Voice only Tops

[WRGKMC]

That's so far from the truth as to be, unfortunately, laughable. I don't know how to put it in a milder form. The vocal frequency range is typically from 150Hz up into the 5-10kHz range (including the lower harmonics), the same place as just about everything else.

 

Yes I agree, but that response curve is "Not" linear and the vocals bass power drops down below the other instruments like bass and kick which dominate and mask just about anything else that extends down into their ranges. You aren't going to be pumping bass into the horns and even the deepest vocals don't produce much energy below 200Hz where the bass guitar and kick dominates. Yes they overlap but my point was about how various instruments reside in a mix and tend to dominate the various drivers in a system if not by a crossover and driver response but also how someone mixing should target the natural frequency ranges of those instruments.

 

This is a simple illustration of what I'm talking about. You don't see allot of bass if any extending up into the vocal ranges and vice versa, nor should you if you expect it to sound any good. If these instruments did in fact have a flat linear response as you suggest, all you would have is white noise.

 

[dboomer]

The problem that's being described is intermodulation distortion where one signal modulates another.

 

This particular type of IM distortion is known as "Doppler distortion". If you think about producing a 1kHz tone, the driver moves back and forth 1000 times. now if you add a 100Hz tone at the same time 500 of those cycles happen when the cone is extended outward and 500 when the cone is moved inward so your 1 kHz tone is modulated by the bass frequency. It's one of those little unavoidable things. But moving the vocals off the instrument channel will help to minimize it. Of course it all depends on how things are set up in the system, but it will help.

 

If you have enough rig for the gig, and it's properly tuned of course, I think the difference would be pretty darn small.

 

Agreed. Like I said earlier, IF you have adequate headroom in the system then the benefits will be very small.

 

[dboomer]

 

I know this is straying OT quite a bit but you've brought an interesting question to mind. I always wondered about co-axial speakers that don't have a separate "horn" per-say but rather an acoustically transparent dust cap on the woofer through which the HF passes. Doesn't the LF modulate the compression driver's output drastically in doing this.

 

Yes ... you get doppler distortion here too. It is unavoidable, but again the amount of doppler distortion depends on how low of a frequency is also on that cone.

 

This is another reason why I am a proponent of Aux Fed Subs. You end up pulling the super lows right out of the main system.

[witesol]

going back to the OP issue.

 

these kinds of clients can be a pain. They know a little and have heard some "professional advice" . Since he didn't actually know if the mains sound was any good, he must be basing his desire on something. Often there is the expert friend, wife, band guy, etc ..feeding opinion. If your rig isn't running at full tilt, is of reasonable brand/model, and is sufficient for the room, balanced properly, I see no need for an A/B PA rig. Bottom line is you want the job but you have to measure what putting up with a diva is worth too.

 

You had a few things going on:

too much stage wash.

A singer that wandered off axis from the wedge

a poor acoustic space in which to mix

a post-show discussion about some future event and how to make it better.

 

Obviously you thought your mix was fine. Don't we all think that! lol But, could it be better, are your mixing skills one of your strong points? On smaller gigs, and gigs within spaces, the house sound that the singer perceives does factor into the onstage experience. I can tell what my voice sounds like in a room after years of singing with bands. So, a combo of monitors and house sound is what makes up the experience. An out of balance house PA with tons of sub info washing the stage can ruin the singer's experience. Could that combo be better?

 

Could you have another wedge or two on the singer's mix? Were there other things in his mix, like drums or bass? How was the tone of the wedge? It may have been loud but how was the fidelity? Was the stage volume of the bass player too loud? I had this discussing Saturday, telling the bass player that his stage volume alone is enough for the needs of the gig and that it's off in the house. ..after he turned it down the monitors all of a sudden sounded great.. duh.

 

Can something be done for the stage or room acoustics? pipe and drape? better aiming of the PA is free too btw..

 

If you want the gig, opening up some dialog with the artist can go a long way. We tend to butt heads with semi clueless ideas. I have. Something as simple as telling the artist that you're going to be using your "vocal optimized, modded system" seeing as he has such great ears...that kind of BS can sometimes make an artist feel like it's handled.

[Tomm Williams]

going back to the OP issue.

 

these kinds of clients can be a pain. They know a little and have heard some "professional advice" . Since he didn't actually know if the mains sound was any good, he must be basing his desire on something. Often there is the expert friend, wife, band guy, etc ..feeding opinion. If your rig isn't running at full tilt, is of reasonable brand/model, and is sufficient for the room, I see no need for an A/B PA rig. Bottom line is you want the job but you have to measure what putting up with a diva is worth too.

 

You had a few things going on:

too much stage wash.

A singer that wandered off axis

a poor acoustic space in which to mix

a post-show discussion about some future event and how to make it better.

 

Obviously you thought your mix was fine. Don't we all think that! lol But, could it be better, are your mixing skills one of your strong points? On smaller gigs, the house sound that the singer perceives does factor into the onstage experience. I can tell what my voice sounds like in a room after years of singing with bands. So, a combo of monitors and house sound is what makes up the experience. An out of balance house PA with tons of sub info washing the stage can ruin the singer's experience. Could that combo be better?

 

Could you have another wedge or two on the singer's mix? Were there other things in his mix, like drums or bass? How was the tone of the wedge? It may have been loud but how was the fidelity? Was the stage volume of the bass player too loud? I had this discussing Saturday, telling the bass player that his stage volume alone is enough for the needs of the gig and that it's off in the house. after he turned it down the monitors all of a sudden sounded great.. duh.

 

Can something be done for the stage or room acoustics? pipe and drape? better aiming of the PA is free too btw..

 

If you want the gig, opening up some dialog with the artist can go a long way. We tend to butt heads with semi clueless ideas. I have. Something as simple as telling the artist that you're going to be using your "vocal optimized, modded system" seeing as he has such great ears...that kind of BS can sometimes make an artist feel like it's handled.

 

I have no hesitation stating my mixing skills are pretty good. The fact that the audience gave the event a standing ovation both nights tells me they agree. I gave the singer two wedges but he couldn't stay in front of them and I have quality monitors that sound quite good, EAW and Bag End. He and I spent quite a bit of time before the show EQing his mic (Line6 XDv55) exactly as he wanted it both in the mains and wedges. This was done however without the whole band going so once his too-loud wedge started contributing to the stage issues, I think all the fine tuning was a moot point. Yes there was bass in his wedge..................at his request ! so I had my challenges.

 

The room was as treated as it could be but still far, far from optimum. Concrete floor, tin roof, even with a decent crowd still lots of reverberation. Though I don't think many of us get to work very many "Perfect" events (from our perspective anyway) This one wasn't terrible, just a little too far on the PITA side to walk away feeling like it was a smashing success.

 

I stated earlier that I was not going to invest in IEM's.....................I lied. A Shure PSM200 just fell into my hands at a price I couldn't pass on. If I could have eliminated his monitor from this whole equation, it would have made an enormous difference in the totallity of the event. I prefer wedges but this was one of those times it was the wrong tool.

 

 

[witesol]

sounds like you had it happening..good gear . . Springing an IEM system on an old school guy might prove to be interesting.

[agedhorse]

 

This particular type of IM distortion is known as "Doppler distortion". If you think about producing a 1kHz tone, the driver moves back and forth 1000 times. now if you add a 100Hz tone at the same time 500 of those cycles happen when the cone is extended outward and 500 when the cone is moved inward so your 1 kHz tone is modulated by the bass frequency. It's one of those little unavoidable things. But moving the vocals off the instrument channel will help to minimize it. Of course it all depends on how things are set up in the system, but it will help.

 

If you have enough rig for the gig, and it's properly tuned of course, I think the difference would be pretty darn small.

 

Agreed. Like I said earlier, IF you have adequate headroom in the system then the benefits will be very small.

Right, Doppler distortion is the form of IM that I was describing. The 1kHz will (appear to) increase in frequency as the cone moves out from the lower frequency (carrier) and will (appear to) decrease as the cone moves inward. It's probably also kind of an inverted form of FM (frequency modulation) too, with the carrier being lower than the program rather than the other way around, and the ratio of frequencies is very small compared with most FM.

 

By eliminating the sub excursion high passing the top cabinets, this eliminates the worst of the issues by a long way. The displacement at 100Hz and up is pretty darn small and the displacement along with the frequency of such displacement translates to the frequency shift of the program.

 

There won't be any additional Doppler distortion on a coaz with a screened dust cap because dust cap is tranparent to the HF program and it has to be opaque in order to act on the program. The reason it works with a cone driver being modulated by sub frequencies is the the moving element is the source of both signals.