Eq'ing a microphone to not feedback at all

J

Jimmy Hardin

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Jan 29, 2013
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I have seen a video and on the video I saw this guy ring out his monitors to where when he put his mic in front of it with the ball end pointing at the monitors and side fills , there was no feedback at all. It said on the video that it was eq'ed to industry standard. I have heard the phrase industry standard a few years ago at a gig but didn't know how to go about doing it . But my question is this how do I get my monitors and mic to do that like I was just telling you. I can ring them out good but I have never had them rung out that good . How do I go about doing that without cutting out completely the dynamics on the vocals?


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The short answer is you really can't totally eliminate the possibility for feedback without just turning it way down.

That being said you need to find the frequencies that are the ringing in the monitors to try and reduce them. A good way to do that is with a simple phone RTA app. there are several of these available and most do a pretty good job of picking out the frequency that is feeding back. Reduce the frequencies that are feeding back and then you can turn the mic up.

Thats the bare bones basics of it. The rest will come with experience, better equipment helps as well, but you should be able to get decent results with just about anything.
 
Luke Robinson said:
The short answer is you really can't totally eliminate the possibility for feedback without just turning it way down.

That being said you need to find the frequencies that are the ringing in the monitors to try and reduce them. A good way to do that is with a simple phone RTA app. there are several of these available and most do a pretty good job of picking out the frequency that is feeding back. Reduce the frequencies that are feeding back and then you can turn the mic up.

Thats the bare bones basics of it. The rest will come with experience, better equipment helps as well, but you should be able to get decent results with just about anything.
Click to expand...

That's what I been doing . I have a rta app for my phone and love using it. I just saw this video of this guy doing this on YouTube and thought man he is doing something that I would love to have happen to my system with no feedback at any monitor or side fill. And I was wondering what the industry standard Eqing setting was so I could do that with my system .
 
The mic channel could have a gate active on it. I real test would be to point the mic at a wedge, and then clap or check another mic. I don't think it would pass that test.
 
A few notes:

I watched the video, and it may be as impressive as it looks and it may not. You can't really tell without being there.

- What kind of monitors do you have? The video is using pro grade monitors. There is a reason they have commas in their price tags, and feedback stability is one of them.

- I do not recommend trying to eliminate all feedback from a wedge before sound check. Notch the 2 or maybe 3 first offending frequencies and wait for the band to show up. Until the band starts playing, you don't know what the dominant acoustic issues are going to be. You could have a guy with an SVT 8 X 10" bass rig or Marshall full stack or field snare drum that completely changes the acoustic signature of the stage. EQ'ing out feedback points is lowering volume at specific frequencies and you may need that volume come show time. You may also have a singer that sings quite loud, so you don't need to make the wedges super feedback resistant because the input signal is so strong.

- Don't try to eliminate all feedback in a small empty room. Again, just hit the 2 or 3 first offenders and wait. The room acoustics will change once the MABs show up (Mobile Acoustic Baffles aka - the audience). All the reflections bouncing around the room, causing feedback will be reduced when the MABs arrive.

- Sound quality is paramount - You can EQ a monitor to not feed back almost completely, but if it sounds bad, then it is useless to the musician.

- When I have a singer that needs/wants lots of monitor, I like to give them 2 wedges in a "Texas Headphone" style setup. When that fails to be enough (I'm looking at you Reggae bands!), I bring in the side fills.

- Sometimes the musician is deaf. I had a keyboard player from a 1970's band (national level artist) that was seriously deaf, so much so that the whole band and crew warned me before the sound check that he would complain constantly. I watched my monitor amps bounce off the limiters the entire set on his mix. There was no feedback, and he wasn't happy. Some folks just can't be helped.

​- All monitors will feed back if you push them hard enough, even the ones with commas in their price tags and processors fully configured.
 
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Fred Garrett said:
A few notes:

I watched the video, and it may be as impressive as it looks and it may not. You can't really tell without being there.

- What kind of monitors do you have? The video is using pro grade monitors. There is a reason they have commas in their price tags, and feedback stability is one of them.

- I do not recommend trying to eliminate all feedback from a wedge before sound check. Notch the 2 or maybe 3 first offending frequencies and wait for the band to show up. Until the band starts playing, you don't know what the dominant acoustic issues are going to be. You could have a guy with an SVT 8 X 10" bass rig or Marshall full stack or field snare drum that completely changes the acoustic signature of the stage. EQ'ing out feedback points is lowering volume at specific frequencies and you may need that volume come show time. You may also have a singer that sings quite loud, so you don't need to make the wedges super feedback resistant because the input signal is so strong.

- Don't try to eliminate all feedback in a small empty room. Again, just hit the 2 or 3 first offenders and wait. The room acoustics will change once the MABs show up (Mobile Acoustic Baffles aka - the audience). All the reflections bouncing around the room, causing feedback will be reduced when the MABs arrive.

- Sound quality is paramount - You can EQ a monitor to not feed back almost completely, but if it sounds bad, then it is useless to the musician.

- When I have a singer that needs/wants lots of monitor, I like to give them 2 wedges in a "Texas Headphone" style setup. When that fails to be enough (I'm looking at you Reggae bands!), I bring in the side fills.

- Sometimes the musician is deaf. I had a keyboard player from a 1970's band (national level artist) that was seriously deaf, so much so that the whole band and crew warned me before the sound check that he would complain constantly. I watched my monitor amps bounce off the limiters the entire set on his mix. There was no feedback, and he wasn't happy. Some folks just can't be helped.

​- All monitors will feed back if you push them hard enough, even the ones with commas in their price tags and processors fully configured.
Click to expand...

Yeah one thing and you brought me to this point of thinking is that who knows if this video was done after sound check where he could have gotten all the frequencies out that would feedback while the band was playing . I just want to do it too much and lose the sound and levels that I would actually need later. It's probably best if I keep ringing them out like I been doing and leave that stuff to the pro's. Lol
 
There are a couple really important things to keep in mind when watching that video:

1. He is yelling into that microphone rather loudly. Yes, it is amplifying his voice, but notice that he is right up on the mic and his voice is quite loud. This allows the input gain of the microphone channel to be lower to begin with.

2. They are using wedges with large format compression drivers in them with lots of power behind them. This allows the system to remain linear with large peaks. You simply can not get this same kind of performance out of little lightweight wedges with a small amplifier, it does not work.

3. Having the system processors tuned correctly is also a big deal. You should be able to get tunings from the manufacturer that will allow that kind of performance if you are using those kinds of tools.

Personally, I can't stand a graphic EQ, regardless how many bands it has on it. I very much prefer a fully parametric EQ with at least 5 bands or more per channel. I can get similar performance to what he is demonstrating here when biamping Peavey QW-M wedges with a Pro-9200 amp and an appropriate DSP based processor. I do not use 31 band GEQ's, instead I use the parametric EQ's on the console outputs.

However, I can not get that kind of performance when using Peavey SP or PV series monitors, they just don't have the sauce that is in the QW-M.
 
Fred Garrett said:
A few notes:

I watched the video, and it may be as impressive as it looks and it may not. You can't really tell without being there.

- What kind of monitors do you have? The video is using pro grade monitors. There is a reason they have commas in their price tags, and feedback stability is one of them.

- I do not recommend trying to eliminate all feedback from a wedge before sound check. Notch the 2 or maybe 3 first offending frequencies and wait for the band to show up. Until the band starts playing, you don't know what the dominant acoustic issues are going to be. You could have a guy with an SVT 8 X 10" bass rig or Marshall full stack or field snare drum that completely changes the acoustic signature of the stage. EQ'ing out feedback points is lowering volume at specific frequencies and you may need that volume come show time. You may also have a singer that sings quite loud, so you don't need to make the wedges super feedback resistant because the input signal is so strong.

- Don't try to eliminate all feedback in a small empty room. Again, just hit the 2 or 3 first offenders and wait. The room acoustics will change once the MABs show up (Mobile Acoustic Baffles aka - the audience). All the reflections bouncing around the room, causing feedback will be reduced when the MABs arrive.

- Sound quality is paramount - You can EQ a monitor to not feed back almost completely, but if it sounds bad, then it is useless to the musician.

- When I have a singer that needs/wants lots of monitor, I like to give them 2 wedges in a "Texas Headphone" style setup. When that fails to be enough (I'm looking at you Reggae bands!), I bring in the side fills.

- Sometimes the musician is deaf. I had a keyboard player from a 1970's band (national level artist) that was seriously deaf, so much so that the whole band and crew warned me before the sound check that he would complain constantly. I watched my monitor amps bounce off the limiters the entire set on his mix. There was no feedback, and he wasn't happy. Some folks just can't be helped.

​- All monitors will feed back if you push them hard enough, even the ones with commas in their price tags and processors fully configured.
Click to expand...

I have 3 peavey PV 15's, What i have been doing is when i setup i ring those first 2 or 3 frequencies out and thats it. I wasnt thinking that i should do it while the band is playing at sound check, I will look into doing that at my next show. I agree with the comments about me trying to do that with non pro gear, I feel the same way, The only ones i have ever saw doing that in any way is sound crews that has pro gear. I wasnt thinking about it like that. Thanks ya'll for bringing that to light for me. :)
 
In general you can EQ monitors without the band playing, in fact they would probably appreciate not getting subjected to brain darts while standing in front of the monitors.

The dominant mechanisms controlling feedback modes, is frequency response (of speakers and mics), and path length. A secondary effect is how the musician standing in front of the mic, alters that mic's response/pattern. For max gain before feedback, you may need a meat puppet standing at each mic while being EQ'd, but these differences will be subtle.

JR
 
John Roberts said:
In general you can EQ monitors without the band playing, in fact they would probably appreciate not getting subjected to brain darts while standing in front of the monitors.

The dominant mechanisms controlling feedback modes, is frequency response (of speakers and mics), and path length. A secondary effect is how the musician standing in front of the mic, alters that mic's response/pattern. For max gain before feedback, you may need a meat puppet standing at each mic while being EQ'd, but these differences will be subtle.

JR
Click to expand...

Yes, I have found all of this to be quite true.

The only thing is that if you are working with a musician who is going to be wearing a hat for the show, you should have the meat puppet wear a similar style hat when you are EQ'ing the wedges. A cowboy style hat certainly reflects sound from the wedge back into the front of the mic and is dependent on how the artist stands and holds the mic in relationship to the wedges. Likewise, a ball cap with a flat or curved bill also will affect the performance, though they will all be in different ways. Some attention should always be paid to these issues because they will jump up to whip you at the most inopportune moment.
 
Josh Millward said:
Yes, I have found all of this to be quite true.

The only thing is that if you are working with a musician who is going to be wearing a hat for the show, you should have the meat puppet wear a similar style hat when you are EQ'ing the wedges. A cowboy style hat certainly reflects sound from the wedge back into the front of the mic and is dependent on how the artist stands and holds the mic in relationship to the wedges. Likewise, a ball cap with a flat or curved bill also will affect the performance, though they will all be in different ways. Some attention should always be paid to these issues because they will jump up to whip you at the most inopportune moment.
Click to expand...

EQing monitors.

Some of the things that help have already been mentioned. To get the best gain before feedback a good monitor is a must. The trick I use is I use SMAART I put pink noise into the monitor so it is going thru the monitor EQ. I route the vocal mic pre-fader into one of the channels of SMAART. I aim the vocal mic into the monitor (be sure the mic is only routed to SMAART at this time and not to the house or monitor feeds) and proceed to EQ the frequencies that are sticking out. This process usually eliminates needing a person to stand in place with or without a hat. Then the next thing to do is listen to see if you got carried away or not. Many times I also find that I need to carve a little bit around 250 out also. If you did it right and it worked it will still sound good and be resistant to feedback. I have been able to make monitors extremely feedback resistant with this method (most of the time) sometimes it doesn’t work the first time you try it and you have to do it from scratch again. I like to start at the lower frequencies and go up to the high frequencies it seems to work better this way. I have gotten monitors to be extremely feedback resistant to the point of someone pointing a mic at a monitor and it is not feeding back.

One time just for my knowledge I ran a cable from a monitor on stage to another one of the same model and had it next to me so I could hear what the person testing the monitor (talking and yelling into it) and telling me to keep turning it up was hearing and if and when it feedback. It was at an unbelievably painful level and I vowed never to do that again. And one of the musicians had arrived towards the end of the experiment. I told the guy I was working with that that level was insane and if they ask for more than that they must be deaf. A little bit later the musician sheepishly asked for more knowing what I had said. So I gave him more.
 
While EQing for maximum gain before feedback can be a great move if you are working with bands that you have never worked with before and aren't sure how loud they will like things to be coming back at them at... IMHO often times well balanced and "good sounding" monitor mixes require much less level than they would otherwise..... especially in hard acoustical environments. YMMV.
 
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Josh Millward said:
The only thing is that if you are working with a musician who is going to be wearing a hat for the show, you should have the meat puppet wear a similar style hat when you are EQ'ing the wedges. A cowboy style hat certainly reflects sound from the wedge back into the front of the mic and is dependent on how the artist stands and holds the mic in relationship to the wedges. Likewise, a ball cap with a flat or curved bill also will affect the performance, though they will all be in different ways. Some attention should always be paid to these issues because they will jump up to whip you at the most inopportune moment.
Click to expand...
Eyeglasses cause feedback too.
 
Mike Brown said:
While EQing for maximum gain before feedback can be a great move if you are working with bands that you have never worked with before and aren't sure how loud they will like things to be coming back at them at... IMHO often times well balanced and "good sounding" monitor mixes require much less level than they would otherwise..... especially in hard acoustical environments. YMMV.
Click to expand...

If you are EQing it properly with SMAART you hopefully aren’t sucking the life out of it. One of the problems with the “RINGING” out of monitors is you are likely to get carried away. You can make a monitor never feedback because there is almost nothing left to amplify. A properly EQed monitor will hopefully be feedback resistant and sound good. But the difference between a really good monitor (expensive) and anything else becomes very obvious in a case like this.

Unless the acts hearing is so shot they need frequencies boosted that are going to feedback. For the times when linear doesn’t work and you have minor problems with the monitors occasionally squeaking I just very recently wondered how a good Automatic feedback suppressor with only 2 filters set to release after 5 seconds for each one would work. Just to catch those times when they do something like dip the mic into the monitor when you have had to set it too harsh.
 
I just realized the one thing I forgot to spell out and kind of assumed it was a known. The quality of the EQ makes a big difference. Some EQs (usually the cheap ones) just don’t work well for monitors. The final decision is still out, but so far I seem to be having good results with the TruEQ in the Midas M32 for monitors and also for my vocal Mix Bus insert. If you look at how the filters interact it is much more like a parametric. If you pull down 3 filters next to each other you don’t have the bumps between them, they act together. You also have the Parametric built into the Mix Bus send so you can use that also.
 
A couple things that haven't been mentioned so far....

- the mic(s) make a big difference... compare an SM58 vs an Audix OM7 for instance and you will have several more db of level out of the monitors before feedback before making any cuts

- coaxial monitors are typically more feedback resistant

- good phase response tends to also help

This is one of the reasons why some modern wedges which are coaxial with FIR DSP for flat phase response not only sound good but have great gain before feedback without having to make drastic EQ cuts. You are already a few big steps ahead in this case.
 
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I find these points to be misleading. The phase response of a speaker itself isn't directly related to the start of feedback. There is a comb filter phase response that is related, but simply moving a speaker even inches differently from its original relationship to the mic changes everything. So any speaker could be made better or worse by moving it regardless of its original phase response.

Phase response and coax monitors could play a big part in sound quality, but you can't make a general statement about how they affect the causes of feedback. Feedback is "system" related so where any mic or speaker might be great in one venue it could be problematic in another.
 
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