Getting big fat thud tones in big resonant rooms

[JimmyM]

Youre an experienced player with a long history. You know the nuances of your Ampegs and your basses and how they respond to your touch. That goes a long way in sending a colored signal to the house. Mr Boone is probably the same way. A lot of folks dont know or are still learning themselves and their gear and havent fully incorporated that yet... ....I went all Zen on that, didnt I?

I have had to play rental basses and amps on gigs too, and as much as I would like them all to be Fenders with Geezer Ps and SVTs, they aren't. But I can still accomplish my goals. I'm a lot better at it these days now that I've learned how all the actual frequencies behave and their numbers, but I don't think I was too bad at it when I was a caveman either...lol.

 

[jdh3000]

Unfortunately for me I've had to round out a generic tone that sort of fits most rooms with little tweaking.
My rig stays in the band trailer because I'm riding with someone else a lot, resulting in my waiting til the trailer gets there, and everything set up before working on my sound.
For most gigs I keep my bass and treble in the middle, and pushed up just a bit on the mids.
I have just a brief few minutes before the drummer and guitar player start messing with their stuff, after which we go right into soundcheck.

In that brief time I sweep and cut any trouble frequencies with the paraeq.
I've tried it other ways but for getting the best sound I can without spending more time on it, it works.
It's not ideal but its the best I can do

This post sounded like I never adjust my eq in any room, which is not true. It's just this is my starting point that seems to save me time in most rooms I play.

It works best from then I tweak my knob on my bass, and adjust from there.

There's no magic button for any room. We played outside on the ground at a wedding Saturday... Weird setup but If I could duplicate that sound in every room it'd be perfect.

 

[Wasnex]

This post sounded like I never adjust my eq in any room, which is not true. It's just this is my starting point that seems to save me time in most rooms I play.

It works best from then I tweak my knob on my bass, and adjust from there.

There's no magic button for any room. We played outside on the ground at a wedding Saturday... Weird setup but If I could duplicate that sound in every room it'd be perfect.

Outdoors the only reflective surface is typically the stage floor, wall behind you, our ground underneath you. So you are hearing primarily the direct sound of your rig and very little indirect sound. Indoors you tend to hear a lot more indirect sound. Some of the problems with indirect sound include that arrival times of different reflections vary significantly from one another, and also vary from the arrival time of our direct sound. Also surfaces don't reflect all frequencies evenly, which impacts your perception of tone.

My solution is to try and increase the ratio of direct VS indirect sound reaching my ears. To achieve this, I elevate my cabs and aim them at my ears. This ensures I hear the direct full range response of the cab, and also minimizes the distance the sound has to travel from the cab to my ears. Keep in mind the inverse square rule for a point sound source, SPL decreases by 6dB with each doubling of distance.

Some other related concepts you might find useful are "diffuse field" and "critical distance". A diffuse field is basically a reverberant field were the energy is moving in all directions and the SPL is uniform everywhere. Critical distance is the distance from the sound source where the SPL of the reverberant field equals the SPL of the direct sound. You can find definitions for these terms here: Sound Fields - acoustic glossary - article

Other useful concepts include "masking and frequency slotting," "boundaries and loading," and "boundary effect" or "boundary interference."

Here are some related articles I found with a quick Google search. These articles will help you understand the problem and how you can purposely use speaker placement, EQ, and even note choices to get better results. It doesn't hurt if the drummer knows how to tune his kits as well .
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Speaker Placement 101: Is Speaker-Boundary Interference Killing Your Bass?