I play instrumental tunes (electric guitar) over backing tracks in restaurants and small bars.
Looks like I may pickup some patio gigs this summer.
90% of the tracks are .wav files created in BIAB.
Simple sparse arrangements. Mostly drums bass & perhaps a keyboard or guitar. Nothing Flashy
I play everything from dinner music jazz to Santana/Allman Bros. Stuff. Even a Zappa tune.

My current rig:
Guitar (Telecaster or PRS Custom 24) into Quilter Micro Pro Mach 12 HD (no pedals).
Tracks played on IPAD direct into Bose S1Pro.
I have an amp stand with extension to mount the S1Pro on top of Amp.
Top of the S1pro is maybe 4' off the ground. Guitar amp under that.
Software for playing tracks Is Anytune Pro. Great package. Good setlist, tempo mods, looping, etc
Blueboard bluetooth Midi Pedal to Ipad to control Start/Stop Track, Next/Previous track, EQ on/Off
Expression pedal into Blueboard to control Track Volume.

Its a pretty good rig. Nothing weighs more than 20lbs which is good for me at age 60.

The guitar amp has all the gas in the world but sometimes the band (tracks) gets muddy with the S1Pro when I crank it.
I use the Ipad direct box to S1Pro and do NOT use the S1Pro bluetooth. Some bad EQ issues with it.

Given the height of the rig I don't think my sound dispersion is all that great.

I'm thinking about changing the setup for the "box on a pole" approach.
Perhaps a single QSC 10.2 for both guitar and tracks.
I own a Tech21 Flyrig for the guitar processor. I like the tone. It will work.
I will also route the tracks through the same QSC.

I figure this would give me a little more headroom as well as allow me to elevate the rig higher on a speaker stand.
I'm a little concerned about running both guitar and tracks through a single QSC 10.2
I don't play "shake the house" gigs, but I hate clipping/distortion from a PA system.

Also, the QSC is a bit heavier at 32lbs but at least I won't be toting the Quilter or the S1Pro.
If I end up needing a monitor I figure I could use the S1Pro as a floor wedge.

I've also looked at the Bose L1 compact/Jbl Eon Pro, and the Larger Bose Line Arrays.
I don't much care for the low end and they are 1.5-2X the price of the QSC approach ($700)
I like the higher end Bose (L1 with B-2 sub) but that's about $3k with a mixer.
Also it adds another trip to the car and a lot more weight.

Anybody been down this road before?
Found a better mousetrap?

Thanks,

I mix my BIAB tracks (usually in Reaper) then “master” them using a LUFS meter to keep an eye on levels. This way most stuff is at a similar volume. I have a 2x2 USB sound interface into which I plug my guitar. I then setup Guitar Rig 5 or TH3 and blend this with the “mastered” songs (I use MP3 mainly because of room on my old laptop I now have heaps of room).

The blended tracks and guitar are then put through a PA. I have an 800watt Samson (cheap and easy to setup the speakers fold together so the entire thing becomes one box the power cable and speaker leads all fit in one speaker enclosure and mixer/amplifier clips into the other speaker enclosure). When all set out it plays in stereo and does actually sound as if the backing instruments are across the stage.

More recently I have put all my songs both backing tracks and lyrics into Songbook. Now all I do is start the song scroll and backing and all works together to make life easy.

I just 3 hours ago got a new USB audio device. It did not work as I expected at first but seems fine now. (A lot more testing tomorrow). Tomorrow I am due to have a MIDI foot controller arrive (on my 70th birthday). I will be using this to control aspects of the amp sims (don’t know how that will go but it’s all a game.)

I’ll be doing a gig on Friday. Probably with the new Audio interface but no foot controller yet.

The thing is using backing tracks and an amp sim works a treat. Have things at a preset level makes life easier. Even though I set out my sets if someone asked for something different as long as I have it in SongBook it is just a matter of a click to get it.

Tony

I don't play live anymore but the principle now is the same as it was back then.

To get louder and keep it clean, you need to move more air..... in other words, more speakers and more amplifier power. It's really as simple as that.

With one of my early bands, we started with a Kustom briefcase PA with 130 watts out into a pair of 15" speaker/horn cabinets. We started to get bigger, better paying clubs and the 130w PA didn't cut it any more. We went to double bass bins, double mid cabs, and double horn tweeter arrays on each side of the stage with close to 2000watts into the stacks. We didn't necessarily become louder, but the result was nice headroom and the clarity of the sound was exceptional. Yeah it could be loud, but the real payoff was the clarity of the sound for the audience. The old Kustom 130 became our sidefill monitors. Instead of our sound tech having to run the PA volume on 10, he could run on 6 or 7 and it sounded so much better. No more distortion from gagged wide open volume controls and amps/speakers running the redline to cut through.

Obviously, you don't need a 2KW PA system, but the idea is the same. More speakers and more power gets the clarity and the head room you need. How you get to that point is totally up to you.

Take your existing system and add more of the Bose cabinets. True story: A local band at the time used a modular setup. They didn't use any crossovers on their PA. The used Yamaha passive cabinets. They had 16 of them total and 8 amps to deliver the power. So when they went into big clubs, they stacked 8 per side.... and fed one channel of the amp to one cabinet. Each amp channel only had to power one PA cabinet. Talk about clean sounding..... wow. When they went into smaller clubs, they used one or two per side and amps accordingly. Scale up, scale down as needed. In the bigger clubs the only difference was they were moving more air.

You might want to consider that kind of approach. Use more of the exact same model powered speakers. Add a second one or even a pair per side for 4. You are moving more air, you have double or quadruple the power, and they are still easy to carry and set up.

Excellent Post Herb.

I've given serious thought to stringing another Bose S1Pro to the existing one.
You can't beat the portability and the battery powered aspects.
The sound is amazingly good and room-filling.

But I'm a little on the fence regarding the EQ of the device.
As per usual Bose uses a bit of its own software to control EQ.
Literally a black box

The bluetooth to me is mostly unusable for any tracks with a bass player or kick drum.
I'm not talking loud metal, even some good acoustic jazz bass will negatively affect it.
B3 organ seems to be particularly offensive.
I messed a bit with EQ for each song inside Anytune Pro and that will work.
But that's a bit of a pain after working that out in the DAW.

Truth is I'm looking for simple. I don't want to be a recording engineer at a gig.
I want easy pack in and setup, have some fun playin, packout, get paid & go.
I'm old and cranky and I like it that way

I do use the two "ToneMatch" channels on the S1Pro at a small gig.
One for guitar the other for the backing tracks (Ipad out/Direct Box into PA)
Mostly they work fine, but in some rooms the backing tracks get a bit muddy.
I think that may be the EQ of the tonematch circuits.
I know I could add a mixer but thats one more thing to deal with.

The guitar part works fine either direct (Godin A6 ultra) or first through a Tech 21 FlyRig(tele,prs).

I have not ruled out just adding another S1Pro. I can probably make that work
I'm also considering the line array JBL Eon 1 Pro.
The JBL should have more clear bottom on it, and a bit more headroom for larger gigs
It does weigh 37lbs which is almost like humping a vibrolux again.

Perhaps if I get enough gigs I can get both.

Again, your comments were spot on and appreciated

I'm thinking the units communicate via bluetooth. Correct? Since you said BT is fairly useless......no big loss.

Well, you might have to look at using some sort of splitter such as an external mixer of small size. Input the mic, guitar, and backing source into it. Send the output via a hard wired connection to the amps..... split with a Y-cord or even something like a 4 channel headphone amp. I use a Behringer 4 channel headphone amp here in my studio. One input gets me 4 outputs that I can control the volume of each output uniquely. $50 for the headphone amp.

To move forward, you might have to take a step back to old school technology and use wires.

Set up for the larger jobs might take a few more minutes, but the smaller gigs remain the same.

The true problem here is money. You want to have studio quality sound out of lower quality and less expensive PA speakers. I'm a keyboard player and I have the same problem. You mentioned B3 organ really messes with the sound. Well, that's about 70% of what I play so I feel your pain. An organ is a very powerful and full range instrument from very low bass, very strong midrange to screaming and distorted highs. Then to add to that you're talking about backing tracks so that organ is messing with your vocals and higher freq stuff like cymbals. So what is needed to cover all that? A powerful and full range PA. Not just a vocal PA, a full range PA. You know, the kind they use at concerts to run the entire band through.

The only way as Herb said is to move more air. You have to find a compromise that fits your budget because trust me you don't want to pay for the best. What I've used for single or duo gigs is EV powered PA speakers. The ones I have now is a pair of ELX 12P's. They're 12" full range speakers and weigh right at 40 pounds each. Street price is about $500 each more or less. You can get by with just plugging into them direct but they work and sounds much better with a good mixer. Note I said good, they're not all alike, mixers do color the sound.

The EV's are less than QSC and sound better imho but things move on, QSC have a new line out too so maybe those are better. JBL has a whole newer line of speaker systems as well. Never used them but they get good reviews. Notice I keep talking pairs. That's because even in a smaller venue you want to spread the sound which is what line arrays like the Bose do. Again, another trade off. A very expensive but light weight and easy to move Bose L2 system or a pair of EV's with a mixer. I like stereo because working with tracks it lets you control the bass by panning it L and the other sounds R in a mixer. Unless you have an elaborate multitrack live setup having at least two discrete channels lets you EQ the bass by itself and pan it where you want it. That alone goes a long way towards cleaning up the sound.

Reading the specs and looking at the size and weight my EV's look like overkill for a restaurant gig but not so. You need all the headroom that amount of power gives you. You can play quietly yet have crystal clear sound because they're not straining at all. EV and other also make 8" cabinets that sound pretty good but they all lack in really good, clear bass. Bass requires bigger cabinets and more powerful amps, simple as that even if you're not that loud. They can try various DSP tricks to get decent bass out of smaller speakers but there's no substitute for moving that air.

All of this is to avoid paying upwards of $4-6000 for the best. What's the best? Well, who knows but one of the best is Fulcrum. It's hard to find prices online but I know the ones with two 8's retail for close to $2,000 EACH. Move up to 12's and it's like three grand EACH. The comments I've read about them is they truly provide studio monitor quality sound out of a commercial stage PA. And that is our problem right there. We hear our tracks at home through good monitors or headphones and want to get that quality on a gig. Hard to do without breaking the bank.

I could go on and on but the point is you can't cheap out on your PA. I see that on keyboard forums all the time. The guy spends 3K on a high end keyboard but he's complaining about a low end amp. Stupid. Do that and you wasted all the time you put in creating what I assume are good sounding backing tracks.

Bob

Great reply jazzmammal.

Initially I was convinced to start with a single qsc 10.2
I could add another in the future if need be.
Its light enough yet powerful.

Then i got sidetracked with line arrays.
The Bose L1 model 2 with a B2 or 2 B1 subs and a ToneMatch mixer is clearly a kick [*****] setup.
It is 2 trips to the car to move it all
The b2 sub weighs as much as a Mesa Boogie Mark 3 (45lbs)
Note:I just checked and the L1Model2 with a B1 bass and a ToneMatch 4 mixer is about $2.5k.
A special is on till end of July. That saves just shy of $500.
Its like the internet knows what I'm thinking. Likely it does.

Perhaps I should just pull the trigger on the Bose Model 1. I can handle the expense.

Your final point hits home squarely. I do wonder about the quality of my backing tracks.
Most of them I make myself with BIAB and little else.
I would love to get some feedback/coaching on my work to make them as good as possible.

Any idea on a resources to improve creation/editing backing tracks?

Again, thanks for your time.

If you like the idea of line array's check out this:

https://www.electrovoice.com/product-family.php?id=242

Sweetwater has it priced at $1,599.

This is new to me, I didn't know EV had jumped into that space. I know Bose sounds great, my problem with them is I think they're overpriced. EV has a great rep in the biz too. They seem to fit into the old formula 90% of the best for roughly half the money. This is the other EV system I was talking about, a pair of ZXa1's which are 8" with their sub:

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/electro-voice-zxa1-90-powered-pa-speaker

https://www.samash.com/electro-voice-elx...jRoC9y4QAvD_BwE

The ZXa1's continually get good reviews from the players on the Keyboard Corner forum for reproducing a good acoustic piano sound which it difficult for lots of PA's. If an AP sounds good virtually everything else will sound good. They all say these put out pretty decent bass too. You could try these and see if you needed the sub or not. Otherwise I would really give that new Evolve 50 a shot because it's much less than the Bose. I know EV makes good stuff and it has a 12" sub so I would bet it sounds great.

As for your tracks, back when I had a duo and we had a casino gig I used Biab tracks. The issue with them was room acoustics. What I mixed at home didn't work at the gig and the problem was bass and drums. The mix had them too loud or too soft depending on room acoustics. My sax player used his PA which was a pair of passive 15" Eons driven by a Yamaha powered head. Overkill for many places but sounded great with lots of headroom. The Yamaha head has a 15 band EQ on it which a pair of the older EON's need because they can get boomy if you're not careful. I was having a hard time getting the tracks to sound like I wanted until I remixed them. That gig died about 8 years ago and I've only played in full bands since.

Bob

jazzmammal

I'm experiencing the issues with backing tracks as you describe.
I try to keep the arrangements sparse with bass & drums out front and perhaps 1 "chording" instrument (guitar,keys,accordion, etc) mixed low
But often the bottom is too boomy or cymbals too bright.
Some of the problem may be the Bose S1pro eq profiles on my tracks/amp speaker. Basically only 3 to select from.

The Bose L1/B1 Line Array has a proprietary mixer (t4s tonematch)option that gets good/excellent reviews.
Conceiveably I could save some eq settings for boomier rooms on a mixer like that.
It would be $2500 with the mixer, $1k more than the EV, but perhaps worth it long run.

Or just buy a single EV or QSC 10 for tracks and stay with a separate guitar amp.
That's the low cost approach that may be fine for most situations.
No doubt the EV/QSC 10" woofer would move a lot more air than the Bose S1 Pro I'm using now for tracks.


As an aside, I long for alive band situation, at least a bass player
We're somewhat starved for musician out where I live.
For the time being its me, an electric guitar and some tracks.

Again, I appreciate your experienced input on the issues of PA selection and tracks.
Now that I'm finally gigging I want the sound to be as high quality as possible.
I was dreaming of set it and forget it. I guess I was dreaming.

I use Izotope Tonal Balance Control to check and adjust my tracks before rendering them. It almost invariably indicates the lows and lower mids are through the roof using Realtracks naturally. When I set them up to agree with the Tonal Balance Control at first I thought I’m chopping too much out but then it really works when compared to other tracks. (Tonal Balance Control is a part of the Neutron 2 Ozone 8 Advanced suite on sale as I write).

To keep the volumes in check I use a LUFS meter and set all tracks close to the same. I don’t rely on Ozone for that but even just the Ozone Maximizer gets you close.

I went away from a Bose system for both cost and sound reasons.

My thoughts
Tony

Thanks Tony. I have Izotope Advanced Suite, but didn't realise I could do this. So little time, so much gear....

Silvertones uses Real Band live for his gigs instead of prerecorded tracks. He reasoning is that's the best way to solve the mixing problem. He uses an 8 output interface and sets RB up to route each track to it's own in/out on the interface. Then he runs each interface output to his mixer. That gives him full and complete control over each track just like having a soundman at a big show.

Of course that certainly adds a level of complexity because now you're using a laptop live with a large interface and all the cabling but he's been doing that for years. There are ways to shortcut the setup and tear down. If you're interested in the details just do a forum search for username Silvertones, he's written a lot about all of this.

If this doesn't appeal to you then one trick to try is don't mix your tracks using your home studio system, mix using your PA.

Bob

I have given the multi-track approach a thought but resisted because of the complexity aspect.
I will probably try to catch up with Silvertone and get some direct feedback

I just found an IOS app called MultiTracker which might also work.
Not sure how it groups individual wav files into an arrangement.
Have to check that out.

It does support playlists (setlists) and some configuration of faders.
Also might be able to use my midi foot pedal for stop/start/next previous song.
I might get by with a 2-4 channel audio interface.

FWIW I have (in a pinch) resorted to ripping all the other keys off a discarded computer keyboard and left just the space bar key .. using that to start/stop with my foot worked just fine.
Whatever it takes to make it work.

Silvertone is a great resource for how to 'get er done' in RB.
He's braver than I, and I consider myself a power user!

I usually resort to PT when going live. For one thing I don't get the 'loading accompaniment' window during a show. I suppose this can be planned for and avoided in RB .. but I like to know what to expect when performing.