Why have a nice rig just to be run direct?

[FretNoMore]

If they can keep repeating the myth that you can't get your amp sound in the PA with a good mic, then I will keep busting that myth.

I'm not special...I don't do anything else any other bass player couldn't do...I just did a little homework and clue the soundman in on what I want. But let's say this myth is true...so what? Unless you bring a super duper DI like I do, for most bass players who like micing, it still sounds a hell of a lot better than a Radial or Countryman, and it sounds a million times better than the POS DI you usually see on multi-act shows in bars.

Unless you have a cab setup with multiple differently sized drivers, in which case I think you'd be hard pressed to get a better sound with a mic than with a good DI. But I guess those players are not that relevant for the mic vs DI discussion anyway.

 

[Marcus Willett]

I've done exactly that. And it's really not easy....Acoustic double basses are difficult to work with. I'd prefer to avoid many of the same issues occuring with electric basses/mics/cabinets, why make everything more difficult than it has to be?

Of course they are difficult. Of course you'd like your job to be easier. Of course you'd like to avoid issues.

But here's where you prove my point. If you have to, you can make it work even given those difficulties.

So (just as an example) of course micing a bass cabinet present issues. Of course you'd like to avoid those issues. Of course you don't want you job to be any tougher than it needs to. That's human nature.

But if you have to, you can do it. So if bass players just do what guitarist do as a matter of routine, it would just become accepted as part of the job. It can be done, so theres little justification for a bassist accepting less effort other than laziness or discrimination.

 

[Marcus Willett]

I don't get your point. Are you now saying that the soundman should override what the musician/band wants to sound like, or in this case even what the instrument itself sounds like?.

My point is simple. What the soundman thinks is the right bass tone matters less than what the person creating the sound thinks. If the person creating the sound thinks it needs this effect or the other, or this EQ or the other, then it does.

If that creates problems or issues for the soundman, then that is his job to deal with those problems and issues. The bassist can and should be cool about things and try to work together, but it is not his job to make the soundmans job easier.

 

[Jeff Scott]

(not just trying to avoid setup effort/time, but also wanting to deliver a better FOH sound to the audience -- where "better" means "what the musician wants it to sound like")

I usually use a DI (sometimes mine but usually the supplied DI) unless the sound person decides to mic my cabinet. So, why is it that the DI'd sound of my bass always sounds different in different venus even though the bass/playing techniques I use is the same? I normally let the sound person know what kind of tone I am striving for and they invariably say "NO problemo!".

 

[squeezer]

My point is simple. What the soundman thinks is the right bass tone matters less than what the person creating the sound thinks. If the person creating the sound thinks it needs this effect or the other, or this EQ or the other, then it does.

If that creates problems or issues for the soundman, then that is his job to deal with those problems and issues. The bassist can and should be cool about things and try to work together, but it is not his job to make the soundmans job easier.

Why do some people see this as a conflict between musician and soundman, or imply that the soundman ought to get off his fat lazy arse and fix any problem even if it's indirectly caused by the musician?

Like I said, I do both -- and put simply, the easier it is for the soundman to get the good sound at FOH that the musician wants, the more likely it is to happen, given that infinite setup time and effort are rarely available.

If as a bassist your attitude is "screw the soundman, why should I make his job easier?" don't be surprised if the sound out front sometimes (often? always?) isn't as good as you'd like it to be...

 

[BurningSkies]

Unless you have a cab setup with multiple differently sized drivers, in which case I think you'd be hard pressed to get a better sound with a mic than with a good DI. But I guess those players are not that relevant for the mic vs DI discussion anyway.

Or you could spend some time learning how to place a mic to pick up the sound from all the speakers...

Not that hard. I know a bunch of guys who use 3 ways and mic them. In the wild, I've had a couple people mic my 2 way by putting a mic out a bit between the two speakers and then tweaking the placement. Or I've had some good soundmen who looked at my rig and said "I'm going to mic that mid then I'll take the lows from YOUR DI."

 

[BurningSkies]

Why do some people see this as a conflict between musician and soundman, or imply that the soundman ought to get off his fat lazy arse and fix any problem even if it's indirectly caused by the musician?

Like I said, I do both -- and put simply, the easier it is for the soundman to get the good sound at FOH that the musician wants, the more likely it is to happen, given that infinite setup time and effort are rarely available.

If as a bassist your attitude is "screw the soundman, why should I make his job easier?" don't be surprised if the sound out front sometimes (often? always?) isn't as good as you'd like it to be...

I don't think anyone is saying 'screw the soundguy' at the same time, assuming that a sound guy can't or is unwilling to deal with the acoustic properties of an amp or instrument comes from mostly having seen it on stage. They SHOULD be comfortable in their shoes and be able to handle a mic for bass if requested or needed. They do it for PLENTY of other things on stage...drums, vocals, guitars, horns, etc. What happens when someone shows up with that beautiful acoustic Martin dreadnought? Do they say they're not going to mic it? Or maybe they'll grab a cheap acoustic guitar soundhole pickup and ask the guitarist to use it because its too hard to mic?

The best soundmen I've worked with have come up asked for me to play while they stand next to me to HEAR what I'm doing and go and reproduce that in the house.

 

[FretNoMore]

Or you could spend some time learning how to place a mic to pick up the sound from all the speakers...
...

I've tried. My setup is however not easy to mic (at least I don't know how); two cabinets, one with a 15", one with 12" + 6" + tweeter, and you need both cabs to get a full sound. So, I prefer a DI.

Anyway (donning flame retardant suit) I have to say I personally don't see the big mic vs DI problem, my bass rig is nice for rehearsals and as a monitor on stage, but I'm not that worried about recreating the sound in the FOH system. Where we play live the rooms tend to be lousy acoustically and I'm happy if the bass sound is reasonably free from boominess and such problems, let alone sound really good. Sad but true, I'm envious of you guys that can sweat the details in the bass sound to the degree where differences in DI characteristics can even be heard.

 

[BurningSkies]

I've tried. My setup is however not easy to mic (at least I don't know how); two cabinets, one with a 15", one with 12" + 6" + tweeter, and you need both cabs to get a full sound. So, I prefer a DI.

Anyway (donning flame retardant suit) I have to say I personally don't see the big mic vs DI problem, my bass rig is nice for rehearsals and as a monitor on stage, but I'm not that worried about recreating the sound in the FOH system. Where we play live the rooms tend to be lousy acoustically and I'm happy if the bass sound is reasonably free from boominess and such problems, let alone sound really good. Sad but true, I'm envious of you guys that can sweat the details in the bass sound to the degree where differences in DI characteristics can even be heard.

I could hear the difference in either board or audience recordings of the band, I also use my preamp DI send in practice as we tend to multitrack regularly, and it was easily even more apparent in that setting. I don't personally care about being mic'ed, I do care about using my own DI send though.

 

[Steve]

Why have a nice rig just to be run direct?

Because it takes a really nice rig to approximate the response of a full bore PA stack.

If you have that rig, you KNOW that "your tone" is hitting the desk properly and that's about all you can do. The sound guy can still pooch it but he isn't responsible for creating it. All he has to do is slot it to the mix

 

[Downunderwonder]

All these "difficult" rooms should have had their own resonances dialed out years ago. When you play a CD you don't throw up your hands at the mastering.

The most anti mic pushback I had was outdoors, when they pumped up the drummer's massive 2x15 + horn monitor I couldn't hear my own 2x10 cab at all, for the din, but it was a fine din, boosting my faith in the p2 skyhigh. It's going to get real interesting next time I strike that crew.

 

[squeezer]

I don't think anyone is saying 'screw the soundguy' at the same time, assuming that a sound guy can't or is unwilling to deal with the acoustic properties of an amp or instrument comes from mostly having seen it on stage. They SHOULD be comfortable in their shoes and be able to handle a mic for bass if requested or needed. They do it for PLENTY of other things on stage...drums, vocals, guitars, horns, etc. What happens when someone shows up with that beautiful acoustic Martin dreadnought? Do they say they're not going to mic it? Or maybe they'll grab a cheap acoustic guitar soundhole pickup and ask the guitarist to use it because its too hard to mic?

The best soundmen I've worked with have come up asked for me to play while they stand next to me to HEAR what I'm doing and go and reproduce that in the house.

Still missing the point -- of course a good soundman *can* cope with pretty much anything, DI or mic, electric or acoustic -- their job is to do the best they can with what they've got, sometimes including the band...

But the less messing around they have to do to get a good sound, the more chance there is of the sound being right on the night -- and even more so if they're not one of the said good guys, a problem I'm sure we've all suffered from.

Like I said, going up to listen on stage is what I also try and do, but sound memory is a fickle thing and you can't keep walking back and forth a dozen times tweaking the sound each time.

Having been on both sides of the fence, what I think has the best chance of sounding like the musician (or bass player wants it to is if he presents the sound guy with an XLR lead and says "The sound coming out of that is *exactly* what I want out front and on stage in my monitor, no need to mess with it (so please don't), everything's already sorted out for you -- and there's no backline to screw up the sound or mic to feed back".

Bliss

 

[rolandm]

… and you can't keep walking back and forth a dozen times tweaking the sound each time.

You can if you have an iPad to mix with. And TBH, I love it when I can log into the sound console and adjust my own mix. No need to tell the soundman if something that sounded good during sound check sounds less than stellar during the show for some reason.

 

[ThisBass]

There isn't just one way of doing it.
On my all tube svt I prefer DI at power amp out.
The legendary ampeg growl is by 100% on FOH mix, regardless of any mic cause I don't need a mic to knock my sound on FOH.

By the way,
everybody has got his own customers/contracts to whom each and every has got served right for.
( jeder hat die Kundschaft die er verdient )

 

[BurningSkies]

Still missing the point -- of course a good soundman *can* cope with pretty much anything, DI or mic, electric or acoustic -- their job is to do the best they can with what they've got, sometimes including the band...

But the less messing around they have to do to get a good sound, the more chance there is of the sound being right on the night -- and even more so if they're not one of the said good guys, a problem I'm sure we've all suffered from.

Like I said, going up to listen on stage is what I also try and do, but sound memory is a fickle thing and you can't keep walking back and forth a dozen times tweaking the sound each time.

Having been on both sides of the fence, what I think has the best chance of sounding like the musician (or bass player wants it to is if he presents the sound guy with an XLR lead and says "The sound coming out of that is *exactly* what I want out front and on stage in my monitor, no need to mess with it (so please don't), everything's already sorted out for you -- and there's no backline to screw up the sound or mic to feed back".

Bliss

Yet it happens so rarely.

I'm not missing anything.

So many times I'll hear a soundman say something like "oh man...I have your tone totally COOKIN' out front" only to hear from knowledgeable people in the crowd what a disaster it was. Or to spend the whole set hearing the clack of a crapload of upper mid presence off the back wall of a club or theater when that's totally inappropriate for my gig. THAT is why I moved away from using house DI's and using pre-eq/pre-preamp signals. It was survival tactic.

A good soundman CAN cope with a lot of things...often would rather do the coping in other places they perceive to be more important. Which is unfortunate, given I play in a bass-centric genre and if you don't have that S*** down, no one in the room will be happy.

Again, I don't mic my cabs. That's not really what this conversation is about. I have a cabinet and amp setup that as close as possible reflects what I send to the board, I have a preamp that does just what I want and it has a studio quality DI that is representative of what is being fed to my power amp, which makes it possible to send to the board with confidence. I've had soundmen in smaller clubs tell me my amp and tone is better than what they can get with what they have out front (and I've heard their subs give up the ghost before my amp breaks a sweat).

In a perfect world I could give an unfettered signal to the house...but it is such a damn crapshoot that I've learned to not give enough rope to start the lynching.

 

[ThisBass]

Give the soundman a signal he can work with then I'm sure everybody feels happy.
Give him a signal that may be anything post or pre or what ever else is possible but never the less give him a signal he can work with.
That's the more important whenever your own skills of sound engineering surpass by far the soundman skills itself.
Many of the posts above I'm reading like that.

I'm wondering a little bit about all your problems because guitar signals are generally more difficult to handle.
But if already a bass guitar sound becomes serious problems on FOH mix so by the hell what happens to the guitar sounds just the same moment?

 

[bigchiefbc]

Why do some people see this as a conflict between musician and soundman, or imply that the soundman ought to get off his fat lazy arse and fix any problem even if it's indirectly caused by the musician?

Like I said, I do both -- and put simply, the easier it is for the soundman to get the good sound at FOH that the musician wants, the more likely it is to happen, given that infinite setup time and effort are rarely available.

If as a bassist your attitude is "screw the soundman, why should I make his job easier?" don't be surprised if the sound out front sometimes (often? always?) isn't as good as you'd like it to be...

No one is saying "screw the soundman". I am saying "screw anyone who thinks they know better than I do what my bass should sound like".

I don't like the sound of clean DI'd bass, at least not for my band's sound. I use a non-master-volume tube amp cranked up into overdrive 80ish% of the time, along with a few distortion and fuzz pedals. I use a power soak to bring the stage volume down to a reasonable volume, and I mic the cab with my own good mic.

If a sound guy really has a problem with a mic'd cab and tells me he's getting to much bleed or boom, I could use my power soak to bring the speaker out signal all the way down 48 dBs to DI level, but it would need some sort of speaker sim to not sound harsh and grating.

If a sound guy insisted on a DI signal before my amp, we'd have a problem.

 

[David Hayes]

Hmm. My reply to whoever it was that was going on and on about mic placement, which drivers to mic etc.. and saying that a mic was bad at reproducing what you hear on stage is this.


A good mic and good mic placement are not rocket science.

A mic will ALWAYS sound more accurate than a DI.

If your SE cannot take a good mic and make it sound like what is coming out of your cabinet, FIRE HIM IMMEDIATELY.

 

[ThisBass]

If a sound guy insisted on a DI signal before my amp, we'd have a problem.

That's not a problem at all because the the gig does not start at sound check.
It could become a problem if the DI is still before the amp after sound check.

 

[ThisBass]

A mic will ALWAYS sound more accurate than a DI.

I don't know your gear but your words are reading like with settled conviction.

By the other hand there are tons of odd vintage stuff out there which I would never ever trust in as soundman.