The dreaded decibel meter

[pete.young]

Reading this, I'm so grateful that I no longer have to have any involvement with playing for weddings.

[EBS_freak]

3 minutes ago, scalpy said:

This was entirely avoidable if the venue had been honest from the get go. 

That’s the thing.

 

I’ve got some stuff to add into this thread but need to do it when I’m at a proper keyboard.

 

As I alluded to earlier - venues should have to call out the limitations they have in place… but won’t… until the contract has been signed.

 

Utter b*stards know what they are doing.

[Downunderwonder]

Anyone in the families a lawyer that can tear the venue contract up and tell them what's happening?

[mrtcat]

1 hour ago, scalpy said:

As far as I’m aware, there is no house system, although that may all change. 

There won't be. Venues with the in house system wont need bands to sound check in advance. They know their system will look after the volume. 

[mrtcat]

44 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

venues should have to call out the limitations they have in place… but won’t… until the contract has been signed.

All the bands on the Alive Network books are asked to highlight these limitations to the agency so they now have a really solid database of problem venues and the individual issues at each one. They let the client know before they book a band so at least we don't have to break it to them in the pre event check or on the night.

[Downunderwonder]

Is there another venue needs a wedding of that Tuesday night that is empty on the Monday? Methinks there could be any number doing sfa that early in the week in the middle of winter.

 

Get them on the phone and see if they take on function bands without auditions and let them self manage sounds.

 

With another venue in the offing the bride needs to finagle the current one into admitting by email they actively mislead her on multiple fronts about the band situation. Book the other venue and tell the noise police she's cancelling and wants her deposit back. Small claims court if they refuse.

[mrtcat]

9 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Is there another venue needs a wedding of that Tuesday night that is empty on the Monday? Methinks there could be any number doing sfa that early in the week in the middle of winter.

 

Get them on the phone and see if they take on function bands without auditions and let them self manage sounds.

 

With another venue in the offing the bride needs to finagle the current one into admitting by email they actively mislead her on multiple fronts about the band situation. Book the other venue and tell the noise police she's cancelling and wants her deposit back. Small claims court if they refuse.

The bride and groom will have been made aware of this from the start. Venues aren't daft. There will be a contract with this all clearly stated and there will be a huge cancellation fee if they try to pull out and use another venue.

[Downunderwonder]

46 minutes ago, mrtcat said:

The bride and groom will have been made aware of this from the start.

Does not gel with our other function venue operations expert opinion.

[EBS_freak]

38 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

Does not gel with our other function venue operations expert opinion.

Not necessary - the bride and groom won’t have been informed of the implications of the setup. They’ll just have been told that the venue has bands all the time and even have a top flight PA system for every band to plug in to. What they won’t mention is the lack of volume to create a party atmosphere or the fact that the music sounds dull due to all the dynamics being sucked out of it.

Edited February 6, 2022 by EBS_freak

[EBS_freak]

On 04/02/2022 at 23:57, Downunderwonder said:

An answer to the question of how those fancy systems wind up sounding if you don't trip their limiter when putting whatever through them sound would be nice. How about the full skinny please?

 

A: e-drums, restrained backline not enough to be interfering in vocal mics, not covering whole venue but not giving a damn, Auntie can natter away to drums and vox and some bleed just fine, dancefloor @ something under 96dB thereabouts avoiding engaging the limiter.

 

B: full e-band backline IEM.

 

😄 1 mousepower backline monitors, e-drums and everything into the mixer.

 

😧 live drums, IEM everyone.

Ok.

 

Unlike sound limiter systems that cut power after the music has exceeded the threshold (usually for 3-5 seconds), these in-house systems work with a brick wall limiter (think 20:1 compressor if you understand what that means) across the LR outputs that feed the amplifiers.

 

How a band sets up for such a gig is usually pretty straightforward. So in this case, the wedding band are expected to turn up with a silent stage setup - this means modelling systems for the guitars and an electric kit. Keys and additional instruments should be direct or if that is not possible (eg for vocals, horns (ha! Don’t even bother)) miced up if required. (So yes to vocals, no to horns as they’ll be (too) loud enough already. All mixing is done by the band mixer, and then the L R is sent to the venue system.

 

All monitoring needs to be done via IEM, which the band provisions. (So if this isn’t a normal method of monitoring, lots of bands will immediately be faced with a nightmare playing such a venue. Why? Because there’s the cost of the IEMs themselves - but also the need for the band to have a mixer that can provide enough IEM mixes for all the players)

 

So once you get your mix sounding lovely, it then goes off to hell to be processed by the venue system.

 

So let’s look at what is going into that system. All the instruments that are going in have a huge dynamic range. So as an example, when playing your bass, you may have a 12db difference between playing softly and digging in, or hearing the attack when playing with a plectrum. Now it’s not unusual to have a compressor on a bass, but what happens, is that it’ll be set at a much lower ratio and set to release quick quickly, so all it’s doing is squishing the extreme initial transients while retaining the overall sound of the bass.

 

Again, on the vocals, you’ll have a softer compressor, smoothing out those transients.

 

So in general compressors are generally good at “smoothing” the intruments so it’s more pleasant to the ear. But the key thing to remember is that the compression in these situations are low ratios with quick release times.

 

(For those still not understanding compression and what I’m stating, here’s a rough guide. On a compressor you set a threshold at the point you want the compressor to act. The ratio states how much you want the compressor to reduce the signal. So for example, for 3:1, every 3db above the threshold, the compressor will only allow 1db through. 5:1, every 5db above the threshold it will only allow 1db through. The compressor will also have attack, hold and release. Attack is the time it takes for the compressor to act, hold is how long the compression is held for - and the release is how long it takes for the compression to stop acting upon the signal. So for example, for a a snare, or vocal plosives, a compressor will tame the transient associated with both those extreme initial input levels - but once that initial transient falls under the threshold, the compressor will naturally let go. The key thing is that the compressor should sound pretty natural and still allow all the instruments to breathe.

 

In recorded music, say in the studio, you have the advantage that you have the programme material in advance (in that it's pre-recorded). You can run the signals through multiple compressors, automate faders and really spend your time controlling the output of each channel and the final LR for mastering. You can’t do that with live music. You haven’t got that level of control or a crystal ball (although if you know the music well enough, you can ride VCAs like they do in the west end to ride in those transients - but again, that’s not practical in this situation).

 

So let’s talk about what is happening when it goes into the venue PA. When the venue has the venue PA installed by the suppliers, the system is fed with pink noise (which gives you a flat output at every frequency along the audio spectrum) - and this will be heard in the venue. What should happen is that the PA is tuned to the venue so there are no hot nodes/frequencies. Great. Next, the amps are set so the maximum output of the system with this pink noise is 96dB. Great. So every single frequency that is output is maxed out at 96dB.

 

Now onto the bands desk - its a fair assumption that the bands output from the desk is not exceeding 0dB on the fader. Ideally that output should be skirting around -12 to -3dB.

 

Now remember what I said about transients, well, it should come as no surprise that bands don’t play pink noise. Band music has transients that occur at different frequencies.

 

Let’s talk briefly about traffic light sound limiters now. Imagine your band playing at 96db RMS (the average sound level shall we say), there will be times that it’s below 96 but also times that it’s above. The limiters usually have a traffic light system that will warn you that you are over 96 - so that snare hit may flicker the orange or red lights - but as long as it’s not for an extended period of time, you are good. So in short, you can have a band playing at a nominal level but still enjoy a level of dynamic range.

 

OK back to our crippled venue with it's own installed PA. Remember that I said that maximum volume output is 96dB? Well, that your maximum spl that you transients can hit. So if you want your band with some level of dynamics, you really need to be playing at 88dB. To put that into context, that’s lower than that of a hairdryer. (And also take into account that a hairdryer output is more akin to pink noise (so naturally sounds louder) than the RMS of music).

This is where the problem starts. So as far as the venue system goes, 88dB does not get a party started but does get you the maximum dynamics out of the system. What you then get is people complaining that the band isn’t loud enough. So what can you do? Well, you could push your LR fader. Immediately you hear the band get a bit louder… but what is happening in reality? Well, your transients start to get super squished by the brick wall limiter on the front end. This causes a number of things to happen, your dynamic range is reduced, so whilst the RMS is higher, the music becomes less exciting. It causes the transients to become clipped (more on this later), which can then be heard as audible distortion if pushed too far. Clipped transients actually tires your ears - meaning listeners ears will get more fatigued… so as the night goes on, the listeners ears perceive the mix to be getting worse. The result is that they usually ask you to turn up.

 

So as you’ll probably see, turning up actually makes the problem worse.

Right, let’s get back to these clipped transients. As I’ve alluded to, the front ends of these systems are protected by a brickwall limiter. The installers know that bands are going to keep pushing up the output to the point where clipping will happen. So either the instructions will tell you to not give any more beans from your desk if a clip light is being observed… however, it also doesn’t look good on the company if the system is both clipping on the input signal (hence introducing distortion) and clipping the transients - so it's also heard as audible distortion. So what do the installers do? Lower the gain so that the front end doesn’t clip as easy… net result, your real world desk dB is down the number of dB they’ve introduced as additional headroom on the front end of their system.

 

So all in all, it’s a complete disaster for those expecting a decent sounding band.

 

Meanwhile, any prerecorded music sounds great as it’s been stripped of any excessive transients, and has been mastered and limited in a super controlled environment. But of course the punters don’t understand that and want to know why the disco can be louder than the band.

 

Oh and for those wondering where the measurements are taken? Well… 1m from a speaker is not unusual (when being calibrated) - and anywhere within the room when the venue get their own meter out. Anybody else figure out what the problem is with that?

 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by EBS_freak

[ubit]

On 02/02/2022 at 07:09, scalpy said:

Hi all. My function band is having difficulty with a venue over a decibel meter. I have no problems with such devices as they need to look after their business, and personally I’m not a fan of loud loud bands anyway, especially at weddings.

 

The venue has a limit of 96dB. As we are not on their list of recommended bands they want us to go and sound check at some point before the event on a day of their choosing between office hours.  None of us can do that because of day jobs. They also want the client to sign a disclaimer that if we trip the meter it’s on us. I have issue with this because after 20 years of functions I know this particular band is more than capable of playing below 96dB-  but an enthusiastic punter singing along if even a healthy round of applause will trip the damn things. 
 

What would you say to this venue? We’ve a good reputation but their issues are making us look bad with the client.

 

 

We used to say to the venue that tripping our amps would damage them so would you mind if we don't plug into the limiter? We used to be playing with this light flashing away like hell.

[scalpy]

51 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Ok.

 

Unlike sound limiter systems that cut power after the music has exceeded the threshold (usually for 3-5 seconds), these in-house systems work with a brick wall limiter (think 20:1 compressor if you understand what that means) across the LR outputs that feed the amplifiers.

 

How a band sets up for such a gig is usually pretty straightforward. So in this case, the wedding band are expected to turn up with a silent stage setup - this means modelling systems for the guitars and an electric kit. Keys and additional instruments should be direct or if that is not possible (eg for vocals, horns (ha! Don’t even bother)) miced up if required. (So yes to vocals, no to horns as they’ll be (too) loud enough already. All mixing is done by the band mixer, and then the L R is sent to the venue system.

 

All monitoring needs to be done via IEM, which the band provisions. (So if this isn’t a normal method of monitoring, lots of bands will immediately be faced with a nightmare playing such a venue. Why? Because there’s the cost of the IEMs themselves - but also the need for the band to have a mixer that can provide enough IEM mixes for all the players)

 

So once you get your mix sounding lovely, it then goes off to hell to be processed by the venue system.

 

So let’s look at what is going into that system. All the instruments that are going in have a huge dynamic range. So as an example, when playing your bass, you may have a 12db difference between playing softly and digging in, or hearing the attack when playing with a plectrum. Now it’s not unusual to have a compressor on a bass, but what happens, it that it’ll be set at a mic lower ration and set to release quick quickly, so all it’s doing is squishing the extreme initial transients why retainining the overall sound of the bass.

 

Again, on the vocals, you’ll have a softer compressor, smoothing out those transients.

 

So in general compressors are generally good at “smoothing” the intruments so it’s more pleasant to the ear. But the key thing to remember is that the compression in these situations are low ratios with quick release times.

 

(For those still not understanding compression what I’m stating, here’s a rough guide. On a compressor you set a threshold at the point you want the compressor to act. The ratio states how much you want the compressor to reduce the signal. So for example, for 3:1, every 3db above the threshold, the compressor will only allow 1db through. 5:1, every 5db above the threshold it will only allow 1db through. The compressor will also have attack, hold and release. Attack is the time it takes for the compressor to act, hold is how long the compression is held for - and the release is how long it takes for the compression to stop acting upon the signal. So for example, for a a snare, or vocal plosives, a compressor will tame the transient associated with both those inputs - but once that initial transient falls under the threshold, the compressor will naturally let go. The key thing is that the compressor should sound pretty natural and still allow all the instruments to breathe.

In recorded music, say in the studio, you have the advantage that you have the programme material in advance. You can run the signals through multiple compressors, automate faders and really spend your time controlling the output of each channel and the final LR for mastering. You can’t do that with live music. You haven’t got that level of control or a crystal ball (although if you know the music well enough, you can ride VCAs like they do in the west end to ride in those transients - but again, that’s not practical in this situation).

 

So let’s talk about what is happening when it goes into the venue PA. When the venue has the venue PA installed, the system is fed with pink noise (which gives you a flat output at every frequency along the audio spectrum) - and this will be heard in the venue. What should happen is that the PA is tuned to the venue so there are no hot nodes/frequencies. Great. Next, the amps are set so the maximum output of the system is 96dB. Great. So every single frequency that is output is at 96dB.

 

Now onto the bands desk - its a fair assumption that the bands output from the desk is not exceeding 0dB on the fader. Ideally that should be skirting around -12 to -3dB.

 

Now remember what I said about transients, well, it should come as no surprise that bands don’t play pink noise. They have transients which occur at different frequencies. Let’s talk about limiters briefly now. Imagine your band playing at 96db RMS (the average sound level shall we say), there will be times that it’s below 96 but also times that it’s above. The limiters usually have a traffic light system that will warn you that you are over 96 - so that snare hit may flicker the orange or red lights - but as long as it’s not for an extended period of time, you are good. So in short, you can have a band playing at a nominal level but still enjoy a level of dynamic range.

OK back to our crippled venue. Remember that I said that maximum volume output is 96dB? Well, that your maximum transient range. So if you want your band with some level of dynamics, you really need to be playing at 88dB. To put that into context, that’s lower than that of a hairdryer. (And also take into account that a hairdryer output is more akin to pink noise (so sounds louder) than the RMS of music).

This is where the problem starts. 88dB does not get a party started but does get you the maximum dynamics out of the system. What you also get is people complaining that the band isn’t loud enough. So what can you do? Well, you could push your LR fader. Immediately you hear the band get a bit louder… but what is happening in reality? Well, your transients start to get clipped by the brick wall limiter on the front end. This causes a number of things to happen, your dynamic range is reduced, so whilst the RMS is higher, the music becomes less exciting. It causes the transients to become clipped (more on this later), which can then be heard as audible distortion. Clipped transients actually tires your ears - meaning listeners ears will get more fatigued… so as the night goes on, the listeners ears perceive the mix to be getting worse. The result is that they usually ask you to turn up.

 

So as you’ll probably see, turning up actually makes the problem worse.

Right, let’s get back to these clipped transients. As I’ve alluded to, the front ends of these systems are protected by a brickwall limiter. The installers know that bands are going to keep pushing up the output to the point where clipping will happen. So either the instructions will tell you to not give any more beans from your desk if a clip light is being observed… however, it also doesn’t look good on the company if the system is both clipping on the input signal and clipping the transients. So what do they do? Lower the gain so that the front end doesn’t clip… net result, your desk dB is down the number of dB they’ve introduced as additional headroom on the front end of their system.

 

So all in all, it’s a complete disaster for those expecting a decent sounding band.

 

Meanwhile, any prerecorded music sounds great as it’s been stripped of any excessive transients, and been mastered and limited in a super controlled environment. But of course the punters don’t understand that and want to know why the disco can be louder than the band.

 

Oh and for those wondering where the measurement is taken? Well… 1m from a speaker is not unusual.

 

 

 

Great post thank you. I don’t think there is a house PA (venue still being cagey) but the info about peaks and a sensible target of 88dB is very useful. We have horns though, and strong singers….. Not feeling anymore confident about this! 

[EBS_freak]

6 hours ago, scalpy said:

Great post thank you. I don’t think there is a house PA (venue still being cagey) but the info about peaks and a sensible target of 88dB is very useful. We have horns though, and strong singers….. Not feeling anymore confident about this! 

It's likely you are on a traffic light system if there is no house PA. As I say, it's doable. You don't have to worry about actual real world dB levels... just sent your default volume to feel uncomfortably quiet. You'll get a feel from the traffic light system about how loud you can play. Basically, your horns and drummer are in for a miserable time - and you may have to roll some low end off your bass. Yes, the lack of low end will be noticeable... but depending how your limiter mic and system is calibrated, it could be more sensitive to the lows (this is when the system is calibrated with a "C weighting" - and is done so because bass tends to be the troublesome frequency range that the neighbours get peed off with)

 

Just tell the band to play super quiet as you sound check... and tell them that's how the gig needs to be. It's not fun - but that's the rules. And if you all understand that, you can actually look at the audience instead of the whole band just looking at the traffic lights all night.  

Edited February 6, 2022 by EBS_freak

[Downunderwonder]

7 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Lower the gain so that the front end doesn’t clip as easy… net result, your real world desk dB is down the number of dB they’ve introduced as additional headroom on the front end of their system.

I was following along looking for the good bit but not following you here. Once you go from your system to their system I don't see that it matters how low the input gain is on theirs so long as you aren't clipping your output trying to drive it.

[Downunderwonder]

Hard high passing will get a less tortured sound than zeroing your bass knob, if you find the traffic light is on you.

[Downunderwonder]

If the worst came to worst could everyone break out a backup acoustic instrument and make your singers really work? That would be a wedding band to remember.

[EBS_freak]

25 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

I was following along looking for the good bit but not following you here. Once you go from your system to their system I don't see that it matters how low the input gain is on theirs so long as you aren't clipping your output trying to drive it.

The problem is, is that it encourages the band desk to be pushed above unity. And keep pushing… and keep pushing. So if for example, the receiving system is 6dB under unity, then the output faders on the sending desk would have to be at +6dB to reach unity - which clearly isn’t good practice, especially when you have your own processing on the outputs of your desk. Incorrect gain staging isn’t going to help anybody, especially if you haven’t got a visual cue on the venue systems as to whether you are clipping or not.

Edited February 6, 2022 by EBS_freak

[Downunderwonder]

28 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

especially if you haven’t got a visual cue on the venue systems as to whether you are clipping or not.

Egad's, they spend a gazillion quid on a system that won't tell you you're clipping it until you hear it?

[nilebodgers]

Interesting topic this. Until I retired, I worked for a company that did total event production for large corporates, conferences and parties. For several years we did a large Xmas party marquee in one of the central London green spaces which presented lots of challenges.
 

The noise limits were very difficult to meet and the function bands (top of the tree London corporate party bands) had to have as near a silent stage as possible so electronic kit, all iem, no brass etc. The stage and dance floor were located entirely within an large acoustically isolated box (back, sides, roof with an open front - using very heavy sound insulating sheets on a self-climbing ground support truss structure) and the sound reinforcement was designed to focus entirely on the dance floor (with a low level feed into the distributed background system throughout the marquee).

 

The shows were independently monitored by acoustic consultants so there was no wagging it, the limits had to be observed.

 

The bands that worked in this environment were totally pro about it and the sound limits just weren’t an issue. I don’t know whether they enjoyed playing, our crew never fed back to me that kind of detail, but I bet they enjoyed the money which was £lots.

 

That wasn’t the worst noise limit, there was a marquee down on the Embankment (not done by my company) that had to line the entire marquee with lead-lined noise damping sheets and face it with bws walls and a starcloth roof. That was a massive and very expensive job, but the special kit was amortised over several years as I know they did it for at least 10 years.

[EBS_freak]

58 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

Egad's, they spend a gazillion quid on a system that won't tell you you're clipping it until you hear it?

Pretty much. It’s locked in a box with a couple of XLR sockets to plug into. The only visual cue is… err… nothing. Just two XLR sockets. And that’s your lot.

[EBS_freak]

23 minutes ago, nilebodgers said:

Interesting topic this. Until I retired, I worked for a company that did total event production for large corporates, conferences and parties. For several years we did a large Xmas party marquee in one of the central London green spaces which presented lots of challenges.
 

The noise limits were very difficult to meet and the function bands (top of the tree London corporate party bands) had to have as near a silent stage as possible so electronic kit, all iem, no brass etc. The stage and dance floor were located entirely within an large acoustically isolated box (back, sides, roof with an open front - using very heavy sound insulating sheets on a self-climbing ground support truss structure) and the sound reinforcement was designed to focus entirely on the dance floor (with a low level feed into the distributed background system throughout the marquee).

 

The shows were independently monitored by acoustic consultants so there was no wagging it, the limits had to be observed.

 

The bands that worked in this environment were totally pro about it and the sound limits just weren’t an issue. I don’t know whether they enjoyed playing, our crew never fed back to me that kind of detail, but I bet they enjoyed the money which was £lots.

 

That wasn’t the worst noise limit, there was a marquee down on the Embankment (not done by my company) that had to line the entire marquee with lead-lined noise damping sheets and face it with bws walls and a starcloth roof. That was a massive and very expensive job, but the special kit was amortised over several years as I know they did it for at least 10 years.

There’s ways and means - and none of them cheap. I’ve played a few venues with isolated rooms as you speak of. Floating/suspended box within a room. All massive investments - but small fry compared to what some of these venues are making.

 

For a while, I ran silent disco bands - which is all really good until the guests think it’s great to take the headsets home as a momento. Yes you can put all sorts of things in the contract to ensure you get paid - but funny - nobody likes to acknowledge that their guests have nicked stuff. For it to work, you need to have a room with one door where nobody gets in without taking a headset and nobody gets out without relinquishing a headset.

 

In theory, it was great. In practice, not so much. Especially when you turn up to the venue and you can’t find a clean radio channel - so the whole thing goes to sh111t.

 

The let thing is, nobody really digs on the restraints imposed by a limited… but experience tells me, either play along and accept it for what it is… or don’t take the gig (if you can afford not to take it).

 

When your whole band is on IEM, the reality of playing a limited gig, is that nothing much changes. As a band leader, if you are on the end of complaints of the volume not being high enough - and accusations of the band sounding lifeless… I made the decision to not entertain them so much (hence me hiking the prices up for those type of gigs). I’d rather not want the agro or risk of the band being name being hit with negativity. A single bad gig that results in a string of negative Facebook reviews can kill a band in one sitting.

[Downunderwonder]

6 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Pretty much. It’s locked in a box with a couple of XLR sockets to plug into. The only visual cue is… err… nothing. Just two XLR sockets. And that’s your lot.

We have those XLR's in the wall feeding the ceiling speakers in bars except they don't mind bands bringing whatever else along.

 

I wonder if you piped a keyboard held note and brought it up until it got garbled, and brought it back to clean would that tell you where you could push your mixer output to?

[EBS_freak]

7 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

I wonder if you piped a keyboard held note and brought it up until it got garbled, and brought it back to clean would that tell you where you could push your mixer output to?

That doesn’t capture what’s happening across the whole frequency range. Hence why you use pink noise.

 

Plus, you also have to take into account the addition of waveforms (across the whole frequency spectrum) as other instruments are added into the mix. When you start adding in all the other instruments all those waveforms start adding. A peak with a peak and all of a sudden, you are peaking again.

 

This is why it’s important that the gain staging between systems of spot on. If you are under unity on the desk, you should be able to assume you are under unity on the venue system. So if you hit -3dB for example, so does the venue system. That’s all great - and to be honest, some venues have got their systems set up perfectly like this… but that doesn’t matter when people start complaining that you aren’t loud enough. There’s only one way you can go to boost the perceived volume… and that’s into limiting compression.

Edited February 6, 2022 by EBS_freak

[EBS_freak]

Additionally - just cos you don’t hear clipping, doesn’t mean that you aren’t clipping. And that’s what folks mastering music to be as loud as it can be for on the radio rely on. But they have golden ears and a high level spec of equipment and a treated room that would expose any clipping as the waveforms are squared off.

[Rich]

On 05/02/2022 at 19:40, Maude said:

This some of the email, the venue name has been deleted, although it shouldn't matter. 

...
• We have a DI box for the base guitar to replace a base guitar amp...

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest that venue's curtains.

 

10 hours ago, scalpy said:

We have horns though, and strong singers….. Not feeling anymore confident about this! 

 

Wow. An enthusiastic blast on a horn will blow that limit clean out of the water - we've played gigs in the past where our two trumpets barely went through the PA at all. Add a couple of powerful voices into the mix and it'll be next to impossible to stay under that limit.