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Worth playing "stereo" in a band practice/live situations?

R

Razzmatazz

Oct 23, 2011
184
2
#1
The title says it all.

I've been asking myself this since I practice at home with a small mixer and headphones most of the time. I can pan and set nice stereo chorus, delay, reverb effects for my bass channel when I play along a drums track or a full song.

It's been a while since I've played with a band but I do remember that fine details get easily lost when playing in a live or a practice context with other instruments.

Opinions, comments and occurences are welcome.

Thanks!
 
#3
I practice using a small mixer and headphones as well.

I play along with recordings made of our group. I use a little Marantz recorder to capture practices we do as a group or CD recordings we've done in the past. In either case, I record a no bass version.

I use whatever signal path I plan on using live for the next gig into the mixer. I don't try and change the balance of the mix at all, and do mix it all down to mono. Keeps me in game form even if we can't get together as often as we'd like.

Jim
 
#4
Maybe if you're in a drums & bass duo. In a regular band setting, no.

Imagine the guitarist who has to play next to your cross-stage cab when you hit the section of the song featuring your magnificently crafted 80 & 120 ms ping-pong delays. Does he thank you? No, he does not.

Now, picture the look on the FOH engineer's mug when he realizes that he's being asked to rewire the mono FOH PA just for your band's set. If he's *particularly* obliging, he'll soon realize that not only is he dealing with much more complicated interference from the bass stage rig, but he also can't create a mix that sounds relatively balanced from most points in the room.

The punters standing in parts of the room dominated by one or the other of the speaker arrays will be (at best) missing the glories of your stereo sound, and at worst—during the moments when you've got a lot of stereo vibe going on—hearing music that suffers from carrying only part of your stereo puzzle.
 
#6
Derrico 1 said it all, although I don't mind a bit of two bass rig, clean/dirty shenanigans.
I would not be interested in loosing any coupling and phase coherence
In spreading my cabs across the stage.
And I would definitely want my front of house channels pans both set to where the bass rig is on the stage.
What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom.:bassist:
 
#7
In general, from hanging around here, I've learned that it's just not wise to have substantial distance between two bass cabs . . . AFAIK, the biggest issue is that when you have two separated sources of bass you get significant cancellations, if you are not in FOH. At 40 Hz (low E) the wavelength is 28 feet. If the cabs are 14 feet apart (to a given listener) the output from one will be exactly the reverse of the output from the other and (other room effects aside) add up to zero 40 Hz sound. The relative distance difference is lower for higher notes, and of course repeats itself at multiples of the halfwave length causing problems all over the place in the room where your audience is at different frequencies.
 
#11
You're not mixing a CD or album, you're playing for an audience that has some people on each side and in the middle- this means a mono PA works best for letting everyone hear the same mix. If the PA was stereo, those on each side will hear only that side, with a little of the other via reflection. That's not a good outcome and it's annoying.
 
#14
For small venues, I don't run "stereo". I run a balanced out from my Tone Hammer pedal to the board and out to the PA. (no bass amp or cab) However, for larger venues, I run a bass rig and take a DI singnal from my amp head to the board, and then I also mic the bass cab. Although this is not true stereo, I have the ability to pan either signal if I choose. I like this approach because it gives me the best of both worlds.
 
#15
Pointless from the perspective of your bass rig. It can be done if you have a minimum of 2 board channels in the PA dedicated to bass, preferably 3, (clean, DI'd mono lows, stereo spread and effected mids & highs), but that's not something that's going to happen unless you get way up the ladder of success there, or run your own PA.

Nobody is going to hear any stereo effect or imaging from a backline rig.
 
#16
Thanks to everyone! I had made my mind about a power amp running in bridge mono with a single 4*10 cab but I just wanted to get more opinions before making a final decision. My favorite set up at home is a subtle stereo chorus effect but it would be just too much to carry the idea at rehearsals or live performances with a typical loud rock band.
 
#17
I'd still run the chorus and try to duplicate some of the sounds in mono. But while it's more work than I want to go through these days, a good clean/dirty rig sounds quite nice. A lot of your bigtime pro types who use distortion do that. And Jeff Berlin runs stereo clean with a chorus into two amps.

But you might not always get two lines into every PA, so even if you do the two amp thing, you'll still want to have a way of doing it mono. Other than that, and the increased schlep factor, stereo rigs can be fun.
 

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