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[Flash@TMB]

The Engel head arrived today.

We also finished coating the stage ceiling with 4" accoustic saw tooth foam. I estimate the this has reduced on stage drum volume by ~25% by virtually eliminating reflected drum sound. The results were much more noticable after the whole ceiling was covered.

I reckon that's about as far as we can take the sound thing now, we've pretty much reached to point of dimishing returns.

[Toasty]

So Flash can the drums take a pummuling from me on Sept the 3rd lots of blastbeats lots of double kick


hahahahahahaaa

[Flash@TMB]

Warning - most people should skip this post as it will put them to sleep heh heh.

We'd been left with a few sonic curiosities and recently started to suspect that a single error might be lurking behind all of them, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack. Now with hindsight it seems obvious. Here are the details in brieft for those interested in such things:


Problems

Movie sound not quite right, voices distorting, no straightforward fix with EQ or compression.

We required numerous cuts at 315Hz, which is a strange frequency. Originally suspected the room, but unusual for a room to resonate in that range.

Lo mid amp was always the first to trip out in the event of overcooking things.

Certain tracks sounded muddy on the jukebox and on the DJ decks. On other tracks the vocals seemed obscured. However the majority of CDs sounded great!

We'd had to cut the EQ at 100Hz by 9db in the stereo bus with quite a wide Q. This should not occur with flat frequency response. We'd also had to make a cut at 700Hz in the vocal bus.

It was often hard to hear people talking during gugs, harder than it sho9uld have been.

***

Let me stress that all these problems were minor, and not obvious to the casual listener. Some days we wondered if we were imagining them. But things came to a head with the movie sound. We'd tried everything, and examined every part of it's signal path from the DVD player, the interconnect, the sample rate, right through.

Last night we sussed that the problem was not caused by one or two frequencies but by 2 very broad range of frequencies that all needed cut by an equal ammount - not something that can be correctly achieved with the EQ... leading us to believe that this was not EQ or room related.

***

The problem turned out to be that when the rig was installed we'd applied the manufacturers recommended settings on our crossovers... as you do. It turns out that 1 of these settings had been entered incorrectly, the power amp sensitivity was not uniform, and that the gain settings were not cast in granite but in fact "provided as a starting point but may vary with the setting".

So we corrected the power amp sensitivity, and revisted the gain structure on the crossover using the troublesome movie sound as an indicator. At the same time we checked the other settings uncovering the error on the bass curve which we then reinput.

***

The results are spectacular. Now it's easy to tell that yes there was previously a problem:

The movie sound is now sorted all bar some minor tweaking + or - 1dB.
The CD players and jukebox now play everything very clearly.
We have removed all the EQ including the 100Hz, 700Hz and numerous 315Hz cuts. Only the filters and some enhancements are left. Everything sounds great, especially the vocals.
The 315Hz cut in the monitors turned out to have been caused by interaction with the front of house, so we were able to remove that also. This in-turn wetted the stage vocal back out meaning we could ditch the reverb. The stage vocals are positively sparkling now, and even louder and clearer than before.
The music now drifts through the bar very evenly and no longer over powers conversation.

***

I don't think it's really possible to improve things any further. Must be time for a new system LMAO only kidding!

[Cloud]

I'm sure you'll find a way to improve things even more Flash

[soundian]

Originally Posted by Flash@TMB

Probably best come round and see it. The new monitors are positioned in a way that will surprise some people and while it is still necessary to adjust aux sends for certain things we have been able to structure the feeds in such a way as to minimise this. The is a separate monitor desk, just the same engineer. If you click layer 1 you get the 16 stage mics. Click layer 3 and you get the 16 channel monitor desk. Click 'masters' and you get the 8 aux masters and 8 bus masters.

But yes it is the same engineer, so while not as good as someone mixing from the stage it is more versatile and makes life a little simpler.

Ah, a misunderstanding. I was agreeing with you but had also managed to misread your post that I quoted. Apologies.

Digi desks have that advantage, was what I was trying to say, I think!?!