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DI banned by the sound guy

#101
kyral210 said:
Setting up for a gig the other night the sound guy refused to take a DI off my Helix and insisted i use their backline amp (a keyboard amp) that he miced up. He said the PA was worth £20k so couldn't risk the bass player blowing it.

I think he was being ridiculous, what are your insights?
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I think he knows the equipment that he has on his stage, and he doesn't know yours. I think he has been burned in the past by having to deal with gear that didn't work like he expected/needed it to. I think he believes that optimizing the bass guitar tone is roughly the 46th most important thing that he needs to do before finishing his night of work. I think he needs to make the band sound passable, and doesn't care to take any risks in trying to make the band sound super.

Given all that, he fed you some BS about how your gear might blow his PA. That sort of comment is just his way of telling you that your request isn't gonna happen. He likely knows how to keep it from blowing his PA, but in the event that he doesn't, at least he put you in a situation where you really can't damage anything beyond the back line keyboard amp.

My guess is that he just wants to run what worked reasonably well during his last show and then go home.

Sorry for your luck; maybe next time you'll get someone who puts in more effort. Not much you can do in such a situation except to tweak that house amp as best as possible using the gear you brought! Some good advice by others to always have extra widgets with you that can help work through it.
 
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#103
You'll never win the argument with him. Bite your tongue and go with the flow. Management often will review the night with the sound man and his opinion of the band may have significant weight. It is void business to be easy to work with.
 
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#107
ewarren88 said:
I think he knows the equipment that he has on his stage, and he doesn't know yours. I think he has been burned in the past by having to deal with gear that didn't work like he expected/needed it to. I think he believes that optimizing the bass guitar tone is roughly the 46th most important thing that he needs to do before finishing his night of work. I think he needs to make the band sound passable, and doesn't care to take any risks in trying to make the band sound super.

Given all that, he fed you some BS about how your gear might blow his PA. That sort of comment is just his way of telling you that your request isn't gonna happen. He likely knows how to keep it from blowing his PA, but in the event that he doesn't, at least he put you in a situation where you really can't damage anything beyond the back line keyboard amp.

My guess is that he just wants to run what worked reasonably well during his last show and then go home.

Sorry for your luck; maybe next time you'll get someone who puts in more effort. Not much you can do in such a situation except to tweak that house amp as best as possible using the gear you brought! Some good advice by others to always have extra widgets with you that can help work through it.
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This is why I have an onboard EQ (Darkglass tone capsule): emergency tone shaping. In this case massively boosting the bass frequencies to give a tone that sounded pretty alright rather than a steel on steel clank
 
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#110
chadds said:
Great suggestion about bringing a Pre.
I respectfully disagree about micing. I have been told about a fourth of the time playing medium and large gigs inside and out that they are going to mic my cab and run DI. I haven't asked. Some engineers see it as a tonal choice. Just like in studio they get to decide how much of either they want. That I don't have control of. When I've heard myself in the FOH. I hear my sound.
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True.

And I tend to let my own gear color my preference. My Aggie TH500 has an amazing sounding post DI through monitors and FOH.
 
#111
InhumanResource said:
He sounds like a smart one. He has an expensive system under his command and has no idea what is going to come from that pedal manned by someone he doesn't know. Much better to just run a normal, dry signal than risk 20k so some bass player can have "their sound."
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Mixing boards have volume faders for a reason: any competent sound engineer is going to set the preamp input level on the channel correctly before raising the fader and sending signal to the FOH speakers.

Live sound engineers have to deal with keyboard and playback DI signals all the time, which are just as dynamic and full range as a bass pedal and in some cases much more so.

A "sound engineer" fearful that a DI signal is so potentially dangerous to their PA that they won't even set the input gain properly and listen to the signal has no idea what they're doing.
 
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#112
It wasn't in a church was it? This was a legitimate conversation from last night with a volunteer (not sure I would want to add the words "sound" or "engineer" to his title:

Me: I'm plugged into the DI
Volunteer: but I can't hear anything
Me: can you see anything flashing on the channel?
Volunteer: yes but it's only one light
Me: can you turn the gain control up until the signal gets up to about 0dB
Thunderous bass in the room
Me (now shouting): OK, can you now lower the fader until the bass is at about the right level?

...sigh...
 
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#113
kyral210 said:
Setting up for a gig the other night the sound guy refused to take a DI off my Helix and insisted i use their backline amp (a keyboard amp) that he miced up. He said the PA was worth £20k so couldn't risk the bass player blowing it.

I think he was being ridiculous, what are your insights?
Click to expand...

Did he put a mic on the woofer and the horn and blend them to preserve the high frequency content?
 
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#114
I presume what he was saying that if you are using some sort of peaky envelope filter he wants you to blow the speaker in the keyboard amp and use it as a giant fuse rather than blow the PA speakers. It isn't a totally illegitimate concern, if the wrong way to go about it, but maybe they don't have a limiter to use as a channel insert. Maybe they should or we should all carry one.
 
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#115
While I totally agree to the general idea that this particular sound person is lacking several pieces of the whole set (mentally), here's an Idea to get you closer to that person's possible reasons:

1. You have a Helix and not much of a plan of how audio in general and FOH in particular works.
2. In your Helix, you used the Seismik Synth to recreate a Meatbox pedal sound.
3. For balancing, you turned up the signal until it feels as loud as your normal patches through your Rumble25 at home.
4. You bring that setup to a gig where the FOH person does a line check and sets the gain for your normal patches and uses no EQ, filtering or compression on your channel.
5. Your band hits that one song where you use the Meatbox patch, so you step on that button.
6. The National Guard comes rushing in because what just happened set off every seismograph in a ten mile radius and you are being evacuated before the tsunami hits.
 
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#116
-Asdfgh- said:
I presume what he was saying that if you are using some sort of peaky envelope filter he wants you to blow the speaker in the keyboard amp and use it as a giant fuse rather than blow the PA speakers. It isn't a totally illegitimate concern, if the wrong way to go about it, but maybe they don't have a limiter to use as a channel insert. Maybe they should or we should all carry one.
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P.S. yes, you could always have one on your pedalboard or the last thing on your multi effects chain but I can see why handing one to the sound engineer to control might make them happy. Abd yes, I have seen inappropriate effects levels cause a PA issues. One of the issues with separate pedals is that one could have a level control knocked in transit or even during the gig and engaging it can cause a huge level jump.

I pushed my own PA monitors (the PA itself is a bit small to be putting bass through at more than coffee shop volume) into serious built in limiter action with a badly set envelope filter. They survived due to that limiting protection.
 
#119
el murdoque said:
While I totally agree to the general idea that this particular sound person is lacking several pieces of the whole set (mentally), here's an Idea to get you closer to that person's possible reasons:

1. You have a Helix and not much of a plan of how audio in general and FOH in particular works.
2. In your Helix, you used the Seismik Synth to recreate a Meatbox pedal sound.
3. For balancing, you turned up the signal until it feels as loud as your normal patches through your Rumble25 at home.
4. You bring that setup to a gig where the FOH person does a line check and sets the gain for your normal patches and uses no EQ, filtering or compression on your channel.
5. Your band hits that one song where you use the Meatbox patch, so you step on that button.
6. The National Guard comes rushing in because what just happened set off every seismograph in a ten mile radius and you are being evacuated before the tsunami hits.
Click to expand...

3 is important. You need to hire a large space and sizeable PA to check things. One day I will check that against an IR of such a space. Or you have a friend who does discos with a large PA and grab thirty minutes when he's having a cup of tea during his set up and test things.
 

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