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Bizarre sounding room
- Thread starter JimmyM
- Start date
today i did a gig in boynton beach with bowzer. it was a small community center, held about 300, and it was packed. they only had a vocals pa so we had to do stage volume. i had my b-15n and two 115 cabs with me. 25w is plentybut i had no idea how plenty it would be.
this room was really bizarre. it is only room i've ever played where i had to dial in an extreme amount of low end and roll off a ton of highs in order for the bass to sound normal. usually i have to reel in the lows with that rig. tonight i had the bass knob on 4:00 and the treble knob on 10:00, and it was still a little brighter than i wanted. it was a really dry and bright room, and while it helped keep standing bass waves from being a problem, it was very disconcerting because that never happens in a room that size.
and for those who think it's insane to use a b-15 on an oldies rock gig with no pa, my volume knob was on 8:30, which means i had used maybe 1/3 of its clean wattage, and the soundman said i was still a little bit too loud. so not only was dry and bright, it was loud, too.
i have no idea why this room behaved the way it did, but i've never seen a room that size that killed low end like that and was so loud. i guess that'll be the next phase of my education...trying to learn how different buildings affect sound and why.
i'll guess that your rig was pointed straight towards the audience. the first thing i would do is to turn my rig
toward the center maybe 20 degrees. likely would
change things up quite a bit.
i wonder....does bowser's band all have to wear hightop converse?
Yep, for years I played (and ran sound) at a church with a circular room. A geodesic dome actually. They certainly are a trip. Hearing whispers from across the room, frequency black holes, 103dB at the back of the room, but only 93dB in the front! And to make it worse the stage was under it's own smaller dome. Mixing was a pain, you'd stand in one spot and the mix would be guitar heavy, more a few feet and the guitar would be buried and he kick was overwhelming, or no drums at all but vocals are blasting. They had an acoustician come in once who spent a few hours, then gave up. He recommended a guy who wanted like, $4000 for a consult. The less then eloquent solution was to beef up the PA so it would handle 108dB, blasting over the reflections.
A frustrating room for sure.
A frustrating room for sure.
no, but everyone but the drummer does anyway. theirs are black and white but mine are all-blacks because i'm cool like dat.
and yes, my rig was pointed straight out. but bowzer absolutely hates to hear any bass above a slightly dull buzzing sound, so that's not possible to point it toward the center at all. he is by far the most bass-hating singer i've ever worked with. claims i'm stepping on his notes all the time. whatever
i buy them so i can get away with wearing converses on gigs where i should be wearing black dress shoes
IT's rooms like this that make IEM make a ton of sense.. wrap up all the issues and forward to the sound guys... any stage sound makes it only bounce back and phase worse.
I have one of these rooms EVERY weekend.
Timmy
I have one of these rooms EVERY weekend.
Timmy
the pa wasn't good enough to do iem's and a di line. it was ok for vocals but we couldn't run instruments into it.
