Sonic Improvements

[Flash@TMB]

The new monitors are here and they are indeed amazing. No doubt Mark will be able to tweak them a little further but already the difference in phenominal. Like the FOH these are tonally perfect and you can hear the difference out front in as much as you no longer hear the sound of shit monitors coming off the stage. This makes the vocals crystal clear out front. They are also loud enough to be comfortably heard over the backline which is no mean feat on our little box of a stage. Not even a peep of feedback all night either, even with 3 vocal mics in use and one of those on the kit.

We previously caught some flack for our guitar sound and the new backline with the powerbrakes has done wonders for this. The guitar is powerful andl vibrant sounding now - you can really hear the valves working... although of course this only applies to valve amps.

The Ampeg is a big improvement on the bass.

Please note: from now on the principle of GIGO applies...

[Afro Droid]

Ran into Justin from Risac today - he was fulla praise for the new monitors. Pardon my ignorance, but what does GIGO mean?

[Guest haigyman]

goes in goes out?

[soundian]

Ran into Justin from Risac today - he was fulla praise for the new monitors. Pardon my ignorance' date=' but what does GIGO mean?[/quote']

It's a polite form of SISO.

[Afro Droid]

I see....

[Lexicon Devil]

Garbage In Garbage Out. Hence sound is now down to the Guitarist; Nobody can blame the equipment.

[Frosty Jack]

God In, Gospel Out. Let God into your heart, and Spread the Gospel of the Good Word whenever you can. The Moorings is now a Christian bar. God Bless.

[Sue Denim..]

Girls in, Geezers Out.

New bar policy.

[Flash@TMB]

Girls in' date=' Geezers Out.

New bar policy.[/quote']

And it's working.

***

Mark arrived back from his holiday just in time for the first band yesterday, and had to run with my settings. Things went OK but it was apparent that some tuning was required so cue a 5am shift with an empty bar. The outcome being that the monitors now go 3x louder than I had them, and are crystal clear with absolutely no feedback. There's very little in the way of EQ on them either. Turned out to be more a *cough* configuration job.

To give you some idea of how loud this is, after he made the final tweak and said "OK - that should be them now" I've had to go up on stage and say *drum roll* "One Two, ONE TWO" into them. So after tentatively waving my hand in front of the mics, tapping the mics, cupping my hand over them, waving the mics in front of the speakers etc, I finally pluck up the guts to give it the old "One Two"...

...and felt something akin to a freight train pass through my body (momentarily wondering if that kebab was dodgey after all) then almost staggered back into the drumkit. At the same time Ruth, Mark, and Laura who are out front, literally jump and let out a collective "FUCKING HELL!". It was so amusing that we spent another 1/2 hour taking the piss saying things like "Oi sound man - I can't hear a fucking thing up here winge winge" and giggling a lot. It feels naughty to have monitors this loud. No Marshall stack can compete with these. For the first time we're going to witness bands going "Umm can you turn the vocal down on stage please".

We also came up with another good idea that we should have though of umm 18 months ago. The desk has 48 channels plus 8 aux and 8 masters, and we typically use about 15-18 (not counting aux and masters) for gigs with 6 more dedicated to jukebox, cinema, minidisc, DJ decks, engineers mics etc. There was a whole bank of 16 channels sitting there not doing anything. So we patched duplicate inputs from the stage mics into these, and fed those into the aux (monitor) sends post fader then turned off the aux sends on the original stage mics. Which mics are routed to which monitors and how much feed is provided is setup as a sort of gain structure with the loudest sends set to zero the others relative to those.

The upshot is that we now have essentially a 16 channel monitor mixer for our stage sound, with separate compressors, gates, EQ, and phase on each of those channels. So if a band require something altered on stage we can quickly achieve this by moving a few faders rather than farting about with aux sends like before.

So tonights jam should be very interesting... anyone fancy coming down to play?

[Tav]

I am really looking forward to play on the 9th now. Last gig we played I kept saying "more bass...and guitar...and maybe some vocals" so perhaps it might be "god damn...turn everything down please!"

[PaulDW]

Excellent stuff... The gig on the 9th is going to be fantastic! Will be good to catch up with you again Tav!

[soundian]

The upshot is that we now have essentially a 16 channel monitor mixer for our stage sound' date=' with separate compressors, gates, EQ, and phase on each of those channels. So if a band require something altered on stage we can quickly achieve this by moving a few faders rather than farting about with aux sends like before.

[/quote']

Not strictly true Flash, pissing about with aux sends will still be required to give different mixes, the fader just acts like a master.

[Flash@TMB]

Not strictly true Flash' date=' pissing about with aux sends will still be required to give different mixes, the fader just acts like a master.[/quote']

Agreed there's no gettting away from them, but there should be much less pissing about with the aux sends, depending on what needs adjusted and to where.

[soundian]

Agreed there's no gettting away from them' date=' but there should be much less pissing about with the aux sends, depending on what needs adjusted and to where.[/quote']

Faders are an overall master for the mic in post-fade mode. If it's too loud in everyones monitor the fader is handy, otherwise it's boring old auxes all the way.

EDIT: not getting away from the fact that the dedicated gates/comps/phase/FX are worth having, just not as easy as you try to make out.

Extra EDIT: Try putting your mons out of phase, sometimes works a treat, sometimes works against you, but with your digi splits you can experiment on each channel.

[Flash@TMB]

Faders are an overall master for the mic in post-fade mode. If it's too loud in everyones monitor the fader is handy' date=' otherwise it's boring old auxes all the way.

EDIT: not getting away from the fact that the dedicated gates/comps/phase/FX are worth having, just not as easy as you try to make out.[/quote']

Oh yeah but in our little box certain things only go to certain places. For example our drums and bass only go through the drummers monitor & sub (drums are always loud enough for everyone South of the kit on, and bass is best restricted to the bigger monitor). So all those can be completely controlled by faders and account for half the feeds... albeit the less useful ones. And yes the phase switch especially is great to have on hand.

EDIT: Yes we used to run all the monitors out of phase but now we just do each separate feed individually. For example tonight a DI'd accoustic guitar fed back out of phase but putting it in phase sorted it out. I'm guessing since monitor was facing uncapped guitar the signal cancelled itself out.

[soundian]

Oh yeah but in our little box certain things only go to certain places. For example our drums and bass only go through the drummers monitor & sub (drums are always loud enough for everyone South of the kit on' date=' and bass is best restricted to the bigger monitor). So all those can be completely controlled by faders and account for half the feeds... albeit the less useful ones. And yes the phase switch especially is great to have on hand.

EDIT: Yes we used to run all the monitors out of phase but now we just do each separate feed individually. For example tonight a DI'd accoustic guitar fed back out of phase but putting it in phase sorted it out. I'm guessing since monitor was facing uncapped guitar the signal cancelled itself out.[/quote']

But still, turn down the fader and both drummer and bass player hear less, turn down the aux and only one wil hear less. Faders are prety redundant in a house engineering/monitor job. They only really come into play with a seperate monitor desk and engineer who understands what is needed and when.

That was exactly my point about phase/polarity, the option for having seperate controls FOH and Mons is worth the extra hassle, cos there's not much with digi patching.

[Paulscoconutass]

That is officially the most happy i've ever been with the on-stage sound of any venue in the 'deen. Everything was so loud and clear on stage that it was just like sitting in the audience. I couldn't believe with so much volume that the mic can be touching the monitor and not feed back, even cupping the mic didn't work! I think that - locally - the Moorings is streets ahead when it comes to sound; I've NEVER heard every instrument in a 7 piece band sound so clear in the final mix.

[Flash@TMB]

That is officially the most happy i've ever been with the on-stage sound of any venue in the 'deen. Everything was so loud and clear on stage that it was just like sitting in the audience. I couldn't believe with so much volume that the mic can be touching the monitor and not feed back' date=' even cupping the mic didn't work! I think that - locally - the Moorings is streets ahead when it comes to sound; I've NEVER heard every instrument in a 7 piece band sound so clear in the final mix.[/quote']

You might find this hard to believe, but later that night, after everyone had left, Mark set to work on them and the outcome is that they are much clearer, the slight harshness is gone, and they now go up about 3x louder than you experienced... in the unlikely event such high volumes are required.

[Flash@TMB]

But still' date=' turn down the fader and both drummer and bass player hear less, turn down the aux and only one wil hear less. Faders are prety redundant in a house engineering/monitor job. They only really come into play with a seperate monitor desk and engineer who understands what is needed and when.

That was exactly my point about phase/polarity, the option for having seperate controls FOH and Mons is worth the extra hassle, cos there's not much with digi patching.[/quote']

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.

[Darth Elvis]

The new monitors are killer, could hear perfectly clear at the Karaoke last night and no feedback.

Greig

[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.

[Fast Caz]

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]

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' date=' 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.[/quote']

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!?!