Wow!
That was fantastic!
By far the best sound we've ever had during a rehearsal.
Let me just set the scene: We have a shitty little rehearsal space that we use every monday. It has gear low priced gear that a lot of different bands use. That means a noisy PA system, a low quality drum set, a weak Behringer bass amp and to Crate transistor half stacks for guitars... But it's what we've been able to afford for the last 4 years
Gradually we've been upgrading the different pieces of equipment, which means that I haul my own amp with me, the bass player his own amp and our own PA mixer. All of this has to be set up for each rehearsal before we can play and taken back down before we leave. And we only have 3 hours rehearsal time, which means we use a lot of that time setting up all our gear, only to be faced with constant volume wars with the drummer because we're in such a small room. As you can tell, not an ideal situation...
That's why I thought the JamHub would be perfect for our band:
1. We would have better sound quality at every rehearsal because we can hear what each of us is doing - even the singer
2. No more volume wars - we can have as much of each instrument as we please
3. We'd have an easy way of recording rehearsals in good quality - something that we've always had problems with. The best results have come from using a Zoom H4n handheld recorder in the middle of the small room, but it's still not ideal - too hard to distinguish individual members of the band
4. The same sound every time we play. We've always had a hard time hitting the right sound at every rehearsal. Sometimes the sound is fairly good, other times it's almost unbearable. And it's not (always) our performance that causes it. Maybe it's because we share rehearsal space with a lot of other people, so the gear is moved around a lot, setting are constantly changed etc., but even when we set up our own gear in the room, we have a hard time nailing the right sound in the room.
5. We would have the added bonus of being able to rehearse anywhere without bothering anyone. Something which is great for those times right before a gig when you want an extra rehearsal to be as tight as possible but you can't find the rehearsal space.
6. It would take as much time, if not less, to set up the JamHub because we wouldn't need to set up our amps every time - we could just go directly from our guitar and bass effect boards (which we were incidentally using before our amps anyway...)
Here is a "quick" run through of our setup:
The drummer was using an acoustic drumset. We used 3 generic vocal mics (cheaper Shure SM58 copies) to mic the drum kit. Two of these were used as sort of overhead mics using the recorderman method and one was used as a bass drum mic (see more on the recorderman method here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiFOD1EeKhQ ) These 3 mics were sent to a Yamaha EMX 512SC Powered Mixer were we turned down the monitor volume and turned the master volume up. We then used the L & R master out to send to the JamHub using an insert cable. This yeilded fairly good results, but the drums were the hardest to get enough volume out of.
Guitar -> Tonelab SE -> JamHub using Tonelab's headphone out, a 1/8 to 1/4 jack adapter and a stereo cable
Bass -> Boss ME-50B -> JamHub using ME's headphone out and a stereo cable
Lead Vocals -> Yamaha EMX 512C -> JamHub using the monitor mono out and jack to xlr cable
Other Vocals -> Mic -> JamHub
Let me just say that the JamHub really came through in so far every way I imagined. It took us a while to set everything up, and even though I've spent the last 6 months explaining the concept to my fellow band members, I still had to explain a lot of basics with regards to connector types, JamHub sections and so forth. But after about 40/45 minutes of setting everything up we were ready to jam. And it was such a fantastic experience. We used the first song (Times Like These by Foo Fighters) to get the levels right for each of us and by the time we played the next song (Sex On Fire by Kings Of Leon) I was in musical heaven! Never before have I been able to hear everything so clearly and at perfect volume levels (for me
). It was like hearing professionally mastered song, but being a part of it at the same time. It was actually a bit weird at first, because it was such a different experience from the louder than life rock band we usually are, but once you get used to it, you never want to hear it any other way. The quality of the sound coming from the JamHub is so good, I was even wondering if there isn't some kind of built in compressor, because the sound was so balanced and easy on the ears. Whatever it does to the sound, it does it just right. And the built in effects are of a surprisingly good and pleasant sounding quality. I wasn't expecting the built in effects to be of such good quality. And the Stage Control is genius. It really helps to give the performance depth - and to distinguish the different instruments and vocals from each other. I can't wait to start recording with this thing...
I do have some very minor issues with the JamHub. One being that I don't think the volume can get quite loud enough in the headphones. Even after having gained the instruments according to the manual and having maxed some of them out on my particular JamHub section, I still had the headphone volume on max through the whole rehearsal. Granted, we're used to playing at very loud volumes so I think it's a matter of getting used to the lower volumes. And I did find myself gradually turning down the volume a bit as we got further into the rehearsal. But I was a little disappointed that I had to max out the volume to begin with. But the ringing in my ears as I lay my head down to sleep makes me appreciate the fact that I wasn't able to turn it up more
The fact that there is no way to EQ vocals directly on the JamHub is an logical omission from a design point of view, but it did bother our singer. So he went through the mixer first, EQ'd his vocal signal and sent it through the monitor send to the JamHub. After doing this though, he was very pleased with the way it sounded. Jeez, singers...
Not so much the JamHub's fault, but the drummer was complaining that he was getting a bit too much bleed from the acoustic set, making it hard for him to hear the rest of us in his headphones, even though he was using the type that covers the ears. He's thinking of combining a pair of earphones with a pair of non electronic isolation headphones on top, just to keep out the bleed.
In short (too late): I love our JamHub! I rate it 9/10, and I haven't even begun to touch on the subjects of silent rehearsal and recording options. Oh, and of course I hope to use it as a live monitor mixer some day, but I'll get back to you once I try it out
