Why have a nice rig just to be run direct?

[JimmyM]

I do not get the point of letting other's people lack of ability to follow appointments make me change my positive attitude.

but thanks anyway, I do understand now why this thread has 42 pages

Poop rolls downhill, that's why If someone makes those in charge mad and stressed out, I know it's only going to be a matter of time before I get hit.

 

[two fingers]

This is something that's never made sense to me. If something sounds good coming from a cab then it sounds good. I'm well aware no PA is truly transparent but surely it would put the same colour on a dry bass signal too,

True. And (again) I work with whatever guys bring me for the most part. And I will admit that the DI box way of doing things is OLD school. In my view it stems from the days when most on-board pres sounded AWFUL in most bass rigs. Nobody wants to hear a 1985 Peavey TNT amp run direct into the board (or a miced signal from it either). So, back then it was just easier to run right off the bass. The "dry" signal is usually less boomy, thus easier to control out front. As I have said many MANY times here at TB, I can add bass all day long if there isn't enough. But if your signal is too boomy, there isn't a lot I can do to ADD treble, or even high mids to clean it up. And taking boom away from a boomy signal will make it sound even more like crap than it already does. You're left with a really odd sound with a little bit of low mids and not much else. It sounds horrible. It is VERY rare for the signal right off the bass to be that boomy.

And (sigh) again, I am not one of those guys. I move with the times and try to get along with everyone. All I am saying is that I understand where some of those guys are coming from. Many musicians take their little piece of the band too seriously. Rather than doing what works best for the whole "team", they get really set in their "this is MY sound, and the band and sound guy will simply HAVE to work with it" mentality. Sure, guitar players are more guilty, and many sound guys are awful at social skills. But keeping score doesn't solve anything either.

So, my ONLY point in all of this (from the beginning) has been that sometimes (note that I said SOMETIMES) YOUR sound is not what's best for the band, the mix, the show, or the crowd. So your insistence that you have YOUR sound both on stage and in the FOH mix MAY be doing DAMAGE to your band. (And...... sigh....... let me repeat myself AGAIN. Guitar players are worse. I get it. But that doesn't make you any less wrong IF you are wrong about something.)

 

[BurningSkies]

Unpunctuality can change my attitude pretty quickly. I show up when we agreed to show up. Usually early so that travel eventualities don't hamper things.

Or this:

There was one decent sized place that we'd been trying to get into...their schtick is that to book there as a local band you HAVE to do one of their 'showcase' nights. They have you over a barrel on that, if you don't do one, they won't book you for anything including opening for large touring acts. It doesn't matter if you've played for 50 years or 5, no matter what your musical bio shows. For us that meant playing with a bunch of stuff that was not a genre match and with a bunch of bands who had no stage experience.

I provided a stage plot, a line list, the whole deal. We repeatedly got emails about 'bands' professionality from the place (obviously mass emails to all the bands), reinforcing that we needed to show up on time, load in quickly had quick change over times. Our stage time 3/4ths of the way through this monstrosity of an all day thing. We got an email saying to show up an hour before doors...SIX HOURS BEFORE SET TIME. That in itself is unprofessional for a set with a 15 minute setup allotment and no soundcheck. I explained to them that I thought it 'unprofessional' to request we show up just to stand around for 6 hours, they agreed and said 'an hour before set time'. Upon showing up an hour before set time we found:

"...You're going to have to go on early, we're way ahead of schedule. Two bands didn't show" (awesome to piss off fans who you've given your set time to)

Followed by: "I know you sent a plot and input list, but I didn't bring it"

Followed by:
"...No wait we're moving your set time back an hour"

Followed by:
"...your set time has been trimmed by 15 minutes because the schedule has been weird"

I bit my tongue through the whole thing. "Professional" means a whole lot of things, not just the band performing well and being organized. It means the club actually having someone there when you're told to show up and someone having an idea of the production schedule. We ended up benefiting by getting our foot in the door and securing decent regular shows and slots there...

 

[BurningSkies]

Guitar players are worse. I get it. But that doesn't make you any less wrong IF you are wrong about something.)

I must work with either the right or wrong guitar players. My last band (which morphed into my new one once we made some personnel changes) we had a guitarist who was great, but never loud enough. We repeatedly had to ask him to turn up. We also had a lead singer/guitar player who didn't actually understand the knobs on his amp (which was my Twin for most shows). He could give me verbal cues as to what he wanted to hear but pretty much just asked me to make his settings. Of course he grew up in a place without electricity or running water.

Although I now have a guy who has a problem because he puzzlingly likes to roll off all his treble most of the time. When did you ever find a guitar player who didn't want to bright you out of a room!

 

[lfmn16]

So there's my take on this topic that I've resisted putting out there until now. Your shot across the bow to sound guys was close to home since there are so many players here that do both. So go easy on the generalizations while you are issuing your edicts about who should or should not participate here.

Geri O

Don't put words into my mouth. I didn't say anything about who should or should not participate. I'm just reminding certain people that this is a BASS centric forum. If you can't figure out who is being blatantly disrespectful to bass players then I can't help you.

It's great that you are professional, trained and take into account the concerns of the bass player. My criticism is for those sound men that give me the sound THEY like with no consideration for what I'm trying to achieve.

This argument will never be settled because there is no agreement on the role of the sound man. If someone doesn't think that the role of the soundman is to reproduce the band's sound, within time and equipment constraints, then every other argument is mute, because all of the arguments from the bass player's view point are based on having their sound faithfully reproduced. If I don't care about my sound then I don't care if the soundman uses a $10 direct box, a mike, or a tin can and piece of string. If you do agree, then there is no reason not to accommodate someone like Jimmy who shows up with a top of the line DI and mic.

 

[Fat Steve]

Unpunctuality can change my attitude pretty quickly. I show up when we agreed to show up. Usually early so that travel eventualities don't hamper things.

Or this:

There was one decent sized place that we'd been trying to get into...their schtick is that to book there as a local band you HAVE to do one of their 'showcase' nights. They have you over a barrel on that, if you don't do one, they won't book you for anything including opening for large touring acts. It doesn't matter if you've played for 50 years or 5, no matter what your musical bio shows. For us that meant playing with a bunch of stuff that was not a genre match and with a bunch of bands who had no stage experience.

I provided a stage plot, a line list, the whole deal. We repeatedly got emails about 'bands' professionality from the place (obviously mass emails to all the bands), reinforcing that we needed to show up on time, load in quickly had quick change over times. Our stage time 3/4ths of the way through this monstrosity of an all day thing. We got an email saying to show up an hour before doors...SIX HOURS BEFORE SET TIME. That in itself is unprofessional for a set with a 15 minute setup allotment and no soundcheck. I explained to them that I thought it 'unprofessional' to request we show up just to stand around for 6 hours, they agreed and said 'an hour before set time'. Upon showing up an hour before set time we found:

"...You're going to have to go on early, we're way ahead of schedule. Two bands didn't show" (awesome to piss off fans who you've given your set time to)

Followed by: "I know you sent a plot and input list, but I didn't bring it"

Followed by:
"...No wait we're moving your set time back an hour"

Followed by:
"...your set time has been trimmed by 15 minutes because the schedule has been weird"

I bit my tongue through the whole thing. "Professional" means a whole lot of things, not just the band performing well and being organized. It means the club actually having someone there when you're told to show up and someone having an idea of the production schedule. We ended up benefiting by getting our foot in the door and securing decent regular shows and slots there...

You just described the entire greater Los Angeles original music scene.

 

[BurningSkies]

You just described the entire greater Los Angeles original music scene.

Its probably where they took their model from. It verges on the 'pay to play' scam where they will only book you if you promise to buy the tickets then sell them yourself.

In the end we benefited from it by being a fairly top tier call for future shows in our genre, but it was painful at the time. Its also hard to show we can draw if you're doing any of those huge multi-band shows (mostly ends up being metal, punk and hard rawk stuff). Our fans aren't going to drop 15 bucks to see us for 30-45 minutes with the promise of a night of 'random fill' band variety act stuff.

 

[aborgman]

I don't understand how anyone that's been playing live for a few decades doesn't understand what a soundman is doing and how rooms, front end PA and mixing works...

I don't either.

...but I see those people on the regular.

Heck, I've run into a few guys who've been playing guitar for 20+ years in bands - and still have to have someone tune it for them.

 

[xk49w]

Have you ever wondered what the freq resp of you mic'd cabinet looks like?

I bought some SVT8x10 cabinet impulses for a recording project. 564 impulses with an assortment of microphones, distances and sampling rates. Anyway, here is one example, the response plot for the SVT 8x10 cab captured with an MD421 at 6" from the cone center.

I'm not surprised at the variation. There are a lot of reflections in the recording environment which could be better or worse on stage.

Edit: This was done with Matlab processing the impulse response (wav file).

 

[squeezer]

Have you ever wondered what the freq resp of you mic'd cabinet looks like?

I bought some SVT8x10 cabinet impulses for a recording project. 564 impulses with an assortment of microphones, distances and sampling rates. Anyway, here is one example, the response plot for the SVT 8x10 cab captured with an MD421 at 6" from the cone center.

I'm not surprised at the variation. There are a lot of reflections in the recording environment which could be better or worse on stage.

Edit: This was done with Matlab processing the impulse response (wav file).

So, no fundamental to speak of below G (-10dB at 50Hz), huge midrange dip (-10dB over most of range), nasty spike at 3kHz (hear that presence peak!), no treble above 6kHz -- and this is 6" in front of the dustcap, the off-axis response where you listen and by the time all the drivers have interfered with each other will be a lot more uneven than this,

Lots of mid and upper bass and not much else -- is this *really* the kind of "cabinet sound" that people like?

(not me, it's the kind of muddy boomy bass sound I hate, but that's just my opinion)

 

[Fat Steve]

So, no fundamental to speak of below G (-10dB at 50Hz), huge midrange dip (-10dB over most of range), nasty spike at 3kHz (hear that presence peak!), no treble above 6kHz -- and this is 6" in front of the dustcap, the off-axis response where you listen and by the time all the drivers have interfered with each other will be a lot more uneven than this,

Lots of mid and upper bass and not much else -- is this *really* the kind of "cabinet sound" that people like?

(not me, it's the kind of muddy boomy bass sound I hate, but that's just my opinion)

I must be reading that graph wrong, because it looks like the cab is +10 db at 50 HZ, and it looks like 35 HZ is where the graph hits the 0 db line.

 

[squeezer]

I must be reading that graph wrong, because it looks like the cab is +10 db at 50 HZ, and it looks like 35 HZ is where the graph hits the 0 db line.

All the numbers were done taking the flat inband response as the 0dB reference, which is +22dB.

(actual vertical scale is arbitrary)

 

[Passinwind]

Have you ever wondered what the freq resp of you mic'd cabinet looks like?

I bought some SVT8x10 cabinet impulses for a recording project. 564 impulses with an assortment of microphones, distances and sampling rates.

Cool, what app or plugin are you feeding the impulses to?

 

[xk49w]

Cool, what app or plugin are you feeding the impulses to?

I am mixing in Reaper. The plugin is the [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] impulse loader.

 

[Clouz]

So, no fundamental to speak of below G (-10dB at 50Hz), huge midrange dip (-10dB over most of range), nasty spike at 3kHz (hear that presence peak!), no treble above 6kHz -- and this is 6" in front of the dustcap, the off-axis response where you listen and by the time all the drivers have interfered with each other will be a lot more uneven than this,

Lots of mid and upper bass and not much else -- is this *really* the kind of "cabinet sound" that people like?

(not me, it's the kind of muddy boomy bass sound I hate, but that's just my opinion)

it may look crappy on paper but it is the best sounding live rig i have ever heard.

 

[Passinwind]

I am mixing in Reaper. The plugin is the [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] impulse loader.

Thanks, I'll give it a go. I've been using SIR pretty happily, but more for rooms and 'verbs.

 

[Marcus Willett]

...Lots of mid and upper bass and not much else -- is this *really* the kind of "cabinet sound" that people like?

Well, apparently. And that's kinda the thing. It's just human nature (this is not a dig at you per se) to feel that what seems right to you is the only reasonable conclusion any person could draw. And a soundman might (being human) receive a signal colored like that and conclude that it's just wrong and needs to be fixed...because obviously no reasonable person would want that. I mean, it sounds BAD.

Yeah, it does...to you. But that's the thing. If that's his tone, that's his tone. It is not your call to second guess and change that. You may think its a bad idea, maybe lots of folks agree, maybe you try to get him out there to make your case. And you might persuade him, or maybe not.

But it's his tone. It. Is. Not. Your. Call.

If his tone is muddy, then that's his tone. If his tone is thin, thats his tone. Your "reputation" is not justification for changing hs tone any more than you insisting the singer sing in a different key because he sounds bad out front, and your reputation might be injured by hm sounding bad in that key.

Despite what you may think, I'm happy to listen to suggestions from a soundman who knows what he is doing and wants to work together to make things sound great. But a player's tone is his tone. And if he needs X to get his tone, then it is not his tone without X. Period.

You can suggest, and maybe you really do have a better approach. But it is not your call, as much as you like to think it is.

 

[rolandm]

We're also needing to take into account that my bass is set up differently than Jimmy's and someone else's bass is set up differently from mine. My sound processing is different, and my band's overall sound is different. So, while that chart out there might be very accurate, who's to say that it doesn't work for my bass/processing/overall band mix? Pulling one piece of the puzzle out of the equation and saying, "See! THIS IS BAD! HERE BE MONSTERS!" isn't really accurate. It has to be placed in context for it to be accurate, and that chart is nothing of the kind.

 

[jtroska]

Have you ever wondered what the freq resp of you mic'd cabinet looks like?

I bought some SVT8x10 cabinet impulses for a recording project. 564 impulses with an assortment of microphones, distances and sampling rates. Anyway, here is one example, the response plot for the SVT 8x10 cab captured with an MD421 at 6" from the cone center.

I'm not surprised at the variation. There are a lot of reflections in the recording environment which could be better or worse on stage.

Edit: This was done with Matlab processing the impulse response (wav file).

Interesting post! And it supports what I had said before about mic signals typically having a lot of peaks and valleys that could maybe be harder to nip and tuck into a mix out front if need be. Of course guys like JimmyM have already done the prep work and understand exactly what they're sending.

For me, personally, I don't care about controlling the tone myself to that level. I just want it to sound good. And I think a DI is typically a little easier to work with and, therefore, increases my odds of getting a good mix.

I should probably qualify that by saying that I don't hire my own sound crew. That might change things if I did. I'm at the mercy of the different sound crews from different venues. So I'm not into throwing them curve balls.

 

[JimmyM]

Got an impulse with an RE-20? I almost expect that out of a 421. Good mic, but I do notice it's brighter than most.