Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

A couple of weeks ago I had to fire our soundman for some personal reasons.

Last night was our first show without him.

Oddly we never sounded better. One of my playing friends has seen us a few times over the past couple of years and said we were cleaner and sounded tighter than ever.

I guess what happens is a sound man thinks he has to mess with the board all night and by the end of the night his ears are shot and he just mushes up the sound. Its funny I eqed the room with our DBX unit. Then I didnt really do a sound check just checked to make sure the mics where working. I kind of leveled out the gains and levels on the board with out listening, we took off on our first song. I went out front and the only thing that didnt sound good was my guitar, not quite loud enough. Thats hard to belienve cause Im ussually the one that is too loud. But I walked the room and it sounded great everywhere. Our bassist ran the room and he thought it sounded great and our singer is always roaming the room and he thought it was great. In the last set i went back to the pool area where a guitarist friend of mine was, and asked him what he thought of the sound. He said man you are as crisp and clear as the first set. We had the level set a reasonable level to where if you were in the back you could talk comfortable to the person besides you. The dance floor was loud enough to get that gut feeling you like for dancing. The lady that runs the place said you guys sound better than any of the bands that come in here. Of course she was one of those hostess's who maybe drinks too much.

It was cracking me up, cause ussually by the end of the night it sounds muddy. Also our sound guy was always changing so much stuff that our monitor mix would change. I asked the guys on stage particurlary our drummer if he was cool, we made a couple of adjustments early in the night and he said it was better than ever where he sits.

I like having someone handling it especially rolling up the cords at the end of the night, but for once everyone helped and we had everything back in the trailer in about 40 minutes, its ussually an hr or better.

I got done playing at 1, started tearing down around 1:15, had to drive about 40 minutes home and walked into my door at 2:33. Not bad, except that my daughter was sitting up waiting for me. She got sent straight to bed. I said Suzie you need to get in bed! Now. She says Dad I was just waiting up to make sure you made it home OK. Gotta love your kids, they are the greatest thing we have or leave behind when we are gone. It wont be long til I will be waiting up on her Im sure.

C-YA

Jeez, JW! Why would you deal with a guy what fiddles the board in the 1st place? I hate that sorta thang. Nothing worse than not knowing how you'll sound from moment to moment!

Good on ya for firing him, for whatever reason.

Good on ya again for doing it so well without him.

Good on ya a 3rd time for getting the rest of the band to help breaking down! THAT, sir, is quite the accomplishment, from what I see around here.

It's usually me what helps set up & break down the PA, & makes lil adjustments...& helps the drummer carry his stuff...& points at the guitarist & gives him a hard time a lot for being too late or "too busy" to help...heh heh heh

jw123, what is a DBX unit? I used to have a hand-held sound spectrum analyzer and ran pink noise through the PA, but someone stole it. Last night we had a similar situation. We did a gig at a new venue for us (lots of country fans there) and I always tell every crowd that our sound man couldn't make it, and that you all are our sound men and women. We had a weird mid-range feedback happening the first set. I usually can look at the equalizer on my board (Peavey powered 684 mixer) and see the LED lights above the equalizer stay on in that situation, so I know which frequencies to turn down. Last night THERE WASN'T ANY LED (RED) LIGHTS STAYING ON. Weird. So I ran back in the middle of a song and turned the high, low, and mids down on each microphone channel, and then cut the main and monitor mix down a hair. We didn't have any trouble after that. One person in the audience said we were too loud, so I cut the main volume down a smidge again. After that no trouble. Our guitar player showed up at ten minutes to nine so we couldn't run a sound check. That sucks.
I know how much the acoustics of a room change, especially as more people show up. Does your PA have built in spectrum analysis? Is there any kind of compressor limiter on your PA? One thing we've never got right is the monitor mix. It seems like every band member I ever played with wants something different from the monitor mix. Some guys want the entire monitor sound exactly like the mix out front. Some guys want just enough so they don't sing off-key. I've played with a few that didn't want ANY monitors. Last night I turned my monitor OFF. There was a lot of hard surfaces so I could hear myself fine with the sound bouncing back to me. It seems like the rooms with a lot of hard surfaces act like a natural monitor. We played a room years ago in the disco era that had some huge speakers mounted near the ceiling. A few people in the audience told us we needed to turn those speakers off. We weren't even using those speakers, sound was naturally reflecting off the cones!
Sounds like you did a great job without a soundman, at least at this venue. It's possible you can go without one. A little more money for the band doesn't hurt either (if you paid your soundman)...

I cant remember what you call that DBX thingie. Haley knows. But it is a link between the board and power amps. It takes the place of eq, crossover, it has compression and delay functions that we dont use.

I call it a rack pack. It and the RTA mic cost $500. Our crossover and main eq was giving us fits and rather than replace them I bought this unit. You run pink noise for about 30 sec to 3 minutes depending on how tight you want it. It sets your eq to a predetermined curve. Our vocalsit and I move all over the room. We never get feedback, I mean never out of the mains. Kevin has stood in front of the mains and sang and no feedback. This unit has feedback suppression but weve never used it. We use it as an eq and a crossover. Its one of the best pieces Ive ever bought for a pa system. 10 years ago it would cost thousands of dollars for this technology. Higher end versions are what all the major sound companys use.

If Haley sees this he will chime in. I think he understands this thing better than I do, but I will say it works and is well worth the price.

My brother-in-law has played guitar in various bands. He's a very scientific person and he taught me a little about setting up the room so there is no feedback. It's hard to explain it here. The beauty of setting an EQ is that none of the individual frequencies can get high enough to cause feedback. That curve you're talking about is (correct me if I'm wrong) is related to what frequencies set where sound best. If you EQ the room so every frequency is at the same level the vocals sound TERRIBLE. You may not get feedback, but it sounds like crap. My brother-in-law taught me to set all the frequencies the same (flat) and then adjust some of them LOWER to achieve the curve you want, NEVER adjusting any of them higher so you can't possibly get feedback. A lot of people buy fancy equipment and never learn how it all works. I've seen bands with thousands of dollars of PA equipment and could tell immediately watching them set it up they have NO IDEA what they are doing. The science of sound reproduction is amazing. I wish I knew more, there's so much to learn, especially so much highly specialized equipment out there. Again, thanks for your input...

Bob, The DBX Driverack PA is a single space rackmounted devise that completely manages your front of house sound. I have a friend that even runs his monitor system with one he has two. It is parametric eq on the imput, 32 band graphic eq on the output, FEEDBACK SUPRESSION, time alignment of your drivers, compression for your mains, limiter to protect your drivers, Pink noise generation with auto eq, you can auto eq a room, name that room and save it so you don't have to pink noise the room over and over, and it is any configuration of crossover you can imagine. You place it between the mixer and power amps or the last devise in your signal chain. There is a slight learning curve but if you follow the steps in the manual with the wizard setup it leads you right thru the process. It is basically a computer. You have to watch when you auto eq because it will cause spikes or dips in your eq that are not good for your system if it measures a deficiency in the room, but the quick push of a button and manually backing up or down that band solves that problem very quickly. These things are pretty much fool proof and I have not had to deal with feedback every since I got it 2004. They make several versions of these so if you get one make sure you get the one that best suits your system they are $499.00 and the RTA mic. that you use with it is an additional $99.00.

This devise has several eq curves to choose from I like the D weighted curve and usually use that one.

J-HALEY wrote:This devise has several eq curves to choose from I like the D weighted curve and usually use that one.

I use a Peavey XR 684 powered mixer, can this be used in conjunction with that?

Bob, the short answer is I am not sure. I wasn't able to locate the owners manual online for that mixer, but if it has a feature allowing you to route the mixer section before the power amp section out and then back into the power amp that is where you would want this devise placed. Most of these powered mixers have that option allowing you to use the onboard power for monitors and then adding outboard power amps. That is probably the best solution. However if you are wanting to keep it simple you might just want to find the source of feedback and concentrate on that, I did notice from the info I was able to find online that this particular unit does have feedback identification.
These DBX Driveracks are primarily for more sophisticated pa systems utilizing seperate mixers and multiple power amps with seperate bi-amped or tri-amped speaker systems.

Bob another solution instead of buying the DBX unit would be to get a 31 Band EQ unit and insert it. The old XR 600 I had for years had a limited number of bands to chose from, with a 31 band you can isolate the problem frequency without killing a whole section of your sonic spectrum. Some times just moving mics or speakers around is easier than trying to eq out a problem frequency. You might look at one of those hand held spectrum analyzers and a pink noise generator to eq your system.

For acoustic gigs I use a Behringer Powered mixer and you know Ive got a nice smiley curve on the eq and so far Ive never touched it when I use that unit. Of course these are low volume situations with very few feedback sources. Im not pushing the unit very hard.

Good Luck Bob, whatever you do and just share it here and Im sure someone will give some decent advice.

Thanks Haley in these post youve actually told me some things about the DBX that I didnt know. Thanks You Thank You Thank You

Dang, another piece of equipment to add to the need list.

JW, glad I could help. I have a friend that is my sound guru this guy is a sound genious I'm not kidding he is the one that taught me all this stuff. If I have a question he always has the answer.

Haley after one of your post I got the manual out and I didnt realize that you could go in and monkey with the curves some. Im going to learn more about this unit and its potential. We have a gig friday night but because of work Im just goign to hire a friend that has a system to do it so I dont have to f**k with it. It will cut 4 hours of my deal of hauling setting up, so sometimes its worth it to me to hire it out.

I use the D curve like you when I do a room. At first we were told to set it flat, but those mids were just to piercing for my taste and then we would pump the lower sub freqs up and it really made it harsh. That curve just suits our sound and ears.

jw123 wrote:Bob another solution instead of buying the DBX unit would be to get a 31 Band EQ unit and insert it. The old XR 600 I had for years had a limited number of bands to chose from, with a 31 band you can isolate the problem frequency without killing a whole section of your sonic spectrum. Some times just moving mics or speakers around is easier than trying to eq out a problem frequency. You might look at one of those hand held spectrum analyzers and a pink noise generator to eq your system.

For acoustic gigs I use a Behringer Powered mixer and you know Ive got a nice smiley curve on the eq and so far Ive never touched it when I use that unit. Of course these are low volume situations with very few feedback sources. Im not pushing the unit very hard.

Good Luck Bob, whatever you do and just share it here and Im sure someone will give some decent advice.

Thanks Haley in these post youve actually told me some things about the DBX that I didnt know. Thanks You Thank You Thank You

Thanks for all your advice guys.