All's well that ends...just another road story.

[Paulabass]

Last night was running along perfectly. Sold out house of really great people. The band was hot despite it being night 5, 5 venues, and everyone was tired. Smallest venue of the week, so I'm doing FOH and monitors. I was really pleased with my punchy mix.
During the last song I heard the unmistakable call of a dying mic cable. Watching the meters I could tell it was the rhythm guitarist mic, and he was about to sing. I ran thru the house, and as I was connecting a new mic cable, my boss, uber bassist and band leader Prakash John blows at least two of his four speakers. Not catastrophic blown...that really noisy flappy blown. Still sounds great in the house, except the first four rows of the audience are hearing a cacaphony of sputtering voice coil and burning paper....and I'm a 100 feet from the mixer.
Mic cable clicks home about two bars before the vocal starts, I unplug both of Prakash's cabinets (I can't identify WHICH speakers are blown) and he somehow continues to play as I RACE back thru the house, and just push up all 8 aux sends on his channel, which of course results in WAY too much bass on stage, and the last song features a thunderous bass solo, but at least they can hear it. Song finishes, and they bid goodnight.
Are you going on for an encore? 'Let's just thank god we got thru that, and call it a night'.
Forty years behind the board, and there are still surprises. It was still a great night.

 

[s0c9]

Sounds a whole lot better than the BL (lead vox) I did ONE gig who got so out of control (drunk) that he dropped his wireless mic 2nd song into 4th set.
Thank god for IEM limiters....
After the gig, he complained that I was "back there reading from charts" from my iPad, when in fact I was CONSTANTLY adjusting HIS mic level in my IEM mix, because he didn't know (or couldn't remember) the words and was either REAL HOT on the mic, or barely there.

 

[sawzalot]

Solving problems the band didn’t know they had with tools they don’t understand.

 

[bassbrad]

Staying on the bounce, that's why you get the big bucks. And the call back.

 

[LilyT]

Last night was running along perfectly. Sold out house of really great people. The band was hot despite it being night 5, 5 venues, and everyone was tired. Smallest venue of the week, so I'm doing FOH and monitors. I was really pleased with my punchy mix.
During the last song I heard the unmistakable call of a dying mic cable. Watching the meters I could tell it was the rhythm guitarist mic, and he was about to sing. I ran thru the house, and as I was connecting a new mic cable, my boss, uber bassist and band leader Prakash John blows at least two of his four speakers. Not catastrophic blown...that really noisy flappy blown. Still sounds great in the house, except the first four rows of the audience are hearing a cacaphony of sputtering voice coil and burning paper....and I'm a 100 feet from the mixer.
Mic cable clicks home about two bars before the vocal starts, I unplug both of Prakash's cabinets (I can't identify WHICH speakers are blown) and he somehow continues to play as I RACE back thru the house, and just push up all 8 aux sends on his channel, which of course results in WAY too much bass on stage, and the last song features a thunderous bass solo, but at least they can hear it. Song finishes, and they bid goodnight.
Are you going on for an encore? 'Let's just thank god we got thru that, and call it a night'.
Forty years behind the board, and there are still surprises. It was still a great night.

@Paulabass Wow, you got a great workout of legs AND brain in that show! Great story! Do you mind explaining to a n00b what a dying mic cable sounds like? Is it just getting quiet or is it adding something to the sound? Also, did you just yank his mic cable off the board and stick it into another channel (or like rewire a mic right under him while singing?) Can we get a play by play (please), because I like to think out these scenarios ahead of time, since my remaining few neurons are hard pressed even when things are running well.
I'm trying to do sound for some live shows, but I am going by trial and error!

 

[Paulabass]

^ Good questions- mic cables can really only do three things during a show -work, crackle, or not work at all. If it's not working at all you won't have any meter bounce on that input. If it's working we wouldn't be having this discussion...so...it's crackling.
You can hear it in the main mix, an awful crackling of an intermittent cable. Depending on how loud that channel is it can sound like clipping, or a munched speaker, or crinkling celophane. Often it's in time with the music because mic stands sway, and stages bounce, and the kick drum thumps....all can cause that bad cable to make noise.
Ok- which channel is doing it? You have 32 mics coming in, and ONE is misbehaving. FIRST makes sure you are not clipping an input- check all your meters. Digital clipping can sound like a blown speaker, analog clipping sounds like distortion.
Know your gain structure throughout the system, even an overloaded outboard unit can cause nastiness to come out of speakers.

Put on your headphones and solo one channel at a time. Mute the offending channel. Check which INPUT it is if it's a digital mixer ( because in digital the input can be different from the channel strip number). In an analog board, input and channel strip number are always the same.
Replace the cable.
Unmute, and turn phantom back on if nessasary.
Tie a knot in BOTH ends of the bad cable, and fix or throw it out later.

 

[LilyT]

^ Good questions- mic cables can really only do three things during a show -work, crackle, or not work at all. If it's not working at all you won't have any meter bounce on that input. If it's working we wouldn't be having this discussion...so...it's crackling.
You can hear it in the main mix, an awful crackling of an intermittent cable. Depending on how loud that channel is it can sound like clipping, or a munched speaker, or crinkling celophane. Often it's in time with the music because mic stands sway, and stages bounce, and the kick drum thumps....all can cause that bad cable to make noise.
Ok- which channel is doing it? You have 32 mics coming in, and ONE is misbehaving. FIRST makes sure you are not clipping an input- check all your meters. Digital clipping can sound like a blown speaker, analog clipping sounds like distortion.
Know your gain structure throughout the system, even an overloaded outboard unit can cause nastiness to come out of speakers.

Put on your headphones and solo one channel at a time. Mute the offending channel. Check which INPUT it is if it's a digital mixer ( because in digital the input can be different from the channel strip number). In an analog board, input and channel strip number are always the same.
Replace the cable.
Unmute, and turn phantom back on if nessasary.
Tie a knot in BOTH ends of the bad cable, and fix or throw it out later.

Loads of great tips there (esp. tie the knots and throw it out). Thank you for all the description of digital and analog clipping. Nice tip that the crackling is keeping time with music because the cable is getting stressed in time also.

I just ordered a digital board (starter board the behringer xr18), I hope that will have soloing capability. I'll work on knowing how to use that. And how to quickly see the input meters. In previous shows I'd try to figure out which line had a problem by turning it down a little and seeing if the problem changed lol.

Thank you thank you for posting all this for me!

-Lily