Interesting 30m levels-setting advice from EV

[Chriscom]

A comment from one of the Facebook groups below. Obviously this would apply to the 50m as well, and I guess the Everse 8:

Sharing info from EV tech support:

I talked to EV about proper gain staging to achieve maximum volume/headroom on the Evolve 30m. (I'm accustomed to a traditional mixer with manual gain input settings, then adjusting faders to taste).

Apparently, the reason we don't see a separate "gain" level on the 30m channels is because they have AUTOMATIC gain for all inputs.
The levels on each channel are channel faders, the "Main" level is the main output level being sent to the speaker, and the "Speaker" is the physical speaker's volume.

They suggested keeping the speaker and main at 0dB, and increase the channel levels until they fill ~75% of the level meter on the back LCD display. That would be max volume. Then LOWER the Main level for quieter shows.

*I'll be testing this all as soon as I get my 30m back from the repair shop

[RonD]

I had seen that as well. I'm not sure it's necessarily true.
As a quick test, I just plugged in my Acoustasonic into channel 4 (Hi-Z input). Once I tuned the Channel 4 "Level" setting up to +15, the channel started to overload. If this had "automatic gain" would it not stop that from happening (and the "level" control would simply feed a signal into the "Main" mix level)?

[Chriscom]

Originally Posted by RonD

I had seen that as well. I'm not sure it's necessarily true.
As a quick test, I just plugged in my Acoustasonic into channel 4 (Hi-Z input). Once I tuned the Channel 4 "Level" setting up to +15, the channel started to overload. If this had "automatic gain" would it not stop that from happening (and the "level" control would simply feed a signal into the "Main" mix level)?

Yeah, there's a lively discussion over there, for those who have Facebook I think this link will work

https://www.facebook.com/groups/9653...5524741622801/

I haven't thought it through but I said over there I wondered if I could initially set it up that way without blowing out my windows

[RonD]

I did run my test with the "Main" and "Speaker" levels set at 0...and I started with the Channel 4 level at "Mute", and then slowly increased it to bring it up to a decent/somewhat loud volume. However, with just that one instrument, the "Main" meter was running close to 80%.

Also, the info. provided in that FB post would also seem to directly contradict the info. in the EV30M manual:

"INPUT LEVEL
Control for adjusting a LINE/MIC or line input's sensitivity. These controls let you adjust the incoming signals to the mixer's internal operation level. The following gain setting instruction is to be used as a guide to help achieve a good signal input level: Set the MASTER volume controls to -80 dB. Set the INPUT LEVEL control to -80 dB. Connect the sound source (microphone, instrument, etc.) to the desired LINE/MIC input. Start the sound source at the highest volume level to be expected - respectively sing or speak as loudly as possible directly (close up) into the microphone. While playing the sound source or singing into the microphone, adjust the input level using the INPUT GAIN control, so that during the loudest part, the CLIP does not show. Then increase the MASTER VOL until the desired output from the column is achieved. This is the basic channel setting."

[Chriscom]

Originally Posted by RonD

Also, the info. provided in that FB post would also seem to directly contradict the info. in the EV30M manual

Yes, very good point, and at least one othe user noted the same thing!

[JakeStone]

Originally Posted by RonD

Also, the info. provided in that FB post would also seem to directly contradict the info. in the EV30M manual:

Dang - as a newbie to EV Evolve I hope they can verify and sort this out.

Honestly the multiple volume controls and proper gain staging has been confusing to me.

Perhaps the Facebook poster may have been mis-informed?

[ZackPomerleau]

Originally Posted by JakeStone

Dang - as a newbie to EV Evolve I hope they can verify and sort this out.

Honestly the multiple volume controls and proper gain staging has been confusing to me.

Perhaps the Facebook poster may have been mis-informed?

Funny enough I emailed them about this as I didn’t understand the difference between raising the speaker volume vs the Mains. Whoever responded gave me a long winded response that it’s preferential and that sometimes you can get more volume from raising the mains as turning up the speaker in some scenarios can do this or that, but other scenarios the other is better. I personally set my input gains how I like it so that the speaker volume control from 0-10 is my complete sweep. Anywhere past 7db or so I begin having limiter flashing on higher end chords hit hard. If I went higher than 9-10 db some hard strums would limit which I don’t want I feel this makes more sense than their thing but I dunno.

[Chriscom]

Originally Posted by ZackPomerleau

Funny enough I emailed them about this as I didn’t understand the difference between raising the speaker volume vs the Mains. Whoever responded gave me a long winded response that it’s preferential and that sometimes you can get more volume from raising the mains as turning up the speaker in some scenarios can do this or that, but other scenarios the other is better. I personally set my input gains how I like it so that the speaker volume control from 0-10 is my complete sweep. Anywhere past 7db or so I begin having limiter flashing on higher end chords hit hard. If I went higher than 9-10 db some hard strums would limit which I don’t want I feel this makes more sense than their thing but I dunno.

Basically whatever works right. Personally I'm never touching the speaker volume setting unless something weird is going on. At least on my smartphone, the ergonomics of fine-tuning that one are atrocious compared to that for the Main, so that's where I'm focusing most of my attention (apart from channel settings of course).

[ZackPomerleau]

Originally Posted by JakeStone

Dang - as a newbie to EV Evolve I hope they can verify and sort this out.

Honestly the multiple volume controls and proper gain staging has been confusing to me.

Perhaps the Facebook poster may have been mis-informed?

Jake I’m curious how you feel the dispersion in real world differed with the Bose and EV. Some legit hardcore bose guys claim it’s waaaaay better but that seems off to me

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by Chriscom

A comment from one of the Facebook groups below. Obviously this would apply to the 50m as well, and I guess the Everse 8:

Sharing info from EV tech support:

I talked to EV about proper gain staging to achieve maximum volume/headroom on the Evolve 30m. (I'm accustomed to a traditional mixer with manual gain input settings, then adjusting faders to taste).

Apparently, the reason we don't see a separate "gain" level on the 30m channels is because they have AUTOMATIC gain for all inputs.
The levels on each channel are channel faders, the "Main" level is the main output level being sent to the speaker, and the "Speaker" is the physical speaker's volume.

They suggested keeping the speaker and main at 0dB, and increase the channel levels until they fill ~75% of the level meter on the back LCD display. That would be max volume. Then LOWER the Main level for quieter shows.

*I'll be testing this all as soon as I get my 30m back from the repair shop

My first question for Chis is from the above bolded statement about getting your EV30M 'back from repair' - I don't remember reading or hearing about an issue you had. What was the problem?

Now onto my thoughts, experiences and observations on the volume and all other settings with the EV30M! I've been watching this thread and it got me to thinking, "How did I set my levels when I first got our EV30M," because it's been so long since we got ours! So I decided to bring it back into the house today (from the car) and set it up because I never really dialed in the new (to me) IRIS DF with the K&K Pure Mini I installed myself. I had found that it sounded 'good enough' with the settings I initially dialed in for the RainSong Nashville in the Channel 4 Hi Z input so I've just been using that. But I knew I could and should do it from scratch to get the best sound. Plus, it would remind me of how I initially set it up so I could comment here. Win-win. After a quick review everything pretty much came back to me and I remembered dialing in everything initially per the EV instructions. I put the 'Speaker Volume' to zero and it has indeed never left that position. I dialed in the mics and guitars by first setting the 'Level' fader on each channel to the point where the red peak indicator would just start to flash whenever I yelled into the mic or strummed the guitar ridiculously loud and then back it off a tiny bit from there. Based on this, I should never overdrive (clipping) the signal. I consider this input 'Level' to be basically the same as the input gain you normally encounter in most mixers and PA systems. Once I got those levels then I tuned up the 'Main' mixer level which is what I consider my main output. This is what I use to set the overall volume levels at gigs.

I typically run it at about -18 to -22 at most places. I think the loudest I ever needed was playing outdoors last summer and bumped up to a whopping -9! So even with the speaker volume set at zero the EV30M get's louder than I would EVER need it to be. Interestingly, both mics needed to have their 'Levels' bumped WAY up to get to that peak, about 34 (me) and 36 (her). My Black Ice dials up to 30 while the Nashville and DF (through the channel 4 HI Z input) only needs to be about 11. Once I got my volumes set then I would go in and cycle through the various presets with everything (EQ) set flat and find the the ones I liked best. For the mics that was 'Vocal Mic' and for the guitar I just used the '80hz Low Cut' since that is where most feedback issues start to arise. More on that in a bit. For the Speaker preset I tried them all and found the 'Live' to be best. Then I would go in and dial in the EQ to taste on each mic and guitar. The last thing I did was to go in and dial in a little bit of 'Echo & Reverb' as they call it. I found the one I liked best and then just dialed in the tiniest bit to where I could start to hear it. I did not use the second channel of FX or compression - more on that in a bit. After that, I was good to go. At most every gig I only mess with the mixer 'Main' volume for our output. On occasion I might bump up my wife's mic volume if she has to sing with a mask since that reduces and mutes her vocals quite a bit. But other than that I never seem to need to make any adjustments. The built-in barn door preamps on the RainSongs gave me extra controls for my guitars for minor on-the-fly tweaks.

Now, onto today's tests. As I said I wanted to dial in the new guitar with the K&K system from scratch to get the very best tone. Another thing to note - I am also using my little Headway EDM-1 preamp in order to have yet more control at my fingertips for dialing in minor tweaks and muting for tuning and what not. Sure, I can do this via the tablet that is also right in front of me but I'd rather not mess with the EV30M settings once I've got them dialed in best. First I started just going straight into the EV30M from the guitar and zeroed out everything flat. I get the input gain ('Level') set to just before peak red. Then I set the EQ to the best sound. At this point I decided to cycle through the presets again and found that I really liked that last one, mysteriously called 'Cory Wong'. I'm assuming Cory Wong is maybe an engineer for EV that came up with his favorite EQ preset and it was so nice they left it? Regardless, it sounded great - huge and warm. So I decided to go with that since I can always dial out any problems with the EDM-1. Then I went in and added a little compression which seems to do not much anyway but I left a bit on there. The last thing I did was go into the second channel of the FX and cycled through a bunch of those. I'm not much of a Chorus or Flange guy and didn't hear anything I liked anyway. But then I started messing with the 'Doubling - Wide' and dialed in bit of that and that took the already huge warm tone and made wet and FAT, for want of a better term. It was really cool and I'm excited to try it out at gigs next week.

The last thing I did was to then run the guitar into the EDM-1 and that into the EV30M. There I was able to dial in a bit more EQ which consisted mostly of dialing out even more of the mids and also a bit of the trebles. Last I just played around with the 'Anti-feedback' knob which is basically just a high pass filter. This will allow me to dial out any problems with the low end that might pop up at various venues. Anyway, the results were really cool. I've been digging on the IRIS DF quite a bit. It was bought with the intention of primarily being an acoustic show only guitar (no amplification) but now that I've got a great tone dialed into the EV30M I'm stoked to use it even more for those shows as well. Check out those settings that I talked about if you have not already done so. The 'Cory Wong' preset and also the 'Doubling - Wide'. I think they really make for a nice tone, at least on my DF with the K&K.

Here's a few photos of the settings on the tablet:

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by ZackPomerleau

Jake I’m curious how you feel the dispersion in real world differed with the Bose and EV. Some legit hardcore bose guys claim it’s waaaaay better but that seems off to me

I know you're not asking me but I have looked hard at both and seen/heard/used both systems quite a bit in the last few years and I'd say it depends on your definitely of just how much better is 'waaaaay better'. The Bose systems do actually provide the very best with horizontal dispersion, hands down. Their physically articulated cone tower speakers throw excellent volume a full 180 degrees and it truly does seem to 'fill the room' with even, warm and enveloping sound. This in turn allows the player to play with less overall volume which is great for the folks in the front.

The EV30M uses directional 'sound wave guides' which direct the sound outward at an angle and do a very good job with horizontal dispersion, better than most any other system not called Bose. As good as the Bose? No. But is the Bose waaaaay better? No. I'd give it only one 'a' as in way better. I'd give them two for most other single point acoustic amps. Waay better than those. Those harping on 'waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay' better are just Bose fanboys that have no interest in anything else without the name Bose on it. Not unlike iPhone users.

And before anyone flames me for any of the above, I'm a Bose fanboy. Love their warm, enveloping sound. Too bad they can't seem to hire enough talented engineers to design a system with more than two usable inputs and maybe a few software programmers to write a decent app. Although in their defense with regard to the usable inputs, that might just be the beancounters telling them to put everything into the external T4/8s mixers so they can gouge another $700 out of their users. Oh, SNAP!

[Chriscom]

Hey Methos, that entire quote I shared is from a user on an Evolve Facebook forum. I've had no functonal issues with my 30m.

As for dispersion, to add to your comments: It's no contest, the Bose's 180 degrees is much better on paper and in practice than the 30m/50/50m's 120 degrees. It's one feature I dearly wish my 30m had. But it's not like there's a zone of silence beyond that, and fairly off to the sides it's fine, just not primo.

I'm about to dive into your wonderfully detailed post, but something caught my eye that I've long wondered about: If Hi Z is such a benefit as a guitar input, why would a multiple-channel mixer have only one? And Evolve is hardly alone. I finally started using mine but now that also means I have to shift my mic from Channel 1 to Channel 3 so I don't have to jump so far for quick adustments, since nearly all my gigs are solo. But there are plenty of guitar duos who could (and do, around here) pipe two voices an two guitars through one decent-sized PA...

[Stringmaster]

Good info everyone! I don't recall my initial settings or how I got to them either, other than I followed the manual. I do start out with the Speaker volume at 0, and sometimes kick that up or down plus or minus a couple. I did go in and eq at the speaker to take off some highs, some bass, and a little mids--to warm it up a bit and since I don't want too much bass as it's just my guitar and vocal. I generally use the Live or sometime Music preset if I want a little softer sound. For the channel presets they are typically on Vocal Mic for the mics, and I like the Flat setting for my Cole Clark, but sometimes use the Acoustic Guitar preset for other acoustics when I host an open mic. My channel EQ's are close to flat, but I sometimes tweak them a little to the room or different guitars. And my channel volumes hover in the mid 20's range. I do add a little compression and reverb/delay. I tried all of the settings on the two effects banks and since I use it so sparingly it doesn't matter much. I did like the doubling and plate reverb for a while which was fine, but moved to the reverb/delay. I think I have 4 stored settings for various venues, but they are slight tweaks on the theme. I haven't had any desire to change anything--until now--haha, I may drag it out and mess with it some more after seeing this thread!

[ZackPomerleau]

Originally Posted by Methos1979

My first question for Chis is from the above bolded statement about getting your EV30M 'back from repair' - I don't remember reading or hearing about an issue you had. What was the problem?

Now onto my thoughts, experiences and observations on the volume and all other settings with the EV30M! I've been watching this thread and it got me to thinking, "How did I set my levels when I first got our EV30M," because it's been so long since we got ours! So I decided to bring it back into the house today (from the car) and set it up because I never really dialed in the new (to me) IRIS DF with the K&K Pure Mini I installed myself. I had found that it sounded 'good enough' with the settings I initially dialed in for the RainSong Nashville in the Channel 4 Hi Z input so I've just been using that. But I knew I could and should do it from scratch to get the best sound. Plus, it would remind me of how I initially set it up so I could comment here. Win-win. After a quick review everything pretty much came back to me and I remembered dialing in everything initially per the EV instructions. I put the 'Speaker Volume' to zero and it has indeed never left that position. I dialed in the mics and guitars by first setting the 'Level' fader on each channel to the point where the red peak indicator would just start to flash whenever I yelled into the mic or strummed the guitar ridiculously loud and then back it off a tiny bit from there. Based on this, I should never overdrive (clipping) the signal. I consider this input 'Level' to be basically the same as the input gain you normally encounter in most mixers and PA systems. Once I got those levels then I tuned up the 'Main' mixer level which is what I consider my main output. This is what I use to set the overall volume levels at gigs.

I typically run it at about -18 to -22 at most places. I think the loudest I ever needed was playing outdoors last summer and bumped up to a whopping -9! So even with the speaker volume set at zero the EV30M get's louder than I would EVER need it to be. Interestingly, both mics needed to have their 'Levels' bumped WAY up to get to that peak, about 34 (me) and 36 (her). My Black Ice dials up to 30 while the Nashville and DF (through the channel 4 HI Z input) only needs to be about 11. Once I got my volumes set then I would go in and cycle through the various presets with everything (EQ) set flat and find the the ones I liked best. For the mics that was 'Vocal Mic' and for the guitar I just used the '80hz Low Cut' since that is where most feedback issues start to arise. More on that in a bit. For the Speaker preset I tried them all and found the 'Live' to be best. Then I would go in and dial in the EQ to taste on each mic and guitar. The last thing I did was to go in and dial in a little bit of 'Echo & Reverb' as they call it. I found the one I liked best and then just dialed in the tiniest bit to where I could start to hear it. I did not use the second channel of FX or compression - more on that in a bit. After that, I was good to go. At most every gig I only mess with the mixer 'Main' volume for our output. On occasion I might bump up my wife's mic volume if she has to sing with a mask since that reduces and mutes her vocals quite a bit. But other than that I never seem to need to make any adjustments. The built-in barn door preamps on the RainSongs gave me extra controls for my guitars for minor on-the-fly tweaks.

Now, onto today's tests. As I said I wanted to dial in the new guitar with the K&K system from scratch to get the very best tone. Another thing to note - I am also using my little Headway EDM-1 preamp in order to have yet more control at my fingertips for dialing in minor tweaks and muting for tuning and what not. Sure, I can do this via the tablet that is also right in front of me but I'd rather not mess with the EV30M settings once I've got them dialed in best. First I started just going straight into the EV30M from the guitar and zeroed out everything flat. I get the input gain ('Level') set to just before peak red. Then I set the EQ to the best sound. At this point I decided to cycle through the presets again and found that I really liked that last one, mysteriously called 'Cory Wong'. I'm assuming Cory Wong is maybe an engineer for EV that came up with his favorite EQ preset and it was so nice they left it? Regardless, it sounded great - huge and warm. So I decided to go with that since I can always dial out any problems with the EDM-1. Then I went in and added a little compression which seems to do not much anyway but I left a bit on there. The last thing I did was go into the second channel of the FX and cycled through a bunch of those. I'm not much of a Chorus or Flange guy and didn't hear anything I liked anyway. But then I started messing with the 'Doubling - Wide' and dialed in bit of that and that took the already huge warm tone and made wet and FAT, for want of a better term. It was really cool and I'm excited to try it out at gigs next week.

The last thing I did was to then run the guitar into the EDM-1 and that into the EV30M. There I was able to dial in a bit more EQ which consisted mostly of dialing out even more of the mids and also a bit of the trebles. Last I just played around with the 'Anti-feedback' knob which is basically just a high pass filter. This will allow me to dial out any problems with the low end that might pop up at various venues. Anyway, the results were really cool. I've been digging on the IRIS DF quite a bit. It was bought with the intention of primarily being an acoustic show only guitar (no amplification) but now that I've got a great tone dialed into the EV30M I'm stoked to use it even more for those shows as well. Check out those settings that I talked about if you have not already done so. The 'Cory Wong' preset and also the 'Doubling - Wide'. I think they really make for a nice tone, at least on my DF with the K&K.

Here's a few photos of the settings on the tablet:

Originally Posted by Methos1979

I know you're not asking me but I have looked hard at both and seen/heard/used both systems quite a bit in the last few years and I'd say it depends on your definitely of just how much better is 'waaaaay better'. The Bose systems do actually provide the very best with horizontal dispersion, hands down. Their physically articulated cone tower speakers throw excellent volume a full 180 degrees and it truly does seem to 'fill the room' with even, warm and enveloping sound. This in turn allows the player to play with less overall volume which is great for the folks in the front.

The EV30M uses directional 'sound wave guides' which direct the sound outward at an angle and do a very good job with horizontal dispersion, better than most any other system not called Bose. As good as the Bose? No. But is the Bose waaaaay better? No. I'd give it only one 'a' as in way better. I'd give them two for most other single point acoustic amps. Waay better than those. Those harping on 'waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay' better are just Bose fanboys that have no interest in anything else without the name Bose on it. Not unlike iPhone users.

And before anyone flames me for any of the above, I'm a Bose fanboy. Love their warm, enveloping sound. Too bad they can't seem to hire enough talented engineers to design a system with more than two usable inputs and maybe a few software programmers to write a decent app. Although in their defense with regard to the usable inputs, that might just be the beancounters telling them to put everything into the external T4/8s mixers so they can gouge another $700 out of their users. Oh, SNAP!

My only thing with this is why even have speaker volume then?

And that’s good to know. I’m actually even more curious about the S1 vs Everse. The S1 is not a true array even though many claim it.

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by ZackPomerleau

My only thing with this is why even have speaker volume then?

And that’s good to know. I’m actually even more curious about the S1 vs Everse. The S1 is not a true array even though many claim it.

I own two S1's. They're great. Not 'true arrays' as you noted (neither are the Bose or EV 'stick' systems for that matter, btw) but the S1 does have multiple vertically articulated tweeters which is why it throws a decent amount of sound for such a small, lightweight box. The Everse 8 has more power and a better app. Funny, now that I think about it, the parallels between the S1/EV8 and Pro8/EV30 are very similar! Eventually someone will meld the best of both into a single system and truly have a winner.