I want to amplify my choir, using hanging mics, so that we can perform in larger venues. The set up is obviously very prone to feedback, and not very satisfactory - a well known problem for choirs.

I wondered if I could delay the input (mic) signal by say 20ms, and put in a low cut filter, to reduce my feedback problem.

Puredata has come up from a general google search, and it may be just the tool I need - but clearly I need to invest a lot of time in installing, learning the ropes, playing, etc before I find out.

I'd plan to use a PC's onboard soundcard for a test, then buy a USB low latency audio i/o unit if that worked.

I wonder if anyone could tell me whether I am on to something great, or whether I am wasting my time? I'd hate to go through the agonies of learning about something so new to me, to find that someone could have told me straight away that it won't work!

Thanks for sharing your expertise.

Thank you Joe - that has a lot of background info. Normalisation control itself wouldn't be enough for us, as we're forced to have sensitive mics suspended over the choir (we've had 'sound engineers' simply plonk mics close in front of us, but they just pick up a few individual singers) - so we'd like to turn the gain up beyond where it would feed back. But there's a lot of other stuff in your links. It all looks depressingly difficult, but I'll soldier on

Thank you again

Thank you arif - that's very helpful indeed. Now I know that Pd is happy wth this sort of thing, I can either try it, or buy one of the 'feedback destroyers' - which frankly seems to be a very simple solution, now I know what to look for.

Thanks again

PS Currently considering: Behringer Shark DSP110

oops, sorry - I meant 'delay the input (mic) signal by say 40ms', with low cut filter to get rid of 25Hz