Jump to content

Here's to you clueless sound provider


Recommended Posts

  • Members

....for lowering the bar so our band can sound great!

I went to a small town street festival last night. It was your typical stage on main street with speakers to the side so that the whole thing pretty much blocked the road at one end of the event. The best thing that can be said is that it wasn't too loud. Here are some fun facts.

20 speaker cabinets used for front house

7 different models of cabinets

4 different sub cabinet models

3 different main cabinet models

One pair of subs were horn loaded "Earthquake" type. These were separated and at the far edge of both stacks

Across the front of the stage were 3 single 18" subs with a wedge on top aimed at the crowd

There were a variety of drivers in like cabinets. Maybe they were proper recones....maybe

FOH rack full of familiar entry level brands and no EQs for the monitors that I could see. And topped off with a BBE 362 Sonic Maximizer.

The mixer was huge but seemed old. I didn't recognize it. It was used as a table with headphones, a few handheld microphones, and some other things on top of the EQ sections of the channel strips. THESE STAYED PUT ON TOP OF THE MIXER DURING THE ENTIRE HOUR WE WERE THERE.That tells you how much channel EQing was going on.

During a changeover they had trouble with one of the instruments.Do they mute ANY of the channels? Nope, all are open so you hear the band and workers talking and sporadic giant popping sounds and voices of "whoa!" coming through the PA after.

So the band starts 20 minutes late. I thought it was strange that they've marked nothing on the board. Turns out it was a time saver as they didn't do anything but turn up one guitar solo during the hour set. There were at least 4 guys "working" yet at times the board was unattended altogether. No urgency about anything.

Although miced, no kick coming through the PA that I could hear, the snare sounded like a tupperware bowl, but acoustically the tupperware would probably have sounded better. There couldn't have been anything north of had 800 Hz out of the snare channel. The bass was ooomphy and undefined. It sounded almost like it had a sustain pedal on it. I could go on, but you get the point.

I just hope at least this outfit was the low bid. Funny too is they had probably 2,000 lbs of speakers and another 300-400lbs in amps (CS800s and RMX). I could have done this event with my 8 box FBT Vertus rig that weighs in at less than 270 lbs including amps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

So, are you saying you would hire me again?? Its great how the BBE makes everything work. yea, i thought it could have been an octave louder . I took the $225 from that gig and bought some peavey SP1 and mounted a pole cup on the bottom for the next festival. I'm supposed to get to mix the Wham tribute band called " fake me up before you go go"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

In the last few months I have experienced not one but two clubs that have smallish flown mains which are not used during shows... only the floor monitors are used.  When asked about this they either insist the mains are on or they might bring them up a tiny bit if the band actually complains.  Is this a trend to make the band less annoying to people who are not really interested in the music and are just there to talk and drink?

At one of these events we experienced the "monitor only" system fail altogether leaving the band with no sound at all.  It took a while for anyone to even respond to the problem and when they did the "solution" was to offer a new mic to the singer even though clearly four other mics on stage were also not working

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 


LSSD wrote:

 

 

In the last few months I have experienced not one but two clubs that have smallish flown mains which are not used during shows... only the floor monitors are used.  When asked about this they either insist the mains are on or they might bring them up a tiny bit if the band actually complains.  Is this a trend to make the band less annoying to people who are not really interested in the music and are just there to talk and drink?

 

At one of these events we experienced the "monitor only" system fail altogether leaving the band with no sound at all.  It took a while for anyone to even respond to the problem and when they did the "solution" was to offer a new mic to the singer even though clearly four other mics on stage were also not working

 

 We play a club like this a few times a year. Very nice FOH speakers that you can tap into with your own FOH rack/mixer. The problem is that they control the volume and have it set so low that maxing the board doesn't get the thing past dinner music volume. So we end up bringing our own FOH speakers in. It's just stupid. We know it can kick serious butt because they actually turned it up once when they were filming a commerical while we were there. It's 4 QSC KW subs and 4 flown K12's at the stage and a few more on the dance floor.

The best,well worst really, part is that as soon as we're done for the night they turn on their DJ dance crap and it's well over 100 dB. Just pitiful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...