Trouble hearing the B and C notes

[Rip Van Dan]

Thanks, but not the low B as on a 5 string but the lowest B on a 4 string. 2 fret A string or 7th fret E string.

He was giving you the correct Hz range for the B and C on the A string. The B and C on the low-B string of a 5-string bass are 30.87Hz for the B and 32.7Hz for the C string.

If you can get out in front of the group to hear how you sound in the mix, that will tell you if the room is actually sucking out those frequencies. I have a couple of Eden EX112 cabs that I sometimes use. They have a very small footprint and I often put them on top of a milk crate to get them up off the floor so I can hear them better. I have zero problem with them being heard out front in the audience.

 

[agedhorse]

Sound is a pressure wave. A counter pressure wave ( guitar / drums ), can cancel or attenuate your notes. Standing in a tight setup like I see, might just be that. All you can do is adjust the pickups for balanced tone
loudness. Adding some mid range on the EQ can help cut thru the mix, but overall tone can suffer. A compression
pedal adjusted well, or add some dirt.. can give you some extra horse power. When I played a Acoustic 360 with
a 18 inch driver, I never had that problem?

This is an interesting and fascinating theory that brings with it very little chance of being true in practice since you are talking about non-coherent sources.

If you played your 18" driver in the same conditions, I suspect that you would experience exactly the same issue (plus all the other issues too)

 

[JimmyM]

If you can get out in front of the group to hear how you sound in the mix, that will tell you if the room is actually sucking out those frequencies.

Great advice! I've had it happen only to sound just fine everywhere but where I'm standing. A perfect storm of wave convergence cancelling out certain frequencies at my mic position but fine everywhere else. Drove me nuts till I found out about boundary cancellations.

 

[Allegrus]

If you can't move position, can you turn the cabinet some degrees in either direction?

 

[Downunderwonder]

Easiest way to make the biggest difference might be to swap corners with the drummer.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

If you were listening through your calves or back, I'm sure it sounded great.
Although that close you weren't getting much latency from the air.
Hard to monitor in that situation unless you had actual PA monitor in front of you.

 

[JimmyM]

If you were listening through your calves or back, I'm sure it sounded great.
Although that close you weren't getting much latency from the air.
Hard to monitor in that situation unless you had actual PA monitor in front of you.

...which creates even more waves that create even more cancellation when you use an amp!

 

[oldrocker]

If you were listening through your calves or back, I'm sure it sounded great.
Although that close you weren't getting much latency from the air.
Hard to monitor in that situation unless you had actual PA monitor in front of you.

...which creates even more waves that create even more cancellation when you use an amp!

There was a monitor in front of me. At this show only the vocals go through the monitor.

 

[Bboopbennie]

This is an interesting and fascinating theory that brings with it very little chance of being true in practice since you are talking about non-coherent sources.

If you played your 18" driver in the same conditions, I suspect that you would experience exactly the same issue (plus all the other issues too)

Was suppose to be funny, 360 is so damm loud it would be the ONLY thing you would hear! With that irregular ceiling acting like a trap, who knows just what cancellation is happening and from what?

 

[Chrisk-K]

Any chance there is a dead spot on that bass?

On a Fender type bass, the low B and C notes on the E string are far from being dead spots.

 

[rknea]

I purchased a Phil Jones Ear Box for situations just like this!! Although I use it in the big band I play in and primarily with my upright bass, the Ear Box is a winner for me as it gives me all the mids/highs so I can hear every note I play.

 

[BAG]

Next time try packing anything soft between the wall and the cab. I usually put all of my PA speaker covers and bass amp cover behind my cab. Sometimes it helps, other times not so much.

 

[jbrew73]

On a Fender type bass, the low B and C notes on the E string are far from being dead spots.

Not too far considering I had one with a dead A.

 

[TomB]

Was suppose to be funny, 360 is so damm loud it would be the ONLY thing you would hear! With that irregular ceiling acting like a trap, who knows just what cancellation is happening and from what?

Funny - though I agree that sucker (360) was loud, I was never able to hear myself standing in front of one!

 

[Rip Van Dan]

Great advice! I've had it happen only to sound just fine everywhere but where I'm standing. A perfect storm of wave convergence cancelling out certain frequencies at my mic position but fine everywhere else. Drove me nuts till I found out about boundary cancellations.

I remember playing a club back in the 70's where the stage and dance floor were down on the bottom level and tables and seating were on various levels going up like coliseum seating or a rice patty terrace. Additionally there was a high dome above the stage at the top of the ceiling of the uppermost level. I could barely hear myself on stage, so I turned up slightly. I about blew everybody away those first couple of songs.

Our female singer walked off the stage and up and down the levels of the club to see what it was like. Said it sounded pretty dead on stage but was plenty loud on the dance floor and way too loud at the tables. So everybody turned back down.

Evidently a lot of the volume from the stage hit that dome above us and reflected down on everyone else. Was about the volume of bedroom practice on stage and more than a little loud in the audience. Was really a weird place to play, but it was a 2-week gig, so we got it dialed in. Probably the strangest acoustics of anyplace I ever played.

 

[BAG]

I remember playing a club back in the 70's where the stage and dance floor were down on the bottom level and tables and seating were on various levels going up like coliseum seating or a rice patty terrace. Additionally there was a high dome above the stage at the top of the ceiling of the uppermost level. I could barely hear myself on stage, so I turned up slightly. I about blew everybody away those first couple of songs.

Our female singer walked off the stage and up and down the levels of the club to see what it was like. Said it sounded pretty dead on stage but was plenty loud on the dance floor and way too loud at the tables. So everybody turned back down.

Evidently a lot of the volume from the stage hit that dome above us and reflected down on everyone else. Was about the volume of bedroom practice on stage and more than a little loud in the audience. Was really a weird place to play, but it was a 2-week gig, so we got it dialed in. Probably the strangest acoustics of anyplace I ever played.

One of the most interesting places I ever set up (roadie for a major Aussie band in the 80's) was in a nightclub that used to be a big church. The natural reverb was fantastic. The sound guy was very good and we had no problem with muddiness while the snare sounded better than any other gig we ever did and had to add zero reverb at the desk.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

One of the most interesting places I ever set up (roadie for a major Aussie band in the 80's) was in a nightclub that used to be a big church. The natural reverb was fantastic. The sound guy was very good and we had no problem with muddiness while the snare sounded better than any other gig we ever did and had to add zero reverb at the desk.

Speaking of great acoustics, the best I've heard was one of the chapels at Stanford University. Evidently it's rarely open, but they used it for a Chanticleer concert one year. Chanticleer is an all-men's vocal ensemble primarily singing a capella. Occasionally they will use some Renaissance instrumentation. My brother-in-law used to sing as a counter-tenor with them. They set up a single omnidirectional condenser microphone just a bit in front of the first pew and got a great recording out of it. Not sure a band would sound as good there. It had very live acoustics.

 

[agedhorse]

Regarding acoustics, great acoustics can't be defined without knowing what the needs of the uses in the room are. There is both an average time and a time versus frequency component to defining room acoustics as well as knowing the impact of any early reflections. It's a VERY complicated subject, there are a lot of different variables that each apply to different aspects of the reverb characteristics as well as what's desired by the use oft he room.

For example, a long RT-60 may seem great (as a generalization) for choral applications but not if the distribution is very high in the 2khz-4kHz range due to hard reflective surfaces. The distribution is at least as important as the time itself. Then there's the distribution of how the reflection energy is distributed and how the reflections sum.

I spent a fair amount of time in school studying the theory of acoustics of spaces, at that time (just post-slide rule era) is was almost impossible to actually calculate all the math because it was generally solved as large matrices, but it turns out that understanding the theory and how reflections and surfaces interact could get you ~80% of the way there. Today you can get over 90% accuracy, BUT it takes a lot of time to describe the parameters ob the models and usually a lot of assumptions are made which result in the 90% target (very) rarely being met.

 

[oldrocker]

OP here with an update. I played a an outdoor backyard show this weekend with the same bass and rig. Same basic EQ, just the master was little higher since we were outside. Again only vocals going through the PA. The only wall was about 2 feet behind the cabs.

All notes strong and true. B and C notes loud and clear. Even the notes up the neck on the G string that can sometimes be weak were loud and clear as well.

I'm very happy my issue was venue related and not a bigger issue with the rig or set up.

 

[Downunderwonder]

Good to know.

Handsome rig in the daylight.