Spice girls sound

[alistermorton]

Yeah, but ...

 

I've seen the same band (Manic Street Preachers) perform at the same venue (Wembley Arena) a good few years apart, and from a remarkably similar seating position. The first time, about 2003, the sound was loud and clear, like you'd expect to get in a large theatre venue, actually. The second time, 2018, the sound was horribly bass heavy, muddy, and unbalanced, with indistinct vocals but with a strangely toppy sound - the middle was missing completely, and to my mind it was overloud in some parts.

 

I've seen them in several venues, and mostly the sound has been good (although it was a less than ideal at the roundhouse) so I don't know what went wrong at the Arena. At two different venues in Brighton the sound was loud (at the Brighton Dome very loud) but still clear. Strange that the sound was better 16 years ago.

[GaryNattrass]

Probably the same sound guy except 16 years on he is deaf?

[alistermorton]

I wonder if 16 years ago the sound chain would have been more predominantly analogue?

 

Edit: Thinking about it, we were using digital crossovers and amps at least with switching power supplies (Chevin A500s racked up) at my mate's summer barbecue way on back in the late 90's/early 00's so probably not.

Edited June 4, 2019 by alistermorton

[bruce]

I read the perfectly reasonable riposte to the complaints from a venue representative ... it seems to me that some people expect attending a gig with 25000+ other people to be as simple and convenient as sitting in their front room with 2 or 3 friends to watch a DVD.

 

To which the equally reasonable reposte would be “but I’m not paying 100 quid a head to sit in my front room, I’m paying that money to see (and hear) a show”

[Stuart91]

I wonder if 16 years ago the sound chain would have been more predominantly analogue?

 

Might have been a point source rig the first time, but almost certainly a line array of some kind the second time.

[Tim McCulloch]

A comment from the other side of the Big Pond -

 

The BBC article is spot on. For me the highlights are crowd noise, locale-based SPL limits and audience expectations.

The first 2 are hand-in-glove linked - people screaming and yelling and having full voice conversations whilst the performance is going on. The amount of noise local to an individual can easily be louder than the PA system 150 ft away (inverse square law); audiences have gotten much ruder in the last 20 years. I remember when audiences would whisper during a Bob Dylan concert, now it's a free for all. Local SPL limits mean this: the *show*, either in the form of the tour itself or the promoter is fined when SPL from the show exceeds stated limits. The police don't go after the audience because any ONE individual isn't capable of exceeding the limit but en mass they are. So the promoter or band management has to pay the fine at settlement (deducted from proceeds) if the Mixerperson turns it up to get over the audience.

 

Audience expectations - a source in the article mentions ear buds and that means the audience "knows how it's supposed to sound" but I think there is little that could be further from the truth. The versions of music distributed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and presumably the streaming services as well, have 'remastered' the audio with multiband compressors to "maker everything louder than everything else." There is very little dynamic range because the loose fitting ear buds are too leaky - the result is that lower level audio is masked by ambient noise around the listener. Ditto for tonal EQ; it's been bass-enhanced because of the poor seal between the earbud and the ear canal. The result is that audience members THINK they know how something is supposed to sound, but even if they have well fitted ear buds, what they are hearing bears only a passing resemblance to what the artists and producer heard when the tracks were originally mastered. The iTunes and Google Music customers, the Amazon subscribers, the Pandora/Spotify listeners complained loudly and since these tech giants have no musical soul they consider tonal modification and extreme "normalization" to being good customer service, while it's a disservice to the performance and production of the original... but the casual listeners frankly don't care about that so from a commercial perspective, the content providers are right.

 

Finally there's the issue with putting on shows in sporting venues. As pointed out in the article stadia and arenas are designer to transmit and reflect sound as part of the fan experience. The multiple reflections and RT60 times are pretty much the antithesis of what is needed for amplified music but nobody is building 50k-80k capacity venues for live music, so what to do... As Frank Zappa said when opening a Mothers of Invention show with the LA Philharmonic "When you make music in a room designed for hockey, you take your chances. Hit it, Zuben!"

 

If the support artist sounded fine and coverage of the audience was even, relative to the later reports of inconsistency when the Spice Girls went on the possible points of failure are the Mixerperson selecting the wrong show file on the console; the system engineer making previously agreed-upon changes on behalf of the Spice's Mixerperson and somehow altering previous settings or choosing the wrong preset; something got unplugged (signal, power, control data); perhaps several other places the technical situation went sideways.

From the Colonies,

Tim Mc

p.s. Have you heard Sir Elton's piano? Neither has he!

 

[GaryNattrass]

I was once told that Sir Elton's piano was so loud in the wedges that the soundies could not sit in front of them to check the piano.

[andy_s]

I read the perfectly reasonable riposte to the complaints from a venue representative ... it seems to me that some people expect attending a gig with 25000+ other people to be as simple and convenient as sitting in their front room with 2 or 3 friends to watch a DVD.

 

To which the equally reasonable reposte would be “but I’m not paying 100 quid a head to sit in my front room, I’m paying that money to see (and hear) a show”

indeed, but the complaints were as much about the car park and the toilets, although the sound did get a mention.

 

I'd also add that a fool and his / her money are soon parted, but where in my world I would not consider spending tuppence on a spice girls show, I can appreciate that they have a greater significance in some people's lives.

Edited June 4, 2019 by andy_s

[J Pearce]

A colleague is attending this week, no doubt I'll get a run down when I next see them.

[alistermorton]

I wonder if 16 years ago the sound chain would have been more predominantly analogue?

 

Might have been a point source rig the first time, but almost certainly a line array of some kind the second time.

Both were the familar flown curved line array.

[Mickstup]

Daughter was in Coventry last night and said the sound was fine, and they were in the cheap seats.