Yet another ruined gig due to the mix.

[PaulWarning]

10 minutes ago, Hobbayne said:

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!

sometimes it's better to have the in house sound man sometimes your own, depends, as always, if they know what they're doing, it should always be possible to get a reasonably sound, a lot of the time it's a case of TURN IT DOWN.

Remember going to a  small outdoor festival a few years ago (Strummercamp), all weekend it was the familiar loud bass drum and mushy sound, then Ruts DC came on and it was chalk and cheese, everything nice and clear, I actually messaged their Bass player (Segs Jennings) about it, back came the reply "We've got our own sound guy"

[drTStingray]

Loud sub frequencies seem to be very popular in modern music mixes - both the bass/kick drum and the synth bass or bass guitar. These must play absolute havoc in some venues. Some bass drum sounds remind me of the boom boom boom of a marching band bass drum!! 

Overly loud drums also seem to be very popular in mixes. 

If you listen to Vulfpeck their sound is far more retro 70s with lots of mids. 

I suspect that these mixes are more to do with the overall change in music and sound taste. Of course it completely wrecks quite a lot of music not written to have those frequencies and layers, and certainly not to have then over-boosted - I've lost count of the number of times I've heard radio mixes which completely delete important elements of established music, usually in mid range, such that things like bass hooks completely disappear. How many times have we heard on this forum things like 'Later with Jools - without bass'! 

A general issue in my opinion - may also have a bit of me getting old, losing patience, and possibly a bit of hearing!! However Im not so sure as I have no problem hearing every bit of Bernard Edwards' playing on Chic songs played on equipment at home!! 

 

Edited April 28, 2018 by drTStingray

[mikel]

I was told back in the day by the guy doing FOH for Yes "Its better to cut a frequency rather than boost another to try and compensate"

[mike257]

On 27/04/2018 at 07:23, T-Bay said:

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.

The support band won't have been mixed by the same engineer, and won't even have been mixed through the same mixing desk. 

There's so many variables involved in getting a good sound. Taking Brixton as an example - it's a beautiful and storied venue. I was really excited to be mixing in there and ticking it off the list. The advice I got from colleagues that had been through there was that it's a hideous sounding room when it's empty, but more manageable when full, and that the sound at the mix position doesn't reflect how it sounds across most of the rest of the room, especially around the tricky bottom end. 

So - you're on the back foot with the room before you've started. Then - many venues that size don't have an installed sound system. It's brought in show by show, by the artist or promoter's chosen supplier. The system will depend on the budget, and the headline artist's brand preference. This has to be flown/stacked, configured, time aligned to suit the space. This is largely science with a splash of art, and is a skill set in itself separate from being a mix engineer. A great system tech is a desirable thing. They create the canvas that the FOH has to work with, so is again filled with variables. 

Soundcheck comes  - taking that Brixton gig as an example, the headline band had a closed soundcheck. I didn't even get to walk up to the desk until they were done. They ran an hour over schedule. I raced to FOH with my carefully prepared show file on my USB stick, filled with confidence because I knew I'd prepped the file well and could start quickly. I got to the mix position to find I'd been supplied a completely different desk from the one in the advance, my show file was now useless and I was starting from scratch on am unfamiliar desk over an hour behind schedule. The ten minute rushed soundcheck we had meant I didn't get the opportunity to walk the room enough to get a proper feel for how it sounded away from the mix position, and also meant I didn't have time to do anything but the very quick basics to throw a decent mix together.

When it came to show time, I discovered all the little issues that the rushed soundcheck had hidden - like just how over-egged with bass and lacking in mid some of the bass sounds coming from the SansAmp on stage were. Whilst there was plenty of low end, there was next to nothing I could do to dial the clarity back in to the midrange because that detail just wasn't reaching me at the desk. In every song, I had effects changes and constant fader rides to do to suit the arrangement, lift key parts in the important places etc, so trying to firefight sonic imperfections around that. The half our set is over before I know it. Band and management made up with the mix, I know it was ok but would have been much better given more favourable circumstances. 

[Edit to add: When you're in a full venue, with regular adjustments to make, it's often just not practical to go for a wander to hear how it sounds across the room. In a sold out gig, to get far enough away from the desk to hear the difference, means there's too many people in the way of you getting back quickly to react to something hapening on stage. I don't know many engineer's working directly with a band whose mix stays static throughout a show. If you know the material, you play the mix to suit and it's constantly changing. ]

That's a pretty typical day and regular set of challenges on a live show of that scale, and that's barely touching on the amount of things on stage in terms of tone, musical arrangements, performance, stage volume/spill etc that you can't control from behind the FOH desk and just have to deal with as best you can. 

If it was that easy to make everything sound great in every corner of every venue, anyone could do it. Sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's really bloody hard. "Turn the kick down" and "tweak the mids" doesn't really cover it!

Edited April 29, 2018 by mike257
Missed a bit

[Cuzzie]

Thanks for that insight, it must be sooooo tricky.

I think as in everything in life, you get some guys who don’t give a funk, and others who try their best in challenging circumstances.

[mike257]

On 28/04/2018 at 11:33, Hobbayne said:

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!

 

On 28/04/2018 at 11:49, PaulWarning said:

sometimes it's better to have the in house sound man sometimes your own, depends, as always, if they know what they're doing, it should always be possible to get a reasonably sound, a lot of the time it's a case of TURN IT DOWN.

The RAH doesn't have an in-house sound man, every show bring it's own system and crew in. It's a bugger of a room to get right, but when it's right it's brilliant. The last show I was on in there, the whole soundcheck was hours behind because it didn't sound quite right and the headliner's FOH guy had the audio crew drop down the centre hang of PA and reconfigure it. It's a right pain in the derrière!

22 hours ago, mikel said:

I was told back in the day by the guy doing FOH for Yes "Its better to cut a frequency rather than boost another to try and compensate"

^ this is great advice. You keep turning things up, you just end up in a mess. The best way is to cut holes for things to fit in, give everything space. If you boost 80Hz on bass and do the same on kick, they'll get in each other's way even more. 

[Al Krow]

22 hours ago, mikel said:

I was told back in the day by the guy doing FOH for Yes "Its better to cut a frequency rather than boost another to try and compensate"

 

9 minutes ago, mike257 said:

^ this is great advice. You keep turning things up, you just end up in a mess. The best way is to cut holes for things to fit in, give everything space. If you boost 80Hz on bass and do the same on kick, they'll get in each other's way even more. 

+1

I think this whole thread has been about sound guys turning up the low end so much that it drowns out the rest of the band and ruins the mix. So the above from mikel and mike in a nutshell!

For me a key takeaway has been it's not just my crew that has experienced this, but that it's pretty widespread. I'm therefore not going to expect all sound guys to be fantastic and that we need to be prepared to actively give feedback during the sound check.

[mike257]

2 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

+1

I think this whole thread has been about sound guys turning up the low end so much that it drowns out the rest of the band and ruins the mix. So the above from mikel and mike in a nutshell!

For me a key takeaway has been it's not just my crew that has experienced this, but that it's pretty widespread. I'm therefore not going to expect all sound guys to be fantastic and that we need to be prepared to actively give feedback during the sound check.

It's a tough one to judge in soundcheck as the low end is the thing that changes most drastically when a room is filled with bodies. When I've done time as a house tech in a venue, I've got a feeling over time for how that room changes when it's full, so a soundcheck that might sound bassy and muddy can be down to reflections from a bare floor and walls that won't happen at showtime because of all the meat-based acoustic absorption units milling around the room. A good tech will be well aware of this and how the room can change, so will have that in mind during soundcheck.

[T-Bay]

I understand it can be very hard to get a good mix, but when one thing is so dominant to the point that you can hardly hear anything else (and this was stood about ten feet from the desk) then it’s a failure on the part of the person responsible OR a conscious choice that the sound is what they want (but surely not?). Why you wouldn’t just turn that down a little after a song or two is beyond me. I have had this at two gigs in the last year and it has completely spoiled both of them,  othe were in venues I have been to before and experienced excellent sound in so it can’t all be the venue.

[oldbass]

1 hour ago, mike257 said:

 

If it was that easy to make everything sound great in every corner of every venue, anyone could do it. Sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's really bloody hard. "Turn the kick down" and "tweak the mids" doesn't really cover it!

Im genuinely interested.

So what is the worst that can happen if you "turned the kick down and tweaked the mids"..would it sound more pleasant or are you saying that it would actually sound horrible.

Last summer in Portsmouth we could barely get near one of the side stages....the kick was so loud and penetrating it was like being hit with canon balls. 

 

[mike257]

Just now, oldbass said:

Im genuinely interested.

So what is the worst that can happen if you "turned the kick down and tweaked the mids"..would it sound more pleasant or are you saying that it would actually sound horrible.

Last summer in Portsmouth we could barely get near one of the side stages....the kick was so loud and penetrating it was like being hit with canon balls. 

 

No, I'm saying that it's an overly simplistic reduction of a complex set of factors, some within your control, some that aren't.

I'm certainly not disputing that there's people out there who are putting together overly kick-heavy mixes, but that big waffling post was me trying to give an insight into why getting a great mix, even in a prestigious venue with a quality sound system brought in, is not as straightforward as people might assume. 

[lurksalot]

32 minutes ago, mike257 said:

No, I'm saying that it's an overly simplistic reduction of a complex set of factors, some within your control, some that aren't.

I'm certainly not disputing that there's people out there who are putting together overly kick-heavy mixes, but that big waffling post was me trying to give an insight into why getting a great mix, even in a prestigious venue with a quality sound system brought in, is not as straightforward as people might assume. 

Its a brilliant insight and very interesting how much needs to be done , but I reckon you are looking to produce a top quality audio presentation in a 'great mix'.  Sometimes,  just 'listenable' will do ,  and I guess while some of that is subjective ,  we can vote with our feet. 

 

[mikel]

2 hours ago, lurksalot said:

Its a brilliant insight and very interesting how much needs to be done , but I reckon you are looking to produce a top quality audio presentation in a 'great mix'.  Sometimes,  just 'listenable' will do ,  and I guess while some of that is subjective ,  we can vote with our feet. 

 

Quite, but we are just talking about doing the basics. Get the basic sounds ok and a not perfect mix is forgiven. Keep it simple.

[Lozz196]

5 hours ago, T-Bay said:

I understand it can be very hard to get a good mix, but when one thing is so dominant to the point that you can hardly hear anything else (and this was stood about ten feet from the desk) then it’s a failure on the part of the person responsible OR a conscious choice that the sound is what they want (but surely not?). Why you wouldn’t just turn that down a little after a song or two is beyond me. I have had this at two gigs in the last year and it has completely spoiled both of them,  othe were in venues I have been to before and experienced excellent sound in so it can’t all be the venue.

Agree, simply turning down a bass drum that is dominating the overall sound shouldn`t be tricky, after all they managed to turn it up in the first place.

[scalpy]

I was stood by the desk at V festival in Weston Park one year. Their sound engineer and the hire guy were having a blazing row about something, from what I could gather about what he could or couldn’t do, and when the band started they sounded terrible. The sound guy got to work, 8 bars in and the kick sounded exactly Questlove should, then the whole kit. By the chorus the vocals were loud and proud, and the end of the song they sounded magnificent. The guy worked like a dervish, and it was a proper insight into how to mix on the fly and make the best of a bad job on unfamiliar gear. 

[BreadBin]

Festival sound is a totally different proposition to venue type gigs, my brother has been doing it for over 20 years and is bloody awesome at it.

[cheddatom]

I played at The Tivoli in Buckley the other night. I assume the soundman was a "house" guy but he was extremely professional. He went to great lengths to EQ everything and it sounded brilliant... but he knew what he was doing

Most of the gigs I play with bad sound are caused by people playing with EQ when it sounded fine before they started. For most small venues it should be as simple as setting the mic gain, and then turning up the faders until you can hear everything. 

[lurksalot]

1 hour ago, cheddatom said:

I played at The Tivoli in Buckley the other night. I assume the soundman was a "house" guy but he was extremely professional. He went to great lengths to EQ everything and it sounded brilliant... but he knew what he was doing

Most of the gigs I play with bad sound are caused by people playing with EQ when it sounded fine before they started. For most small venues it should be as simple as setting the mic gain, and then turning up the faders until you can hear everything. 

The Tiv is normally a good mix , I've been there a few times and it's always been ok , funny enough though , I saw Uriah heap twice in 2 years and the first gig was definitely better than the second 

[tonyquipment]

It’s the “modern” sound patch that people have adjusted to. Scooped tones for everything to make it sound “HIFI” what ever happened to the mid boost ? But on the record I agree live music is a lot of BOOM BOOM BOOM BASS DRUMBS

[dannybuoy]

I found this discussion relevant to this thread (from 29:04):

 

[Huge Hands]

1 hour ago, dannybuoy said:

I found this discussion relevant to this thread (from 29:04):

Some of what he said was valid, but to say that "I'm going to stubbornly play with a stack of cabs at full pelt and you have to make the PA louder to fit around me" smacks of a poor starting point for any sound engineer. 

[PaulWarning]

21 minutes ago, Huge Hands said:

Some of what he said was valid, but to say that "I'm going to stubbornly play with a stack of cabs at full pelt and you have to make the PA louder to fit around me" smacks of a poor starting point for any sound engineer. 

yeah I thought that, then later on starts talking about not using a backline at all and relying on monitors 

[Cuzzie]

Ramping the sound would be born out of frustration, seen him with his rig, the band had a beautifully balanced sound.

Going through the PA is all about recognising what the modern world is like, but using his pedal to keep his tone.