dear sound guy, thanks. (di box content)

[Jerry Ziarko]

i say this to nobody in particular...i have no problem with anything anyone else wants to do...you want to di? great. just don't come at me with your nonsense about how i'm doing it all wrong because i don't like what you like.

Then please don't quote me, thanks. JZ

 

[fokof]

Bad analogy. The keyboard sound is "done" when it leaves the unit. Chorus, delay, verb, whatever...it's all there by the time you get it. A proper analogy would be the raw sample and waveform without any internal processing in the snyth. Your answer reveals that your basic position is that the bass tone is "done" at the 1/4" jack. It is not for me and for many others.

It is for me.....
The last 15 gigs I just did last month , didn't even had an amp.

But the laws of physics aren't suddenly suspended when you get to 80Hz.

Speaking of wich;
Do you play a Five or six strings ?

If you are in a small club , the discussion ends here.
I too , bring myself a monitor when I play in small places to fill the room , but in a larger venue , with a big PA , how do get the fundamentals to the FOH ?

I've got a jazz gig I do where I use a very specific amp. I'm quite literally soloing on just about every song. I use that amp on that gig because it gives me the solo tone I want which I will not get with a DI. So, the guitarist gets to keep his solo tone but not me?

Personaly in these situations , I would use both mike & DI.
Di taking care of the low end.

Difficult? Sure. Impossible? Please

When you do a show and you are miked , you're telling me that the sound that gets out of the PA speakers is THE EXACT SAME THING as what you hear 5 feet in front of your amp ?
Impossible.

My point being that since everything in the sound chain changes the "tone" , it's utopic to think that the sound from your amp is gonna be the same.

Sound reinforcement is sound sculpting , and sound sculpting implies changing the tone of the instruments.

 

[JimmyM]

Then please don't quote me, thanks. JZ

where is my hanging myself smiley??? so i can't ask you a question specifically, then continue on with nobody in particular? ok, whatever.

 

[JimmyM]

Speaking of wich;
Do you play a Five or six strings ?

If you are in a small club , the discussion ends here.
I too , bring myself a monitor when I play in small places to fill the room , but in a larger venue , with a big PA , how do get the fundamentals to the FOH ?

i almost always play a 4 tuned standard. in the rare event i use something else, my amps have always been able to reproduce those notes just fine. we hear those notes way more from the second harmonic anyway.

When you do a show and you are miked , you're telling me that the sound that gets out of the PA speakers is THE EXACT SAME THING as what you hear 5 feet in front of your amp ?
Impossible.

only if you suck. i seem to be able to do it on almost all my gigs when the soundman realizes that's what i want.

My point being that since everything in the sound chain changes the "tone" , it's utopic to think that the sound from your amp is gonna be the same.

Sound reinforcement is sound sculpting , and sound sculpting implies changing the tone of the instruments.

maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. if the sound is fine as it is, why change it? and why do i have to sacrifice even 1% of my happiness to make YOUR job easier? the soundman is there to support the band and make THEIR job easier, not vice versa.

 

[Marcus Willett]

It is for me.....

Right, but not me.

Personaly in these situations , I would use both mike & DI. Di taking care of the low end.

Interesting. OK, at what point do I lose that consideration? What if I don't want much low end? There's no drums on this gig. Where is the line drawn?

When you do a show and you are miked , you're telling me that the sound that gets out of the PA speakers is THE EXACT SAME THING as what you hear 5 feet in front of your amp ?
Impossible.

And yet it doesn't seem to stop anyone from miking a guitar cab, does it?

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

I just bought a Radial Phazer and the manual brings up an interesting point. On a typical stage, the bass cab is located several feet behind and to the side of the nearest PA speaker, which can create comb filtering as the cab sound waves arrive at the FOH mix a few milliseconds after the sound waves from the PA. This can muddy the tone. So complaints about FOH bass tone may have nothing to do with whether one uses a DI pre OR post, OR directly mic'ing the cab. The solution here is using a device like the Phazer to align both signals. Sure are a lot of "moving parts" in this equation! I'm keeping an open mind on solutions....

 

[devoge]

I wonder why people won't even respect what soundmen who are bassists have to say.....I've already heard soundmen/bassists adequately answer the question. While I realize there are some bad soundmen out there, in live sound reinforcement situations, there are a lot of parameters to deal with. Soundmen have to please a lot of people and live sound is not a perfect world...there are limitations and not just for the bass player. My advice to you that don't understand.....go study acoustics, signal flow, and see if you can just "become" a good soundman....it's not magic....I can't just wave a magic wand and give everyone exactly what they want....go get a gig doing sound for a medium-large venue and sit your ass in the driver's seat....then you WILL understand.

 

[Marcus Willett]

I wonder why people won't even respect what soundmen who are bassists have to say.....I've already heard soundmen/bassists adequately answer the question. While I realize there are some bad soundmen out there, in live sound reinforcement situations, there are a lot of parameters to deal with. Soundmen have to please a lot of people and live sound is not a perfect world...there are limitations and not just for the bass player. My advice to you that don't understand.....go study acoustics, signal flow, and see if you can just "become" a good soundman....it's not magic....I can't just wave a magic wand and give everyone exactly what they want....go get a gig doing sound for a medium-large venue and sit your ass in the driver's seat....then you WILL understand.

Hey Amy.

I have done what you suggest. I'm also not necessarily disagreeing with you but again, no one has presented a valid reason why the reasons for sculpting the FOH bass tone ONLY from the FOH don't also apply to other instruments. None of the physics or acoustics apply only to bass or only to frequencies below 80Hz.

 

[fokof]

Interesting. OK, at what point do I lose that consideration? What if I don't want much low end? There's no drums on this gig. Where is the line drawn?

The line is drawn when you work with other professional , who are doing their jobs. An if you don't like the job they are doing , do it yourself.

And yet it doesn't seem to stop anyone from miking a guitar cab, does it?

You probably know that gtr cabs are open back, or infinite baffle , a lot easier to mike.
Bass cabs have multiple drivers and/or vent ports that are as essential to the whole cab sound as the driver themselves.
A lot more difficult to mike.

only if you suck. i seem to be able to do it on almost all my gigs when the soundman realizes that's what i want.

If your soundman tells you that what goes out in front is the exact same thing as what gets out of your amp , sorry to tell you that you've been sçrewed all this time.......

 

[fokof]

I just bought a Radial Phazer and the

That's the magic ingredient I use when I use both Mike and DI.
8 times out of 10 , the phase switch on the board is useless. (not 180°)

essential tool with 2 mike on kick too.

 

[Marcus Willett]

The line is drawn when you work with other professional , who are doing their jobs. An if you don't like the job they are doing , do it yourself.

I don't even understand this...how does that in any way answer my question? Why is miking in this one situation something you have no problem with but other times it is?

You probably know that gtr cabs are open back , a lot easier to mike.
Bass cabs have multiple drivers and/or vent ports that are as essential to the whole cab sound as the driver themselves.
A lot more difficult to mike.
How would you ,personaly , capture the coupling effect of an 8/10 ?
By putting a mike in front of one of the eight 10" ?

So since it's difficult, best to not even attempt? I use open back cabs too sometimes, fwiw.

 

[JimmyM]

You probably know that gtr cabs are open back, or infinite baffle , a lot easier to mike.
Bass cabs have multiple drivers and/or vent ports that are as essential to the whole cab sound as the driver themselves.
A lot more difficult to mike.

If your soundman tells you that what goes out in front is the exact same thing as what gets out of your amp , sorry to tell you that you've been sçrewed all this time.......

bullcrap on all counts. bill fm has already explained that the pa makes its own coupling effect, and since lows are omnidriectional they find their way to the mic regardless. besides, i either use a sealed cab or a cab where the port lets out at the speaker hole, so not only do i think this argument is a load, it specifically does not apply to me. and again, i often go out front to hear what's going on during a show. when it sounds like what I like, it sounds almost identical to my amp, give or take a tiny bit of futzing for the mix's sake. and btw, when you run sound for my band, you're doing MY job, not yours. let's make that clear...if i tell you something, i'm not telling you how to do YOUR job...i'm telling you how to do MINE. if you have a problem with that, please turn down any gigs you may get with us.

also, amy, one could reverse your question and ask why the soundmen are questioning the way we work. i've got 32 years of pro playing, marcus has a lesser (since he's got to be way younger than me) but no less significant amount of experience. if a soundman can't deal with working pros who absolutely understand signal flow and acoustics and generally make it extremely easy for a soundman to do his job, even with our "oddball" wants and needs, then said soundman sucks.

 

[fokof]

I don't even understand this...how does that in any way answer my question?

I was stating that I would use a mike and a DI.
I'm a professional.

Why is miking in this one situation something you have no problem with but other times it is?

In cases where the tone comes from the amp , like a rock band with a SVT , or old genuine stuff , a mike is "de rigueur" but in a case where the amp is only a monitor, A DI is preferable.
I'm really not against mikes , I'm just a lot more leaning towards DI being a bassist too myself.
The final decision HAS to be the soundman's , after discussing it with the band , since he's mixing the FOH.
If the band sends a Left/Right signal and do it themselves onstage , heck , they can do whatever they want...

There is a thing called "Communication" wich does miracle sometimes.

So since it's difficult, best to not even attempt? I use open back cabs too sometimes, fwiw.

What I'm saying is that a DI will always give a much closer tone to what comes out of the 1/4" output of your bass than a mike will give of what goes out of your amp.

 

[JimmyM]

What I'm saying is that a DI will always give a much closer tone to what comes out of the 1/4" output of your bass than a mike will give of what goes out of your amp.

i sure have a lot of recordings of my bass amps mic'ed that prove otherwise. besides, who said i want what's coming out of the output of my bass and nothing else? i absolutely DO NOT want that.

 

[Marcus Willett]

I'm a professional. In cases where the tone comes from the amp , like a rock band with a SVT , or old genuine stuff , a mike is "de rigueur"

I'm a professional as well. OK, so how about a guy like me where 100% of the time my tone comes from my amp?

What I'm saying is that a DI will always give a much closer tone to what comes out of the 1/4" output of your bass than a mike will give of what goes out of your amp.

Interesting premise, have you got any real data or evidence to back this up? Or has this just been "in your experience" in which case why would yours be more valid than mine?

Also, what if I plain and simply don't like the "DI tone"? You're suggesting I'm just wrong by definition?

 

[Febs]

I'm a professional as well. OK, so how about a guy like me where 100% of the time my tone comes from my amp?

Didn't he just answer this by saying that in those situations a mic is "de rigueur"? You two don't really seem to be disagreeing.

 

[Marcus Willett]

Didn't he just answer this by saying that in those situations a mic is "de rigueur"? You two don't really seem to be disagreeing.

Pretty much, yeah. All I am really seeking is uniformity of treatment. The guitarist is no more entitled to have his rig get "his" tone than I am. What I object to is the notion that the bassist somehow "needs" to be the one to give that up; almost always only the bassist, and I dispute the validity of the reasons that happens.

 

[fokof]

i sure have a lot of recordings of my bass amps mic'ed that prove otherwise. besides, who said i want what's coming out of the output of my bass and nothing else? i absolutely DO NOT want that.

Not saying what you prefer. I'm saying that a DI gives a closer representation of bass sound than a mike will give to a amp.

Forget your gig habits , or what you prefer , I'm not talking about that.

I remember that the different we had in a previous thread was not even about a mike or a DI , it was about who shall have the last word about how to work.If it's the bassist decision or the soundman's.
We are getting back to this now.

Again , I'm not against mike at all.

 

[Marcus Willett]

a DI gives a closer representation of bass sound than a mike will give to a amp.

I'm saying that's a flawed premise. The true sound of the bass is what you hear when it's unplugged. Everything else is electronics and just because you arbitrarily decide to stop at the 1/4" out does not make it any "truer" than at any other point. A DI will give you a true representation of what the bass sounds like going into a DI, that's all. It's not any more "close" to anything because it's not an acoustic instrument...there is nothing to be close to.

 

[devoge]

Jimmy - I don't question the way you work....and I never insulted anyone as a bass player....ah hem...
A lot of times, I'm working at a theatre, where I'm an employee of the performers, not the band, which can throw all kinds of wrenches in the mix. When I'm on the road with Glen Campbell, I have to keep the bass down more than I'd like to, because he's sensitive to "too much bass," but he's the boss. And...you obviously don't understand acoustics/signal flow if you think that what's coming out of your amp is gonna magically be the same in FOH