thinking out loud

[yuri]

Hi all

I been thinking today about all the gear I have now got for my sons band ,garage is full with drum set guitar amps bass amps pa amps, speakers, stands, leads, etc etc

Going to need a big van?

What I have been wondering is how small a system can you use for a band i.e. 4 or five piece band or any band

 

Guitar, keys, drums, bass, vocal that sort of thing

Can or do any bands play with things like line 6 pods straight in to the desk for guitar /bass, electric drums , no need for back line amps . With in ear monitors

Would be a small box count to move around.

 

What would you need play say to a 100 people in a small club?

Apart from the instruments ,mics, stands ,leads etc

 

2 active bass bins

2 active top cabs

Mixer with fx on board

In ear mons

Guitar pod

Bass pod

Drum box thing?

Keys straight in?

 

Is this possible to get a good sound for the crowd and the musicians

 

Just thinking out loud,

As I don’t think I have ever seen a band without a huge stack of gear all over the stage,( mind you I have had beer glasses on many a night )

 

Cheers all

[Bobbsy]

There was an article in Audio Media magazine a few months back about an Australian band that does exactly this. They have no backline at all, with all instruments (including an electronic drum kit) into the mixer via appropriate DI and effects boxes, and all monitoring for the band via IEMs. Alas, I can't think of the band's name at all (but if I do, I'll edit it in here).

 

The thrust of the article was that, for the uninitiated, the completely silent stage was a freaky experience, but that the FOH mix, without any interference whatsoever from the stage, was amazingly clean and clear.

 

I've got a pile of old mags under the bed...if I can find the right issue, I'll post more.

 

Bob

[Ben Langfeld]

Adding in digital audio at every stage to that (AES/EBU from pods, kit, keys) and digital mixing, including transport all the way to the transducers, I think we have a recipie for the worlds easiest gig to engineer. It's almost private hospital like. :P Yummy

[yuri]

I have lost the bass bins ,

can just use two full range speakers.

(thanks to cedd on SOS)

[andylouder]

I may be wrong but , isnt this how Garbage gig.

[dbuckley]

I dont know if anyone is actually doing it, but having a silent stage is eminently do-able.

 

The problems you are likely to face is that you are doing venues of capacity 100. For a venue of 20K it would be trivially easy.

 

Why? Think about those mix tapes everyone makes off the back of the mixer at gigs, and everyone knows that the tapes from little venues are (in mix terms) generally terrible, the vocals are far too loud etc. However, have a listen to a mixer tape made at a big gig and the mixes are near as dammit perfect. This is because a drumkit or Marshall 100 guitar amp in a small room is (flippin!) loud and the mix engineers job is mostly about getting vocals above guitar amps. At Knebworth or whatever a Marshall 100 is an insignificant source compared to the significant fractions of a megawatt of the PA.

 

To get the full sound of a band at band volume from a silent stage in a 100 seater is going to take a powerful, high quality PA, far more (both in quantity and frequency range capability) than vocals only. A couple of EONs aren't going to cut it, even though they might be adequate for just vocals. They need to be able to simultaneously reproduce the low end of bass guitar and kick, high end of cymbals and synths, whilst maintaining vocal intelligibility.

 

If transport space is the prime issue, then trading van cost for PA cost may be the answer, a compactish but powerful active speaker system. There's folks here who have much better product knowledge in this are than do I. You probably need sub(s), unless the full range box is very good indeed, but in any case sub(s) are a good move, as the ideal location for the sub(s) often differs from the ideal location for the full range cabs.

[Bobbsy]

dbuckley makes a very good point that, with no acoustic sound to fall back on, the main FOH sound system has to be of sufficient quality to reproduce the whole band at the desired sound level. However, in a venue as small as 100 people, this wouldn't necessarily have to be that big or powerful (relatively speaking!). Quality is likely the bigger issue, but dbuckley is right about subs being absolutely necessary if your only source of kick drum/bass guitar is the main sound system.

 

The other issue I can see will be getting the mix in the IEMs perfect...clearly, you will be totally reliant on this since you can't simply walk up to the guitar cabinet to hear that...or to the drums to get the rhythm and so on.

 

However, in venues that small, the main problem with getting a good sound tends to be getting the vocals over the drums and (all to often) the lead guitarist's ego! For this reason I think this approach is worth a try!

 

I would suggest that the band in question play together as much as possible before going public with this system. A frequent comment while people are getting used to IEMs is about a feeling of band members being "disconnected" on stage and I can see this scenario making the effect even worse until people get properly familiar with it.

 

Bob

[Arnot]

How about the Mackie SA1532's, They look like an interesting concept for small scale gigging without too much degradation of quality. They will also save quite a bit in terms of cost and packing volume on amplifiers, cables, crossovers etc as well as being quick and essy to set up. It has to be said that I have not had any personal experience of these though, has anyone else had any?

 

Used with a small desk with a good EQ on the mix o/p I would have thought it would have worked quite well up to 2/300 people.

 

Regards

 

Arnot

[Stuart91]

How about the Mackie SA1532's, They look like an interesting concept for small scale gigging without too much degradation of quality.

 

The most interesting challenge with using these in your average pub gig (i.e. without a very high stage) will be getting the horns above head level, so the punters at the back of the crowd can actually hear the high end. It doesn't look like they will stand mount very well... :o

[Andrew C]

It doesn't look like they will stand mount very well...

From the manual

WARNING: The cabinet has no rigging points and is not suitable for rigging.

NEVER attempt to suspend the SA1532z by its handles. The SA1532z should never be pole-mounted.

[Bobbsy]

Well spotted Andrew.

 

These units don't seem too well thought out. According the the promo blurb, they feature 40 degree vertical dispersion which cries out to be up high, angled down...but then give you no safe way of achieving this.

 

Bob

[Arnot]

Hmm... Yes I accept that they have some issues, but doesn't every solution to this problem? However as a speaker, amplifier, active crossover combination that ought to provide reasonable output quantity, quality and intelligebility, they look to have some virtue.

 

One problem that I have noticed regularly with more conventional multi part systems is that the people who own and set them up may well be good musicians but rarely have any understanding of acoustics. The result of this is that although the equipment may well be capable of sounding good, it never seems to. A good point (IMHO) about the Mackie solution is that it would be difficult to go far wrong even if you arrive late and just have to sling the stuff in and go for it.

 

In addition, my experience of Mackie is that the stuff generally does what it ways on the tin and seems to be fairly robust.

 

I had envisaged a small venue with some sort of stage such as a school hall or village hall. In my (fairly limited) experience these tend to have a stage that is intended to allow sitting musicians to be heard by a sitting audience or ditto with both standing.

 

I saw the warnings regarding flying and pole dancing but didn't see why this should preclude a pair of sturdy stands being made to give adequate support and enough loft to get over the heads of the audience even with no stage at all. Again, not perfect, but feasible with a bit of thought I think. They could even be the flight cases...

 

It was just an idea anyway.

 

Regards

 

Arnot

 

PS HAS anyone heard them?

[paulears]

the real problem isn't anything technical. With pod type processors, you can get the signals out of the instruments and what you do with them is up to you. The problem is playing. Decent in ear monitors are pretty expensive, and you need an on stage mixer that features a mix per person. So this means again, a more expensive and sophisticated piece of kit. With in-ears, you really do need a mix-pre-person. The other snag is that some players really do miss having the sensations that playing loud give, that don't use ears! A guitarist might need the acoustic feedback to generate sustain, the drummer - even with a set of mesh heads might need a little physical feedback (a butt shaker). So although you can do it - how does this affect how well they play. IEMS just sound horrid to some people, and I can't use them - I have sensitive ear canals and they get very sore when I use in-ears, even proper hospital provided onces. You have to add in room sound, of course - so the idea isn't that easy to implement.

[MarkPAman]

I know a band that go part way down this path, and may have got the answer to (most of) the problems mentioned by Paulears.

 

They use the pods for bass, & both guitars. Key are silent on stage anyway. The drummer has a proper kit but is good enough to be able to control his volume. They then use a small (400W ish) PA pointing at the band from stands at the sides of the stage for all their monitoring. This consists of two powered speakers, and a small mixer (with splits for FOH) so that a member of the band (drummer in this case) can mix the monitors. I believe the singer has experimented with IEMs as well but did not like them. The drummer usually has headphones on.

 

I have not actually mixed this band (a friend of mine & theirs does that), but know from going to their gigs that the volume from stage is very low, so that the engineer has very good control of the sound for the audience.

 

Size wise; Drums bass & monitor system go in one very small car (with two people), bass, gtrs, keys, pods, & 4 people in another. If they have to provide the FOH system that will travel separately, usually with all the backline stuff too (depends on PA & van size).

 

I should mention that this is not a yongsters band and that most of, if not all, the band undersand PA & sound equipment well.

 

They manage to get some of the best sound I have ever heard for small venues. If I actually liked thier stuff it would be a great night out! :o

[dbuckley]

It doesn't look like they will stand mount very well...

From the manual

WARNING: The cabinet has no rigging points and is not suitable for rigging.

NEVER attempt to suspend the SA1532z by its handles. The SA1532z should never be pole-mounted.

I too thought these might be a good answer for this problem, they look to be made of the right stuff. A bit of googling found some reviews, and one review commented that these boxes were "afraid of heights" - no pole mount, no fly points...

 

Maybe the Hill powercube M5/M7 active boxes would be a good choice? I've not head them either, but they look much more height friendly than the Mackies. I'm surprised the Nexo crew haven't shown up yet, as although not active it would be another serious contender, I'd have thought.

 

And incidentally, Paul's right - the band need to buy into this with IEMs to start with, otherwise its a showstopper.

 

Back in the 80's, a band I was in practiced in a shed, and got the odd (well, ok, more than odd) neighbour complaint. So, we practiced using headphones. I hacked both guitar amps into dummy load and provided DI outs from the speaker side, the bass and keys DI'd (as they were normally anyway) and the kit miced as usual. So accustically we had just the kit banging away, plus a couple of vocals. Normal PA desk, L+R into hifi amp, five sets of cans each with a volume control. (yes, just one mix) Worked really well, which is why I dont have any hesitation in saying it can work.

 

Unless you need a lot of racket from the amp to do Hendrix feedback... but honestly 90% of guitarists past the age of 17 dont go there.

 

We thought about using cans on stage, as it gave much better monitoring than the old wedges, but the trailing cables from cans appeared to be a bit of a problem, and being bluntly honest, we lacked to bottle to be that different.