Interesting FRFR story..

[EBS_freak]

4 minutes ago, Bridgehouse said:

Afterwards he wandered over and said he liked the bass sound very much and found mixing the FOH bass much easier as there wasn't a massive big cab blaring it out which he had no control over. I had my onstage monitor, rest of the band was happy, soundman was happy. It's a mind set.

Nothing happier than a soundman mixing a silent stage. Now, if there was only a way of getting a digital out from a singer's vocal chords.

[Bridgehouse]

1 minute ago, EBS_freak said:

Nothing happier than a soundman mixing a silent stage. Now, if there was only a way of getting a digital out from a singer's vocal chords.

I could think of somewhere we could try sticking the XLR lead.....Ahem.

The downside of course is my rapidly growing obsession with Preamp/DI pedals....

[EBS_freak]

Just now, Bridgehouse said:

I could think of somewhere we could try sticking the XLR lead.....Ahem.

The downside of course is my rapidly growing obsession with Preamp/DI pedals....

Ha, well, you know that XLR wouldn't belong to the singer.

Yeah, I'm with you - I think that's one of the reasons I went with the Kemper... it gives me opportunity to try new stuff at minimal cost. (Obviously Kemper outlay aside - but that does for my guitar stuff too, it replaced my Fender Twin)

Perhaps this isn't the time I suggest that mic channel strips > bass DI pedals...

[Bridgehouse]

Just now, EBS_freak said:

Ha, well, you know that XLR wouldn't belong to the singer.

Yeah, I'm with you - I think that's one of the reasons I went with the Kemper... it gives me opportunity to try new stuff at minimal cost. (Obviously Kemper outlay aside - but that does for my guitar stuff too, it replaced my Fender Twin)

Perhaps this isn't the time I suggest that mic channel strips > bass DI pedals...

Helix for me. Does all my home duties and sometimes gets wheeled out for gigs.

Mostly though it's looking at the range of Preamp/DI pedals and thinking "I've not got that one.. hmmm.. wonder if that sounds different to xxx"

[EBS_freak]

Helix covers much the same. Of course, the advantage of the Helix is that I can download profiles til the cows come home. But sometimes too much choice can be bad!

I've got 3 profiles that are doing it for me at the moment. A focusrite pre, a neve pre and a SSL pre. Also have a brilliant Chandler channel strip through a neve channel that I profiled on a recording session I was at cos I loved the sound so much.

It's all very addictive! 😛

[Bridgehouse]

1 minute ago, EBS_freak said:

Helix covers much the same. Of course, the advantage of the Helix is that I can download profiles til the cows come home. But sometimes too much choice can be bad!

I've got 3 profiles that are doing it for me at the moment. A focusrite pre, a neve pre and a SSL pre. Also have a brilliant Chandler channel strip through a neve channel that I profiled on a recording session I was at cos I loved the sound so much.

It's all very addictive! 😛

I thought I had it bad looking at preamp pedals with a real valve in them..... 

[jrixn1]

31 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Good stuff. I think there's a mind set to get away from the look of the cab - but for everything else, I just haven't used anything better. I bet the double bass sounds stellar through it.

Yes, I've had the  other members of the band saying "what is that?" and "why is that over there next to the drums?"  but it's not negative in any way - just the first time of seeing a PA speaker where they weren't expecting one to be.

The way it looks (functional) is fine with me - although if they made a version with a cloth cover I would trade mine in for it.  The closest I saw was https://www.thomann.de/gb/friedman_amplification_asm_12_active_monitor.htm   but it's expensive and heavy, and perhaps lower spec than my current one.

Yes, double bass sounds very very good through this! 😀

 

[The Saint]

On 23/07/2018 at 16:57, EBS_freak said:

Nothing happier than a soundman mixing a silent stage. Now, if there was only a way of getting a digital out from a singer's vocal chords.

In a previous life, I worked as a sound engineer at a venue in the UK. It would have been mid 90's when a band turned up with four keyboards and a drummer with an electronic kit. 

As usual, I gave them time to set their stage and then wandered over to cable up.

I remember thinking to myself, they're just sat around here relaxed and they haven't even bothered to bring their amps on stage..!

This was my first real introduction to IEM. They did their own mix on stage and required only one mic for chatting to the audience, no vocals for the songs. 

It was one of the easiest gigs I've ever done. I went on stage during the soundcheck (having turned off FOH) and the only noise was the drummer hitting the pads. Quite surreal... And no mike bleed from coughs, sneezes and farts...!

Getting back to the thread, I've been using an amp and vocal processor for a couple of years now. I haven't used an amp onstage for years.

I recently bought a Line 6 module for amp sim and use it with either my Bose array pa or an RCF powered cab, the ART 310a. I can easily switch from acoustic to electric guitar. OK, time to fess up, I dont play bass.!!

It's been a revelation to me, much easier to pack in the car and much more consistency at the gig.

It's a million miles from you guys  with Kemplers and Helix, but it works for me.

Great thread by the way..!

[Muzz]

Ok, so, after having a bit of a lightbulb moment whilst typing in another thread, I realised yesterday I have the band's PA under my stairs, and an empty house for a few hours, soooo....

I pulled one of the RCF Art 732s out, plugged my B3 into it, stuck it on the floor in 'wedge position', annnnndddd...crikey blimey... 😯

First off, it sounded godawful: no punch, no heft*, it just didn't sound much like a bass amp at all. My first thought was 'Gawd, is this what I sound like FOH?', and it wasn't a reassuring thought. I stomped through my B3 preset sounds - I have nine which cover all the different genres/songs we have in the function band; I've mentioned (at length) previously the range of stuff we do, so I won't bore anyone, but as a three piece my tones do need to be ballpark at the least, so...nine it is. None of them really went anywhere, so I did a bit of digging into the presets: I'd created these tones using in-ears, which is a completely different scenario to FOH.

While I was (I'll be honest, a bit listlessly) trying to rescue the tones, I noticed I hadn't used any cab sims on any presets. I switched them in, and boom, suddenly the RCF began to sound like a bass rig. Next salute was to roll off the low bass, and after an hour or so of twiddling (see 'nine presets', above), I've got a very very good 'bass rig' sound from the RCF, and hopefully as a bonus, I've tightened up and improved my FOH sound, too. I know this is all in splendid isolation in my kitchen without the rest of the band and at, erm, kitchen volumes, but I've a gig Satdy, so I'll report back on the in-ears/FOH results then.

It's just a shame I can't try an RCF735/745 in a backline scenario at the moment, that'd be the clincher for me (the wedge thing is a bonus, too). My other Rawk band (no in-ears, just attenuators and backline**) is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, and it'd be interesting to see if the 12" 732 would cope with two Marshall half-stacks and that gorilla from the Cadburys/In The Air Tonight advert on drums...

So, the TLDR bit: yep, you can make a single RCF sound like a 'real' bass rig...and I'm very interested to investigate further. Depending how Satdy's gig goes, I might even persuade the band to do a Technical Rehearsal (normally a once-in-blue-moon event) at a big rehearsal room with the full PA and tweak from there. We'll see. I shall report back...

 

* Noooo, don't click away, it's not one of THOSE posts... 😉
** Someone's got to try and keep rock'n roll alive if everyone else around here is busy killing it... 😁

Edited August 1, 2018 by Muzz

[EBS_freak]

21 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Ok, so, after having a bit of a lightbulb moment whilst typing in another thread, I realised yesterday I have the band's PA under my stairs, and an empty house for a few hours, soooo....

I pulled one of the RCF Art 732s out, plugged my B3 into it, stuck it on the floor in 'wedge position', annnnndddd...crikey blimey... 😯

First off, it sounded godawful: no punch, no heft*, it just didn't sound much like a bass amp at all. My first thought was 'Gawd, is this what I sound like FOH?', and it wasn't a reassuring thought. I stomped through my B3 preset sounds - I have nine which cover all the different genres/songs we have in the function band; I've mentioned (at length) previously the range of stuff we do, so I won't bore anyone, but as a three piece my tones do need to be ballpark at the least, so...nine it is. None of them really went anywhere, so I did a bit of digging into the presets: I'd created these tones using in-ears, which is a completely different scenario to FOH.

While I was (I'll be honest, a bit listlessly) trying to rescue the tones, I noticed I hadn't used any cab sims on any presets. I switched them in, and boom, suddenly the RCF began to sound like a bass rig. Next salute was to roll off the low bass, and after an hour or so of twiddling (see 'nine presets', above), I've got a very very good 'bass rig' sound from the RCF, and hopefully as a bonus, I've tightened up and improved my FOH sound, too. I know this is all in splendid isolation in my kitchen without the rest of the band and at, erm, kitchen volumes, but I've a gig Satdy, so I'll report back on the in-ears/FOH results then.

It's just a shame I can't try an RCF735/745 in a backline scenario at the moment, that'd be the clincher for me (the wedge thing is a bonus, too). My other Rawk band (no in-ears, just attenuators and backline**) is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, and it'd be interesting to see if the 12" 732 would cope with two Marshall half-stacks and that gorilla from the Cadburys/In The Air Tonight advert on drums...

So, the TLDR bit: yep, you can make a single RCF sound like a 'real' bass rig...and I'm very interested to investigate further. Depending how Satdy's gig goes, I might even persuade the band to do a Technical Rehearsal (normally a once-in-blue-moon event) at a big rehearsal room with the full PA and tweak from there. We'll see. I shall report back...

 

* Noooo, don't click away, it's not one of THOSE posts... 😉
** Someone's got to try and keep rock'n roll alive if everyone else around here is busy killing it... 😁

Haha! I will wait on your progress with great interest. The 732s will put out a lot more than you think  If anything, at least you know what you sound like out front now and made the necessary adjustments!

So here's the thing... what you want from your inears and front of house may not be the same. Those that follow what I do on the IEM thread, will know that I have two signals - one for front of house, one for monitoring... meaning that I can run completely different EQs, compression (even models!) etc for front of house and my monitoring. It takes some twiddling - but I've never had such a great sound out front... and in my ears? Absolute heaven for me! :p

[Muppet]

@MuzzSlightly off tangent maybe but if you're creating your B3 tones using in-ears, how do you ensure your current FOH sound is spot on? 

[Muzz]

That's rather the point: my in-ears mix is pretty damn good, but is separate from the FOH mix, and I've never been totally happy with that, and now I'm seeing why...I'm sure I'll need to rework my in-ears mix (and so will the other guys) now I've modded my B3 presets, but that shouldn't be the end of the world, and we can do that as a band round at someone's house one evening.

I'll have to re-EQ the 'real' bass rig (Walkabout and BF Super Twin) to cope with the B3 changes, too, but I'm happy doing that: I play far more with the in-ears and DI than anything else, so that should be right first and dictate changes elsewhere...

[JohnDaBass]

I wonder if any Line 6 employees are following all the commentary on this thread?

I wonder if Line 6 develop a BASS version of their Power Cab?

Could be interesting for all the Helix users to have a matching Power Cab.

Just saying! 

[EBS_freak]

39 minutes ago, Muzz said:

That's rather the point: my in-ears mix is pretty damn good, but is separate from the FOH mix, and I've never been totally happy with that, and now I'm seeing why...I'm sure I'll need to rework my in-ears mix (and so will the other guys) now I've modded my B3 presets, but that shouldn't be the end of the world, and we can do that as a band round at someone's house one evening.

I'll have to re-EQ the 'real' bass rig (Walkabout and BF Super Twin) to cope with the B3 changes, too, but I'm happy doing that: I play far more with the in-ears and DI than anything else, so that should be right first and dictate changes elsewhere...

The secret is to split your signal into two channels on your mixer (or to two different mixers) and eq for front of house and eq for your inears. I’ve discussed quite a bit about this on the IEM thread - with many digital mixers you can do the split digitally internally and split the input to two separate channels. Depending on your mixer, the other cool thing when you split is that in addition to running different eqs, you can also run different compression and fx to foh if you wish.

[Muzz]

Yep, we do this already: as I say, my in-ears mix is (was) pretty good, I just wasn't aware the FOH bass sounded quite as bad as it apparently does. I know I wasn't happy with it, on those gigs when I've had to monitor from the FOH...

As I say, I may have improved things considerably for my feed to the FOH, but then again I may have completely ballsed things up - that's the danger EQing in isolation... 😕🙂

I'll know more Satdy...

Edited August 1, 2018 by Muzz

[Bridgehouse]

You are describing something I went through with Helix, and then with Preamp/DI's a little while back. 

At the end of the day, any FRFR motor, speaker, system or whatever is just that - it's a completely neutral flat representation of what you put into it. 

It's the old adage of sh*t in, sh*t out.. some traditional amps add a colour, a texture and a quality that gives them their unique sound. You need to create that somehow before it hits your FRFR device. 

At home, and at rehearsals, I can hear clear differences between different preamp pedals, and different models on Helix - some sound brilliant, others not so much - but for Helix the biggest difference comes with cab sims. 

[LukeFRC]

5 hours ago, JohnDaBass said:

I wonder if any Line 6 employees are following all the commentary on this thread?

I wonder if Line 6 develop a BASS version of their Power Cab?

Could be interesting for all the Helix users to have a matching Power Cab.

Just saying! 

Ignore me

Edited August 1, 2018 by LukeFRC

[Musashimonkey]

3 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

Have a look at the FRFR thread ... the solution need not have a Line 6 badge on it ...

Agreed, in actual fact I really wouldn’t want a matching power cab, the offerings from QSC and RCF will likely not be beaten for bass applications. They’re also multi function too; monitor and PA solutions too...

[EBS_freak]

39 minutes ago, Musashimonkey said:

Agreed, in actual fact I really wouldn’t want a matching power cab, the offerings from QSC and RCF will likely not be beaten for bass applications. They’re also multi function too; monitor and PA solutions too...

Woah woah... let’s not forget that Line6 now has the know how of Nexo and Yamaha...!

[intime-nick]

and Ampeg.....not entirely sure if that helps or not 😁😁

 

[LukeFRC]

1 hour ago, Musashimonkey said:

Agreed, in actual fact I really wouldn’t want a matching power cab, the offerings from QSC and RCF will likely not be beaten for bass applications. They’re also multi function too; monitor and PA solutions too...

Ah - you saw this before I realised this was the FRFR thread! 

[Muzz]

Just a quick interim update, as I had a quiet house and a spare hour yesterday, too, so I had another run around the presets/setup, just in case I'd made a terrible mistake the other day. I dunno about anybody else, but there's a kind of inertia sets in after I've spent more than a couple of hours tweaking sounds - I feel I lose the ability to judge, and they start to converge the more I tweak...kinda like that thing where you try aftershaves, and after you've sniffed half a dozen, you get a bit overwhelmed by it all and can't remember what was good and what wasn't...

I digress...anyway, point being after twenty minutes I realised I was listening to the presets and the dynamics of the bass, and I'd completely forgotten I was playing through a PA speaker: it sounded like a bass amp, reacted like a bass amp. It was a bass amp.

Satdy's gig, I've just been informed, is in a yurt*, so it might not be the best place to judge FOH sounds for bass, but we'll see.

 

* Is there any real need for this? We're having to go on at five, finish for seven (normally a Very Good Thing, but it's a loooonnng drive anyway, so it'll still be most of the day), presumably because of noise concerns. A yurt. I ask you...our drummer, who's Italian, asked me what a yurt was...the best I could do was 'It's like a tent, but more expensive...' 😕😏

[EBS_freak]

11 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Just a quick interim update, as I had a quiet house and a spare hour yesterday, too, so I had another run around the presets/setup, just in case I'd made a terrible mistake the other day. I dunno about anybody else, but there's a kind of inertia sets in after I've spent more than a couple of hours tweaking sounds - I feel I lose the ability to judge, and they start to converge the more I tweak...kinda like that thing where you try aftershaves, and after you've sniffed half a dozen, you get a bit overwhelmed by it all and can't remember what was good and what wasn't...

I digress...anyway, point being after twenty minutes I realised I was listening to the presets and the dynamics of the bass, and I'd completely forgotten I was playing through a PA speaker: it sounded like a bass amp, reacted like a bass amp. It was a bass amp.

Satdy's gig, I've just been informed, is in a yurt*, so it might not be the best place to judge FOH sounds for bass, but we'll see.

 

* Is there any real need for this? We're having to go on at five, finish for seven (normally a Very Good Thing, but it's a loooonnng drive anyway, so it'll still be most of the day), presumably because of noise concerns. A yurt. I ask you...our drummer, who's Italian, asked me what a yurt was...the best I could do was 'It's like a tent, but more expensive...' 😕😏

So lets get the most important issue out of the way first. A Yurt is not a tent. (It is really, but we can't call it that). It's a take on marquee... but marquees are awfully common darling, especially for a wedding (so we can't call it that later. No, a Yurt is a way of elevating the fact that we are all sheltering from the UK weather in a tent of foreign origin... but it's Turkish, not Chinese... cos Chinese is cheap tat, naturally. Now that's out the way...

Yes - you can get bogged down in profile/setting overload... I find that it's best to dial something in, live with it for a bit and then go off and do something more interesting... and revisit regularly with fresh ears. Ears tire. Same as when mixing tracks. If you are running your FRFR at any sort of volume, they will tire more quickly. The danger with modelling, is that you can have tweakability anxiety. For some people, the less buttons and settings to mess with, the better. For some, the ability to tweak to the nth degree is a God send. Same still applies, little and often until you get to where you want your tone to be.

I'm glad you've seen the FRFR setup as a bass rig though. That's one of the first challenges. It doesn't look like a bass rig, right? So in a  lot of people's minds, it's not a bass rig. And you are probably right - all it is, is a load of processing, an amp and a speaker. The processing however, is nothing like modelling and DSP of yesteryear that people seem to remember - we are now in an age where code is king and the result of that silicon based code is very pleasing on the ear. It's just a modern take on a rig that is now about 70 years old in it's concept. The interesting bit for you now though, is price for price, you're going to start getting a lot more from a PA setup than a traditional bass setup.

I am waiting in anticipation for your opinions after using it out in the wild...

Just think, you could let your PA do all the work and ditch the backline completely... or if you aren't into inears, you could use a wedge as a mean sounding monitor but have the added bonus of getting vocals and everything else you'd want to hear through it to. Lets face it, do you know anybody who puts PA foldback through their bass rig?

Anyway, good and interesting update to read!

[EBS_freak]

How was the yurt... and the rig...?

[Muzz]

Well, the yurt was a double tipi (twopi?),  boiling hot as the sun was still on it...still, we were done for half seven, and paid.

To the important bit; turns out my FOH sound wasn't as bad as I'd feared - the Presonus/Mainstage had been picking up the slack - so in the ten minutes we had*, we flattened it, EQ'd for the room (tipi) and it sounded much better. We're having a rehearsal this week with it all when we should get a lot closer. Still no closer to trying out a single Art as backline, tho...

 

* Hey, that's an age for a bass soundcheck, right?...