Cabinet/Vocal Mic Bleed Over

[Buzz]

Alright Crew,
Just played an outdoor show with my Goliath 3 4x10, SOB 1x15 stacked and my 550x running a DI to the board. We were under a large gazebo and in front of a large pond. Some across the pond comments were that the bass sounded "hollow and distorted". I heard no distortion on stage but I'm beginning to think that my rig was being picked up through my vocal mic, going back through the board, sonic maximizer, compressor, EQ, yada yada and therefore creating at the very least the "hollow" comments. The distortion I'm not so sure. My master was around 10 o'clock and I don't feel I was pushing anything hard.This is the first time I've used both the 4x10 and 1x15 and that raised the height of the speakers closer to that of my mic. Your thoughts? We use gates on the mic compressors and they even brought me down quite a bit on the board so I don't feel it was our PA sub causing this issue. We don't do a lot of outdoor shows but I'd like to correct this before the next outting.

Buzz

 

[Big String]

I'm not familar with your gear but outside gigs are always a real pain especially if you're running your own sound like we do a lot. When there is a Pro Sound Company doing it, they can "make ya or break ya", but it's always tough doing it yourself. We have a very ample set up for inside gigs but it's still not quite big enough for outside yet we do use it about half the time. We have EV18 for subs and EV 15 w/horn for tops. We always mic everything inside or out. We have MX3000a and MX2000a QSC which is plenty of power for inside but barely enough for outside. As far as your distortion that is hard to say. People in the audience will always hear things differently and most of the time not notice anything wrong unless there actually is. The water in front of you probably didn't help and the Gazebo roof (I've done exactly this) probably made it hard for you guys to hear on the stage area. I would say your signal to the board was either to hot or the gain/trim signal on the board was to hot and clipping the signal. I heard some pros a few weeks ago like this. I was suprised because it's a good sound company and the board man was experianced but the bass sounded like crap when he hit the B string. He was way to loud for that mix. People were leaving and moving back from the speaker arrays you would think the sound man would have noticed... The hollow sound was probably some type of anomaly I'm guessing. The only other thing I can say about the distortion is you may have been underpowered on your rig and clipping your amp, but you said it sounded ok... Maybe someone else with more knowledge can help. Thanks for asking me, but my outside gig thing has been a real journey.
I've since spent thousands on getting it close to right for me. I've got boo coo power for headroom and a very punchy sealed type cab for the stage. It's really the only thing that has worked for me and still even somtimes I start to get lost in the mix a bit toward the end of the night. I will say that all I ever get is compliments from the front of the house sound. Last week another bass player even said he could hear my stage rig very clearly and it sounded great.

Check a couple things I've mentioned and just to the best you can because the outside stuff is always a pain for the bassman.

PS, does your DI have a gain on it? If so these gain controls can be very very hot on the signal they send. And, I hate to suggest it but maybe the man running your board needs to learn more... about signal chain, things like "unity gain", clipping, signal to noise ratio, etc. I'm no expert by any means but there is so much than can make you sound crappy. BTW we don't use any compressors - they are an art to get right. You do protect your gear but can squash the hec out of the sound too.

 

[RicPlaya]

You said you had subs? Could be a phaze cancellation or some weird reverberation. Did you delay your mains and subs to the stage noise? If you don't do that sometimes the sound from mains and subs get to the crowd then you stage noise will hit a few milliseconds later causing that effect. Like you said you could have also had some stage noise bleed into the mics.