Crap Sound at Gigs or Perfect Mix for Whom?

[Chienmortbb]

I went to see a famous singer last night, not normally my cup of rock 'n' roll but the better half loves her. The show was uber professional, the singer in question was in superb voice. just a hint of reverb but  no vocal processing, superb musicianship except from the bass. It was very loud and so mushy that I could not even tell if he was playing the right notes. I could not see any amps on stage so presumably it was a silent stage. Oh and when the kick drum was used, it and the bass/mush obliterated the vocals. Now I have seen a number of gigs where this happens, but I was beginning to think it was my ears/brain but in the interval several; people were commenting that it was too loud.Yes the overall volume was high but as we all know, clear sound does not seem as loud at distorted sound. When I asked them to describe what they heard it was too boomy or bassy.

 

On some songs there was just piano and acoustic guitar and the sound was superb. So do the Sound guys, mixists etc. all get taught how to over-amplify the kick drum and make a bass sound awful or have the just gone deaf over some years of touring?

 

They had the latest digital desks etc but could not achieve the sound quality of Genesis (Gabriel included) when I saw them in Bracknell Leisure Centre way back in the Early 70s with a PA that was two WEM 5 input powered mixers and a number of 4x12 columns. Of course the ears and brain are very poor at comparing sounds, especially 50 years apart.

 

Of course the artistes gave their all and I am sure the IEM mixes were fine. I am remeinded when I saw a band in a pub about 5 years ago. they had huge (in relation to the pub size) JBL cabs and everything went through the PA. They spent half an hour getting the stage mix right ans about 1 mins checking the FoH sound. That was not too good either.

 

Rant or  Ramble over, for now.

[Clarky]

I am guessing Mrs C went to the same concert last night (she is a Slave to the Rhythm) and said to me on her return that the sound was pretty poor at times with overly loud drums (especially) and bass. You were not alone in your observations

Edited June 20, 2022 by Clarky

[Lozz196]

It’s the modern phenomenon that many sound engineers seem to need to do, ensure that the kick drum completely obliterates the whole of the rest of the mix. 
 

I’m yet to work out why.

[BigRedX]

Maybe we as punters are partly to blame because we don't say anything, other than on forums like these.

 

If every time the sound was crap we posted on the band in question's social media pages, and if we could find out who had been hired in to do the FoH post on their pages too, and if it's an in-house PA on the venue's pages as well. Then if enough people do it, then it might become obvious that a mix that is all boomy kick drum is not want the audience want.

[Chienmortbb]

1 hour ago, Clarky said:

I am guessing Mrs C went to the same concert last night (she is a Slave to the Rhythm) and said to me on her return that the sound was pretty poor at times with overly loud drums (especially) and bass. You were not alone in your observations

Maybe or maybe not. I went to see Jane McDonald, there all my credibility gone in one sentence. It was a treat for the Mrs. I have to say that she really can sing, Jane not the Mrs. She is obviously a Gay Icon too (again Jane not the Mrs)  as I have rarely seen so many same sex couples in one place.

[Clarky]

Ahhhh, Mrs C saw Grace Jones at RFH!

[bertbass]

Mrs Bert and I saw The Hollies in Brighton a couple of weeks ago, yes they're still touring and I have to say that the mix was pretty poor and got worse as the show went on but in the opposite way.  By the end the bass and drums were virtually inaudible as well as the backing vocals while the guitars seemed to get more predominant and trebly.  If you know the hollies at all, then you'll know that the Hollies' sound is predominantly vocal harmonies and when they're missing it's pretty noticeable, especially on He Ain't Heavy.

[chris_b]

Many years ago I saw Little Feat at the Shepherds Bush Empire and when they started the sound was wonderful. Just like the records. I was standing by the desk and noticed the sound guy never stopped twiddling!! The sound got progressively worse and ended up an indistinct mush and painfully loud. IMO the biggest part of the sound guys job is to know when to leave well alone. It seems many don't understand the concept of less is more.

[TheRev]

I do often wonder if some FOH engineers mix by numbers...i.e 'the bass drum has a gate and isn't clipping or feeding back so it must be OK', rather then using their actual ears to work out whether it sounds OK in the mix or not.

[Bassman68]

I played a venue over the weekend where the FOH speakers had everything under 400hz rolled off, due to complaints from punters who are sat at dinner tables nearest the stage, saying the bands are too loud!

Even the speakers suspended from the ceiling, halfway down the dance floor have this HPF?
To combat the lack of bottom end, there were subs set under the stage to provide some ‘oomph’ without projecting out to the crowd…

I have no idea what it sounded like at the back of the venue,overall, but as we run a silent stage with no backline, Through my IEM’s my bass felt pretty good (similar I imagine to the effect of using a backbeat?) during soundcheck.

Our sound engineer demonstrated the subs on their own & it was a pretty woolly sound, from out front…disappearing completely the further back, down the venue as you moved.

We just endured the night…

The punters seemed to enjoy themselves…

There were no complaints about the sound…

[gjones]

I went to see a band called Mamas Gun, at Lafayette, in London, back in January. The band played to a packed house of 600 people and the sound was excellent and the PA looked pretty 'state of the art'.

 

Fast forward to the beginning of this month and I saw them again, in a small club under a railway bridge in Glasgow, playing to about 50 people,through a not very 'state of the art' PA system. But the sound was equally as good, if not better, at the gig in Glasgow. Interestingly the bass drum did sound too loud for part of the first song but after that everything, including the 4 piece harmonies, sounded fantastic.

 

Their sound engineer really needs a medal. Interestingly he was introduced halfway through the gig by the band, and took a bow.

Edited June 22, 2022 by gjones

[NHM]

On a slightly different point I played at an outdoor urban festival a few weekends ago, a council/community event, where the FOH sound was well balanced and appropriately loud except there was virtually no 'low end' in the mix. I wondered whether the sound company had been told by the client to minimise the likelihood of annoying neighbours by filtering out any sounds that might carry any distance.

[Lozz196]

It’s funny isn’t it, as I went to see The Professionals last year and the sound was easily the best I’ve heard at any gig ever. So it’s not new technology/gear to blame, solely the ears of the people doing the sound. 
 

Maybe a lot of these bands as well as having sound-people should have some sort of road manager who can simply say “that sounds awful, sort it”.

[Beer of the Bass]

I've definitely seen a few sound guys spend the largest part of the soundcheck getting a massive kick sound to the full ability of the system, then everything else is almost an afterthought over the top. I don't know if this is a genre specific thing, or some sort of strange soundguy tunnel vision!

[uk_lefty]

Ten years ago I saw the Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Knebworth. The vocal was almost entirely inaudible. I thought Anthony must be sick or something. Then I bought an MP3 download of the gig and the vocals were very good, well mixed. It was just the engineers on the night just have decided that it wasn't important for the paying punters to actually hear the lead vocals. It ruined the whole evening, one I'd been really excited about. I rarely even listen to RHCP now and I'm sure it's down to the rubbish experience at that gig. 

 

I can understand poor sound at the beginning of a set but not an entire gig. There's supposed to be someone there to sort it out.

[Lozz196]

In Chas Hodges (of Chas & Dave) book he wrote about this, and said that at their sound-checks they got the vocals right first, then added in everything else underneath it so that the vocals always stood out clearly. He did say that a few times they had to advise the sound people that pretty much no-one ever went home from a Chas & Dave gig complaining that they couldn`t hear the bass drum properly, but a few times people had complained they couldn`t hear the vocals, so from then on that was how they worked, they vocals/lyrics being more important than any of the accompanying/supporting instruments. 

 

Which is directly opposite to pretty much every sound check I`ve ever done, where probably more time was spent on the level of the kick drum than on (all of) the vocals. Ok, yes, it was punk, but even our vomit should be heard clearly!

[Muzz]

I know I'm approached Grumpy Old Geezerdom in a deal of areas, but I've walked out of the last three or four big stadium-ish sized gigs due to the sound being absolutely awful: usually inaudible bass mush, combined with a pointlessly loud cannon-kick, tho there were some specialities on top of that; the Foos at Manchester Cricket Ground had horrible swirling tops and mids bouncing off the block-like stands, and Alterbridge at the MEN was just painfully, blaringly, distortedly loud.

 

The oddest one was the Stranglers at the Apollo recently, where JJB's bass sound (pretty much a defining element of the band's sound) was just inaudibly terrible (for the material - a typically scooped Metal kinda sound) - I've since heard that other gigs were OK, and the band had just switched to in-ears for the tour so, disappointing as it was (especially as the ticket still cost me the same) that one may well have just been the setup on the night, and the in-ear mix for the musicians might well have sounded different...

 

Two of the better gigs I've seen for sound were Blackberry Smoke at the Ritz, where the soundman (I was standing just behind the desk) hovered over the board for the first couple of songs (without twiddling), and then left well alone, folding his arms and letting the band manage the volume dynamics from their instruments, and a recent Elbow gig at a small (100 or so punters) bar in Manchester, where they were refreshingly quiet but verrrry clear...

 

Oh, and the Fun Loving Criminals at Manchester Cathedral, effortlessly proving that a 15th - 19th Century cathedral is possibly the worst place to have a loud, booming gig...maaaan, that was poor...

Edited June 20, 2022 by Muzz

[MGBrown]

7 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Maybe we as punters are partly to blame because we don't say anything, other than on forums like these.

 

If every time the sound was crap we posted on the band in question's social media pages, and if we could find out who had been hired in to do the FoH post on their pages too, and if it's an in-house PA on the venue's pages as well. Then if enough people do it, then it might become obvious that a mix that is all boomy kick drum is not want the audience want.

Good idea. If it was my band I'd be mightily hacked off to find out FoH sound was substandard. I'd want to know!

[casapete]

11 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Maybe or maybe not. I went to see Jane McDonald, there all my credibility gone in one sentence. It was a treat for the Mrs. I have to say that she really can sing, Jane not the Mrs.

As I have little credibility anyway.....We played for Jane McDonald in the 90's (as a resident club band) and she was ace! Great singer,

lovely person and very pro / easy to work with. Not particularly my cup of tea musically but still really enjoyed the gigs.

[jimmyb625]

I think there are a number of problems when it comes to live sound, which include:

• Quality of engineers/operators

• Familiarity with the music

• Room construction

• Subjective opinions on what "sounds right"

 

I cut my teeth in live sound with theatre, covering both dramatic productions and musical theatre. I also took a brilliant Open University course, called "The Technology of Music".

One of the biggest lessons I learnt, was how the room itself has a huge influence on the quality of sound you'll get from any system you use there. As an example, the local theatre where I volunteer has a large standing wave around 125Hz, which also affects the relative frequencies, so we tend to cut any mix quite a lot there. Similarly, another venue we use is a large rectangular sports hall, with a tin roof and a very reflective floor. There are curtains, covering some of the walls, but not fully. As a result of this we need to cut around 63Hz and also in the 2-400Hz range as it can get quite muddy and boomy. It can be problematic with acoustic drums and bass amps in this hall, purely because of the acoustic properties of the room.

We try to set up each system to be as "flat" as possible and we'll spend quite a bit of time running reference sine waves and test tones as we eq the various system components (much to the dismay of other people trying to work in the area). Keeping this as flat as possible gives us the opportunity to set the channel eq's for the instruments in a way that isn't fighting with the room.

For the musical theatre stuff, we'll commonly be mixing a band containing brass, woodwind, percussion, keys, bass and guitar, as well as the cast of singers and chorus. The orchestra tend to be located either at the rear of the stage, or in a separate room (which helps with isolation, although it makes monitoring more difficult) and we tend to group it as a stereo channel, so we can adjust the entirety, much as you would do with a backing track. With the musical theatre sound, the vocal's need to be clearly distinguishable above the music, but still balanced overall to provide the right "fit".

Audiences can also be "interesting" to say the least, when it comes to providing their opinions. We've had more than one occassion on the same performance where different audience members have come to us saying how great the sound was, whilst others would say something wasn't right. We usually ask where they sit, to see if there's a trend, but there never seems to be. We've also had more than one instance where people have queried why we used a backing track, which was an unknowing compliment and we took great delight in showing them pictures of the backstage band pit.

There does seem to be a trend nowadays of louder being perceived as "better", which I'm not sure I subscribe to. I'd much rather listen to a well mixed group at a slightly lower volume than a wall of "noise" where there's no clarity at all.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

[nilebodgers]

When I was working in production I hired lots of freelance sound engineers to do corporate gigs. The best came from musical theatre and church backgrounds, the worst came from band backgrounds. We never hired ones that came from dance music backgrounds.

 

The very worst thing was when we had installed a killer system that one of our system engineers had tweaked to perfection, then a band engineer came in and made it sound like an over-loud muddy mess. We just had to grin and bear it, the (name) bands contracts always gave them full control so we couldn’t intervene.

 

[zbd1960]

From what I can tell, some of this probably relates to trained and untrained sound engineers. Trained sound engineers will have done courses in the subject possibly to masters level. A friend of mine has a masters in sound production which was sponsored by EMI. He's fussy about sound being clear, clean, and neutral. He likes my hi-fi system as he says it's very neutral with good articulate bass. I am aware of a local guy that does sound for a local venue - he's utterly clueless. My friend offered to help him to improve the sound, but the guy thinks he knows what he's doing which translates as 'loud' and 'incoherent'. 

[Boodang]

I play drums as well as bass. The main issue I have with sound as a drummer is engineers who think the kick should sound like a hand grenade everytime I use it. Then after the hig people come up to me and say how much the drum sound ruined their enjoyment of the music. When it sounds like that I couldn't agree more. I've taken to playing the engineer some tracks as an example of what I want but it doesn't always work. As for bass, I've taken to using a very mid heavy, bridge pickup tone which sounds very nasal on it's own but sits well in the mix and difficult for engineers to make mushy.

As for volume! We have a gala gig this weekend and I know the pa is going to be way over the top and we'll be battling excessive volume the whole evening. Absolutely no need to drive the audience away just because the engineer wants to show off how loud and bassy his pa is. 

[Lozz196]

It can sometimes be the artists at fault too. Many years ago I went to see Hanoi Rocks and the first 4 songs were just this wash of echo & modulation to the point where I could hardly make out what they were. At that point someone from side stage went over to the guitarist and probably said something to the effect of "turn off your shytboxeffectpedal" as from then on the sound was awesome. 

[Velarian]

I wonder if these issues are caused by the mixing console being optimally positioned in both distance from the stage and the height so that it sounds spot on there, but as soon as you move off-axis the effect of the crowd and room change the balance of frequencies? I'm reminded of a situation in a small room where just a couple of feet lower that than the optimal position produced a significant uplift in low-mid/bass frequencies. You would think that the FOH team would have someone checking different positions in the audience to provide feedback to the main desk, although I guess that might be easier said than done in a densely packed venue.