EBS_freak

You'll be amazed how far sound travels when there is nothing to absorb the soundwaves. Having nothing but open fields surrounding a wedding venue can actually be a nightmare for surrounding villages.

And this ladies and gentlemen, is how you commit commercial suicide.

Do you just want to slam your man meat on the table now? Jeez.

You’ve got this wrong. I don’t have to build anything to have an objective view on your bridge. I’m your target market. Maybe listen a bit more and you’ll have more people on board with your product. For example, I don’t have to to build cars to say that a Fiat Mulitpla looks fricken awful.

“I’m out”

Good stuff. If you are using a QU16, you may want to consider a ME500 - it only copes with 16 channels but it will save you some cash if you don't need access to 40 channels.

California you say? You've got to power the hydroponic lights somehow.

Either that, or sharpen your strings.

I can well imagine. Lots of bands play at a volume where you'd think that they were playing Wembley without any front of house support. Keeping the onstage volume low cleans up the mix incredibly... and then you let the FoH do the heavy lifting. ... but for lots of people, that's not rock and roll. They will still want to use a Marshall stack when a little 15w combo and a mic, or a modelling processor would sound infinitely better.

Additionally - just cos you don’t hear clipping, doesn’t mean that you aren’t clipping. And that’s what folks mastering music to be as loud as it can be for on the radio rely on. But they have golden ears and a high level spec of equipment and a treated room that would expose any clipping as the waveforms are squared off.

That doesn’t capture what’s happening across the whole frequency range. Hence why you use pink noise. Plus, you also have to take into account the addition of waveforms (across the whole frequency spectrum) as other instruments are added into the mix. When you start adding in all the other instruments all those waveforms start adding. A peak with a peak and all of a sudden, you are peaking again. This is why it’s important that the gain staging between systems of spot on. If you are under unity on the desk, you should be able to assume you are under unity on the venue system. So if you hit -3dB for example, so does the venue system. That’s all great - and to be honest, some venues have got their systems set up perfectly like this… but that doesn’t matter when people start complaining that you aren’t loud enough. There’s only one way you can go to boost the perceived volume… and that’s into limiting compression.

There’s ways and means - and none of them cheap. I’ve played a few venues with isolated rooms as you speak of. Floating/suspended box within a room. All massive investments - but small fry compared to what some of these venues are making. For a while, I ran silent disco bands - which is all really good until the guests think it’s great to take the headsets home as a momento. Yes you can put all sorts of things in the contract to ensure you get paid - but funny - nobody likes to acknowledge that their guests have nicked stuff. For it to work, you need to have a room with one door where nobody gets in without taking a headset and nobody gets out without relinquishing a headset. In theory, it was great. In practice, not so much. Especially when you turn up to the venue and you can’t find a clean radio channel - so the whole thing goes to sh111t. The let thing is, nobody really digs on the restraints imposed by a limited… but experience tells me, either play along and accept it for what it is… or don’t take the gig (if you can afford not to take it). When your whole band is on IEM, the reality of playing a limited gig, is that nothing much changes. As a band leader, if you are on the end of complaints of the volume not being high enough - and accusations of the band sounding lifeless… I made the decision to not entertain them so much (hence me hiking the prices up for those type of gigs). I’d rather not want the agro or risk of the band being name being hit with negativity. A single bad gig that results in a string of negative Facebook reviews can kill a band in one sitting.

Pretty much. It’s locked in a box with a couple of XLR sockets to plug into. The only visual cue is… err… nothing. Just two XLR sockets. And that’s your lot.

The problem is, is that it encourages the band desk to be pushed above unity. And keep pushing… and keep pushing. So if for example, the receiving system is 6dB under unity, then the output faders on the sending desk would have to be at +6dB to reach unity - which clearly isn’t good practice, especially when you have your own processing on the outputs of your desk. Incorrect gain staging isn’t going to help anybody, especially if you haven’t got a visual cue on the venue systems as to whether you are clipping or not.

I with Doddy on this - there's a difference in playing busily and playing busily and grooving like a MF. Here's my exhibit A for busy but absolutely smashing a home run because you have your musicality and skills all suitably honed rather than playing around with pentatonic nonsense.

I was talking about the one in the first post... but yeah, I guess the one above my comment does! The other thing which always makes me laugh, is when people rabbit on about the sustain - and then put up a video of how plucking a note sustains for 2 minutes. Can I just ask... who has ever needed a bass that can produce a note that can last for such elongated periods? I guess the question is this... do we need sustain? As long as a bass sustains to get us through the pieces that we are playing... does sustain really matter as much as it's marketed as? What I also know is this... damaging a bass by adjusting a bridge is more down to the wrong tool being used. I would wager there is a bigger risk of damaging a bass with a huge spanner slipping off a nut. Oh and good luck finding any other hardware to match that bridge finish.

It's likely you are on a traffic light system if there is no house PA. As I say, it's doable. You don't have to worry about actual real world dB levels... just sent your default volume to feel uncomfortably quiet. You'll get a feel from the traffic light system about how loud you can play. Basically, your horns and drummer are in for a miserable time - and you may have to roll some low end off your bass. Yes, the lack of low end will be noticeable... but depending how your limiter mic and system is calibrated, it could be more sensitive to the lows (this is when the system is calibrated with a "C weighting" - and is done so because bass tends to be the troublesome frequency range that the neighbours get peed off with) Just tell the band to play super quiet as you sound check... and tell them that's how the gig needs to be. It's not fun - but that's the rules. And if you all understand that, you can actually look at the audience instead of the whole band just looking at the traffic lights all night.

Has nobody noticed that it looks aesthetically awful?

Ok. Unlike sound limiter systems that cut power after the music has exceeded the threshold (usually for 3-5 seconds), these in-house systems work with a brick wall limiter (think 20:1 compressor if you understand what that means) across the LR outputs that feed the amplifiers. How a band sets up for such a gig is usually pretty straightforward. So in this case, the wedding band are expected to turn up with a silent stage setup - this means modelling systems for the guitars and an electric kit. Keys and additional instruments should be direct or if that is not possible (eg for vocals, horns (ha! Don’t even bother)) miced up if required. (So yes to vocals, no to horns as they’ll be (too) loud enough already. All mixing is done by the band mixer, and then the L R is sent to the venue system. All monitoring needs to be done via IEM, which the band provisions. (So if this isn’t a normal method of monitoring, lots of bands will immediately be faced with a nightmare playing such a venue. Why? Because there’s the cost of the IEMs themselves - but also the need for the band to have a mixer that can provide enough IEM mixes for all the players) So once you get your mix sounding lovely, it then goes off to hell to be processed by the venue system. So let’s look at what is going into that system. All the instruments that are going in have a huge dynamic range. So as an example, when playing your bass, you may have a 12db difference between playing softly and digging in, or hearing the attack when playing with a plectrum. Now it’s not unusual to have a compressor on a bass, but what happens, is that it’ll be set at a much lower ratio and set to release quick quickly, so all it’s doing is squishing the extreme initial transients while retaining the overall sound of the bass. Again, on the vocals, you’ll have a softer compressor, smoothing out those transients. So in general compressors are generally good at “smoothing” the intruments so it’s more pleasant to the ear. But the key thing to remember is that the compression in these situations are low ratios with quick release times. (For those still not understanding compression and what I’m stating, here’s a rough guide. On a compressor you set a threshold at the point you want the compressor to act. The ratio states how much you want the compressor to reduce the signal. So for example, for 3:1, every 3db above the threshold, the compressor will only allow 1db through. 5:1, every 5db above the threshold it will only allow 1db through. The compressor will also have attack, hold and release. Attack is the time it takes for the compressor to act, hold is how long the compression is held for - and the release is how long it takes for the compression to stop acting upon the signal. So for example, for a a snare, or vocal plosives, a compressor will tame the transient associated with both those extreme initial input levels - but once that initial transient falls under the threshold, the compressor will naturally let go. The key thing is that the compressor should sound pretty natural and still allow all the instruments to breathe. In recorded music, say in the studio, you have the advantage that you have the programme material in advance (in that it's pre-recorded). You can run the signals through multiple compressors, automate faders and really spend your time controlling the output of each channel and the final LR for mastering. You can’t do that with live music. You haven’t got that level of control or a crystal ball (although if you know the music well enough, you can ride VCAs like they do in the west end to ride in those transients - but again, that’s not practical in this situation). So let’s talk about what is happening when it goes into the venue PA. When the venue has the venue PA installed by the suppliers, the system is fed with pink noise (which gives you a flat output at every frequency along the audio spectrum) - and this will be heard in the venue. What should happen is that the PA is tuned to the venue so there are no hot nodes/frequencies. Great. Next, the amps are set so the maximum output of the system with this pink noise is 96dB. Great. So every single frequency that is output is maxed out at 96dB. Now onto the bands desk - its a fair assumption that the bands output from the desk is not exceeding 0dB on the fader. Ideally that output should be skirting around -12 to -3dB. Now remember what I said about transients, well, it should come as no surprise that bands don’t play pink noise. Band music has transients that occur at different frequencies. Let’s talk briefly about traffic light sound limiters now. Imagine your band playing at 96db RMS (the average sound level shall we say), there will be times that it’s below 96 but also times that it’s above. The limiters usually have a traffic light system that will warn you that you are over 96 - so that snare hit may flicker the orange or red lights - but as long as it’s not for an extended period of time, you are good. So in short, you can have a band playing at a nominal level but still enjoy a level of dynamic range. OK back to our crippled venue with it's own installed PA. Remember that I said that maximum volume output is 96dB? Well, that your maximum spl that you transients can hit. So if you want your band with some level of dynamics, you really need to be playing at 88dB. To put that into context, that’s lower than that of a hairdryer. (And also take into account that a hairdryer output is more akin to pink noise (so naturally sounds louder) than the RMS of music). This is where the problem starts. So as far as the venue system goes, 88dB does not get a party started but does get you the maximum dynamics out of the system. What you then get is people complaining that the band isn’t loud enough. So what can you do? Well, you could push your LR fader. Immediately you hear the band get a bit louder… but what is happening in reality? Well, your transients start to get super squished by the brick wall limiter on the front end. This causes a number of things to happen, your dynamic range is reduced, so whilst the RMS is higher, the music becomes less exciting. It causes the transients to become clipped (more on this later), which can then be heard as audible distortion if pushed too far. Clipped transients actually tires your ears - meaning listeners ears will get more fatigued… so as the night goes on, the listeners ears perceive the mix to be getting worse. The result is that they usually ask you to turn up. So as you’ll probably see, turning up actually makes the problem worse. Right, let’s get back to these clipped transients. As I’ve alluded to, the front ends of these systems are protected by a brickwall limiter. The installers know that bands are going to keep pushing up the output to the point where clipping will happen. So either the instructions will tell you to not give any more beans from your desk if a clip light is being observed… however, it also doesn’t look good on the company if the system is both clipping on the input signal (hence introducing distortion) and clipping the transients - so it's also heard as audible distortion. So what do the installers do? Lower the gain so that the front end doesn’t clip as easy… net result, your real world desk dB is down the number of dB they’ve introduced as additional headroom on the front end of their system. So all in all, it’s a complete disaster for those expecting a decent sounding band. Meanwhile, any prerecorded music sounds great as it’s been stripped of any excessive transients, and has been mastered and limited in a super controlled environment. But of course the punters don’t understand that and want to know why the disco can be louder than the band. Oh and for those wondering where the measurements are taken? Well… 1m from a speaker is not unusual (when being calibrated) - and anywhere within the room when the venue get their own meter out. Anybody else figure out what the problem is with that?

Not necessary - the bride and groom won’t have been informed of the implications of the setup. They’ll just have been told that the venue has bands all the time and even have a top flight PA system for every band to plug in to. What they won’t mention is the lack of volume to create a party atmosphere or the fact that the music sounds dull due to all the dynamics being sucked out of it.

That’s the thing. I’ve got some stuff to add into this thread but need to do it when I’m at a proper keyboard. As I alluded to earlier - venues should have to call out the limitations they have in place… but won’t… until the contract has been signed. Utter b*stards know what they are doing.

Do you want a biscuit too?

This is for bands that don't run with any backline. So you'll just have the sound of an electric kit being bashed acoustically... and the singers...

You too eh? If you google all the systems there, we are talking some seriously good gear. And then it's all null and void because of that brick wall limiter.

None of that matters. They are in control of what happens in their venue and they determine that with the gear they have and are happy using and interpreting in whatever manner they like. If the mic for the limiter is dangling and installed incorrectly... is it actually going to be any use to you knowing this? Are they going to pay attention to anything you say about that? That's their measure, end of. Anything other comments are not going to get you onside. Think about it, you wouldn't thank anybody for commenting upon your technique when playing, or how you have set your PA. Bands are mostly an annoyance to venues as it's an element they have limited control over. Work WITH venues, not against them.