Sub Woofers (again!)

[Al Krow]

Just recently been asked to play a couple of gigs at a large venue (Wembley Box-Park) in August.

We've been asked to provide the PA - currently we use RCF 310As which are great for vocals and acoustic, but no so much for the kick drum. Backline for bass and lead guitar.

Not looking to replace the 310As with something completely new, rather just adding a quality sub for occasional use into the mix.

Please do let me know what you would recommend if you have a separate sub in your set up?

[Dan Dare]

If it's just a one-off job, I'd think about hiring a sub or couple of subs. If you only usually use your PA for vox plus acoustic and it does the job, buying subs will be a bit of a waste. If you do wish to buy and you like your RCFs, have a look at their subs. They're as good as any out there in their price range.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

You'll need more than one. Power and driver displacement requirements go up exponentially as you go down in frequency. If you have a pair of ten loaded tops it will take a pair of eighteen, or very high end fifteen, loaded subs to keep up with them. If it's an outdoor gig you'll have no low frequency boundary reinforcement, which means doubling the sub count for the same result as indoors. All things considered you're best off renting.

[Al Krow]

32 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

If it's just a one-off job, I'd think about hiring a sub or couple of subs. If you only usually use your PA for vox plus acoustic and it does the job, buying subs will be a bit of a waste. If you do wish to buy and you like your RCFs, have a look at their subs. They're as good as any out there in their price range.

That's a good shout in terms of hiring.

6 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

You'll need more than one. 

I was thinking in terms of a "cheap Plan B" we could simply put the kick drum and bass through a mini mixer --> bass amp (my DG M900 has plenty of headroom) --> 2 bass cabs, to deal with Bill's 'more than one' point. I have a BF SC and a Fearless F112 (both 8 ohm) which could be daisy chained.

We could potentially then put the DI out from the amp into the PA for additional top end, but I'm not sure that would benefit the low end much and I'd prefer to keep the PA for the vocals.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Al Krow

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Crossing over at the usual 80Hz there's little to no vocals in the subs anyway, nor guitar. But there's plenty of content above 80Hz from both the bass and the kick that should be in the PA. Even when I don't bother with subs I always run the bass and full drum kit through my PA, not for volume, for dispersion.

[Al Krow]

5 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Crossing over at the usual 80Hz there's little to no vocals in the subs anyway, nor guitar. But there's plenty of content above 80Hz from both the bass and the kick that should be in the PA. Even when I don't bother with subs I always run the bass and full drum kit through my PA, not for volume, for dispersion.

Agreed for the sub woofer route.

Plan B with bass & kick drum mixed into bass amp and two decent, pretty transparent, 112s should however provide a full frequency spectrum up to 4 kHz in the case of the BF SC and right up the freq scale in the case of the Fearless 112 with its 5" mid speaker and 1" tweeter. Two separated bass speakers should provide pretty decent dispersion too. Any reason this Plan B shouldn't work?

If this second option does work then the we've got a ready made solution we can roll at any time for no additional cost, which would be great.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Plan B is OK assuming the speakers are not part of your backline. You'd be a very unhappy camper were that the case.

[EBS_freak]

@Al Krow - knowing boxpart, I would say you are going to be better hiring in a rig - assuming you playing in the wide open seating area. You won't be able to get any kind of volume there, it's as good as playing outside. You'll need a lot of air moving - more than you can achieve through your backline and 10s (and even by adding a decent sub or two).

[Al Krow]

26 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Plan B is OK assuming the speakers are not part of your backline. You'd be a very unhappy camper were that the case.

Why so good sir? Surely just be a case of having one of them a little further back on stage behind me (doubling up as a stage bass monitor) so I can hear myself?

I'll be tightly locked into the kick drum for once...😂

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

I've never cared to hear anything coming out of my rig other than me, it's very distracting.

[chris_b]

Why isn't the promoter/organiser providing an appropriate PA system?

[Al Krow]

3 minutes ago, chris_b said:

Why isn't the promoter/organiser providing an appropriate PA system?

We heard back from the organiser a short while back (they seem pretty disorganised). Turns out (after all that!) that there is a half decent PA on site but we still need to:

"You bring your own back-line and instruments, mics, monitors, mixer, stands and plug into the house PA. & your lights, please."

There was an understandable 'FFS!' from the drummer when we got the follow up message, not least as he had started making enquiries about hiring kit!

On the plus side, I quite like the Plan B option - effectively using a second bass cab as a sub woofer. FRFR in reverse  

[chris_b]

I think they need to tell you exactly what is available and if they are supplying a crew to operate it.

Are they insured or do you need your own PLI?

Take a mains tester for your own safety.

[Al Krow]

Spoke to the sound engineer at a gig we were playing at last night (different venue to the Wembley Box Park gig I mentioned in the OP), and who did a really good job.

Bass related: we needed him to cut down the amount of stage monitoring, particularly in terms of reducing the amount we were hearing everyone else through our own monitors - definitely much better hearing just the bass through my bass monitor which was Bill's point above. He also agreed not to set the HPF off too high (he went for 70 Hz cut off). Excellent sound system and a couple of FOH subs. End result: a meaty low end of both kick drum and bass. It's a central London venue which I travel light to on the underground, so just bass and a few bits and bobs; no amp and cab (or pedals other than tuner); I simply DI straight into the house PA. Any tonal variation is just from rolling the treble off. All worked a treat and really good response / feedback from the audience. 

Anyway that's kinda all by the by - simply mention because sub woofers were in play and also because I ran the Plan B option mentioned above, and sound engineer thought it should work just fine / couldn't see any issues with mixing a mic'd kick drum and my bass --> bass amp --> two x 12" bass cabs. FRFR in reverse.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Al Krow

[krispn]

So are you wanting to use your cabs as subs? Effectively running the bass and kick drum to a mixer and sending those two feeds to be your subs on the boxpark gig?

It's one of those set up's you guys could try in a rehearsal room to see how it worked (I appreciate the volumes levels will differ from small room to open air gig as will the effect of the room on the lows and overall sound.

Might just be worth hiring in the right kit for the job and taking out those additional 'risks' - adding in more cables, mixers etc. In saying that reverse engineering a solution might well work but you'd wanna be actually using it in the context at least once to make sure everything works as planned - when there's more stuff to go wrong it usually can and you don't wanna be finding out at your soundcheck that it's a bad idea!

[Al Krow]

17 minutes ago, krispn said:

So are you wanting to use your cabs as subs? Effectively running the bass and kick drum to a mixer and sending those two feeds to be your subs on the boxpark gig?

It's one of those set up's you guys could try in a rehearsal room to see how it worked (I appreciate the volumes levels will differ from small room to open air gig as will the effect of the room on the lows and overall sound.

Might just be worth hiring in the right kit for the job and taking out those additional 'risks' - adding in more cables, mixers etc. In saying that reverse engineering a solution might well work but you'd wanna be actually using it in the context at least once to make sure everything works as planned - when there's more stuff to go wrong it usually can and you don't wanna be finding out at your soundcheck that it's a bad idea!

Yes that is correct in terms of the 'Plan B' solution.

Fortunately it turns out that there is a PA on site for the BoxPark gig tonight (The Organiser seems to be anything but organised 😁), so we don't need to try out the 'reverse FRFR' Plan B solution.

Rehearsal room that we regularly use is likely to be too small to give us any real sense of how it will add to the sound, as the kick drum is already loud in a confined space. But we could certainly give it a go at a pub gig where folk are a bit more relaxed about sound perfection than at a function or wedding.

I am chuffed, though, that we have potentially found a 'hack' which lets us use existing gear for additional low end punch, without needing to fork out on additional gear.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Al Krow

[chris_b]

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

He also agreed not to set the HPF off too high (he went for 70 Hz cut off). Excellent sound system and a couple of FOH subs. End result: a meaty low end of both kick drum and bass.

This is the thing. Too much bass kills the sound of the bass. Makes no sense? But it's true.

We're not making noise, we're making music with other instruments and the bass always sounds better if we're pushing the low mids. That's where we get definition, punch, full sound, warmth and are able to hear every note clearly. Then we are supporting the band, other instruments and the song instead of making a low noise  that no one can hear properly.

This is why all the guys who think they need speaker systems to handle the fundamentals of their low strings have completely misunderstood where their instrument sits best in the frequency range of the piece of music.

[krispn]

I think the importance of mids (those low ones and the mid ones) has been done to death but the folks need to make their own mistakes and figure stuff out for themselves and I mean that in general terms not specific to the OP. I had an issue with our singer who does ‘the sound’ and when he was ready to listen (i.e. when he couldn’t fix a feedback issue) he had no choice to take take on some advice which worked for the benefit of the band and perhaps to the detriment of his ego. Next thing he’s asking advice on getting the drums sounding punchier! I think he was glad not to have the responsibility of it all plus it sounded better to his ears. 

Min terms of the plan b approach I was simply thinking running the rig in a rehearsal to make sure it works ok not as a full low end back line as you’d have to sort that out in the venue. Be good to try it on a gig if it wasn’t ‘essential’ to the life sound. Could help reinforce the tops like you say. 

[Phil Starr]

On 01/08/2019 at 15:03, Al Krow said:

Just recently been asked to play a couple of gigs at a large venue (Wembley Box-Park) in August.

We've been asked to provide the PA - currently we use RCF 310As which are great for vocals and acoustic, but no so much for the kick drum. Backline for bass and lead guitar.

Not looking to replace the 310As with something completely new, rather just adding a quality sub for occasional use into the mix.

Please do let me know what you would recommend if you have a separate sub in your set up?

Hi Al, I don't now the venue but from their web site it looks like a big shed, metal framed and a corrugated roof, a big old barn in fact. Is that right? If so then on the plus side it's indoors and you will have some reinforcement from walls etc.On the minus it's huge and looks pretty poor acoustically, lots of echoes and long delay times. How loud do you need to be? Just playing to 100 people gathered round a stage area and background for the rest or are you trying to reach concert levels across the whole room/space?

If it's the latter then using your own PA just isn't sensible, you are probably in line array territory with multiple subs, a hire job then.

If you are the former then, as someone who has tried it, kick through the bass stack is horrible. Because they are coming from the same source you'll hear it as a single sound so what you hear won't be what you are playing and it's very disorienting. Like sitting in a train when the one next to you starts moving.

RCF 310's work great with subs, even a single sub makes a huge addition but not in this situation. It isn't sensible to buy for a one off in any case but a planned development of what you have, that's a different question.

[Al Krow]

Thanks Phil. It is a big venue! 

However it has a very powerful airborne Bose PA system and a sound engineer was on site, so hares were set off needlessly by the (slightly clueless) person we were dealing with from the event organiser. In the end our PA stayed in the boot of my car! I used my bass rig as a stage monitor and took a post EQ DI out from my amp into the mixer and we obviously mic'd the drums and vocals, had a single stage monitor for vocals and the guitarist simply played through his VOX AC 30 (no DI or mic). 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Al Krow