Sound guy making making support bands sound worse

[Jason A Silva]

It's not your imagination. The "show" is typically the soundguys one opportunity to be king of their sad little kingdom of disappoints and broken dreams. It's unfortunate but it's true. Truth be told, 80% of the time is dedicated to the headliners sound, and next to nothing for the opening act but, this is just part of the pecking order of musician life.

So buy them a beer, be nice, hope for the best, and if it's a club gig just ask them to mix the vox and drums while you and the guitarist can self amplify if your rigs are big enough.

 

[marmadaddy]

Purposefully mixing poorly is unlikely. Others have given many reasonable explanations for why earlier bands on the bill may sound terrible.

However...
It's totally normal to limit openers access to gear. This is accepted with things like the lighting. The openers get basic coverage; everyone understands this. Sometimes, someone like a tour manager will decide to extend this principle to things like sub-woofers.

 

[Bassbeater]

The "show" is typically the soundguys one opportunity to be king of their sad little kingdom of disappoints and broken dreams.

We are music lovers, and mostly also musicians.. Bring us snacks or a drink. We are cool people. We do our best. I can assure you I'm not ego tripping when I'm working in sound. When we have a band sounding good, we get a true sense of accomplishment.
These days with digital consoles and being able to save a scene for each band, the music quality is getting better and better. Typically it's the event organizer that pays the sound person. If a sound person sabotaged one act's sound to favor another it would be a pretty serious offense against the promoter. The kind of bad politics mentioned throughout the thread could take place with huge acts, I wouldn't know, but I've never seen anything like this. It's almost always the band's lack of experience working against sound quality when it is an issue. Other times it's that the sound engineer is just not very technical or the gear is not great or matched for the event. There is no conspiracy.

 

[edro]

A busy show, not much time to grab food exists.
A beer and a burger before go time would probably go over pretty well....and would probably get you some undivided attention during your slot...