This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

B

Brett Smith

Freshman
Jun 5, 2011
25
0
0
40
Howell, NJ
Been working at this venue called tthe Saint in Asbury Park, NJ for the pass 7 years and the dimensions of the club present a problem thats been bothering me since I started working and teching here. The club is basically a perfect retangle, with the stage, mains and subs at 1 end. Mains are flown and in line with 4 subs clustered in the center. From the center of subs to the side walls, its a 1/4 wavelength at 80Hz, presenting a huge bass shortage in the main listening spot of the room. Bennett Prescott recently came in and made a signifigant improvement, but I feel we can make it even better with a little work. A few options have been discussed, a few of which are; placing another sub somewhere else in the room and playing with delay and phase, other option is to stack all 4 subs in a corner(which would never fly with the venue owner).

Would like to get some opinions and advice on a low budget solution to really make this club thump. We have plenty of power and plenty of subs, its just the dimension of the room that kill things...
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

The ultimate EQ to flatten a room: CAT D-9.

Seriously, the problems are structural. What options did Bennett give the owners, or did you guys even get to that point after the improvements were noted?
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Tim McCulloch said:
The ultimate EQ to flatten a room: CAT D-9.

Seriously, the problems are structural. What options did Bennett give the owners, or did you guys even get to that point after the improvements were noted?
Click to expand...

From what I know, he realigned the system and played with the delay between the left and right subs using Smaart. I dont know the full extent of what he did.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Maybe you guys shouldn't have gone and blown up an amp right after I tuned it the last time ;)

When I went in (last year?) the biggest problems were running out of PEQ on the DRPA, half the subs had different drivers from the other half (and the DRPA has linked LF EQ), and half the subs were being driven out of polarity from the other half. Once I solved... err... one of those problems I found the rig got up and went pretty well, but of course I spent about two hours in the place and I have never mixed there so I don't have a good idea of what it takes. I started from scratch and built up my own XO and EQ based on a secret formula I keep in my head. I did not tune it at FOH, I tuned it for the center of the audience area. As FOH is up against a boundary that may be half the problem.

Why not put the subs against one wall? Get rid of one boundary, at least. You could stack them and maybe make it better... maybe make it worse. Hard to say in those sorts of confines. I have been trying to get those two Eminence drivers changed out so the LF is all JBL, but as people rarely harass me about the system in the Saint I admit I have not been terribly on top of it.

It could be worse, you could be in the Wonder Bar!

Attached find my settings in rigorously defined Excel format. Or maybe just a photo of what I scribbled on a piece of note paper. If the amp that replaced the blown up amp doesn't have identical sensitivity it will be wrong... I should have bit the bullet and re-tuned that rig with constant gain. Sorry!
 

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Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

@Bennett - Amp was 7 years old, getting pounded 6 nights a week, year round :)

Regarding the sub phase, one of our other engineers has a habit of changing the polarity of the subs, even after you came here, Ive caught him doing it too many times to count. I now check thd polarity at least once a week, as I'm only there 2 nights a week. I've explored stacking the subs on one side, but it wont fly with the venue owner. As far as upgrading the driver, JD gave us 2 8OHM JBL drivers from the "Du nder" which I wired in. The 2 JBL drivers we already had are 4ohm drivers, so now its a question of how to have the amp see a 4ohm bridged load. JJD suggesed wiring a 4ohm and 8ohm in parrallel to each side.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Hah! Which is worse, half JBL drivers and half Eminence, or half 4 ohm and half 8 ohm... wish I knew. Who knows what "4 Ohm" versus "8 Ohm" actually means in this case. This is 25% of the reason I dislike bridged amps.

Snag me next time I'm in Asbury and see if you can get the owner to pony up to have me in again. Or buy me drinks until I promise to do it for less. I hear that works if I'm already in town, and it's a small venue like the Saint, and it's being a pain in your ass because the subs need another look.

P.S. Brett, it's polarity, not phase. If you can accomplish it by reversing a cable or pushing a button it's polarity. There's my smartass correction for today.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Amen on ur smartass correction! Lol.

Exploring the possibilities, for shits and giggles I decided to keep the eminence in and wire up the 8ohm JBLs in parrallel in place of the 4ohmers wired in series just to see how it would react, and to my surprise it was actually a signifigant improvement! More efficient drivers maybee? To clarify, Jason suggested wiring in a 4ohm JBL and 8ohm JBL to each side in parrallel, since we now have 4 JBL drivers. Sorry, I've been responding between each band. HoHoHo. I would love to get ya back here and I've been in talks with scott on improving the bottom end here. Your initial tweaks were def a big improvement in the crowd area, but you can tell that the subs are still fighting each other. A simple trick I've been using for some time now is panning kick slightly to one side and bass to the other, its seems to have better phase interaction in the room. It just plain sucks up the center....
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Hmmmmm, interesting, but I shit you not, I've done an A-B comparison during shows, running up the center and then panning them a bit and the difference is noticeable in the center of the room as well as FOH. MMaybee its the slope of the 15"s dropping off? Maybee someone screwed with the DR? All I know is they work much easier seperating the 2. I can usually notice at least a 50 percent increase in crucial frequencies that are otherwise lacking...

The thing that makes this an even harder thing to work with is the fact that their isnt much of a budget to make this happen. My efforts are in making the club sound better to support the thriving local scene and to have a killer rig when nationals come through (and of course, so its a more enjoyable mix expierence). I begged and pleaded for the club owner NOT to buy our current console and Ive been begging and pleading about buying identical sub drivers, as well as other things....but I dont have a final say in club purchases......
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Brett,

I believe you, but the difference you're hearing is almost certainly due to the tops. Subwoofers aren't the exclusive domain of "power alley", so running LF intensive signal to one top only may make life a lot better. Since the whole club is like 40' wide it's not like much of the audience is missing out on that instrument!

P.S. When I originally build settings for those subs I had to, naturally, create some sort of hybrid EQ that worked for both types of drivers. Together they operated well, but now that there's just one type of driver in there it may be that the EQ needs to be different (or, really, more right). I can't recall which was the greater offender, the Eminence or the JBL, so I don't know what filters were dealing with what problems.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

Gotcha, those mid drivers def reach down to some lower frequencies, so I can see how it would affect the overall bottom end. If I can convince Scott to purchase a new driverack, one capable of running subs on an aux(which we have plenty of), would you see a benefit in running the subs on 2 seperate auxes? That way the upper frequencies of the bass and kick would be up the center, but the bottom could be driven slightly panned, yeilding less phase cancelation from the room.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

I think subs on two auxes is probably asking a little much from that little venue! Also, with subs on an aux I would likely introduce more overlap between the subs and tops so that sources just sent to the tops would not sound thin. I don't have my measurements from that tuning so I'm not sure where the 2nd order HPF at 100Hz I put in actually causes the output from the top to wind up. Lower crossover point means they'd have to work harder, as well... those are just little low end JBL cabs! If you are able to get a good result without losing output from your panning technique I would keep doing it.
 
Re: This one for all the smart, acoustics of sound/math guys.

I suppose if you were to do the aux thing you could just keep the XO point as is, and send accordingly on the channels that sound thin. Might be a bit overkill for the club, but at least it would be functional and possibly help the bottom. I just hate hearing the attack of the kick anywhere but center, haha, and it screws with recording. Ohh well, ya cant polish a turd. The low end is really my biggest issue, the rest of the system really rips! I like the flatter response you went for, it works well in the room. Thanks again for you wealth of knowledge.
 
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