Does such a piece of equipment exist?

R

Red Squirrel

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This is not exactly related to "PC" sound, just sound systems in general.

Is there such thing as a sound board that takes an amplified output, splits it into multiple outputs, and have individual control for each output? Basically what we'd like to do at our church is split the speaker signal, as there are multiple speakers that we want to individually control. There is also lot of other equipment such as the hearing aid, the recording, possibly a monitor if there's someone singing. Right now we just use various outputs on the board, but we are limited by those and some of them have seperate volume control (ex: aux) which is ok in some situations, but basically we'd like to just control it all from one spot.

I was thinking of building one using a bunch of reostats, but there has to be a premade device like this out there.
 
Sounds like you need a bigger mixing console for what you want to do, but bigger is more money and your implication is trying to do this on the cheap. You might want to look into a two console setup to do what you want cheaper. In the latter setup you would use a aux send, hopefully on the board you already have to send your signal to a second board that would control the speakers. For what you are talking about that is what I would do unless I had a big enough budget to afford a computer controlled mixer setup.
 
What you need is a distribution mixer. this is a 5-channel one, designed for line level. Another option would be as others talked about use a headphone amp. While those provide more voltage than you want, just don't turn them up all the way. The largest one I know of is this one. Cheap and effective.
 
Cool, the headphone amp might do, so would the distribution mixer.

We actually do have 2 mixers at this point, but I would like to look at centralizing it into one. The only reason we have two is because of our need for more outputs, and the setup is kinda messy especially when it comes to recording as we want to be able to record from both systems. One of the amps is basically hooked into the other as a mic. It works I guess, might keep it that way and just add the mixing console on the output.
 
Well if you have the money there are some really large mixers with lots of outputs. Mackie makes a digital mixing system, the TT System 32 that is really expandable. It would do what you want almost certainly (you can call them with specific requirements and they can help you). A cheaper option, both in terms of price and build quality, is a Behringer EURODESK SX3282. That's a 32 input, 8 output, analogue mixer. For that matter you can even get more outs as it has 8 auxes and you can use each of those as a separate mix if needed.

All of those are high dollar options though. The Behringer is like $800-900 and the Mackie solution would be multi-thousand dollar. If you want Mackie's better build quality (Behringer isn't bad, just not as rugged) but less they also have a 32 channel analogue mixer that might work, but only 4 busses. It does have 2 other matrix outputs.

Kinda depends on how many outs you need. For a whole ton of independently controllable ones, a digital setup is the most flexible. Expensive though.
 
Sycraft said:
...(Behringer isn't bad, just not as rugged)...
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Dude you don't have to be PC about it. Behringer products are complete crap.

To the OP: As Sycraft has already mentioned, what you are looking for is a distribution mixer. The ART MX225 that was linked to earlier will work great. DO NOT USE A HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER or any other product with unbalanced outputs. The system will be full of noise. One thing that hasn't been mentioned, this solution works before your amplifiers. Individual zones will require their own amplifiers. IMO the best way to implement this is to feed it from a post fader aux output. Leave the speakers for the main PA on the Left and Right outputs of the console. This way, if you need to adjust volume for all your remote zones at once, you can do it at the aux send. If you need to adjust any of the zones individually, you can do it at the distribution mixer.
 
In my experience they are not crap. Their sound quality is fine, their features are what they advertise, and their build quality is acceptable. Not my first choice, but the price is right. For something like a church, I think it could work fine. The gear isn't being moved around on the road all the time, the environment is sedate, it is exposed to little of the elements or abuse. As such it should hold up no problem.

For a road gig, yes I'd want something very rugged like a Mackie mixer, but when somethign in installed it doesn't need to be as rugged. Also when you are talking not for profit entities, you have to be realistic about money. They may well not have a lot of cash to put in to this.
 
behringer gets shit on too much. they have plenty of good products.
 
Sycraft said:
In my experience they are not crap. Their sound quality is fine, their features are what they advertise, and their build quality is acceptable. Not my first choice, but the price is right. For something like a church, I think it could work fine. The gear isn't being moved around on the road all the time, the environment is sedate, it is exposed to little of the elements or abuse. As such it should hold up no problem.

For a road gig, yes I'd want something very rugged like a Mackie mixer, but when somethign in installed it doesn't need to be as rugged. Also when you are talking not for profit entities, you have to be realistic about money. They may well not have a lot of cash to put in to this.
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Often times installed gear needs to be just as rugged as gear that's on the road. Installed gear is typically constantly in use and hardly gets maintained due to the set it and forget it attitude. I will concede that for a church or school on a limited budget, Behringer is probably fine.
 
Can you provide more detailed information on your current system design and specific needs? There are important differences in how you distribute audio to your PA system vs recording, monitoring and hearing assist systems. Also, as was previously stated, in order to control speakers in a PA system separately, you'll need to have an amplification channel dedicated to each individual speaker in your PA. It's not clear from your original post if you have those capabilities already.
 
Right now our current system is a mid range Yamaha mixing console, 20 channels or so with a snake going to the stage area. This amp goes to two speakers. For a preacher, it sounds better when it's coming out of just one speaker so a middle one was installed in the ceiling with a seperate amp. Then we thought, what if we want to record people signing and playing guitar and say both amps are used? So we ended up plugging the stereo amp into the other amp as an input so we can record from the secondary amp which uses the monitor out (pre amp connection).

Now we decided to add a speaker behind the sitting area as when the church is full people will sit there and can hardly hear the speaker. Right now we plugged that speaker into the monitor output (post amp, as there is two outputs) so then the volume control for the recording also controls that speaker. That's when I realized, it would be nice to just have every output go to a single mixing console, and control from there instead of all over. There's also other misc outputs like a coax that goes to the kitchen and nursery but they are hard to individually control. I think those are on aux, so we have to control the aux for each input as well.

But for this to work properly, each output technically needs it's own amp right? I could see that being expensive.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Right now our current system is a mid range Yamaha mixing console, 20 channels or so with a snake going to the stage area. This amp goes to two speakers. For a preacher, it sounds better when it's coming out of just one speaker so a middle one was installed in the ceiling with a seperate amp. Then we thought, what if we want to record people signing and playing guitar and say both amps are used? So we ended up plugging the stereo amp into the other amp as an input so we can record from the secondary amp which uses the monitor out (pre amp connection).

Now we decided to add a speaker behind the sitting area as when the church is full people will sit there and can hardly hear the speaker. Right now we plugged that speaker into the monitor output (post amp, as there is two outputs) so then the volume control for the recording also controls that speaker. That's when I realized, it would be nice to just have every output go to a single mixing console, and control from there instead of all over. There's also other misc outputs like a coax that goes to the kitchen and nursery but they are hard to individually control. I think those are on aux, so we have to control the aux for each input as well.

But for this to work properly, each output technically needs it's own amp right? I could see that being expensive.
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Ok, I think we have a terminology issue here. I could barely follow your last post. There are a few things I need clarified before I can help you out.

1. It sounds like your amps may be built into the mixer. is this the case?
2. If you have outboard amplifiers, how many do you have?

So we ended up plugging the stereo amp into the other amp as an input so we can record from the secondary amp which uses the monitor out (pre amp connection).
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this confuses me the most. you have the output of one amp going into another amp? something is going to get seriously damaged if thats the case.

You might be better off calling a local sound company to help you out. Your needs are rather complex for someone of your knowledge of audio systems. (not meant as an insult)
 
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