Show 1: Performing Arts Center. 500 seat capacity with traps hung L/R/C and sub flown as part of center cluster. Discrete (read totally hidden) fills for front seats and seats furthest from the stage.
One of the easiest and most effective advances I have had recently. Eveything was exactly as advertised. I thought it was neat that instead of listing everything out they just sent me a photo of the FOH processing rack. I did learn that I am consistantly perfectly happy with a GL2800. I also learned that the secret to not ending up puulling out your hair over an ACP88 is to mount it up at eye level, make sure it is well lit, and count the channels every time before making adjustments. I am not sure if I just found a sweet spot but I seem to like the REV X on the SPX2000 better than I like it on the lower cost Yamaha digital desks.
One of the best things about this show was I had the time to set up my new SMAART system (I am on about show 8 with it since late december) move the mic around and see what a room that sounds good to me looks like on the traces. I also found I liked the spectragraph during the show. After the first couple of songs I knew there was a "tubby" that I didn't like somewhere around the 400 hz I use to fatten the mic response for female vocalists. On the spectrograph it was easy to see a build up at exactly 250 and 500. I was able to use small narrow cuts to clean that up rather than taking out a bigger chunck at one frequency that I would have probably have done by ear.
Show 2: Community Center on the second floor of a historic church. 200 capacity. Two antique Yamaha SOS powered by a home theater amp with a mackie 1604 at FOH. Only processing available is a microverb with a 9 channel graphic. In bypassing the graphic to my carry rack I discover the sends on the snake are TS unbalanced. I end up turning around channels 15 and 16 as XLR returns to stage. Loadin was 3:00, soundcheck was supposed to be at 4:30. Upon firing up the system I discover one side sounds like mud and is at least 6 db down from the other side. Flipping any of the connectors from the board to the inputs on the amp flips the side that sounds bad. Both channels show ok on my rat sniffer and both are metering exactly the same leaving my DSP. Best I can figure out is somewhere in the snake pins 2 and 3 are shorted to each other because it sounded exactly like what you get when you try to sum a balanced signal by connecting the pins. The PA owner thinks it might be the unbalanced inputs on the amp and brings in an antique crown.
Getting the stage patched with my monitor split took at least three tries. Apparently moving 6 channels down two places on the FOH snake was excessively confusing.
So it was now 6:30 I am am just getting to soundcheck. No matter what my bass channel is dead, and I later discovered pin 2 was disconnected on the snake. No other channels were available so I just turn up the bass amp on stage.
Now the interesting thing about this show was the drastic changes in the sound due to changes in temperature. The building had minimal heat. Everytime the front door would open a blast of cold air would come in , and after it made its way to the stage the frequencies that were peaking the most would change. then they would slowly change back as the room warmed up again. by time they got back to where they were someone else would open the front door.
While that was interesting the real pain was that having a single sweepable mid on a Mackie 1604 trying to cover from 100hz to 10 kHz is basically useless. That left me making corrections on my parametric for the entire mix. The problem was I kept watching where the narrow cut had to be wander around from about 400 hz-800 hz. I ended up with a far wider cut than I would have wanted just to cover the possibilities.
Big lesson: The promoters brother in law or whomever with an ancient PA is probably not going to be an effective provider.
Show 3: Listening room. 120 Capacity. (Typical NYC small venue) Absolutely ancient traps L/R backed by some reasonable low end equipment. Unfortunately, the soundcraft C?? had the same problem of only one sweepable mid. Lots of stage curtains made that more acceptable. The system was stable enough that I didn't have any feedback problems and could actually use the board eq's to shape the sound.
While the results at show 2 were not up to my personal standards, apparently they were a lot better than what the audience were used to there. I know because people were telling me.
Show 1 was pleasant not only because of the quality of the system, but also because the provider had educated ears, and was one of the few times recently I have had a chance to discuss what I was trying to do with someone who could critique my work in a fashion that I could use his input to improve.
Show 3 was actually a lot of fun. The band had a fairly large group of family/friends in attendance to the point of being a majority of the crowd, so the event felt like a private event in a lot of ways.
I had mixed this band about 6-8 times in the past, but they just changed three band members. I had mixed the new members three times prior to this trip, but this trip was really the first time the band is starting to get a real cohesive feel as a new group. They were tickled pink with my work, everyone got along great on the road, so I am looking forward to further travels with them. Everything should really be clicking by time we hit festival season in May.
One of the easiest and most effective advances I have had recently. Eveything was exactly as advertised. I thought it was neat that instead of listing everything out they just sent me a photo of the FOH processing rack. I did learn that I am consistantly perfectly happy with a GL2800. I also learned that the secret to not ending up puulling out your hair over an ACP88 is to mount it up at eye level, make sure it is well lit, and count the channels every time before making adjustments. I am not sure if I just found a sweet spot but I seem to like the REV X on the SPX2000 better than I like it on the lower cost Yamaha digital desks.
One of the best things about this show was I had the time to set up my new SMAART system (I am on about show 8 with it since late december) move the mic around and see what a room that sounds good to me looks like on the traces. I also found I liked the spectragraph during the show. After the first couple of songs I knew there was a "tubby" that I didn't like somewhere around the 400 hz I use to fatten the mic response for female vocalists. On the spectrograph it was easy to see a build up at exactly 250 and 500. I was able to use small narrow cuts to clean that up rather than taking out a bigger chunck at one frequency that I would have probably have done by ear.
Show 2: Community Center on the second floor of a historic church. 200 capacity. Two antique Yamaha SOS powered by a home theater amp with a mackie 1604 at FOH. Only processing available is a microverb with a 9 channel graphic. In bypassing the graphic to my carry rack I discover the sends on the snake are TS unbalanced. I end up turning around channels 15 and 16 as XLR returns to stage. Loadin was 3:00, soundcheck was supposed to be at 4:30. Upon firing up the system I discover one side sounds like mud and is at least 6 db down from the other side. Flipping any of the connectors from the board to the inputs on the amp flips the side that sounds bad. Both channels show ok on my rat sniffer and both are metering exactly the same leaving my DSP. Best I can figure out is somewhere in the snake pins 2 and 3 are shorted to each other because it sounded exactly like what you get when you try to sum a balanced signal by connecting the pins. The PA owner thinks it might be the unbalanced inputs on the amp and brings in an antique crown.
Getting the stage patched with my monitor split took at least three tries. Apparently moving 6 channels down two places on the FOH snake was excessively confusing.
So it was now 6:30 I am am just getting to soundcheck. No matter what my bass channel is dead, and I later discovered pin 2 was disconnected on the snake. No other channels were available so I just turn up the bass amp on stage.
Now the interesting thing about this show was the drastic changes in the sound due to changes in temperature. The building had minimal heat. Everytime the front door would open a blast of cold air would come in , and after it made its way to the stage the frequencies that were peaking the most would change. then they would slowly change back as the room warmed up again. by time they got back to where they were someone else would open the front door.
While that was interesting the real pain was that having a single sweepable mid on a Mackie 1604 trying to cover from 100hz to 10 kHz is basically useless. That left me making corrections on my parametric for the entire mix. The problem was I kept watching where the narrow cut had to be wander around from about 400 hz-800 hz. I ended up with a far wider cut than I would have wanted just to cover the possibilities.
Big lesson: The promoters brother in law or whomever with an ancient PA is probably not going to be an effective provider.
Show 3: Listening room. 120 Capacity. (Typical NYC small venue) Absolutely ancient traps L/R backed by some reasonable low end equipment. Unfortunately, the soundcraft C?? had the same problem of only one sweepable mid. Lots of stage curtains made that more acceptable. The system was stable enough that I didn't have any feedback problems and could actually use the board eq's to shape the sound.
While the results at show 2 were not up to my personal standards, apparently they were a lot better than what the audience were used to there. I know because people were telling me.
Show 1 was pleasant not only because of the quality of the system, but also because the provider had educated ears, and was one of the few times recently I have had a chance to discuss what I was trying to do with someone who could critique my work in a fashion that I could use his input to improve.
Show 3 was actually a lot of fun. The band had a fairly large group of family/friends in attendance to the point of being a majority of the crowd, so the event felt like a private event in a lot of ways.
I had mixed this band about 6-8 times in the past, but they just changed three band members. I had mixed the new members three times prior to this trip, but this trip was really the first time the band is starting to get a real cohesive feel as a new group. They were tickled pink with my work, everyone got along great on the road, so I am looking forward to further travels with them. Everything should really be clicking by time we hit festival season in May.
