Bass drowning out music
 

I’m the sound tech at my high school. We have a Allen and Heath GL24000. For our play I am playing music during the intermission. I am playing it from a laptop through an aux cord. It has never really played well with stero tracks but this year everything is getting drownd out by the baseline. I am wondering if there is anyway to fix this. Thanks.

Is there an EQ on the master track?

If not, whatever music player you're using to play the music should have its own equalization settings so maybe turn down the lows? lol

Yeah, High School is tough.
First thought is if it's bass, make sure the channels on the mixer you are feeding the stereo signal into are panned full left and right, respectively.

Good luck with her!

What do you mean by everything in "everything is getting drowned out by....."?
Is the music you're playing, commercial tracks or your own mixes?

Anyway, bass drowning out other elements in a mix sounds like a badly set limiter or compressor.

What is an "aux cord"? What input(s) are you using on the GL?

The best bet is that the stereo signal is getting combined into mono from either the cable you're using or within the GL and cancelling out most of the program information except the bass which is either mixed mono or panned center in the recording.

Proper connection from a laptop would be USB to an "AV" direct box, then to the board. Peavey USB-P is what most folks use. No need for a special driver...plug and play.

By aux cord I mean the cords that you would use in your car. I figured that the issuse was that it was converting a stero track into mono, but my director insists that it’s a stero system. Thanks for the part recommendation I’ll see if it will help.

We are playing commercial tracks, mostly of of YouTube.

I’m just playing music off of YouTube from a laptop.

Thanks. We have it only feeding into one channel. I figured that it should be two, but I’m not the one that set up the system.

YouTube video sound may be bassy, but I bet it's more likely it's the PA system emphasizing the bass. Perhaps try an EQ (or EQ app) on the laptop and create a curve or shelf for the bass to reduce it? Oh, and if it is stereo>mono, that could be emphasizing the bass as well, depending on the source, how it's mixed, and how it's compressed for online streaming.

That would depend if the one channel is a mono or stereo channel.
How many plugs are on the mixer end of cable...is it a splitter cable?

It may be a stereo system but that doesn't mean you can't mess up the connections to turn stereo to mono.

It isn’t a splitter cable. And it is a mono channel.

If the bass is drowning out the mix, pull the channel that says "bass" down on the mixer. :facepalm:

Your director is an idiot.


You are correct, but you'll need the proper cabling. Sound System Interconnection

Technically, it's not legal to do that...