• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Live sound chit chat

Jimbob Jones

Jimbob Jones

Sep 9, 2006
1,629
399
Birmingham, UK
#1
Hi all

I thought it would be cool for all the sound engineers on here to have a place to share their live sound experiences day to day. I do a lot of stuff that is relatively interesting from a PA point of view, but doesn't warrant a new thread of it's own. Maybe this thread could fill that gap?

This may be a flop, or may take off, who knows?

So post away! Any amazing new mic techniques discovered? Had a cool experience with a musician/band? Any niggling little questions about sound reinforcement? This is the place to chat about it!

All the best :)

Joe
 
#3
Live sound stories from the gigging schmucks! There is tons of knowledge to be had over at prosoundweb.com but a lot of it is over the heads of, or irrelevant to most of us who are working in or for local bands who play for a few hundred bucks a night.

I think a lot of people have a solid idea of what they would buy/use/provide if they had bigger budgets. I'm really interested in what other working bands and sound guys are doing within their given budgets.

Let us know what you use, what you hate, what you love, what you are planning on upgrading next, what you do to get by with a non-traditional piece of gear. Tell us when crazy stuff happens mid gig or when equipment fails.

I like this already! I've got a bunch of stuff that is the wrong gear for the wrong purpose..... but we get by :)

Derek
 
#4
God I hate wireless!

I put my alarm at 4Am to wake up to hate them some more.


I did TV shows , and did a lot of theatrical shows with "mega" racks of wireless and there is always wrong with these &*%@%#.
Even with a guy hired to run them with the oscilloscope and software and everything , there always something going wrong.
But alas , a necessary evil on these shows.

Did a TV show couple of years ago , the patch was 105 inputs , with 39 WL mikes and 22 stereo IEM WL mixes.
A nightmare.
The good thing is that it creates jobs.



Had to vent.:D
 
#7
fokof said:
God I hate wireless!

I put my alarm at 4Am to wake up to hate them some more.


I did TV shows , and did a lot of theatrical shows with "mega" racks of wireless and there is always wrong with these &*%@%#.
Even with a guy hired to run them with the oscilloscope and software and everything , there always something going wrong.
But alas , a necessary evil on these shows.

Did a TV show couple of years ago , the patch was 105 inputs , with 39 WL mikes and 22 stereo IEM WL mixes.
A nightmare.
The good thing is that it creates jobs.



Had to vent.:D
Click to expand...

That reminds me of an "experience" I had a few years ago.

I was on holiday (at home as I work away) and a friend called to see if I could help him with a "little" problem he was having setting up a concert for a local town hall.

When I arrived, it turned out to be a 10 piece orchestra, plus a small choir (6 people I think), and all set up with wireless (or at least most of it).

In the past I had never experienced any problems with wireless, as the installs that I usually do (theatres etc.) actually spend a lot of money on making sure it works (which means Shure in my opinion!!) but this event was a "freebie" and was a collection of donated equipment from local audio companies.

There were at least 5 different brands of receivers (some of which looked like the old Atari game stations) and they were all trying to work on pretty much the same frequencies!

After hours (which seemed to be weeks!!!) of trying to make it work, and about 2 hours before the gig started, my friend and I went out and spent a few hundred euros on hiring "wired" mics to make it work.

Since then, my view on the "wireless" setup as changed dramatically, and I avoid them whenever possible!!

(NOTE: We are still waiting for the town hall to reimburse the cash we spent!!)
 
#8
We have 12 channels of wireless at my church, plus 8 (mono) in-ears. It all works great except for the four Shure SLX handhelds we have...getting them to work without hisses, pops or dropouts seems to be an insurmountable task...

Anyway, speaking of orchestras, I get to mic up a 14-piece along with a choir next week! Fun times! I'm pretty much sussed on what I'm going to do (I have done it a couple of times before), but any choice nuggets of advice would not go amiss.
 
#10
It's a minefield with the legal/illegal frequencies, but TBH I'm not really a pro at the whole wireless thing. I think we've got a combination of bank 4 and 5 working together, and things (currently) seem relatively ok.

What's frustrating about it is that we have some Shure UHF gear (older gen of UHFR?) and it's ace, straight out of the box. It works on bank 1, channels 1,2,3,4. It's the same story with the Sennheiser in-ears (yup, all 8!) and the 4 Senny beltpacks; it's all fine with minimal hassle, apart from the SLX.

/rant.

The orchestra should be interesting; I'm close mic'ing everything, with the addition of two overheads. If I could get the GBF then I would just run with the overheads. As we're a little thin in the low end (1 cello, 1 DB, no lower brass and no bassoon) I'm double-mic'ing the two lower string instruments, using a dynamic (probably an M201) to go through the subs, and a condenser (either a C3000 or a small-capsule condenser of some kind) for clarity. I'm also going to try adding a little chorus here and there to thicken things a little, but subtlety is key!
 
#11
I think hearing what gear us weekend warriors use would be pretty neat. I actually own the PA for the band I'm in and run the PA at the church I attend. Here are the setups:

Band:
Yorkville PowerMax 16 (2150 watts in 4 amps 800 each main, 275 each monitor)
Monitors - Yamaha A12M
Mains - Yamaha S115
Subs - Pyle 18s (not as bad as you'd think)
Mics - a duke's mixture that includes some decent ones as well as some dogs (SM57, Audio Technica, CAD, etc)
Snake - 8 channel no return currently maxed out, but sufficient

Church:
Peavey SRC24
Crown 1500 to power mains
Crown 400 to power monitors
Mains are Yorkville 15's (4 of them flown)
Monitors are 2 Yorkville 10's and 2 Yorkville spots
4 Shure wireless handhelds
1 Shure wireless clip on
2 Sennheiser podium mounts
4 Audio Technica condensers for choir
DIs for Guitar, Bass and Electronic drum kit
Piano mic
 
#15
Gotcha. The band uses a Yorkville Powermax 16. It's a 16 channel board with onboard power. It's rather large and very heavy, but it's easy to set up and I got a good deal on it. The church uses a Peavey SRC24 (SRC=Studio Recording Console). It's a dry board with 24 channels and a multitude of auxiliary sends/returns. Hope this answers your questions.
 
#16
I guess I qualify as the tech for the band I play in. We hire several different engineers to run the rig, but day in and day out it's kinda my baby, as I helped design it (hey, I got to spend the drummer's money!).

Tops:

EV QRX 212 x 4
Yorkville UCS1 x 6
Tops power - QSC PLX3402 x 2
Bottoms power - QSC PL6 PFC
Processed by a Behringer DCX2496
FOH is a Presonus 16:2 digital board


We covered up to 1000 outdoors this year with this rig, and we're thinking about one more set of subs. The hornloaded 15's really come to life in a block of 4, and the bonus is they're small enough for one person to schlep around pretty easily. The only bad part of the system is there are some small bar gigs where it'd be nice to be able to stick a single dual-18 box for low end. Two subs is pretty big floor space and the Yorkies aren't good at all as singles.

Recent surprise for me...friend of mine got some Carvin TRX 2x18's used for $600 (for the pair!). I had never heard Carvin's nicer subs before, but they are impressive for the price, even new. I wasn't nearly as excited about the EV XLive dual 15's he got for tops....they very stereotypically have the midrange hole that dual-15/horn tops are noted for. It's very difficult to get good warm vocals out of them. Possible, just not as nice sounding for a vocal box as something with a 12, or a three way box.
 
#17
I own the PA for my bands, sometimes I run it from the stage, other times we hire a FOH engineer.

On Tuesday for a large stage in a large gym we used

Yamaha MG 16/6 FX board
EAW 1x12 Mains
Carvin 1x18 sub
4 Yamaha 1x12 monitors
Mackie 1400i running monitors
Behringer EP2500 running mains and sub

During soundcheck, channel 1 sounded thin. We swapped the mic and all cables and determined the board channel must be going bad.

Also, the sub and monitor 2 sends, both going through a Samson eq, didn't want to work. So I took the eq out of the chain and they both worked fine.

After fixing these issues we had a great show.

This morning I went through all the gear and could not replicate any of those problems. Aigh! :hmm:
 
#19
Any opinions on carpeting/padding for underneath the band at my church? It's inside a gym, with the boomy hardwood floor and cinder block walls and all. We have a large heavy velvet type cloth backdrop, and we have some thin rugs for the band to set up on. Would some deeper pile carpets be better?
 
#20
We only use our PA for small gigs. For larger gigs a PA is always provided (where is the knock on wood smilie?). So we do NOT mic the drums; the PA is for vocals and acoustic guitar only. So we have about the smallest system possible.

* Peavey PR15 Mains
* Peavey PV112M monitors
* Yamaha Powered Mixer
* Peavey IPR1600 Power Amp
* Various mics (provided by vocalists)
* Lots of cables ;)
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back