DBX DRIVERACK PA Opinions!!

puremule

I need a little help with this one. If anyone has any advice or opinions on the following it would be great. As we dont have a sound engineer travelling around with us I thought this might help in speeding up the sound checks and also the overall sound throughout the night. Thanks in advance

http://www.dbxpro.com/PA/PA.php

Neurojazz

I think feedback elimination is handy - Peavey make something like that - as for the EQ thing, remember that you sound check when the place is empty, so can't take the crowds absorption of sound waves into account - this device would help a little, but not greatly... i'd just get a feedback eliminator and get some feedback on levels from someone in the crowd and tweak as you gig along and get used too what you need for different venues.

Savman

Automated 'Feedback elimination' is a myth. It simply does not exist. The Driverack PA is like any DSP, it'll just do what you tell it to do. EQ, crossover, speaker delay, limiting etc etc.

Its' success depends solely on the operator.

Neurojazz

Weird, i used to sell them and the company i worked for installed gear like this for in house PA systems - i'm sure if they didn't work they wouldn't sell or get returned the first time they didn't.

The Peavey is the only one i've seen working - you'll hear the feedback for a very short time and then the unit snaps in and remembers the bogus signal should it come back again.

Savman

So this machine can distinguish between, say, an electric guitar feedback which is commonly used for 'taste' and the squeal of a mic due to speaker positioning? Unless it's a unit operated by Skynet or the Matrix, it's not something I would ever touch.

Sure, it'll zap the most obvious feedback but nothing you can't do with a graphic EQ and trial and error.

FWIW I owned a 'feedback destroyer' a few years ago, it was the biggest joke of a thing I've ever bought. There are far too many variables to live sound feedback to assume one magical box can solve all your problems.

edit: I'm not dissing Driverack products here, just anything that claims to be able to prevent feedback.

slavedave

I use one of these each week in a very problematic room ( a gym) and it did give us a few more dB's by cutting out some of the major offenders regarding feedback. However, removing feedback means degrading the full audio spectrum somewhat so there is a payoff as usual.
What it is really handy for is reducing the number of units in our rack. We use it as a two way crossover, a limiter and an EQ unit and it is all in 1u of rack space. DBX have a huge forum for questions that cover most of the bases. Like all technology it has a (steep) learning curve that needs a fair bit of application to set it up correctly - I am still learning.
Most recommendations are for the unit up from this one since it has greater flexibility, better speaker protection from transient peaks & you can connect a computer to it for RTA analysis. It is several hundred euro more. I think in hindsight it may have been a better option for us since it is more flexible. However, it has enabled us to do things that we were never able to do before.
I did try the auto-eq set up a few times. There was a marked improvement in my home studio but doing it in the gym was less useful.
As the above posters say, you can do all the same stuff with other units-you may not have the same convenient package though.

Neurojazz

Savman wrote: »

So this machine can distinguish between, say, an electric guitar feedback which is commonly used for 'taste' and the squeal of a mic due to speaker positioning? Unless it's a unit operated by Skynet or the Matrix, it's not something I would ever touch.

Sure, it'll zap the most obvious feedback but nothing you can't do with a graphic EQ and trial and error.

FWIW I owned a 'feedback destroyer' a few years ago, it was the biggest joke of a thing I've ever bought. There are far too many variables to live sound feedback to assume one magical box can solve all your problems.

edit: I'm not dissing Driverack products here, just anything that claims to be able to prevent feedback.

The peavey gear works by learning the typical feedback from the mikes first (so yeah, it won't catch somethings - but when it's trained it will catch the main mikes it's been tested with and no need for having to EQ too compensate) - the band would force feedback during the sound check and the unit will watch for those patterns of oscillation - then old jimi hendrix can stand in front of his marshall and won't get cut off

The main thing here is that some feedback removal is better than none if they don't have an engineer.