Bull**** or not, a DI question?

[MacDaddy]

So at last night's gig (6 bands just a line check between bands) the normal set up for bass is to go through the supplied back line, a Fender Rumble, which is DI'ed.
Having played there before, I just wanted to DI straight from my Behringer BDI121 (there are monitors on stage) but the soundguy said he would prefer me to go through the amp as it 'would put less strain on the PA'.

Is this true?

Edited May 1, 2017 by MacDaddy

[0175westwood29]

None total rubbish, tbh just means he's to lazy as he might have to re eq for the new di

[Dood]

Unless he is expecting the amp to provide the FOH sound with only a smidge in the PA for spread. But that would depend on venue and PA sizes. That I can't be sure without knowing the details.

[Dood]

Just re-read again - Did the engineer also mean that he didn't want bass in the monitors? Some engineers just don't know how to set up their monitors and pump way too much low end through them. The speakers can't handle it and sound rubbish. So prefer to use a bass amp instead.

Edited May 1, 2017 by dood

[MacDaddy]

Plenty of bass goes through the monitors.

When I played there before, I went through the amp, but it wasn't loud enough for on stage monitoring, so I had bass in the monitors. So this time I didn't want to bother with it.

I did end up DI'ing through the BDI121.

[roman_sub]

sounds like the engineer was intending to make use of the amp's power section, with the hope of needing to put less bass through the PA / monitors. maybe it didn't work out in practice ;-)

[chrismuzz]

[quote name='0175westwood29' timestamp='1493656813' post='3289778']
None total rubbish, tbh just means he's to lazy as he might have to re eq for the new di
[/quote]

I sort of agree with this, however it's not necessarily due to laziness. He's probably had bad experiences with really hot signals clipping and even overloading the desk. An unprocessed signal from a bass can throw out some pretty nasty spikes even at low levels. I played an all dayer at the weekend where many bassists DI'd and the results were mixed depending on if they had pedals or whether their basses were active/passive. I naturally took my full rig and had the best sound of the night

[Huge Hands]

What he said does sound like rubbish, but I'm guessing if he had 6 bands to do on one desk, there wouldn't be much turn around time between bands, and he was probably trying to keep it all as familiar as possible, especially if your DI was unknown to him and he was worried about wildly differing gain structure.

Some might call that lazy, I'd call it him trying a bit of "band psychology" to make his life easier on an undoubtedly stressy night for him....

[Jack]

Did he think you wanted to just use the di and not the amp? If so, not using the amp's stage volume would put more stress on the PA.

[0175westwood29]

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1493769267' post='3290594']
I sort of agree with this, however it's not necessarily due to laziness. He's probably had bad experiences with really hot signals clipping and even overloading the desk. An unprocessed signal from a bass can throw out some pretty nasty spikes even at low levels. I played an all dayer at the weekend where many bassists DI'd and the results were mixed depending on if they had pedals or whether their basses were active/passive. I naturally took my full rig and had the best sound of the night
[/quote]

see now at the risk of sounding snobby, if im using a di i should know how to use it.

i like to take a few minutes to find the sound guy and explain my rig, ie i have two di's from my heads and a third for my sub which i dnt need to use if its a problem, and i use distortion alot of distortion.

ive actually been told to use a crappy (Behringer) di on a out door gig last year instead of my amps Di he said it sounded bad and was clipping, later then got told by a friend doing sound he never adjusted a thing between di's so in that situation he made the di sound bad, when i have that happen kinda bums me out a little bit.

Andy

[chrismuzz]

[quote name='0175westwood29' timestamp='1494270837' post='3294606']
see now at the risk of sounding snobby, if im using a di i should know how to use it.
[/quote]

Behringer Ultra DI I'll bet, the silver coloured one. They suck pretty bad, you lose a lot of clarity in your sound with those. Its probably the frequencies that they cut that caused the clipping

[0175westwood29]

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1494274478' post='3294658']
Behringer Ultra DI I'll bet, the silver coloured one. They suck pretty bad, you lose a lot of clarity in your sound with those. Its probably the frequencies that they cut that caused the clipping
[/quote]

got it in one mate!

actually affected how i played and used effects.