Great tips on Live Sound and Stage Volume

[Randyman...]

Here is some good info I got over at the VS-Planet from White Rabbit...

 

Garbage in, garbage out, and how to fill the void...

by Greg Simmons

I've been to a number of live gigs lately, small bands playing in small pubs, and I've seen the same scene every time. The foldback is on the brink of feedback yet the singer wants more, the whole mess is painfully loud and screeching, and the band are looking nervous because there are more people walking out than there are walking in. The space in front of the stage is a sonic void that no-one wants to pass through, let alone stand in. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's wrong: IT'S ALL TOO LOUD.

 

What's the problem with musicians and small PA systems? Is it too hard to understand that a box containing two 15 inch drivers and a horn is no match for two quad boxes, a bass amp, and a drum kit at full blast? Obviously, musicians don't understand the basic principles of good live sound. So, I now present "Simmo's Four Steps to Better Sound through Small PA Systems".

 

Step #1: Garbage in, garbage out

This is so blatantly obvious, I can't believe I'm writing it. If you sound like crap on stage then you will sound like amplified crap through a PA system. On the other hand, if you sound good on stage, a good engineer can make you sound great - and you'll blow away the other bands who still sound like crap. So how do you sound good on stage?

 

Step #2: Play balanced

Sounding good on stage begins by sounding good in the rehearsal room. Next time you're in rehearsal, move into the middle of the band and take a critical listen. Can you hear all the instruments clearly? Is any one instrument dominating the others? Does it sound like a defined musical event, or sonic mush? If it's sonic mush, you've got to do something about it.

 

Start by writing down the volume settings of all the instrument amplifiers. Then turn them all down to zero and take a 30 minute break. Go outside and give your ears a chance to freshen up. Now go back into the rehearsal room, but don't plug your instruments in and don't touch those volume controls. Take a good look at how the band is set up. Does it encourage communication between all musicians? Or is everyone facing an imaginary audience at one end of the room? Forget the imaginary audience - you must be able to play to yourselves before you can play to others.

 

Set the drum kit up between the vocal PA speakers, facing into the room, and position the vocalist on the other side of the room (facing the drum kit). Now ask someone with the appropriate expertise to get the vocal PA sounding as good as possible. Start from scratch if necessary.

 

Put the instrument amplifiers on the sides of the room, facing inwards. Get the amps up off the floor; 33cm (i.e. one metric milk crate) is a good height. Guitar amps should be aimed at guitarists' ears, not their butts (unless their ears are in their butts), so chock them upwards. Bass needs room to develop, so move the bass amp back a bit and let it breathe. Make sure all musicians can see all instrument amplifiers, because that means they'll be able to hear them all as well.

 

Step #3: Play soft

With all the instrument amplifiers down to zero, start playing a song. Listen to the drums. Adjust the level of the PA so that the vocals are in a good balance with the drums. Take your time to get it right, because the vocals and the drums are your points of reference. Now, start turning up the bass amp until it sounds balanced with the drums and vocals. Add the other instruments, one at a time, turning their amps up slowly until they fit into the right balance within the room. If an instrument drowns out the vocals or drums, it's too loud. By now, you should be able to hear a much better balance of the band, and the PA system will no longer seem like a useless piece of howling crap.

 

Take a note of all the instrument amplifier volume settings, and stick to them. With a bit of patience, you'll get used to it.

 

Step 4: Learn to like it

I know what you're thinking now: "my amp isn't giving me the right tone", or "I can't get enough sustain", or any of a zillion other excuses for turning your amp up. Bad luck. The reality is that if you want to sound good through a small PA system, this is your only option. There are solutions to most of these complaints that don't require turning up the amplifier.

 

Now that you've got your volume settings and instrument layout sorted, use the same settings and layout when you play live (but turn the vocalist around to face the audience, of course!). Keep your amps playing to yourselves, and let the PA play to the audience. You'll get much better live sound, and you'll have far less problems with foldback. If the venue's PA is particularly small, work with the sound engineer. You may have to repeat these steps during sound check.

 

Enjoy yourself

The steps above have helped countless musicians sound better, but are they going to work for you? Is your band a unified group of musicians who enjoy playing to an eager audience? If so, the steps will quickly help you fill the void. Or is your band just a bunch of immature ego wankers, each trying to be the star of the show? If so, you'll have a hard time making the steps work, and you can look forward to a frustrating future of playing to the sonic void. At least you'll be fulfilling the important role of being the crap reference that the better sounding bands are compared against. Somebody has to do it.

 

Oh, so true!

 

Later

[J Kylez]

Nice post. I have found that I can find a good tone at a low volume as guitarist. It's nice to turn up sometimes though. I just can't get that nice feedback at the low volume I normally play at. That's where the big rooms are nice.

[Tommy Tune]

Most of the time, I don't have time to go through all of that turn your amp to zero and experimantation stuff. I plug in, tune up, turn on & burn. As time goes on, you'll instinctively know if you are too loud. If your ears are ringin' after the 3rd song, you're probably too loud. Besides that, a band that practices enough at lower volumes, shouldn't have any problems keeping it down at a club. A good indicator is in watching people talk to each other in the bar. There are definitely indicators if you know what to look for. If I'm still questioning it, I'll sometimes ask the Owner or Manager if we're too loud. They'll tell you. If you know that you are a decent band and people start piling out of the door, you're definitely too loud.

[Randyman...]

Most bands I know STILL practice LOUD.

 

I would say the stage volume at a show with a good PA should be LOWER than at practice.

 

Yes, with practice, you will get it down to more of a science. Just remember, what you hear on stage is not what the audience hears. Most live sound guys will actually MUTE the guitar in the mains since the multiple 4x12" cabs on stage are already LOUDER than the 2500 watt PA to begin with!

 

Later

[Tommy Tune]

Thats why I'm a big fan of combo amps. I played clubs that hold 3500 people with a combo amp. No need for anything more. Part of being a professional is having the right tools for the job. So, the "out with the garbage" idea is a very good one.

[J Kylez]

Originally posted by Randyman... Most bands I know STILL practice LOUD. I would say the stage volume at a show with a good PA should be LOWER than at practice. Yes, with practice, you will get it down to more of a science. Just remember, what you hear on stage is not what the audience hears. Most live sound guys will actually MUTE the guitar in the mains since the multiple 4x12" cabs on stage are already LOUDER than the 2500 watt PA to begin with! Later

 

Aside from reflections from the FOH I'd say it should be about equal. We use our amps as our instrument monitors for the most part, just like practice. Although, the IEM's have changed this a bit.

[Tommy Tune]

We're always about the same too. If anything a little louder in a live situation.

[coolmanchad]

this is a great post. i find humor in it, because the band we run sound for, they play way too LOUD in practice and at concerts, and they complain about not being able to hear what's going on with the other instruments... i checked their spl level one time during a sound check at a show one time and their stage gear plus a little vox in the monitors, they were pushing 107 decibles..... and they say they practice at this level!!!! i've tried to get them to turn down at practices, but they say they can't get into the music unless its that loud. the bad thing is, is that the drummer is the only one who uses ear plugs at all, and they play so loud that our system can barely keep up. oh well... i guess they're gonna be deaf soon, and its not my problem anymore, since i've repeately mentioned it to them. i wear protection as much as i can and wish they'd just turn down a little. too bad they don't listen to a sound guy.

 

 

Chad:cool:

[RickJ]

The combo vs stack debate no longer holds water for me. I play through a Fender 40w combo amp with a single 12. A buddy plays through a full stack (two 4x12's) with a Roland GP and a 40-watt single RU power amp. I'm putting 40 watts into one speaker. He's putting 5 watts into each of the 8 speakers. His tone is much more full in the "sweet spot", and that area is much larger on stage than mine. His amp doesn't seem to throw as far on-axis as mine. He can get feedback anytime. OTOH, anyone who stands on-axis to my amp is getting his head shaved. (Usually me, because I stand in front of it and it's on a 45-degree angle on an amp stand.)

 

From a sound tech perspective, I find that the channel gain on the guitar strip is always lower with a combo amp than it is with a 4x12. A close-mic'd speaker in a 100-watt 4x12 will never be as loud as a single speaker in a 40-watt combo. (And technically, the on-axis throw distance is about the same.)

[Kennykeys]

Good post, RickJ. I never considered this too much, but I have noticed the problem of 1-12 combos being VERY directional and really carrying well into a room. Of course I'm talking smaller places or lower volume levels. Once it packs up with people, or it gets later and the crowd gets louder, then I can usually bring the guitar back into the mix to help spread it out through the PA. And of course I've noticed the phenomenem of how much better almost any small combo ( even a 15 watt tuber) will sound when you run it through a 4-12 cab. Just never considered the possibilty of using that setup live. After all, you've gone to the combo partly because you're trying to get smaller. But yeah, one of my guitar players refuses to tilt back his combo ....he can't stand it because it IS so piercing. Hmmmm, you've got me thinking....A nice 22 watt Deluxe, a 4-12, only 5 watts to each speaker, sounds great UP CLOSE but it's NOT a sonic laser shooting off the stage, get him into the PA mix right from the git-go. Only one problem,....I ain't movin that Marshall bottom!!!!!

[Tommy Tune]

LOL.........I think that's why alot of people are going to the pod's. Nothing to carry and a decent sound. Eventually, I can see that there will be a small box to plug into and everything will go direct and be fed through IEM's. Kinda like an FOH mix in your head. Then stage volume wouldn't really be an issue at all.

[RickJ]

I have good reason to be tainted: The New York State Smoking Ban. About 80% of the people in our neck of the woods who go to bars are smokers. As of two weeks ago, they can't smoke in bars anymore.

 

Show attendance is down -- WAY down -- and those who do show up are outside 45 minutes out of an hour. The room always seems empty, and the out-of-town bands think it's because they suck. (Which is generally not true.)

 

Tonight, for example, a regional touring metal band from NYC called Mad Ball played the club where I work most weekends. For the three openers, it was 20 people inside, 150 outside. When Mad Ball took the stage, the place was packed. Then, slowly, person after person sneaked out until there were maybe 90 or so in the room when Mad Ball finished.

 

Encore? ... Ahem ... Encore? Nope -- the freekin' crowd left to have a cigarette! Not one person clapped or screamed after the band said their initial good-bye.

 

Back on topic: The guitar player from Mad Ball blew up his Marshall 100 watt head on the previous gig, so he had me run DIs to his rack-mounted pod. The two 4 x 12 cabs were silent, but they looked good on stage. He heard his guitar thorough his dedicated 15/horn wedge. Both he and I agreed that it was the best sound we'd heard for that band in that room.

 

I'm not advocating the use of the Pod ... the point is, I got to control 100% of the stage volume. As a part-time and long-time guitar player, I made sure he was CRANKED in the FOH.

 

Interestingly, one song into the set he asked me to turn the guitar down in his monitor. It was facing him for a change, instead of blowing the backs of his knees off.

 

I've been there, and now I'd much rather hear it from the monitors than from my own cheesy-sounding and too-loud amp.

 

Are we all getting spoiled by listening to too many recordings? Do we really think that we can emulate them all live?

 

How much processing is too much? I have weaned myself from a max of 20 comp/gates to 3: One on a vox sub, one4 on the bass, and one on the kick. And that kick is starting to sound so much better if I minimize the compression and bypass the gate.

 

Sorry for the rant.

[Craig Vecchione]

I think most of the problem of crappy too-loud sound comes from the typical guitar musician thinking that it's not rock 'n roll unless the audience's ears are bleeding.

 

So they buy whatever amp their guitar (or bass) hero plays, or more accurately, has standing behind him on stage, and since it's usually an endorsement deal it's the biggest amp on the planet.

 

So he cranks it up in his basement and is happy. Then he joins a band of like-minded individuals who gather in same basement and jam. They think it's all cool, so they decide to gig, and realize they need a PA.

 

Nobody wants to spring for $15K+, and being musicians they can't be trusted with splitting the cost, so the odd man out buys a Behringer lunchbox and some Nady speakers, and they hit the bars.

 

And hee we are......