Equipment, the backbone of live music
Since one of the goals of this site is to let you know what makes CFW tick, I’ll get all techy on you and talk about equipment. Today’s installment is on FOH- Front of House-. This is probably the most important group of equipment a band uses. It is the speakers, amplifiers and related gear that produces the sound that you- the audience- hears. The most important piece of FOH is the sound engineer. Our- Tammy is awesome and does a fantastic job.
I’ll map out the equipment chain from Tammy to your ears-
First is the mixer- a piece of equipment that controls the volume of each instrument and vioce in the FOH mix. From there, we run the sound through a DSP- Digital sound processor. This controls the sound that is sent to the amps. Ours is adjusted to each venue we play for best sound. The DSP also split the signal for the amps. We send the low frequencies to the subwoofer amp and the rest of the signal to the main amp. From the amps, the signals are sent to the speakers.
CFW uses Peavey speakers for our main speakers. They are inexpensive, light and most importantly sound good. We use a Yamaha subwoofer for the bottom end.
At our next gig, stop by and say hi and ask about the system.
Equipment really does make or break a live show. My band sold for less uses some crappy used speakers, which is reall what is holding us back. Our singer has a great voice but its hard to hear over the rhythm and horn section. How inexpensive are Peavey speakers?
Thanks for the comment. The Peavey speakers were less than $200 each.