Two Desks Why!!!

[schooltechie]

hi all

 

I know this will proabably sound like a very stupid question, but I have been at a few gigs recently ( 1 at the carling academy and 1 at the free festival evoloution) and both had a desk on stage and one FOH I was just wondering why? Also at the evoloution gig they had 4 speaker stacks 2 infront of the stage and 2 at either side, hlaf way throught the last band the speakers went completley dead and it was absoloutly horrible, afterwards I talked to the FOH crew and founf out that the generator went down and they had to send one of the technicians round to bung a can of diesel in it to get it to work again, shouldnt this have been checked or should they have had back up power or something.

thanks

alex

 

P.S. sorry if the last bit's in the wrong forum before the Mod's jump on me.

[Stutwo]

Desk FOH is for the main mix controlling what the audience hears, the desk at the stage end is a monitor desk controlling what the act hears through the onstage foldback speakers.

 

As for the generator, would be difficult to say without more knowledge on the issue.

[Jivemaster]

There will be FOH mix(es) done from the FOH desk, and Monitor mixes at least one per performer on stage mixed on stage and sent to monitor speakers and/or in ear monitors for each person on stage.

 

FOH mix is controlled by listening to the product, Monitor mix is controlled by finding what each performer wants for each (part of) the song/show and watching for cues and clues in performer body language

 

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Two really good books on sound reinforcement

 

Moderation: Amazon tags tidied up. Click on the images to order.

[Simon Lyall]

When there are two mixers in the configuration that you stated the one on the stage is frequently called the 'monitor desk'. This means that this sound desk is for mixing the sound for the band's monitor speakers and/or in ear monitors. Each band member may need a different mix (sometimes the vocalist likes lots of their own voice in the mix which other band members may not like!). The engineer doing this mix needs to have quick communication between themselves and the band so that they can adjust the levels live. In smaller systems you don't need a monitor engineer because you can run the monitor mixes on the main (Front of house: FoH) desk but this lacks the communication and ease of adjustment. By having two desks (one to deal with band sound and one for audience) each engineer can work on their own sound instead of having one person trying to multitask. Having two desks (and therefore two engineers) is expensive though, more equipment equals more cost; you also need splitters to split the signal one to go to the FoH mixer and one to go to the monitor desk, these can be expensive too.

 

As to the extra speakers, it's unclear in your post where these speakers are. Sometimes there are extra speakers placed deeper into the audience. These are called delay stacks. They are delayed so that the sound coming from the speakers near the stage arrives at the same time as the sound being made at the delay speakers, this varies with distance and temperature (the further away from the stage the longer sound takes to arrive to you, the warmer it is, the faster sound travels). By having delay stacks you don't need to drive the speakers at the stage as loud, these means that the audience near the speakers aren't deafened but everyone can still hear the sound.

 

As to the gennie running out of fuel: that could be because they dry hired the generator (hired without an engineer to look after it and run it) and forgot about it. Normally bigger generators hire with an engineer to run it and make sure it doesn't run out of fuel amongst other things! Then again, we weren't there and thus can't comment about how the gennie came to run out of fuel without anyone thinking to keep an eye on it.

 

 

Hope this helps,

 

Simon

 

Edit: ak beaten to it... twice!

[cedd]

You'll also find that monitor desks are completely different beasts to FOH desks, normally having lots more aux's and maybe having an inbuilt splitter (remember of course that both FOH and monitor desk need the same inputs).

 

Have a search on the soundcraft website for their monitor desks, you'll get a good idea from there.

 

Lots of modern desks, especially digital ones, have switchable modes between FOH and monitor.

 

There will also be close co-operation between FOH and monitor engineer as when something goes wrong (guitarist knocks his amp mic over for instance) it will more than likely be the monitor engineer or one of their crew who puts it right.

[lightsource]

I know one of the sound engineers that worked on this gig. If anyone has any questions, PM me, or post the question, and I'll try to get the question answered.

[dbuckley]

You'll also find that monitor desks are completely different beasts to FOH desks

Not to mention that monitor engineers are completely different beasts than FOH guys.

 

I've never done proper mons, nor do I want to. The challenge of doing several simultaneous strange mixes to the most knowledgeable and demanding audience who are well within throwing-things-at-you-distance is a challenge I don't feel the need to attempt.

[Pete McCrea]

You mentioned that there were speakers on the stage- if these were pointing on to the stage, then they'd have been stage fills used to 'fill' in the sound for the band and give them a idea of how it all sounds. Standing behind a big PA stack without the fills usually sounds awful, so the fills serve to make it sound a bit closer to 'out front'.

 

The difference between a monitor Engineer and a Toilet? A toilet usually only has to deal with one A55hole at a time....

[basilbrush1982]

You'll also find that monitor desks are completely different beasts to FOH desks

Not to mention that monitor engineers are completely different beasts than FOH guys.

 

I've never done proper mons, nor do I want to. The challenge of doing several simultaneous strange mixes to the most knowledgeable and demanding audience who are well within throwing-things-at-you-distance is a challenge I don't feel the need to attempt.

 

Sometimes you don't get the option of what you do! I've been asked to do monitors a lot more than FOH recently, at other times it's the other way around.

 

Also a large advantage of having a seperate monitor desk is it will have completely seperate eq and inserts meaning that you can eq it to the wedges or IEM that are on stage rather than the cheaper way of doing it where you just have to have the eq set for the FOH system. Of course you can split the signals into different channels on the FOH desk but it means you have to have two channels for some things. Also compression on vocals in the FOH mix is useful but not really what you want through the monitors.

[MarkPAman]

I've never done proper mons, nor do I want to. The challenge of doing several simultaneous strange mixes to the most knowledgeable and demanding audience who are well within throwing-things-at-you-distance is a challenge I don't feel the need to attempt.

 

Go and do it!

 

I spent many years as a monitor engineer and had a lot of fun doing it. OK there are times when the band are not happy whatever you do, but most of the time things go well.

For those who like to actually work the desk, there are a lot less monitor engineers who come with the band, so you get to do more shows.

Personal communication with the band during a show is great and you often get jokes & comments that the audience does not.

[lightsource]

The difference between a monitor Engineer and a Toilet? A toilet usually only has to deal with one A55hole at a time....

 

 

Yeah, and the same for FOH.