Played a venue with AMAZING sound last night...

[Zeromus-X]

...and I don't know how the hell they did it! The place was probably 30' wide and 60' deep... and probably 20' tall. The only speakers they had were a pair of JBL's with 15" speakers about 3/4" the way up the wall, lined up with the front of the stage, and two 18" JBL cabinets (maybe 2x18, couldn't really tell... "large") that were angled like floor monitors pointed at the crowd from on-stage. The only monitors we had were two Peaveys with 12" speakers. The sound guy had a snake under the stage running up to a Behringer Eurodesk mixer. Not sure what other gear was back there... not much though!

 

Anyway as soon as we went on, I was completely floored. The stage sound was pristine and louder than hell; vocals and guitars cranked in the monitors, plenty of bass coming off the backs of the subs. Kick drum could be felt on stage and wasn't in the monitors! I walked out front at one point (wireless) and it was loud and clear out there as well.

 

Made me look into some more JBL products, that's for sure!

 

Gotta love it when you find just the right place to play, with just the right sound, and a soundman who knows his {censored}.

[Tommy Tune]

I had a similar experience in the ballroom area of a fire hall. The hall had a stage that was 20 ft deep and 30 ft wide. The dance floor was combination of hardwood and carpet. There were mirrors on the wall and the ceiling was about 20 ft high. The room itself was about 40 ft wide by 100 ft deep. I'm not sure how or why but there was great sound here too. The monitors were clean and loud and the FOH mix sounded sweet. I dunno why it sounded so good but it was nice to get that kind of sound out of a place that I thought would be a nightmare.

[groove.77]

Maybe because necessity requires that they tune the system to the room? I've seen house systems that haven't been tuned to the room because 'it sounds good anyway'. People hear the noticeable acoustic shortfalls of a certain room and tune the system to the room, thus it sounds really good.

 

My theory, anyway.

[Tommy Tune]

I dunno.........you'd be suprised. There are alot of people that have no idea what sounds good and what doesn't. Unless you are a soundman or a musician, the only 2 distinguishable things that make it sound "bad" for most people are too much volume or feedback. There are alot of musicians and soundmen that don't know what good sound is like, either. This forum, in one way or another, has established that. We, as musicians or soundmen or both should have a better idea of what is good and what is not acceptable. After all, we're subjected to it more often than most everyday people. Then again, Audiopile brought up a good point in another forum. If you are continually listening to crap.............then mediocrity starts to sound phenominal. I bought a wireless mic. I'm the only one in the band that gets to go out and actually hear what the crowd hears. There is a vast difference between the stage mix and what's being heard on the floor. Then again, we have our own sound guy. I'm not too sure that most musicians realize the difference. With a good sound guy, it's tremendous. The guys in my band always ask me........"What's it sound like out there?" To me it's like night and day. It's true that every room is different and some systems are better in the hands of a capable tech.

[Tommy Tune]

So there you have it. Sometimes it's the room and sometimes it's the engineer. Sometimes you can get away with run of the mill gear but, obviously, run of the mill gear won't get you by in every venue. The flip side of this is that there are rooms where there is absolutely nothing that you can do to stop it from sounding like doo-doo. There is this place that I've played a few times in the past on the outskirts of Philly. It has a slate floor, high ceiling (drywall), nothing to baffel the sound, 120 ft long and 40 ft wide. GIANT SHOEBOX. No matter what volume you play in at this place, it's always way too loud. Forget about effects. You'd be best served using the natural reverb of the room. It's literally like playing in a cave. The cops are called religiously by the locals because every band that plays there is way too loud. The owner thanked us for "keeping it down" after we played because the cops didn't show. My ears still rang well into the following day. I told the rest of the guys in the band that I didn't want to play there anymore because it's simply too hard to control the sound. Besides that, the pay is not so hot. It's just more headaches for less money.

[Phantasm]

 

Originally posted by Audiopile A few year back I supplied some addition monitor power for a show at a local club with an "installed system". I stuck around for soundchecks to make sure everything would be ok... and returned for the last set to retrieve my gear... and I was blown away. The house system consisted of the following: 1) An OLD Carvin MX-2422 board 2) 2 homemade front loaded double 18" subs, Peavey loaded. 3) 2 homemade front loaded double 12" mids. 4) 2 big ole Peavey horns 5) Amps: pawn shop assortment of Crown DC-300, Haffler maybe, Peavey CS-800. 6) FX: pawn shop assortment of ART, Alesis, DOD, Soundtech. 7) Mics: pawn shop assortment of just about everything imaginable that could be bought used for under $25 ea. The sound was HUGE... absolutely unbelievable. Blew me away.

 

 

The guitarist in my band is always saying "you can make just about anything sound acceptable if you just try to work around its shortcomings." This is another example of how this can be very true. I think that we buy good gear just to have less shortcomings to overcome.