My controllers settings – Part 1
I thought I would share my controller settings with you guys so you can compare them. Very proud to say that I don’t need any EQ function for my PA system, as it already sounds very good to my ears. My only settings enabled are the obligatory crossover and limiter settings.
Crossover settings
I’ll start with the crossover and show you both the subwoofer and top settings.
Subwoofers
For the subwoofers, I strongly relied on the recommendations for this particular speaker cabinet. This means that the polarity must be inverted first. The high pass frequency is set at 38 Hz, which is not very low, but in my opinion sufficient for a PA of this size. For the low pass I found a sweet spot at 96Hz.
In the documentation for this build there were 3 suggestions for the low pass: 90, 96 and 100Hz. I found that the middle option sounded best to me. The speaker itself could theoretically go up to 210Hz, but who wants a subwoofer that screams at those frequencies? 😅 Besides, its position would become very audible at such high frequencies. For the slope types, I just kept the settings recommended in the documentation to get good protection from high frequencies and still get more decibels in the low end.
Tops
The tops run with normal polarity and take over the high-pass frequency of the subwoofer in the upper range. There is no need to set a low pass frequency in the controllers crossover settings here. I found these slope types best suited while I did some listening tests to not cut the low frequencies harshly. Moreover, the ElectroVoice ELX 115 are full-range speakers after all.
Gain reduction
As you can see, both speaker types are set to 0dB gain. If you feel that your system is producing too much treble or too much bass when playing music, you can adjust the gain directly in the controllers crossover settings. This will make the entire speaker quieter without affecting the sound quality.
You can also adjust this with an equalizer, but that would be just another circuit that the signal has to go through before it comes out of the speakers.
📝 Note: The less equipment you use, the less noise is added to your noise floor.
Conclusion
Since this post has already become longer than I expected, I will create a separate post for my limiter settings as well. Stay tuned! ☺️
