Best way to turn down active speakers that lack built-in volume controls?

My church has a pair of Mackie SR1530 active 3-way speakers which sound nice, but, inexplicably, have no volume control for the built-in amplifier (unlike most or all of their other active speakers). In order to get the proper volume level out of the SR1530s, we have to run the master on the mixer at -30dB, which is about 1cm from the bottom of the slider. This is in addition to throwing everything into groups and attenuating the group sliders 10-20dB.

Clearly, the volume on the SR1530s is more or less out of control. It is easy enough to balance levels with our other speakers in the room (Mackie SR450 2-way active speakers, which, surprisingly don't even need to be turned up all the way to be balanced with the 1530s). However, the subwoofer just can't get enough volume. Our amp has enough power to rip the walls off with the sub, but with a -30dB signal, it can't keep up with the other speakers, even with the amp maxed out.


The ideal solution would be to find a way to turn down the internal amp, but it appears that would require tearing the thing apart and messing with wiring, and, quite frankly, I don't really know what I'm doing with that kind of stuff. So it looks like we'll need to connect some external unit to attenuate the volume. Suggestions? An ideal solution would be reasonably simple, not hurt the tone too much, and not cost a stupid amount of money.

Are you running a crossover? I assume there's one somewhere. To me, it sounds like the channel on the crossover that feeds the out-of-control boxes is cranked up. There seems to be a gain boost somewhere in the system to be having that much problem. If there's an EQ feeding just those boxes, check the gain on that too. Some EQs have a 1-10 output knob with no indication of where unitiy is. I hate that.

Basically, check the input and output gains on anything inline between the board and the boxes.

We aren't running a crossover. We're feeding the same signal into everything. The signal running to the sub goes through something that I think has a low-pass filter. The SR1530s don't have their own dedicated EQ, although I'm wondering how well it would work to use one to just cut the signal down.

What you need is a 2-way stereo active crossover. Just type in "crossover" in the Musician's friend search field at the top of this screen, and it will show you plenty! At the very least, you can set the crossover point and have seperate volumes for your sub and your full-range cabs.

I think I've figured out the best way to do things. Our mixer has 3 main outputs - left, right, and mono. Currently, we are only using the mono. The best way to do it would be to use one of them as a subwoofer output and dial in the kick, bass, and CD into that output. That way, I could have lots of kick, a some bass, and a little CD going to the sub and no vocals or keys or other stuff that has no business being there. That would also solve the volume problem as I could run the output on the sub out hotter than the main out.

Just got the mixer set up with a sub out and did the EQs and stuff. I also repositioned the speakers on stage. It sounds good now. I'm still running the main out on the speakers at like -25.