How To Set Up A Speaker For An Event

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How to set up a speaker

Written by the founder Steven Thompson

I have to admit, when I first started hiring speakers many years ago, I came at it from a highly technical, background. You see, before founding this organisation, ST AV, I'd worked as a sound engineer at high stakes / high profile live events. So it's no wonder I was probably a bit jargonistic. And, dare I say it, maybe a bit snobby towards cheaper gear, and with an emphasis on premium equipment.

I'm pretty sure in those early days when ST AV started hiring speakers to the general public, we perhaps confused a few customers 🙈

Well, not any more!

In 2024, nearly 300 people dry hired speakers from ST AV! And so we've got pretty damn good at demo-ing equipment to clients who collect from us, contact us to request a free demo)

Set It Up Yourself: Save Money

here's how

Video Guide, How To Set A Speaker Up, The Introduction

Watch this series of videos to learn, or if you'd rather read, here's the transcription:
"Hello, my name's Steven Thompson, and this is an actively amplified loudspeaker like some of the ones that I hire out.

I'm going to plug it in and show you how it works.

If you've previously made other loudspeakers work, then stop watching.

You'd be wasting your time. You've already done it.

However if, like a lot of people, you've never made a loudspeaker work, this'll be a great watch".

Playing Music Part 1

How to connect a phone (read more)

"So I don't know exactly what your setup will be next time you make loudspeakers work, but I hire out loudspeaker packages, and I'm going to give you an example system now, and hopefully that'll be really similar to something you're using, and this will be, therefore, really helpful. So really what we're talking about here is not just loudspeakers, but a PA system. So if we break this down into three parts.

Inputs, left-hand side, control, in the middle, or mix. And then on the right-hand side, we've got outputs. That's the speaker, like what you saw right at the start of the video.

So I intend to keep this explanation simple. Again, if you've got previous experience of setting up speakers, this video probably isn't for you. If you're in a band and you want to plug in multiple inputs, this video probably isn't for you.

However, if you've got an event coming up where you want to plug in some music and you want to use a microphone, this video is very much for you. So here's an example setup. This is one of the packages I hire out.

Let's begin with the music. I tend to test music first when I'm setting up speakers because it's more stable than the microphone. It won't do that feedback thing, that ringing, and also, well, you don't have to talk like an idiot into a microphone test one, two, and all that.

You just put some music on and slowly fade it up. It seems like a more controlled way to start your day. So, this is the cable we'll use to get the music.

This one is a left and right jack, and they are labeled in tiny little... you want some tape on them, really. This one here, if you can't see, you'll have to trust me, this says number one. That will mean left.

I'm going to use this input here, input three and four. Left, right. One goes to left.

Two goes to right. Now, this thing isn't even switched on yet. It's often good just to plug stuff in even before you've got things switched on.

Certainly at this point, we haven't got the loudspeaker switched on, heaven forbid. Sort your inputs out and then move sensibly towards your outputs".

Playing Music Part 2

How to connect a phone part 2 (read more)

"So, I'm going to use my phone, this is a Lightning to 3.5mm aux socket, goes in there.

In my packages I also include USB-C, by the way.

This is the microphone cable for later, so let's just send that over there for now.

I've got a camera to unlock my phone, should I?

And bring up some Spotify, again, nothing switched on yet, just plugging stuff in.

So, one thing on the iPhone, I'm just going to demonstrate this on an iPhone because it's what I've got, is that when you plug this in, if you play something from the phone, nice, from the phone, when you plug it in it should take over, and it does.

Sometimes I'm plugging adapters like this into my phone and I'm still hearing music playing from the phone, go no further, figure out what's wrong here because you're never going to get sound onto the desk, onto this little mixer, if there's still music playing off the phone.

The adapter should take over. In this case, well, it says, is this Lightning adapter connected to a pair of headphones? If you switch devices, you can update the selection in the sounds and haptics section of the settings. Okay, I'm just going to say headphones, it's effectively what it is.

Now in terms of output level on here, don't play it right at the top, give yourself some scope to go louder if you need to, but maybe come down to about, I've put that at three quarters, 75%. I'm just going to put that down to one side for a moment.

Now, at some point we should switch on this mixer.

There's a power cable in the back, switch it on. I can do that without fear of banging, popping, because the speaker is not switched on at this point, so there's not going to be a problem there.

Okay, next, let's see if we can see some signal on the mixer.

So there's this rule in setting up speakers, which is make sure you can see the sound before you hear it. And the reason for that is to make sure that loud bursts of sound don't suddenly fly out of speakers and hurt people's ears. And when we say see it, we mean can you see levels in the mixer, and indeed sometimes on the speakers, before you actually hear the sound.

So let's see the signal first. So I've plugged it into input three and four. This is the level control for input three and four.

Ultimately, this is the control that you're going to be controlling how loud you want the music, or otherwise, just turn it up and down on the phone. So this is going to come up.

Now, there's a little line here that would be referred to perhaps as sort of the zero value, kind of like the typical default, turn it up to about there kind of thing.

There's a little line there. And then, of course, that could be too loud and you might need to turn it down. I'm just saying put it there first.

Unity is the technical term. So then this one can come up to a similar kind of value. And we see some signal.

Fine. That's just a start point. We don't hear anything yet.

The speaker's not even switched on. I just want to make sure I can see the signal before I go any further. And I did.

Great. Something else just to be aware of is make sure that the rest of this little mixer is normalized. What I mean is, like, make sure that there's not other things turned up that shouldn't be turned up.

So turn this level control to zero so that there's nothing coming flying out of there. These are just other inputs, by the way. We're going to plug a microphone into there next.

We won't use this one. That's input two. And we won't use this one.

This is input five and six. For now, just make sure they're turned down. These control the tone, like bass or higher frequency of the inputs on this mixer.

They can be in the middle. And these can also just be in the middle as a start point. Now, remember, for now, we've turned down this master fader because I want to test the microphone next before I switch on the speaker".

Connect A Microphone

How to connect a microphone (read more)

"So, let's test this microphone. So, we got our cable back again and pause this music playing for a moment so we don't get distracted with that. I am going to plug that in there. Should point out that looks like that. Plug that in there.

And I'm going to plug that neatly into there. There's something in the world of sound called phantom power.

All you need to know for now is it doesn't need to be applied in this case. There's a button that says phantom power. It's this one. This would be switched on. Little red light. This would be switched off.

Leave it off. In fact, check it's off if you if you you should really.

Right. Our mic's plugged into there. I would press that button. What that has to do with is reducing some very low frequencies from the microphone which frankly aren't helpful to speech intelligibility and clarity.

Also be aware that some microphones have an on-off switch on them. This one does, although it's got a stop so you can't switch it on and off. So now actually for all intents and purposes, the microphone is is ready to be used.

So I'm going to talk into it.

That's going to come off camera. And I'm going to turn this. I'm going to make sure this master control is up. And then I'm going to turn this and make sure I can see some level, which I can.

Test. Test. Okay. So, now we've definitely seen the signal in the mixer. It's time to connect to our output. It's time to hook up the speaker.

So next a case of taking the female end of the XLR audio cable putting it in the left output of the mixer left because this is a mono instance which just means single speaker and it's customary to take the left output and then the male end of the XLR audio cable goes into the input one of the loudspeaker.

Still at this point, the loudspeaker is switched off"

Connect the mixer to the speaker

Switch the speaker on (read more)

"Good news. It is time to switch the speaker on if not already and get our test done. So if not already, power it on there. We can fade this input one up to zero.

At this point, there are these four modes of this speaker for use in different environments. PA is the flattest.

That's sort of the most neutral sound, the most balanced sound, the most evenly balanced sound. But if you want low-end boost, then there's this DJ function uh that you can move it to.

Changes the tonality of the speaker somewhat. Then there's a monitor function that is if you use this speaker, it's in this orientation at the moment like it supposed to be on a tripod, but you can lie it on its side and put it on the floor of a stage for example and use it as a monitor wedge for uh music playing or uh for for monitoring if you're doing a speech.

We're not talking about that in detail right now. And there's a solo mode as well for uh effective effectively like solo performers. But again, no no further detail required on that just now for this basic video. Back to PA.

I encourage you to make sure the limiter is switched on, please. Um so that's its off position. That's on.

Perhaps not obvious to see just through the video, but it's a real obvious feel when you press it for which way is on and which way is off. That just protects the speaker.

By the way, when there is signal reaching the speaker, it will light here green. We've not played anything into the speaker yet, so that's why it's not lighting green. Hurrah. And finally, we can test the whole system. So, I said earlier that testing with a some music first seems like a sensible idea so that you avoid um wild feedback. So phone, plug it in and press play. Let's put that there. So the master fader can come up to that point. It's marked with a triangle.

And then slowly, nice and steady, fade it up. And now you'll see that green light. And we can test the microphone as well.

The master fader is still faded up, but that's okay. The microphone isn't live because the input one channel is not faded up. But now, let's fade it up.

I'll talk into the microphone, but that'll be out of shot. Test test test. Nice and slowly just fading that up. Um, just a quick thing about the way that these loudspeakers are designed in relationship to microphone use.

The microphone is designed to be used behind or off to the side, but not directly in front of the loudspeaker.

So I'm talking into this microphone quite it's quite close to my mouth and I'm stood behind the loudspeaker over in that direction. it's not feeding back.

It's nice and stable. If I was to move the microphone in front of the speaker at about this level, uh, it would most likely feed back. So, watch out for that. You want to set your level. Yeah, short loud enough, but you also need to think about where your microphone is in relation to your speaker so that you can get it loud, but it's not feeding back.

There is a little bit of tonality control on this speaker on this mixer, but not a lot.

This will take off some high-end, and this will take off some low end. That's where we're going to leave it for now"

Connect The Mixer To The Speaker