Shading

Randy Gartner

Randy Gartner

Junior
Jan 12, 2011
465
18
18
72
Pennsylvania
randygartnersound.com
The band I work with does 2 jobs a year where a regional sound company provides the system and I just bring my console.This year at the event on Tuesday,they were using new cabinets.3 line array cabinets per side ( ground stacked) with 2 double 21" subs under the stage.The subs were on an aux.The system sounded great and the subs were really full and punchy at FOH.I was concerned that the people in the first few rows were really getting beaten to death by the subs,but the tech told me not to worry that they were " shaded". I have heard the term before but really don't understand how it works.
 
Re: Shading

Looking forward to hearing some input on this as well. I believe I understand shading in terms of the actual line, but I dont understand how you would "shade" two center clustered subs.

I may stand to be corrected but shading is turning down the lower boxes that are closer to the crowd and their faces while boxes that cover the back of the room and further into the crowd are louder. Helps to keep a more consistent volume throughout the venue and from abusing the punters ears up from too much.
 
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Re: Shading

Evan F. Hunter said:
Looking forward to hearing some input on this as well. I believe I understand shading in terms of the actual line, but I dont understand how you would "shade" two center clustered subs.
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Yeah, short of the "aardvarking" discussion that happened here the other day (I need stereo subs on an aux so I can +++ and --- every other slider on the GEQ, and opposite on the other sub send) I have no idea how this would relate to center clustered subs... it doesn't make any sense.

Evan F. Hunter said:
I may stand to be corrected but shading is turning down the lower boxes that are closer to the crowd and their faces while boxes that cover the back of the room and further into the crowd are louder. Helps to keep a more consistent volume throughout the venue and from abusing the punters ears up from too much.
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You can shade both magnitude (or level, or loudness) of each output channel from your processor or amp rack and you can also shade in the frequency domain to reduce the comb filtering functions when you have adjacent boxes that do not have enough splay or their coverage overlaps too much.

This was originally demonstrated to me in a system that had three tight packed top boxes in an array and there was tremendous comb filtering because of the overlap. Essentially, we shut off the horn in the middle box and lowered the low pass filter for the woofer in the box until we got to a point where the woofers were coupling across the array without combing. Having the additional output from the center horn would have been nice, but in this case the combing was doing too much damage to the sound quality. So, you could say that we shaded the center box to make the whole array work better. We got better directivity and output from the low end of the array because it was physically larger and we had more drivers, but we did not have as big of an issue with high frequency combing since the center horn was off. It was a neat learning experience.
 
Re: Shading

Randy Gartner said:
I was concerned that the people in the first few rows were really getting beaten to death by the subs,but the tech told me not to worry that they were " shaded".
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Being under the stage, the subs were shaded from the sun.
The tech that told you a pair of subs were "shaded" was "shining you on".
 
Re: Shading

So did you listen? Was the level reduced?

You can do all sorts of things with "steering' and such, but one thing you CANNOT do is to make the sound "hop over" the people in front.

If the people were closer to the subs-then it is going to be louder-assuming they are in a straight line between the subs and the FOH.

People use all sorts of terms (most are made up) that mean nothing-or they NO idea what it actually means-but they they think it sounds cool-or they don't under the basic concept-so they want to impress people.

To me it is not a question for a forum-but rather a simple test to walk up and listen and decide for yourself.

Shading cam mean all sorts of things-but reducing the level directly in front of the subs is one I have yet to hear.
 
Re: Shading

Ivan Beaver said:
So did you listen? Was the level reduced?

You can do all sorts of things with "steering' and such, but one thing you CANNOT do is to make the sound "hop over" the people in front.

If the people were closer to the subs-then it is going to be louder-assuming they are in a straight line between the subs and the FOH.

People use all sorts of terms (most are made up) that mean nothing-or they NO idea what it actually means-but they they think it sounds cool-or they don't under the basic concept-so they want to impress people.

To me it is not a question for a forum-but rather a simple test to walk up and listen and decide for yourself.

Shading cam mean all sorts of things-but reducing the level directly in front of the subs is one I have yet to hear.
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In fact, I did walk up in front of the stage durring the show and the sub level was lower there than at FOH which was about 50ft back.
 
Re: Shading

Randy Gartner said:
In fact, I did walk up in front of the stage durring the show and the sub level was lower there than at FOH which was about 50ft back.
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So were the subs in the center or off to each side.

If off to each side-then there is a possibility that it could be lower in the middle up front.

If they were centered-and it was quieter-then there is something that is "missing".
 
Re: Shading

Randy Gartner said:
In fact, I did walk up in front of the stage durring the show and the sub level was lower there than at FOH which was about 50ft back.
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Randy,

Did you notice less low frequency, or less "punch" around the front of the stage?

Since the subs were centered, and the top cabs were left /right, they probably were time aligned for the mix location.
Up close, they would tend to have cancellation around the crossover frequency, usually in the "punch" range.
 
Re: Shading

Bennett Prescott said:
Randy, are you sure there were no other subs? Did the line array go really low?
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Bennet,
There were no other subs.Just the 2 pair of double 21" subs under the center of the stage.I have no idea what was in the 3 gorund stacked line array cabs on each side, or where they were crossed over so I can't really speculate on how low they were running them.
 
Re: Shading

Art Welter said:
Randy,

Did you notice less low frequency, or less "punch" around the front of the stage?

Since the subs were centered, and the top cabs were left /right, they probably were time aligned for the mix location.
Up close, they would tend to have cancellation around the crossover frequency, usually in the "punch" range.
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Art,that could be the case.The subs sounded real full and loud back at FOH. I asked the provider's tech to mix a few songs so I could take pictures.When I walked in front of the stage,the low end was not overwhelming.
 
Re: Shading

Randy Gartner said:
Art,that could be the case.The subs sounded real full and loud back at FOH. I asked the provider's tech to mix a few songs so I could take pictures.When I walked in front of the stage,the low end was not overwhelming.
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Was this inside or out? Room modes could explain a bit of it.

There is almost nothing you can do with just 2 cabinets together under a stage (short of an endfire or cardoid array) that could result in any sort of "steering"-except maybe a tad sideways in one direction only.
 
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