That's a shame. My wife and I saw Pat Benatar and Neil Geraldo a few years ago at the River Spirit Casino here in Tulsa, which is a smaller venue. The sound was great, and so were Pat and Neil!
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Concerts where the bass sounds lousy
- Thread starter g-dude
- Start date
I hate when the kick sounds like an atonal boooom. I prefer a clean snap, short duration with lows rolled off some, letting the bass guitar make the clear low notes.
Yep saw Fleetwood Mac the kick drum overpowered everything FFS Fleetwood Mac for heaven’s sake. Can’t blame that on acoustics
I don’t know if that was intentional but I love it.
And yes, sound in large venues these days tends to be both painfully loud and unintelligible. And tickets are obscenely expensive.
No matter who is to blame, they could be doing better, and they choose not to. They will not get any more of my money.
I don't have first hand experience working with national touring acts. I mixed mostly for military bands.
I believe top level national touring acts generally travel with their own system, backline, and tech staff. At a lower level they may hire the system and back line locally, but still travel with their own tech. At still a lower level, they may rely almost 100% on local resources. I would expect using local techs to mainly occur at approximately the level were local musicians are hired to form a pickup band. Perhaps something like a reunion tour. But even at this level, I would expect most artists to use their on tech (if they can afford it).
There can be a range of reasons that impact decisions. For example, a group may perform in a venue that has a very good PA. I did a few gigs like this where the house tech ran the board, but our audio tech sat next to him as an adviser.
We saw a show last Saturday and the first two songs were all bass rumble and kick punch… Af the third song, maybe someone noticed and adjusted accordingly or my ears became accustomed? Anyway, the sound balance was really « meh »!
Deceiving as the artist does some kind of atmospheric pop music and the other players were buried in the mess. I still enjoyed the show though…
That’s what I’d expect too.
Counterintuitively it might impact the issue we’re talking about - it can’t be easy to march into a new venue every third day and have to decode that venue’s specific acoustic challenges in the few hours you’d have. Given the choice I might rather use someone who has run a few hundred shows in that room.
But I suppose sound techs these days have responsibilities beyond the audio mix that are connected to the performance - activating swells and such - that would make it hard to have a different person at each gig.
The show I mentioned in my precedent post was in a kind of small room but probably more than 300 however. The singer relied on wedge monitors, no IEM I could see…Yep, unless it's a small room (300 capacity or less), it's sounded liketo me for years.
I really enjoy running audio, but I generally prefer listening to recordings over live concerts.
I do concede there are aspects to live concerts that really can't be experienced by listening to a recording. Likewise there are aspects to recordings that can't be duplicated live.
Did the bass always sound great when I was running sound. Absolutely not. In general, most of the audiences we performed for did not like a mix that was loud or bass heavy. So I rarely mixed at a volume where the PA had control over the low end.
During sound check I would sometimes turn the system up enough to get a nice bass sound. This was to check for sufficient gain-before-feedback. After the check, I turned the system back down to a comfortable listening level...where I essentially had little to no control over the bass. Essentially I prioritized a comfortable volume over bass quality.
What did the audience think? You would probably be surprised by how many people made an effort after the show to come over and shake my hand, compliment the mix, and thank me. Many mentioned how other shows they had seen were ruined by too much volume and/or too much bass.
I do concede there are aspects to live concerts that really can't be experienced by listening to a recording. Likewise there are aspects to recordings that can't be duplicated live.
Did the bass always sound great when I was running sound. Absolutely not. In general, most of the audiences we performed for did not like a mix that was loud or bass heavy. So I rarely mixed at a volume where the PA had control over the low end.
During sound check I would sometimes turn the system up enough to get a nice bass sound. This was to check for sufficient gain-before-feedback. After the check, I turned the system back down to a comfortable listening level...where I essentially had little to no control over the bass. Essentially I prioritized a comfortable volume over bass quality.
What did the audience think? You would probably be surprised by how many people made an effort after the show to come over and shake my hand, compliment the mix, and thank me. Many mentioned how other shows they had seen were ruined by too much volume and/or too much bass.
I think it's more important for the audio tech to know the show and style than the room. IMHO, a band should hire an audio tech with an appropriate artistic vision that suits their needs. To some degree audio techs tend to specialize in specific styles of music. Someone who knows how to make EDM sound right may not understand how to mix rock. Likewise a person who specializes in rock may not understand how to mix EDM.
Not unusual for big acts to have an extensive audio staff. The person who runs the house mix is not necessarily the same person who tunes the system.
As an audience member in a general admission environment, I always try to find a perch as close to the sound guys as possible. Off axis response (i.e. anyplace other than the sound desk) can be almost incomprehensibly worse.
Agreed! And in one case, I was at a Frank Zappa concert, and we were sharing a, er, smoke with the FOH sound guy and occassionly he would ask "does this sound better". Dube, Sliders, it's all good!
Not necessarily talking about just the bass, but I think live recordings of the Red Hot Chili Peppers always sound like hot garbage. I've never been to one of those concerts, but ALL of the recordings I find are awful. Whether they're recorded with a phone, or genuinely professionally recorded, straight from the console. The vocals are usually super dry, the guitar is WAAAY louder than the bass, the drums are generally fine, and the bass is usually way too thin. It's almost as if they swapped the EQ for the bass and guitar.
Don't get me wrong, I generally like the music they made, and still make. But those live shows are awful. It's almost as if they can't actually sound good without Rick Rubin.
Edit: Well the guitar isn't waaay louder, but I think the bass needs to be way more prominent in such a band.
Don't get me wrong, I generally like the music they made, and still make. But those live shows are awful. It's almost as if they can't actually sound good without Rick Rubin.
Edit: Well the guitar isn't waaay louder, but I think the bass needs to be way more prominent in such a band.
Most concert goers want the PA to be loud and the kick and subs to break bones in their chest when it hits. The recording is for the nuances, live is for the experience unfortunately.
The thing I have always found odd is that the bass in the recorded music played through the PA before the main act plays live, usually sounds well balanced. But, when the live music starts, the drums are 10 times louder and the bass guitar disappears. I think that the non-musician concert goer expects the drums to be the loudest part of the show and doesn't even miss the BG. As long as the kick drum is hitting them in the chest, they are happy.
If it sounds bad where you are, before passing judgment, try moving someplace else. A good place to a start, as SuperiorPine said, is right in front of the FOH mix position. Or right behind. I recently went to a Journey/Toto show in the local barn with some friends who got the worst seats possible. And it sounded like it too. While making a beer run I looped around the arena and listened from a few different spots. And all of them sounded better than were we were seated. I got back to them saying how since the bands had been together so long they should sound way better than this. I told each of them to go listen where I had listened and hope that next time they buy tickets they will remember this experience or let my pick the seat locations!
As far as whose fault it is; there are a lot of things potentially at play here. Barring any of the above, the system engineer (not the sound guy) may have not adequate time to tune the system to the room. The band's sound engineer may also be the tour manager and was either under-qualified for the sound engineer position or may have been busy with TM duties and/or didn't get a proper sound check. The sound system may be out as a one size fits all system and was not able to be adequately tuned for the space. Maybe they just like it that way! There are a lot of variables in any show.
As far as whose fault it is; there are a lot of things potentially at play here. Barring any of the above, the system engineer (not the sound guy) may have not adequate time to tune the system to the room. The band's sound engineer may also be the tour manager and was either under-qualified for the sound engineer position or may have been busy with TM duties and/or didn't get a proper sound check. The sound system may be out as a one size fits all system and was not able to be adequately tuned for the space. Maybe they just like it that way! There are a lot of variables in any show.
You have left out some very important parts of the equation.
1) The room itself has a huge impact on the sound. There are places that you will never hear a good concert - the room is simply that bad.
2) If the room is good, then you wold tend to blame it on the "sound guy" - leaving aside that some of the best FOH people aren't guys, we'll take on one other detail - for a bog tour, there are 2 "sound people" - there is a "Systems Engineer" who is responsible for getting the PA set up and tuned to the room so that you can make a good mix - if you ask the FOH person to do that, some don't have the skills (Systems Engineer is a highly technical job), and even if they do, the process is so hard on your auditory attention span that its essentially impossible to mix well after that. The FOH person comes in after the system is set up and tuned (with fresh ears) to mix. If either Engineer doesn't do their job well, the sound can be a mess, and who is at fault? You (the audience member) won't know.
3) The musician is responsible for doing their job well, but if they are a "hired gun" (not the name on the marquee) then what they play and how they get their sound are things that are team efforts - there will be someone who is a music director who hires and manages the musicians and the FOH person and the musician will work together to get good sounds that can work in the house mix.
Sound for a concert is not a single person's responsibility - it's a team effort. Given that, if the team dynamics aren't good, the sound may suck simply because the people aren't working well with each other.
I tend to avoid concerts that use PA. It's too bad, because I love contemporary music, but volume levels have killed live entertainment.
