What are you listening for?

[indyld]

I've been thinking about this for a while and thought it might make a good topic for discussion here on the BR. I searched for something similar but didn't manage to throw up anything, there isn't much that hasn't been discussed here at some point... but here goes.

 

When working with people new to sound, live sound in particular, there seems to be a common theme that they find it hard to interpret what they are hearing. Everyone has an opinion on sound, most people seem to instinctively know what "bad" sound reproduction is but can't explain why it's "wrong". Often beginners can say that sound has changed, but they can't explain what is different.

 

Even seasoned professionals sometimes find it hard to articulate, although they develop adjectives that seem to be widely understood by other sound persons: boxy, muddy, airy etc. That's all very well once you've be let into the secret society... (In a demonstration a few months ago, I was showing some students sound reflecting from a brick wall and then firing it into a serge drape and one student brave enough to identify the change in sound rightly called it "more curtainy" or something). The other day I was working with a system that had some, what I could only describe as "rattley buzz" issues that I first off attributed to the DI'ed acoustic guitar with capo but further listening suggested that it was actually something mechanical at the speakers themselves. But "rattley buzz" was all I had when it came to communicating to anyone else.

 

Obviously, when listening to a vocal mic or an actor's lav or a rack tom or whatever, you are listening for different things and have different needs (intelligibility, smoothness, slap, clonk, twang etc etc) but I thought it might be interesting to discuss what YOU are listening for in a specific situation or in just general, to make "good" sound.

 

And can you describe it to someone that had only just started out in terms that they can grasp?

[Andrew B.]

I'm sure someone more experienced will be along in a moment to answer this wisely.

 

Most of my mixing is for bands of the pop/ rock variety or modern church groups, indoors, to 100 to 700 people, so that is my perspective. Here's what I look for in a "good mix", in roughly the order of importance:

 

1. Vocals that sit at the right level in comparison to everything else (usually pretty much at the top) and cut through the mix so that they are intelligible and flatter the singer's voice with appropriate EQ and reverb/delay for the style of song.

2. Backing vocals that complement everything else and are tightly controlled in level.

3. Drums that are full but not flooding the mix with reverberant bass mush. A little character and skin tone to the kick, rather than just a dull thud - but not a weedy underpowered wet cloth on leather sofa kind of noise either. A hi-hat level that captures the subtle strokes. A snare that doesn't take your head off with its sizzle out front and doesn't ring like a handbell but still has power and body. Toms that are tuneful.

4. A bass guitar that again doesn't boom (often a problem indoors in smallish venues, especially when the player has an oversized cab on stage) and has some definition and sounds like the bass player wants it to sound (listen to their amp up close). Obviously the bass must sit nicely with the kick drum.

5. So, a rhythm section that underpins the song, sounds tight (gates etc if necessary) and doesn't inject too much 150 to 250kHz into the room. And gets people dancing, if it's that kind of song.

6. Acoustic guitar that has a bit of woody body to it (not all top end string noise or piezo quack).

7. Electric guitars that are differentiated (assuming there is more than one on stage) and at a volume that doesn't trample all over the vocals - can be a problem with guitarists who like their amps loud on stage, when you are in a club sized indoor venue.

8. Keys that sound like a real piano, if that's what is being attempted. Proper bass power in the lower registers (needs a decent DI box).

 

Overall, I am looking for a good vocal sound that isn't hidden beneath other instruments in that frequency range, a rhythm section that drives the song without drowning it in bass energy and melody instruments that sound like the players' dreams and are loud in the right places...

 

Mixing this stuff indoors is a constant battle against high stage volume levels and boomy room acoustics, to be honest. So my idea of a good mix sounds like a control freak at work but it is the way to get decent sound IMO.

 

Andrew

[Gareth Owen]

Wow, I love threads like this. I'm really interested to read what a few other people thing before I weigh in...

[indyld]

Wow, I love threads like this. I'm really interested to read what a few other people thing before I weigh in...

 

Guh, don't tell me that the good people here at the BR are sitting on their hands and reticent to offer opinions? ;-) If I'd asked which speaker system under £500 should I invest in for cat's birthday parties, this thread would be 4 pages long by now....

 

Good on Andrew B. for putting keyboard to screen and giving a relevant answer that I reckon could be understood by most people. What about everyone else?

[Andrew C]

Part of the problem with answering the question is that it is very difficult to demonstrate here. With lights, it is trivial to put a picture up for all to see, but sound? Even if you did upload a sample, some would listen on cheap nasty Creative speakers, some on DT100 head phones, some would copy as a .wav and play through a few kW of D&B.

 

For me, in normal "show" conditions, I don't even want to know there is sound there. That's because I do "theatre". If I go to a concert, I suppose "warm" would be good, ear tearing, harsh, upper frequencies (like you get when the 'engineer' has destroyed his hearing and should retire) isn't good.

[Solstace]

Andrew B's post is so good I think I could use it as my textbook for training the next batch of newcomers.

 

I think there has to be a stage of familiarisation when teaching new sound operators/engineers. They need to be shown what "good" and "bad" can look like, and to hear examples of commonly used terms (boomy, boxy, shouty, etc) and to have space to play around to set in their minds how their actions/tweaks affect what they hear. Just like doctors need to learn the names and examples of terms used in the field, describing body parts, symptoms, tools and procedures.

 

I'd add (or rephrase) some other things:

• Vocals and speech that are intelligible - If I can't discern the words then there's no point in the vocals being reinforced. I don't want to hear pops, breathing or scraping of mics on paper or clothes. Nor do I want to only hear the person's chest, throat or sinuses. Personally I aim for a speech system to sound more like "News on Radio 4" than "shouting and straining to the back of the hall".
  
• Timbre: I want the instruments to sound like the instruments, not a synthesiser! Close attention to mic choice, placement and EQ techniques pay off immensely here.
  
• Bass and percussion: If the instrument stops playing, the PA needs to stop playing it. Lay off the reverb, and tame the frequency response of both system and incoming feed so as not to excite resonances in the building or the system.
  
• System: Make it sound more like "loud hifi" than "stupid-loud for the sake of it". Bass shouldn't dominate, but underpin the mix. Mids should be detailed and let me hear the full character of the input. Highs should be detailed and distinct, but again not dominant. Sub-bass that thumps me in the chest gets boring within a few bars unless the rest of the system has detail and impact to match. Give me headroom for peaks, not absolute volume squashed within an inch of its life. For large systems, have each part of the system time-aligned to the centre of the stage so that most instruments/voices fed through the system still sound like they're coming from the stage.
  
• Mixing (some of which crosses over from system): No one frequency range or musical note should be allowed to stand out from any other unless the musicians played it that way. I'm looking for detail and dynamics (let the material get louder or quieter), and give me space, so that I can easily follow the instruments individually if I choose.
  
• Distractions: The sound system and mixing should disappear from my awareness. Bad mixing, bad timing on cues, pops, bangs, cracks/crackling, distortion, major peaks/troughs in system response, even HF rolloff over distance in much larger venues make me aware of the system instead of the music/source playing through it.
  

 

I surprised myself last week by both attending and thoroughly enjoying a James Taylor concert at the O2, where all of the above things seemed to come together - made for a very natural sound even in such a big venue, and helped to make a very enjoyable evening. It was also I think the quietest gig I've yet been to, and all the better for it.

[Gareth Owen]

Guh, don't tell me that the good people here at the BR are sitting on their hands and reticent to offer opinions? ;-)

I believe the professional term is "lurking"... ;)

[Stuart91]

They need to be shown what "good" and "bad" can look like, and to hear examples of commonly used terms (boomy, boxy, shouty, etc)

 

This might help:

 

http://www.rationalacoustics.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/D/w/DwarvesTBackDetailWeb.jpg

 

 

Courtesy of Rational Acoustics.

[Bobbsy]

Okay, let me take a preliminary stab at this, at least from a theatre perspective.

 

Barring "rock" based shows, I'm trying to get it to sound just like it would without microphones and a PA system...just loud enough to hear comfortably all over the auditorium.

 

To make this judgement, you have to know what things sound like naturally, both voices and any orchestra, then go for that.

 

To go into more detail though is difficult. Sound has to be the hardest thing to describe with mere words. One person's "warmth" is another person's "muddy". Somebody else's "harshness" is celebrated by another as "clarity".

 

But, to go back to my main point, the key to knowing what to listen for in sound reinforcement is to know what real speech and music sounds like!

 

Bob

[Andrew C]

I like the Dwarfs above. I'll be stealing that!

 

I too have seen James Taylor (not this tour), and his sound is really good. Kudos to his team.

[Andrew B.]

I like the Dwarfs above. I'll be stealing that!

 

I too have seen James Taylor (not this tour), and his sound is really good. Kudos to his team.

 

I've stolen the dwarfs already!

 

This is quite an interesting article from Performing Musician magazine about getting good sound in a stadium, written from the point of view of a relatively inexperienced FOH engineer who finds himself mixing his usual band when they are supporting The Police in the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff:

http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/mar08/articles/stadiummixing.htm

 

One thing I found interesting was that he needed to high pass everything at 80Hz to fight the boom. It also sounded a bit like mixing in a large old church. One thing that annoyed me was his insistence on putting all the faders at unity and mixing through the gains... that is just not right IMO. Perhaps it's OK for a big gig where you have a proper split to a monitor console but obviously a no-no where you are running monitors from FOH (or via Avioms). Also not good for the gain structure IMO.....

 

Andrew

[timsabre]

Interesting article. I don't understand people who insist on lining up all the faders and mixing it with the gain knobs. Why would you do that?

 

This is what he says about the Police's FOH engineer...

"I was also very surprised to see that the gain structure on the desk was not set in the manner that I have learned, meaning that the faders were not all uniformly set to 0dB and then mixed from the gains. They were, in fact, mixed from the faders themselves after the initial gain had been set."

 

Mixing using the faders, who would have thought it....

[Bobbsy]

Interesting article. I don't understand people who insist on lining up all the faders and mixing it with the gain knobs. Why would you do that?

 

 

Yeah, I'm with you (as, I suspect, are pretty much everybody posting here).

 

Frankly besides the sheer convenience of grabbing a handful of fader, I also tend to rely on the visual cue I get from seeing some faders up nice and high and others pulled down lower. It's a help when I want to, say, bring up a member of the chorus for one solo line or whatever. If I can see the soloist at 0 and the rest of the chorus at -20, it helps my feeble brain make sense of things.

 

Bob

[dosxuk]

IMHO, if faders were supposed to be left at 0db and channels mixed through the gains, we would have faders on the gain control and the current faders would be missed off the desk.

[Hilary Watts]

I'm pleased but not altogether surprised at the general consensus concerning gain controls. A few years ago somebody who claimed to be an ex BBC engineer (and I have no reason to doubt him) turned up at our church's morning service and after looking at the uneven row of faders on the desk I was operating proceeded to demonstrate (accompanied by a certain amount of feedback) how to reset all the gain controls in order to get all the faders in a nice straight line at 0db. He hasn't been back since and I reverted the next week to my normal 'amateur' way of doing things, much to the relief of the congregation!