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Concerts where the bass sounds lousy

#41
fdeck said:
I tend to avoid concerts that use PA. It's too bad, because I love contemporary music, but volume levels have killed live entertainment.
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My new line in the sand is miked drums. If they are there I am not. ;)

But that has a few exceptions, as most things tend to.
 
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#44
g-dude said:
So for the first time in forever (and now you have that song from Frozen stuck in your head), I managed to get out to see some live music.

Popular band with a long track record - tickets were $60 for GA standing and who knows how much for seats. Venue was probably the largest 100% indoor venue in the market - can hold over 5,000 people. Probably wasn't at capacity, but certainly was well filled and they played two nights in a row.

First time hearing this band, so absolutely no background with them. Friend invited me and I decided I'd try something new. Band was good.

The sound...well, initially it was a bit out of balance. Too much in the way of Hammond, not enough guitar, but as the set progressed, the sound got better and you could actually hear the electric guitar. From where we were standing, the volume was actually decent in terms of it wasn't painfully loud (I forgot my earplugs).

The bass was a hot mass though.

I assume the bassist is good. But I couldn't actually tell what he was playing. It was basically loud amorphous bass rumble, and just muddy as hell. I could even hear the occasional PA speaker farting out.

For a top-tier venue, how much of that can be blamed on the sound guy, and how much on the bassist's own personal choices?

Or are they both to blame?
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Hmm, trying guess. Was it The Red Clay Strays?

A buddy of mine saw The Cure on their last tour and he said the bass was so loud and distorted it nearly ruined the whole show.
 
#45
I spent a summer with a local touring sound company (just shows within a 100-200 miles), and I am utterly convinced it's the hardest thing to get right, and this just in, sometimes, you just don't get the results you hoped for.

First, you Q-in the room . . . . with no audience, all those hundreds or more of two-legged sound deadening that also make plenty noise on their own come in after your Best Guess for when the room is full.

The band, often convinced THEY need to be THAT loud, like shining a spotlight from the weeds into your headlights.

The monitor mixing guy kept turning up the monitors every time the band gave him the finger, and now EVERYBODY hears that mix.

It was 70 degrees and low humidity at soundcheck . . . . now it's 98 and 100% chance of Sweat.

And, the Number One answer? Bass . . . . is . . . . not . . . . directional, it just goes everywhere.

Then you tear everything down, throw it in the truck by 1 AM or pay overtime, and after Waffle House and four hours sleep, you do it all over again.

Fixed installations should be far easier, but . . . . not always.

That's why really, really good FOH guys are always working.
 
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#46
Hockey rinks are pretty bad.
The old Alexandria roller rink was all wood, saw a bunch of shows there and they sounded ggggrrreat.

Sadly the Old Alexandria Roller Rink, which was all wood burned down in the 80s. That was a sad day.
 
#47
Wasnex said:
The opener may not get a sufficient sound and I have actually seen concerts where the PA was throttled for the opening act. Perhaps ironically on the example that comes to mind where the PA was throttled back, the opening act sounded great and I thought the headliner sounded awful, although way louder. The audio tech for the headliner pushed the system well into distortion
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Saw Tommy Shaw open for Rush on the Hold Your Fire tour. Shaw sounded awesome, so I was psyched for Rush. I could barely tell what song Rush was playing when they came on. The difference was the volume.
 
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#48
Recently I’ve seen the roots, fleet foxes, rhcp, hiatus kaiyote, and Donny benet. Donny was in a small venue, and sounded great. The other acts (all of whom I love) sounded like a wall of 30hz mud. Bass player should have just stayed at home. I don’t even want to see big shows anymore.
 
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#49
SoonerBill said:
For the last probably 10 years or so there seems to be a trend in mixing that thinks the main sounds need to be bass and drums. To the point they're so loud that they aren't clear. Even if the group is mainly a vocal act. An example. We went to Pat Benetar not long ago. That's one woman that can belt out a vocal. Most of the songs you could hardly tell she was singing. But you could hear and feel the bass and kick drum!
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That's funny... we saw Pat a few years back (before Covid) at Bethel Woods and you could not hear her vocals. People were shouting at her that they could not hear her and she got into a dialog with the sound guy, from the stage, who told her that she was as loud as he could make her.:rollno:
 
#50
ardgedee said:
Top-notch equipment can't save an act from their (or their engineer's) worst decisions.
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Same venue, same seats, same FOH system. The first night was all kick drum and some of everything else (the singer was overly loud, too, though) - Tower of Power. The following night, same venue, same seats, same FOH system. Sounded great for both bands on the bill - John Scofield's Combo 66, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

I chalked it up to the FOH engineers for the different bands.
 
#51
fdeck said:
I tend to avoid concerts that use PA. It's too bad, because I love contemporary music, but volume levels have killed live entertainment.
Click to expand...

Passinwind said:
My new line in the sand is miked drums. If they are there I am not. ;)

But that has a few exceptions, as most things tend to.
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For the past few years we rarely go to concerts that we are pretty sure will be over-PA'd. The Cleveland Orchestra is sonic bliss.
 
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#52
It’s all been said already, and who’s to blame really can’t be determined on a forum, but it does need to be reinforced that bass is very hard to control in a live environment. Sometimes the room is crap, sometimes the pa is not appropriate for the gig, sometimes backline/monitors are too loud, sometimes the band is unrehearsed and sloppy, sometimes it’s just one engineer having to do both mains and monitors, and sometime the engineer isn’t very good.

Anyone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know all the dynamics of the situation that says with absolute certainty they know the cause of the problem is either uninformed or making a biased judgement.
 
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#54
Wasnex said:
It's a complicated, multi-faceted problem. I'll try to give you a basic understanding.

Acoustics in a large venue tend to have a long decay time that allows the lows to rumble around and build up. If acoustics are the problem, the correct solution is acoustic design and treatment, which is mostly beyond the audio tech's purview. In some instances the audio company may hang sound absorbent material.

What the audio tech can do:
1. Spec a system that is big enough and sophisticated enough to keep most of the sound focused on the audience. This is not an easy task for low frequencies. Control over low frequencies requires large arrays, and it's not a perfect solution.
2. Aim and tune the system. Aiming is to keep as much sound as possible of the walls and ceiling. Tuning relates to time/phase aligning different speaker elements and dialing in the desired frequency response contour.
3. Minimize the amount of energy pumped into the room at problem frequencies. This is part tuning the system and part analyzing the current situation and choosing the compromise you think best suits your priorities (artistic choice).

As the acoustics get more and more unsuitable for amplified music, the size and quality of the system, and how it is configured and tuned have less impact.

When acoustics are truly bad, the audio tech can choose between very lean low or present lows that are essentially incoherent. When there is excess build up of low frequencies it tends to mask frequencies higher in the spectrum. So I tend to choose running very lean on bass (my artistic choice).

Few large venues have acoustics that are great for amplified music. Some are better than others.

The musician also have a role. In order for the PA to have control over the lows, it needs to be significantly louder than the low frequency wash coming off the stage. The problem goes both ways. For the musicians to have the best sound, their amps and monitors must be significantly louder on stage than the low frequency wash coming back from the PA. This often results in a catch 22, where nobody can have a perfect mix. It takes a large and fairly sophisticated PA to force most of the lows forward while limiting how much low frequency energy is directed on stage. Also, space constraints often prevent realizing such a system.
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Go direct with a modeller/ profiler: problem solved
 
#56
Wasnex said:
The opener may not get a sufficient sound and I have actually seen concerts where the PA was throttled for the opening act. Perhaps ironically on the example that comes to mind where the PA was throttled back, the opening act sounded great and I thought the headliner sounded awful, although way louder. The audio tech for the headliner pushed the system well into distortion
Click to expand...
Back in the day when I started going to concerts (70s), the openers ALWAYS were mixed poopy. I mean really bad. Then, magically, the main act was clear and loud. Go figure.
 
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#57
Coming from the dub world, among other places, I love deep thumping bass and drums working together, but......shows I've seen lately, it's all kick drum and vocals, little else, that can be discerned in the mix. Like said above, that kick drum is super heavy even in situations where that's not useful musically. I took think there's widespread misuse of subs going on.

Used to headline at the Wild Hare every month and while that setup is even better now, the 16 18" subs under the stage and pointed at the foh dancefloor seemed to do the job.
 
#58
I've been to a few concerts (heavier rock bands specifically) where I've watched and listened intently for the bass, ultimately being completely drowned out by the rest of the band through the whole set both openers and headliners. I remember kind of shaking my head thinking, wow anyone could play anything up there on that stage because the audience wouldn't hear the difference anyways. I'm sure that's not the case but that's what went through my mind at the time. The bass seemed to be more drowned out in medium sized venues as opposed to small clubs and stadiums from my experiences.
 

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