What's the use!!! (sound-guy rant)

[badgrandad]

Last night the band did a benefit concert where we were one of 4 bands, and one of the "selling points" to the other band members was that we didn't have to bring or set up our sound system (or bring and pay a sound person).

Normally we do our own sound, now I remember why!

This place had a great sound system with over-kill amounts of speakers/subs etc. and it sounded so bad that when I sat down to listen to the other bands after we played you couldn't even detect the pitch of the chords being played or the notes of the solos, or even the words of the vocalists because the soundguy was so overdriving the volume and bass frequencies (for the size room) that all you could hear was a ROAR of sound.

Which is such a shame , because there was some really talented performers there playing a really diverse amount of music. Even a progressive country act that played all acoustic guitars (including a Takamine acoustic bass which sounded great) had so much lows going that all you really could tell was when they started and when they stopped.

Every one of the performers had really good gear,
Every one of the groups had real talent,
It should have been a night to remember - now it's one to forget.

Is it that hard to use sound equipment to just make the music audible and let the performers select how the mix should sound (by our selection of equipment)?

Is it just too tempting to crank it up just because you've got it?

What's the use of having good equipment and style and technique, and practicing 'till you have it down, if, when you go and play, the "newest member of the band" (ie the soundguy) decides to interject his own interpretation of how you should sound.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!!

p.s. I can only imagine what some of you go through on a regular basis dealing with this at different clubs etc where you depend on house sound.

[Relic]

Urrgh!!
I've experienced stuff like that before as well as been victim to it.
Just because someone is a "soundman" doesnt make them a good one.
Sometimes I suspect that some of them might also double as DJ's (I know of two who do that) and it seems like they try to mix bands as they would a dance tune they're spinning in a club - all you hear is a throbbing bass drum and booming bottom end, etc - it's sexy on a dance floor, but they take same angle when mixing a band which is totally totally wrong.

[ric1312]

Originally Posted by badgrandad

Last night the band did a benefit concert where we were one of 4 bands, and one of the "selling points" to the other band members was that we didn't have to bring or set up our sound system (or bring and pay a sound person).

Normally we do our own sound, now I remember why!

This place had a great sound system with over-kill amounts of speakers/subs etc. and it sounded so bad that when I sat down to listen to the other bands after we played you couldn't even detect the pitch of the chords being played or the notes of the solos, or even the words of the vocalists because the soundguy was so overdriving the volume and bass frequencies (for the size room) that all you could hear was a ROAR of sound.

Which is such a shame , because there was some really talented performers there playing a really diverse amount of music. Even a progressive country act that played all acoustic guitars (including a Takamine acoustic bass which sounded great) had so much lows going that all you really could tell was when they started and when they stopped.

Every one of the performers had really good gear,
Every one of the groups had real talent,
It should have been a night to remember - now it's one to forget.

Is it that hard to use sound equipment to just make the music audible and let the performers select how the mix should sound (by our selection of equipment)?

Is it just too tempting to crank it up just because you've got it?

What's the use of having good equipment and style and technique, and practicing 'till you have it down, if, when you go and play, the "newest member of the band" (ie the soundguy) decides to interject his own interpretation of how you should sound.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!!

p.s. I can only imagine what some of you go through on a regular basis dealing with this at different clubs etc where you depend on house sound.

If you havn't already check out the bose L1 system. Many hate on it. But, I use it for my 3 piece rock/ metal band and found it a godsend. It works as well as they claim. Go to bose.com click on products for musicians. Also check out the forums, you will see how many people are ga ga over it.

One of the biggest reasons I got it was because the situation you described happened to me more often than finding a club with a house system that had a "sound guy," worth a crap.

I've found that unless you are a major act and and or have your own sound guy expect to get the F knobs regardless of talent.

The bose system is loud enough for small and mid sized clubs up to 300-500 people. It will not however be usefull by volume whores who want to crank it too eleven because their guitar must be louder than everything,even the singer.

Some people think it is only good for solo acoustic acts. Such is not the case. I have bass and electric guitar through pods straight in, and two vocals. Way before maxing the volume I can drown out the acoustic drums if I so choose.

But because of the 170 degree dipsersion pattern I don't need too. The whole room is filled by sound. It's like swimming in your sound as oppposed to it being beamed at you from one monitor or backline amp.

We constantly get complements on our sound.

Best of all, once you have it set at practice the same settings usually work at gigs. Only thing you will really have to adjust is volume up or down for the room size of the venue.

You say you do your own sound usually. I'm assuming with your own pa. I used to do so as well. But because it was so damn heavy and a pain in the ass to set up and correct for feedback and always performed different I tried the L1 out.

You also hear on stage the same mix the audience will. so, that makes mixing easy and gets rid of the need of a soundman or someone to go out in the audience and tell you how the mix is. But, if you really want the full benefit IMHO you need to ditch backline amps and just get something like a pod and go straight in. My drummer swears our guitar player sounds like it's going through a Marshall half.

I can have my system loaded in and set up ready to go in 15 minutes or less and get better sound than ANY club pa I've ever played through.

Sorry for the rant. It's just that the L1 has solved so many problems for me and made playing enjoyable again. So, if I can lead someone else to this fun I do.

[seanm]

I played a gig today at a venue I had never played at but everybody else had. The regular sound guy was at another gig, so I was it. The exact quote was: "Do you know how to setup a PA? Good." Must be said with no pause between the two sentences.

I wasn't completely happy with the sound. Trying to setup a new to me mixer in a hurry and I couldn't get the onboard reverb working.

Well, did I ever get a lot of compliments from the band! Turns out the regular sound guy owns the mixer and won't let anybody touch it. Every gig tends to be very very muddy.

When I first setup the mixer, I thought somebody had been playing with the knobs. Many channels had extreme EQ adjustments on them. Now I am not sure

[invader3k]

A lot of sound guys also have terrible hearing. Just think...years of being in clubs and venues, not wearing ear plugs, listening to bands up front at full blast...it tends to wear down your ear drums pretty quickly. As a consequence, they crank the bass up, so they can hear the lower frequencies better, which sound more exciting to their ever dwindling hearing capacities.

There is also the prevalent opinion that a lot of bar patrons love to hear music full blast, though I find this to be a general fallacy.

[Vorago]

All gear, no skills = the truth about a lot of soundmen.

[bishopthomas]

Usually people lose their top end hearing first. So a lot of sound people don't hear those low volume, constantly ringing, high pitched frequencies. Too much bass/muddiness usually means the guy just doesn't know what he's doing. Of course, this is assuming that the band isn't too loud, the room isn't a cave, and the PA doesn't have blown horns from previous crappy sound dudes.

[badgrandad]

I think that it is a fallacy that the music has to be really loud - because it's live!

I had a beautiful daydream when imagining the situation described by ric1312. I just don't think realistically I could talk the band into the investment without having all of them see a band perform with thw Bose system.

When we use our own system we are not LOUD, just loud (sometimes) and we don't even have an equalizer for the monitors because we don't have the monitors turned up that loud. Long ago the band found the wisdom in low stage levels.

Seanm - it has been my experience too that if I have ever been called upon to run sound, that I get alot of compliments on the mix and the comfort level.

That is why I suspect that sound-man woes are often the result of the sound-man being the newest and most frustrated member in the band.

[vindy500]

my old manager at my work was a sound man, he kept buying all these big fancy eqs and effects and stuff saying how great he was gonna make evrything sound, the band he was working with kicked him out coz he was a arse, always playing with the effects and getting the eq just right so he didnt have time to do "unimportant things" like adjusting the bands monitors, he also sucked at making good sound. Some soundmen just dont get it...

[Stumpy]

No this isn't a defense of sound guys.

I ran sound for about 5 years prior to playing bass in Crash The Machine. I had a 5000 watt harbinger system 24x8x2 FOH and 24ch monitor system (2500watts).

In all the time that I was working as a sound guy I never cracked 1/2 the volume available to me. The mix was set so that you could hear it at a "barely audible" level and then raised to fill the room. More bodies in the room up the sound went ... just enough to keep the room full. NO MORE.

The thing that I remember getting compliments on was that it was never too loud. You could hear when we were finished with the night. The band could hear everything in the mix.

Even with harsh sounding bands they could hear all of their instruments in the mix.

Being the last/newest member of the band was really hard most of the time. I knew that I could kill their show in the blink of an eye. I watched for cues of whom was playing the solos, who could and could not hear what in the monitor mix, etc.

Now,

as a bassist I have to say that I was a rarity in the sound business. I have played way too many shows where the sound guy would sit and continually spin the knobs throughout the night. Find the sound ... leave it be. They would either not know what the instrument was supposed to sound like or they would not listen to the players and try to get the sound that the players wanted.

We found a guy that charges 80.00 to mix our set on someone elses gear. That was a bargin. When we went to the gig the owner siad that he would be mixing us. WE listened to his mix on a different band from a different night. Uh...no. We brought our guy and he did not stop making adjustments to the sound (not spinning knobs, at all) for the balance in the room. He would walk the room and see how things were going. He would watch us for solos (we worked out a cue from the beginning) and it was a great night.

Of course he left with us and the band after us, though they had talent and decent gear, were awful in the FOH. their stage mix was better than what was going out the FOH.

Our band knows how to setup their mics for their instruments. We all know what our instruments are supposed to sound like. We know how to get that sound out of most systems.

I should think that, even though the sound guy/gal has complete control of the FOH, we as musicians should know how to get the sound that we are looking for out of most every system. Even if it is just the stage mix that we do with our personal rigs.

IMHO