Small festival sound

[Tim McCulloch]

That's the one downside to digital desks - you can screw up the sound far more spectacularly than you ever could on an analogue desk!

 

The good (or bad, depending on ones perspective) thing is that such persons could probably do just as badly on fitted out analogue kit, too.

 

What I see from too many younger/newbie mixerpersons is a reliance on "library" patches for EQ, EFX and dynamics. Often the name of some notable studio mixing person is attached to these (Waves, anyone?) with the implied promise that using Chris Lord Alge's compressors will somehow "fix" the mix, or that Yamaha has the perfect kick drum sound in the EQ library and the operator will spend much valuable sound check time trying to find the right preset rather than learning how to dial in his/her own settings that are appropriate for the band, genre and individual song being performed.

 

It's a lack of craft and a reliance upon work done by those before.

 

I think it may come down partly to compensation as well - in the firm I manage we spend a fair bit of money to get and keep the crew members needed to fulfill the quality expectation of our festival clients. When a production company spends all it's cash on a new loudspeaker system the question becomes "how much is left over" to hire and pay crew. If a firm has 1 good system tech and 1 good mixerperson that firm needs to have only 1 stage but often what happens is the 2 competent workers get split to 2 stages and a place-holding warm body is employed to sit at FOH and give the appearance of mixing.

 

This topic is getting some play on the forums at ProSoundWeb in the USA: http://forums.prosou...c,167843.0.html What I find discouraging is the number of posts to that topic that essentially blame the bands, schedules, etc. The first band of the day as well as the last are deserving of the full attention of the production crew and the audience is within rights to expect that, too.

 

Have fun, good luck.

Tim Mc

[Junior8]

I really have to smile when you go to any of the shows we visit ourselves - the PLASAs and the video shows where they do Q&As or training sessions - and every single time the sound is awful, and sitting there in full view of perhaps hundreds of audio people is a guy at the back paying no attention, often on their phones. If it was me I would at least attempt to show people in the same game I was trying!

 

Make that most if not all trade shows and I do about ten a year, plus the control point pretty well always looks like a slum...

 

 

 

 

 

[sunray]

Of course, an X32 now means that you can have compression on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING and you can strangle every last bit of dynamics out of the sound.

 

Where is the 'like' button when you want one?

 

That's the one downside to digital desks - you can screw up the sound far more spectacularly than you ever could on an analogue desk!

[themadhippy]

Apologies to S&L ,the so called pros with all the gear can nonce it up big time,as this weekends fiasco has proved.

[paulears]

Tell us more, Mr Hippy - sounds interesting?

[Brian]

On the subject of professionals getting it wrong...am I the only one who can't watch the Jules Holland show due to his appalling mic mix?

[sandall]

Interesting - I haven't watched for quite a while, but it used to be quite good.

[alistermorton]

Agreed about jools - mix is often terrible. I wonder whether its mixed for 5.1 or 7.1 but doesn't translate to stereo very well.

[splodge360]

If you don't want to mix the bands, go and work conferences or something!

Please don't - if you can't tell who's singing on a small stage, you are probably going to make a dogs-dinner of a top-table as well.

"Paging Dan Dougan"!

[gyro_gearloose]

Could have been worse. There was a small festival recently with a mix of singers and musicians, where the sound desk wasn't even brought out until the second day. Up until then the PA/staging company had been using one of those Soundcraft rack-mount digital mixers (Ui16, I think) controlled with a tablet. Over Wifi. Apparently the tablet kept losing connection to the mixer. Can't imagine why...

[GaryNattrass]

Agreed about jools - mix is often terrible. I wonder whether its mixed for 5.1 or 7.1 but doesn't translate to stereo very well.

 

It is mixed 5.1 so the stereo fold down may not be too good. I understand the budget is also squeezed every year so there may not be the time to mix things quite so refined.

As a side note when we did The Tube it was all balanced live in mono on a single fostex self powered speaker.

 

I always mix to stereo as that is what most people are listening too even though we are 5.1 throughout the building, I never use our up mixers either as they just mess around with phase too much.

 

I am constantly amazed that in this digital age the signal path can be hugely compromised by all the processing that goes on.

 

As for PA I love bass but find a lot of PA just has too much of it and a lot of the time they don't even put high pass filters on the vocal mics so you get huge sub bass pops randomly mixed in with the kick and bass.

[Shez]

Although things have doubtless changed a bit since it was published, this article in Sound On Sound all about how they record Later is fascinating.

[sandall]

...., this article in Sound On Sound all about how they record Later is fascinating.

Thanks for that - some very familiar faces & places.

[RichM]

The whole "no guest engineer" thing is bullshit that you only ever seem to find on smaller shows. Weekend warriors that are too precious about their gear most of the time. Just have a clause in your rider/contract. If your guy doesn't get to mix, you don't play.

 

 

To pick up on one thing from the OP though, with regards to keyboards - they are often a complete PITA to mix. The amount of times I've asked if all patches are set to roughly the same levels, if he has anything with a sudden jump in volume or a hi resonance filter sweep etc. "Oh no, it's pretty must just piano". Then 10 minutes in BOOOOOOM. That's why I will always stick a comp on unknown keys players, at least until I'm fairly confident they know what they're doing...

[paulears]

Yes rich but if you out a compressor on our keyboard you would WRECK the song and it happened again a few days back where a song with very quiet keys but a huge stab in t middle just didn't happen. They probably assume you left sufficient headroom,mbecause for them, t patches probably are the same level but they play some louder. In this weeks case, they keys never came back, and in my ears I could hear nothing and had to pull one out to hear the stage sound. How can you pitch to something that isn't there? We're flying out to a show next month where at the moment we will be totally reliant on a stranger, and a stranger who may not speak English?

 

Why do people squeeze the last dB out of their input gains, and just not use a compressor. If in one song it gets too hot, then a compressor does the same as dropping the gain, but for gods sake, put the damn thing back in case you wreck things. PA is a support to whoever play, at any level, yet seem to think they know best. They are there to do their best, not spoil things. If their musical knowledge is poor in some areas, they need to skill up. Modern well known singers frequently glue the mic basket to their lips. Des O'Connor doesn't, and very few of his age do. When you hear a sound guy ask him to hold the mic closer, you cringe. If they are going to belt, they pull away, if they are going to croon, they go closer. They learned this when compressors in PA didn't exist.

 

I think my need is simply so many engineers do not understand why they get what they get, and react inappropriately. Did the guy who applied the compressor understand the implication to the performer, or his unwillingness to ride a fader? Surely first action, drop the fader for foh keys, second, work out if dropping the input gain is a problem to the band, and adding a compressor could have a killing effect for the probably already not perfect monitor mix.