wow, really?
the idea of just treating crossover, subs and tops as a "flat response black box" once it's been dialed in, and relying on channel EQ and HPF'ing to put each instrument where it belongs in the frequency spectrum, is an old school thing that's kinda going away in the bigger leagues?
Well, kinda, but not totally...
Walter, I did walk back my comment from the "thankful" notion, with an apology to that poster. Your point is very well taken...I read this at work on my phone and waited until I got home so I could reply on the computer because I knew it would get lengthy.
These days, in the big leagues, 90% of the time, we see a system aimed, flown, and measured and set up just right. THEN the subs are piled up either left or right or all in the center and treated like a separate system, if treated at all. No, it's not the best results. And a lot of times, there's just barely enough time to get this much done before the bands are loading in and breathing down our necks. Having said this, the BIGGEST of the big leagues DO indeed take the time to carefully align the subs (with either delay or phase-alignment-through, and on good days, we don't have to choose between the two), treating them as the low-frequency bandpass of the PA.
The one big problem that never gets any attention, never gets discussed, never gets pointed out is that, when the subs are driven from an aux, we are varying the input's lever to the subs, NOT using EQ to treat the input. This throws any alignment work out the window basically, because now we are also changing the sub's crossover point in a roundabout way. Hard to explain here, but it's true. Another anomaly from setting up PAs this way is that if you record the shows, you've screwed up the reference of the bass and the kick drum (and floor tom, keyboard, playback, whatever you've sent to the subs via the aux send) to the recording. Way early on, I tuned and still tune the PA as linear (not flat, there's an explanation for that, too) so that hopefully, my 2-track board recordings would be close to the live mix. Now, if you push the bass up in the subs via the aux, that's not making the trip to the recording. This has reared its head at the church I go to where we depend on the live mix recordings to critique things. A lot of recordings lately have very little bass and kick on them. On a service when I'll sit with the volunteers that mix and watch how they are mixing the bass and kick. I swear, it must be natural to push the bass and kick inputs up a little bit, then lay into the subs from the input's aux. I have them bring those aux sends down a good bit, then push up the input's main level, and and the aux send in a little bit as necessary. Hey, now we have bass and drums in the live recording. I want to use the mono bus for the subs (for reasons I'll describe further down), but since the system is a true left-center-right system, the mono bus tied up.
Okay, having said all of this, the effects of what I've described aren't devastating or mix-killing for most everyone with SL24s or X32s or other small mixers and small PAs in clubs. Hell, 98% of the guys that show up to mix on our rigs operate this way. I've never heard an audience member say "gee, you really hay-stacked the crap outta that bass input, dude! What were you thinking!!".
The thing that a lot of the true big boys (as well as I, but I'm not a big boy at all) do is align the PA, sub included as part of the system and not an effect. The subs are driven from a mono buss or group and tuned for equal energy and alignment with the mains. But now, an input can be assigned to the subs, but not varied in level, because that's not necessary now. The bass, kick drum, playback, etc. (even vocals, if you are mixing Josh Turner, Randy Travis, et al) are now in the subs, but can be EQed at the channel, knowing that the EQ is accurate because of how the subs are set up with the PA.
I can attest that even with steep high-pass filters, mixing an orchestra this way provides a very clean mix from the PA, more so than using high-pass filters (which I still use, well, because I can...
). But I'll plead guilty to more often than not, setting up the PA the bad ol' way I described earlier when I had to mix regular bands. It's one of those "just make it work" situations that gets handed a whole lot to local sound guys dealing with national acts like I did for a long time,
Walter, I feel like you probably are aware of everything I've spoken of here. I'm kinda explaining the point I was making and how dealing with all morphed along over the years. And don't get me started on the cardioid subs, end-fire subs, stair-stacked subs, center subs, spaced, out and outer subs delayed and on and on. These methods work well for directing sub energy, but they take a lot more time and a lot more space to set up.
At this point, I'm kinda wishing I hadn't said anything because these subjects get way outside the scope of most of what's going on here and I don't want to muddy the waters up with this stuff. Especially since I've tried to abbreviate some of my points to keep this from becoming a dissertation. Everyone just carry on as usual.
Walter, always a pleasure conversing with you here. Would love to meet you someday...
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