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In Reply to: Ain't there no pro guys out there? posted by Inmate51 on October 11, 2006 at 09:32:34:
Suggestions from a 30 yr. veteran who learned most things from actual experience:There isn't anything useful above 11khz on a dynamic vocal mike like a 58 or 57, so why boost them at the master EQ? There could be a reason. You do this to catch the highs in cymbal overheads (got a condenser?)and turn the highs on the other mic channels down to compensate. Too many sound guys point their cardioid dynamic right at the center of a guitar cabinet speaker. That's the dust cap!! Not much tone there when close-miking. Point at one side of the cone or the other.
Boosting the guitar channel's high eq very much will result in a harsh, brittle sound if the guitarist is using harmonic distortion, and most guitar stomp boxes come with a good deal of "hiss" that make your PA's horns elements deteriorate, and your audiences won't appreciate, and just helps make your power amps oscillate. (A poet, don't 'cha know-it?)
As a bass guitarist for many years, while relying on someone to hook my rig into his snake & PA, I couldn't imagine why he said my bass had an over-ring, or extra resonance. He was close miking with a SM 57, a poor choice, and always neglected to use the low-impedence line out that Fender had thoughtfully built into this amp. No wonder it boomed like that. One cable away from resolution, this went on for years.
If you don't have a 1/3 or 1/2 octave EQ available, you might squeak by (I like a pun now and then too, ;-) ) by using the interactions between adjacent bands of an octave EQ or with even fewer bands, along with the shelving on the channels, etc.
Some rooms, overly reflective, overly small, or poorly laid-out, are going to sound like shit anyhow, pardon my 4 letters; and the best that even the talented can do is to make them sound less like it.
Wooden stages in ballrooms before they had much PA used to deliberately build hollow, resonant floors. The string bassist and drummers loved this; it was like a big wooden amplifier/speaker setup,
with reverb. One place I know used to store the audience chairs below the stage, hundreds of them. But beware when the modern band sets up on one of these; though these venues have become more rare; some, to save their heritage, have been "saved."
They still boom and resound like in the old days although they no longer 'need' to to provide a richer sound. Every footfall near a mic in a place like this will threaten to start a feedback fest anywhere from 80-160 hz, though I believe it begins from an octave lower, or appx. 40hz. The thing to do is to isolate mic stands as best as you are able, and use the subsonic filters you have. If you know the band, you might ask them to change out of their combat boots. What it does to cut the feedback frequencies as an afterthought is to take all the thickness out of the vocals.There is a similar effect that happens when PA bins and other cabinets share the stage with an amplified band. Whenever possible, isolate the mics from the cabs, & even the guitar cabs from the actual stage. Casters=good, stands=good, even resting on the seat of a chair=good.
As a bassist of 25 years or more, I'll reaffirm that there rarely is any useful information below about 42hz, or with a 5-string to about 30hz. just extra work for those in the speaker re-coning business. Exceptions would be a 40" or greater concert bass drum, the last 1/2 octave or so on the piano, which is seldom-utilized, and only sounds good in a fine brand of large grand or a high quality large upright. Tuning pianos for a long while has taught me something after all. 27.5 is correct for a low 'A,' but Boesendorfer Concert grands have another couple below even that.
Here's an interesting shortcut if you lack a pink noise/RTA setup and still want to, or HAVE to do a (virtually) silent soundcheck. I saw this when at a concert by the 'ghost band' of a once-major big band, the original leader long-deceased. Their sound guy showed up so late that the concert had almost begun without him. The small, self-powered mixing board was mainly for their vocalist and pianist. It was capable of emitting a fairly consistent white noise when cranked on the main strip. He did this, then tweaked the room by very briefly running each EQ band up, one at a time, just until he got a squeak or hoot of feedback (triggered by that 'hiss',) determined whether that brief noise rang too long, too short, or about average, and then backed each eq band down by a fixed measure below that stage, say -3 db. When the band started, he was almost dialed in, really. Quick and dirty, but effective when "life" happens.
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- Re: Ain't there no pro guys out there? - Yassir_Ar-a_Fat-Boy 21:37:09 12/10/06 (0)
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