I recently was asked to provide live music and a sound system for a talent show at a local fraternal organization. I was expecting to accompany singers & dancers and run everything through the Bose L1. Then the surprise...most of the talent were Karaoke singers who wanted to use their own discs and needed a video monitor. Not my bag.
The solution: The club had a Karaoke Jockey in the earlier part of the evening and he agreed to move from the bar to the big room and set his stuff up on the stage with my gear. He had two large cabinets, powered mixer, a LT and one video monitor.
For the show, we used both systems. All the Karoke discs and his Crown mic ran through his system.
My Crown, PSR 3K and two handheld mics for singers ran into my Alesis mixer, then into the Bose power stand.
The results:
No problems when I played and singers sang to my live accomp. I could hear the mix perfectly and adjust levels for the different talents' voices almost seamlessly.
When K singers sang through the Bose and accomp was coming from the KJ's system there were audible complaints from the audience about the music being too loud or not loud enough. While some of the singers were out of tune or tempo
their lyrics came through just fine when not overpowered by the music.
The K jockey became visibly frustrated riding the levels and even made a comment to the audience about not being able to please everyone. The guy was a very good singer, but when he sang through his own system he encountered occasional feedback and tended to lose the lyrics in the mix.
It was a difficult room in that in that it was L shaped. Back when I was using a conventional system, I had problems in the room to. But, that all disapeared when I got the Bose.
This was as close as I have come to A-B'ing the Bose with a conventional system and the differences were v-e-r-y noticable, even to the audience.
Eddie