Two Dumb Questions About Sound

To most people here I am pretty sure these two questions will seem simple and obvious, but I would still really appreciate sharing your knowledge with me on this. Thanks much.


Question 1

We had a gig last weekend and the place was relatively small. Our drummer likes to put my bass extension cab speaker next to him so as to use as a monitor. He was in the corner and had the extension cab pointing at him which was essentially pointing at the corner. Isnt this the worse way to position the bass cab. Common sense tells me that the sound waves are simply hitting the corner and then hitting audience while my primary amp is pointing to audience. It sounded a little funny to me like a slight delay.

Therfore shouldn't we have pointed the cab towards the audience and not towards him in the corner? In other words put the cab right by his side but pointing towards the audience and not towards him and the corner?

Question 2

Our band is having volume issues in practice and at gigs (too dam loud). I told them last night that we need to play quiter as we are bothering the audience, eroding our sound quality, and maybe causing some hearing damage.

Are decibal meters helpful in these situations? If so what are typical settings. If my band does not start to play quiter then I will let them know I will leave the band for this reason.

Thanks in advance.

 

Thanks for the reply Wayne and that makes total sense. So the amp is the source of the sound waves and then those waves are bouncing off everything and interacting with the source sound waves and anything can happen. But having two amps in two separate places makes the chaos of the sound wave interaction even more crazy. Therefore from now on I am going to have the two amps sitting on top of each other and pointing outward towards audience to minimize the wave interactions.

Am I thinking about this the right way now?

Thanks again for your kind reply.

 

Right on. I am working to get the volume reduced but I am also going to bring earplugs to gigs. At practice I will take a firm stand on volume issues as I am the one with the practice space I can exert a little more pressure there. Don't get me wrong the guys in the band are all great but I think the singer and drummer already have hearing issues as they seem to not get it that it is a little to loud (need to turn down a good 20% in my opinion).

 

Well here it is in a nutshell. Problem is drummer is weak and loud and my idea and guitarist agrees is to turn louder to help cover up when he makes mistakes (erratic and unpredictable, sometimes he is on and sometimes not so much). So I figure this strategy is not working so good. Drummer, me and guitar player all agree to start playing softer, jury still out on the singer but like I say I provide the practice space so I can exert more pressure at practice to turn down. At gigs I am going to start bringing earplugs just in case.

 

Man you are so right about this. I have a friend who is a pro level Jazz drummer (not the drummer in my band) and that is exactly what he told me. He told me to turn down and make the drummer carry his own weight. I have been his time crutch for close to a year now and it is time to stop.