Super-boomy FOH

T

tomilchik

Dec 18, 2007
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#1
Super-boomy lows + overall mud in FOH (and stage) sound.
Prompted by attending 2 separate gigs, within a week. One I played (small venue, 100 seats) another listened to (theatre, 2k+ seats).

Common: FOH person (ppl?) decisions to:
* set the kick volume so that it has effect of an elephant falling over - huge thud, with feedback and long tail. Overpowers everything
* set bass to be effectively muddy and not really heard. The listen-to gig had Joe Dart (Vulfpeck) come out to play Dean Town, on the settings the whole set was done. The line practically could not be heard. That despite the set being done by Cory Wong! (same-ish music - seemingly calls for same-ish mix?)
* set vocals so low that: on-stage the singer could not hear herself; in house vox were buried.

What gives?

I heard on inet that nowadays it is effectively a trend among sound engineers to always go for club/EDM-like mix, regardless of the actual music.

Curious: is that how live mixing is now taught? Or - what gives?

Does seem to be a trend, not coincidence.
Couple of months back: Dirty Loops; same: _monster_ kick that almost buried everything. Granted, DL music benefits from large presence of bottom end. But to _that_ degree?
 
#3
IMHO the difficulty of delivering a really good bass sound in the typical live performance venue at a reasonable volume ranges from difficult to impossible.

Contributing Factors Off the Top of My Dead:
1. Trends in taste--Many are more concerned with quantity than quality
2. Lack of awareness, talent, knowledge, and skill--A lot of people posing as audio techs who seem to like one or more of these qualities. Some of them are obviously deaf.
3. Poor acoustics--The only real solution is acoustic engineering and treatment. Ideally this should be done in conjunction with the architectural design; rather than after the fact. What qualifies as good acoustics varies with the type of performance. A small chamber ensemble may be enhanced by a hall with significant reverberation that has a fairly long decay time. Amplified music tends to work better in dry acoustic spaces.
4. Inadequate or improperly aimed and tuned PA system--How much of a difference the system makes depends somewhat on how suitable the acoustics are. As acoustics get worse, the quality of the system becomes less relevant
5. Low frequency bleed from the stage--For the PA to have any significant control over the bass's tone, usually the PA must be significantly louder than the low frequency wash coming off the stage. I typically mixed on systems that could deliver quality bass in reasonably good acoustic spaces. However, I usually mixed at an SPL where the system had little to no control over the way the bass sounded :poop:. The level of bass in all of the stage monitors is often more of a problem than the volume of the bass amp.

Which of these is the dominant factor can vary from one concert to the next.
 
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#8
Mike Caldwell said:
It's the person driving the system.
Click to expand...
Or not!
One band I have worked for many years often has its family members complaining there’s too much bass (or guitar). Telling them it’s ALL from stagewash means nothing until I show them the channel fader all the way down on my iPad. While I shrug and tell them I have ZERO control over it.
 
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#9
s0c9 said:
Or not!
One band I have worked for many years often has its family members complaining there’s too much bass (or guitar). Telling them it’s ALL from stagewash means nothing until I show them the channel fader all the way down on my iPad. While I shrug and tell them I have ZERO control over it.
Click to expand...

Yup! In small venues the LF buildup is often from stage wash (and the acoustics probably aren't great, either). The sound engineers in the venues I play are typically pro touring guys off tour. Just watched the headliner (a veteran death metal band) play in a smallish club and the mix was great - smooth top end and good instrument separation - just quite a bit of low-end rumble. I complimented the engineer on the mix and he basically said he could've done a better job if it was a larger venue, and with a 90dB (assumed he meant A-Slow or LAeq) SPL limit there's not much you can do.

Bigger venues can be better from stage wash perspective, but older theaters with lots of hard surfaces can be equally problematic (there's an early 20th century 500cap room in my town that definitely wasn't designed with amplified music in mind!), and when you go up in size from there the problem starts being the low end arriving over a relatively long time. The largest room I've personally ever done is 3.5k seated, but I've heard pros quote figures like 80ms+.
 
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#10
s0c9 said:
Or not!
One band I have worked for many years often has its family members complaining there’s too much bass (or guitar). Telling them it’s ALL from stagewash means nothing until I show them the channel fader all the way down on my iPad. While I shrug and tell them I have ZERO control over it.
Click to expand...
Yea very true, I've been there!
 
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