Yet another ruined gig due to the mix.

[Skol303]

Not leaping to the defense of sound engineers here: some are certainly better than others. But here’s a fun little test you can try at home...

Play a song you know well over your hi-fi, if you have one. And what the heck, play it loud. Now walk around the room, pause and listen to how the sound changes: boomy bass in some places; weak bass in others.

Now imagine trying to control that on a grand scale, in a room where no investment has been made on acoustic treatment. It’s just not possible; and there will always be parts of the room/venue where the sound will suck.

And it’s always sucked. We just hear the ‘suck’ more as we get older, because we’re less drunk/ more experienced/ discerning/ fussy/ whatever.

I remember seeing Motörhead when I was 18 years old. It was an indiscernable wall of noise and I loved it; but I wouldn’t tolerate more than 10 minutes of it now.

Yes, some live enginneers need a good talking to. But there’s only so much you can do with bad acoustics. And even purpose-built music venues often have major flaws in their design.

If you want great acoustics, go take a seat at a grand old theatre or opera house and give your ears a treat. If you want to swing your pants, be prepared to compromise on the sound... most of the time.

Thus it has always been,

[intime-nick]

Not wanting to sound (ahem) controversial but can we stop calling them sound ‘engineers’ ?  They are not Engineers, they are technicians (at best) unless they have a recognised and accredited qualification in that subject (and, given the comments on here, it would seem not).  It’s the same as people saying ‘heating engineer’, ‘washing machine engineer’, ‘insert random occupation here....engineer’ etc etc etc etc.  The watering down of the name seems to be such a common thing nowadays that it’s become acceptable to all but the qualified engineers - rant over - carry on 

Edited April 26, 2018 by intime-nick

[leschirons]

21 hours ago, dannybuoy said:

I wonder if the bassist for RnBM is the same chap that posted this recently - turquoise Jazz per chance?

 

No, not a turquoise jazz. Same bassist though.  Pretty sure he's a great player if he's got that gig but I had no way of telling. 😂.  I was central to the stage and maybe  40ft back. I'd guess the venue to be about 4,000 to 5,000

At least they had the forsight to screen the drums. When we first got to the venue area, the support had started. We could hear what constituted the bass and kick from six streets away.

[Cuzzie]

Interesting thoughts on this, couple I especially like is use of the job title engineer. I have the same angst against the term ‘consultant’ for me, it should be reserved for the hospital doc.

I get the room thing too, it must be difficult, but I have been to gigs where I have seen multiple acts from the same spot on the same night with varying quality of mixes, and the number of people in the venue did not change appreciably.

That surely is poor craft

[Graham]

All four bands had great sound last nigt, I assume a combination of good engineers and the Ballroom having good acoustics.

I moved around the room a fair bit during Converge and there were definitely places which had better sound.

[T-Bay]

1 hour ago, Cuzzie said:

Interesting thoughts on this, couple I especially like is use of the job title engineer. I have the same angst against the term ‘consultant’ for me, it should be reserved for the hospital doc.

I get the room thing too, it must be difficult, but I have been to gigs where I have seen multiple acts from the same spot on the same night with varying quality of mixes, and the number of people in the venue did not change appreciably.

That surely is poor craft

This^^^^ The recent Feeder gig I mentioned was a perfect example of this. The support act (sweet little machine - superb by the way) were clear as anything. This makes it even more puzzling to me as you would expect them to have had about two minutes of the ‘engineers’ time, whereas the main band get every knob twiddled to their liking. The bass player may as well not have turned up, I did not hear a single clear note in the whole set. Very frustrating.

[Cuzzie]

My one was Halestorm, Shinedown, Black Stone Cherry at the Cardiff Motorpoint Arena.

Good, Bad, Good - performance and sound!

[Phil Starr]

On ‎26‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 01:38, leschirons said:

Are there any sound engineers out there that actually know what a band should sound like? I've just experienced a bass drum that can be heard on Jupiter and a bass frequency that  makes the audience feel sick?

What is it with this "how loud and low can you go?"

Just got back from seeing Walk off the Earth and Rag'n'bone man. Two great bands, but a complete waste of time. 

WOTE, couldn't hear even one of any of the other instruments on stage. They may as well have been miming. All down to the bass drum.

Rag'n'bone man, drums under control but the bass (a four string) sounded like it had only one string, a low F#. Couldn't clearly discern one note.

I'm wondering if this is down to the rise of the DJ as music maker. People are coming into music after starting as DJ's. Conventionally their music, if it's an original song, starts with a sampled/midi beat and the rest of the track is built upon that. The lines between them and conventional musicians has become completely blurred as some of them sing and or work with other musicians to make music. It's a small step to mix for bands. There's even a pathway now; by studying music tech at university.

The sonic signature of music has changed, Drum and Bass is a thing of course but drum and bass dominate modern music the way guitar used to in the 60's and 70's. You don't hear screaming guitar solo's in a lot of mainstream music. If the engineers coming out of college have been trained in this way and are brought up with this drum sound then you can see why they would favour it when mixing. It's comparable with modern drummers, I played with a succession of talented kid drummers in my first band (all teachers so they 'borrowed' the schools best young drummer) none of them could play a shuffle at first, it just wasn't something they were hearing, to be fair I've known older drummers who can't play anything else

[dmccombe7]

I've found many so called "sound engineers" are just Joe Bloggs off the street has been given the job to monitor the desk in a venue and rather than have any formal training he's had to pick it up himself. The good FOH sound is usually from guys that have had roper training.

Back in my earlier years the sound engineers were just mates that said they would operate the desk for us and we toured with that too and it all seemed to be ok at the time.

Would have to say at larger venues like the OP mentioned i would expect the sound engineers to be properly trained in their job.

I've been to gigs where i was level with bass bins and it was mostly all i could hear.

Dave

 

[PaulWarning]

went to Rebellion last year, the sound in the main venue was awful for the first couple of days, sounded like they'd put reverb on the bass drum, just a sea of mud, my mate went up to the desk and actually told them the sound was rubbish, they just pointed at the high ceiling and said there's nothing they could do, come day 3 the sound in the venue was spot on, I just thought "Christ, people are paying £180 a ticket here and they can't even get a sound man who knows what he's doing"

 

[bartelby]

Quite a few year back now, a band I was in opened for Lars Frederiksen & the Bastards in TJs in Newport. They took over 2 hours to sound check, with their own soundguy. We gave up our sound check to the middle band on the bill. 

Fortunately the soundguy that was with the PA hire company was a legend named Paul Jocelyn. He'd been doing sound in TJs for a long time and knew the venue well. We just had a line check as we got on stage and Paul sorted the sound during our first song. Apparently we sounded better than the other two bands.

Many times I saw Paul's advice to touring soundguys get ignored, to the detriment of the band they were meant to make sound good. Local, unknown, support bands regularly sounded massively better than the touring headliners. 

[PaulWarning]

9 hours ago, Skol303 said:

 

And it’s always sucked. We just hear the ‘suck’ more as we get older, because we’re less drunk/ more experienced/ discerning/ fussy/ whatever.

I remember seeing Motörhead when I was 18 years old. It was an indiscernable wall of noise and I loved it; but I wouldn’t tolerate more than 10 minutes of it now.

 

Thus it has always been,

I used to got to a lot of Punk gigs in the late 70's, the sound was so bad it took about a minute to figure out what song the band was playing, I thought it was great, used to laugh about it, we had a game going, who can recognise the song first 

[la bam]

Where i accept that certain venues may have awkward spots for sound etc - i think in that case then they shouldnt sell tickets for that area. Especially if their excuse is theres nothing they can do do get it to sound good.

I mean, flippin eck, we are all gutted if its a slightly poor sound for a song whilst we are playing in a pub consisting of about 30 people all getting in for free! Its time these touring shows got their acts together if theyre to continue charging so much.

Can you imagine poor sound being accepted in the likes of stage shows or opera?! Not a chance.

[thepurpleblob]

So, how does one get to be a good sound person?

I've had this role (as well as the bass of course) in various bands and have made quite a bit of effort to read about it and work out what I am doing. But I've never really progressed beyond, "just be logical and try not to panic". It's a black art of the first order!!

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, PaulWarning said:

went to Rebellion last year, the sound in the main venue was awful for the first couple of days, sounded like they'd put reverb on the bass drum, just a sea of mud, my mate went up to the desk and actually told them the sound was rubbish, they just pointed at the high ceiling and said there's nothing they could do, come day 3 the sound in the venue was spot on, I just thought "Christ, people are paying £180 a ticket here and they can't even get a sound man who knows what he's doing"

 

That Empress Ballroom is bad for this. Especially if the bassist is using a warm bassy sound, not too bad if they have a sharper sound, but it really can sludge in there.

[FuNkShUi]

53 minutes ago, bartelby said:

Quite a few year back now, a band I was in opened for Lars Frederiksen & the Bastards in TJs in Newport. They took over 2 hours to sound check, with their own soundguy. We gave up our sound check to the middle band on the bill. 

Fortunately the soundguy that was with the PA hire company was a legend named Paul Jocelyn. He'd been doing sound in TJs for a long time and knew the venue well. We just had a line check as we got on stage and Paul sorted the sound during our first song. Apparently we sounded better than the other two bands.

Many times I saw Paul's advice to touring soundguys get ignored, to the detriment of the band they were meant to make sound good. Local, unknown, support bands regularly sounded massively better than the touring headliners. 

I watched The Ataris in TJs about ...15 years ago maybe?! 
The 1st band on were a local band, and although i didnt much like their songs, the mix was great. Could hear everything. Wasnt crazy volume levels.
Ataris came on, and it was as if the sound guy just pushed all the volume sliders to max. Couldn't hear feck all

[PaulWarning]

3 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

That Empress Ballroom is bad for this. Especially if the bassist is using a warm bassy sound, not too bad if they have a sharper sound, but it really can sludge in there.

you mean the bands had a bass player?  seriously, Bad Religion on the first night was awful whereas Sham 69 sounded spot on, the main difference from what I could make out was the Bass drum at a sensible level and the guitar and vocals clear in the mix, still couldn't here much of the bass though, most of the bass players seemed to have this big smiley EQ mix, which sounded great on it's own but inaudible when the rest of the band kicked in

[Al Krow]

Someone needs to change the lyrics 'cos it's clearly causing confusion: it's not all 'about the bass' in the mix; it's surely much more accurate to say it's 'all about the mids!' ?

[Huge Hands]

1 hour ago, thepurpleblob said:

So, how does one get to be a good sound person?

I've had this role (as well as the bass of course) in various bands and have made quite a bit of effort to read about it and work out what I am doing. But I've never really progressed beyond, "just be logical and try not to panic". It's a black art of the first order!!

There is no correct way, I don't think. 

I did a BSc(Hons) in audio tech (more studio, not live) and I would say having a bit of tech knowledge of what is actually going on helped me understand why I was choosing to turn the knobs I was turning.  However, IIRC there were people on that course that were really audio savvy but couldn't mix a band to save their life.  I also met really good engineers who had never had any formal training.  I guess its a bit like bass players who have picked it up themselves versus those with lots of theory training.  On paper you would presume the latter would be the better musician, but in practice, it isn't always the case.

In my experience as a FOH technician (or should that be Bachelor of Science?  ) you rarely get remembered or thanked for your good gigs, just the bad ones....

 

[mikel]

18 hours ago, Skol303 said:

Not leaping to the defense of sound engineers here: some are certainly better than others. But here’s a fun little test you can try at home...

Play a song you know well over your hi-fi, if you have one. And what the heck, play it loud. Now walk around the room, pause and listen to how the sound changes: boomy bass in some places; weak bass in others.

Now imagine trying to control that on a grand scale, in a room where no investment has been made on acoustic treatment. It’s just not possible; and there will always be parts of the room/venue where the sound will suck.

And it’s always sucked. We just hear the ‘suck’ more as we get older, because we’re less drunk/ more experienced/ discerning/ fussy/ whatever.

I remember seeing Motörhead when I was 18 years old. It was an indiscernable wall of noise and I loved it; but I wouldn’t tolerate more than 10 minutes of it now.

Yes, some live enginneers need a good talking to. But there’s only so much you can do with bad acoustics. And even purpose-built music venues often have major flaws in their design.

If you want great acoustics, go take a seat at a grand old theatre or opera house and give your ears a treat. If you want to swing your pants, be prepared to compromise on the sound... most of the time.

Thus it has always been,

I have no problem with difficult venues, its not possible sometimes to get a good sound everywhere. My problem is with sound guys making the BD the overwhelming sound in the whole mix, for every band on the bill, and making it sound like a sub explosion. That is deliberate.

Edited April 27, 2018 by mikel
spelling mistakes

[DaveFry]

They don't even call it a " bass drum " any more . Now its " the kick " . 

[oldbass]

And the really sad thing is it doesn't matter what fancy high end bass you bought from a fancy high end store....the sound guy will reduce its high end tone to mush and boom..bassists might as well be playing with the cheapest Squiers nowadays...its all the same. Boom and mud! 

And how the heck do they achieve boom and mud outdoors? There are no reflections, no hard surfaces just clean dense air.  One festival last summer made me nauseous it was so bad.

 

[oldbass]

23 hours ago, thepurpleblob said:

So, how does one get to be a good sound person?

 

Here's a left field idea. How about back off the bass knobs a bit and tweak the mids a smidge. No?

[Al Krow]

Went to hear Imelda May at the Paladium last year. Sound was awesome (this was recorded on a mobile phone - not a particularly high end one):

 

[Hobbayne]

I saw the Bootleg Beatles at the Royal Albert Hall two days ago and the sound was excellent!

I dont know wether because that was due to the RAH having their own sound staff or the Bootlegs own sound man. Bloody good though!