WTF is the issue with some sound guys?

Tonedef · 2011-01-24T12:23:43+00:00

So on Friday night a mate and I went to a rock/metal club in Boksburg (which shall remain nameless) in order to check out some live tunes. Bloody hell. I wa...

WTF is the issue with some sound guys?

Tonedef

Warren wrote: Don't forget that, on stage, you can't hear what the audience is hearing. The on-stage sound might have been perfect and balanced, which is all the band would hear.

Surely some experience should tell you that what you get from the monitors is not what the audience is getting? But regardless, this particular sound guy needs to go back to his day job.

Warren

Tonedef wrote:

Surely some experience should tell you that what you get from the monitors is not what the audience is getting?

That's what I said. ? In other words, they might have been praising captain sound guy because their stage sound was good. They might have had no idea that the audience sound was horrible.

Tonedef

Ya but experience should tell you to verify the floor's sound seeing as you know the sound you get ons stage is different. Not sure how easy/hard this would be though. Sad thing is that the sound guy can obviously not always be trusted to do a good job.

(That's what I was trying to say ?)

[deleted]

Far too common, unfortunately. I haven't heard good, well-separated sound in many SA clubs. The exceptions with good in-house guys, in my experience, have been The Blues Room, Mercury Live, Burn and, surprisingly enough, Backline in Margate, before it went full-techno. (Some bands I've played for have had their own travelling sound engineer, which can help a lot.)

BMU

Yup, it sucks. Live metal is an unlistenable mess the majority of the time in my experience.

When I saw Avenged Sevenfold live (in Singapore), the local opening band was LOUD. Painfully loud. I thought 'this is going to hurt' cos obviously the main band would be LOUDER.

Guess what? A7X's own sound guy took over the desk and when they came on the volume was actually reasonable (much lower than the opening idiots), balanced and crystal clear.

So catch a wakeup SA venues.

Part of this may be because the bands themselves think you need a 100W stack on 10 or something. What idiocy, in a small club. (Oh yeah we have SUCH HUGE metal venues in this country..DUHHH) Get a POD or Axe-FX and go straight to the desk, leave your stupid testosterone and 40 kg amp at the door, and allow us all to hear the F*CKING MUSIC.

There's a quote from Scar Symmetry's guitarist Per Nilsson that since they started going POD X3 straight to desk they've had the best live sound. Look it up. Scar Symmetry - one of the best sounding metal bands on the planet.

I always enjoy watching Moment of Clarity because Neil (lead guitar) being NOT and idiot, goes Vox Tonelab straight to the desk. Guess what? Perfectly audible guitar solos! Unheard of in South Africa! >☹

Grrrr.

MIKA-the-better-one

99% of the sound guys I have used this last year have sucked, mainly because most of them i expect saw that there was more money n sound than playing in a band...
So they roughly learn how to make a band sound decent.
I have had sound guys trying to
line out my guitar amps
hang an sm57 mic in front of an amp to mic it
etc etc

But in respect to loud, I really like the shows i play to be loud, I cant stand it when you have a band who plays all out and then you can talk over them..... At the same time if someone want to be a loud band, you gotta have good nice tone from amps, and drums, or else its a real mess

Did this band playing have decent gear, because while it was most likely a bad sound guy at this nameless club (Black Dahlia????) bands gea often makes the situation worse.... Its not hard to make your band sound good, at a show, it takes a little forward planning.... and decent gear. and communication with your sound guy (good or bad)

If it is Black Dahlia you talk of, then i remember gigging there years ago when i played in a very bad band, and i remember even further it was a horrible setup for sound....

MIKA-the-better-one

BMU wrote: ) Get a POD or Axe-FX and go straight to the desk, leave your stupid testosterone and 40 kg amp at the door, and allow us all to hear the F*CKING MUSIC.

I dont and never have played metal, but for me playing pretty much any style a POD, or Axe FX is not an option... And for most bands gigging bands that i enjoy a POD or Axe FX is even less an option

Tonedef

MIKA the better one wrote: But in respect to loud, I really like the shows i play to be loud, I cant stand it when you have a band who plays all out and then you can talk over them..... At the same time if someone want to be a loud band, you gotta have good nice tone from amps, and drums, or else its a real mess

Did this band playing have decent gear, because while it was most likely a bad sound guy at this nameless club (Black Dahlia????) bands gea often makes the situation worse.... Its not hard to make your band sound good, at a show, it takes a little forward planning.... and decent gear. and communication with your sound guy (good or bad)

If it is Black Dahlia you talk of, then i remember gigging there years ago when i played in a very bad band, and i remember even further it was a horrible setup for sound....

The main issue was perhaps just the overall master volume, although it's impossible to tell (as a result) whether the individual inputs were properly mixed. It was horrible.

Simply by turning down the master knob a couple of notches would have made the world of difference. I just don't get how the sound guy couldn't figure that the sound was kak. He is at the back of the floor, and gets to hear everything the audience hears.

As for loudness, if you have everything crystal clear, the volume can be turned down but you still get a great impression of fill, if that makes sense.

raithza

MIKA the better one wrote: hang an sm57 mic in front of an amp to mic it

Just fmi what's wrong with an sm57...?

ezietsman

raithza wrote:
MIKA the better one wrote: hang an sm57 mic in front of an amp to mic it
Just fmi what's wrong with an sm57...?

Its not omni-directional. You need to point its diaphragm to the speaker. Hanging it doesn't work correctly.

MIKA-the-better-one

nothing I love them ...... just the angle he hung it at was pretty much useless

Squonk

Tonedef wrote:
The main issue was perhaps just the overall master volume, although it's impossible to tell (as a result) whether the individual inputs were properly mixed. It was horrible.

Simply by turning down the master knob a couple of notches would have made the world of difference. I just don't get how the sound guy couldn't figure that the sound was kak. He is at the back of the floor, and gets to hear everything the audience hears.

As for loudness, if you have everything crystal clear, the volume can be turned down but you still get a great impression of fill, if that makes sense.

Maybe getting a bit too old for young folks gig's ?

Tonedef

Squonk wrote: Maybe getting a bit too old for young folks gig's ?

Lol, my mate Steve and I were by far the oldest people there. It was sort of lekker, the whippersnappers gave us plenty of space.

[deleted]

I cant stand it when you have a band who plays all out and then you can talk over them.....

Generally people talk over music because they are bored, whether it's loud or not. Just saying.

MIKA-the-better-one

True, but I have seen the difference many a time where a band is decent and intresting but they fall short because they have no punch.
I went to see a band in NY and they were amazing, what made it better was their intense volume, it occasionally hurt but their music would not translate quietly or toned down. Aside from that they had a greatg guitar sound and huge reverbed drums....
heres a clip of them and notice how loud it looks in there...

Jack-Flash-Jr

As a paying audience member you should go and talk to the sound guy. No really.
"Dude, we can't hear a damn thing because it's all maxed out."

Tonedef

Jack Flash Jr wrote: As a paying audience member you should go and talk to the sound guy. No really.
"Dude, we can't hear a damn thing because it's all maxed out."

Eh?

make-and-do

MIKA the better one wrote: True, but I have seen the difference many a time where a band is decent and intresting but they fall short because they have no punch.
I went to see a band in NY and they were amazing, what made it better was their intense volume, it occasionally hurt but their music would not translate quietly or toned down. Aside from that they had a greatg guitar sound and huge reverbed drums....
heres a clip of them and notice how loud it looks in there...

off topic:
@ Mika >☹ grrrr...A place to Bury Strangers. I can't believe you saw them live and in such a small intimate venue - sadly bands like that will most probably never venture here... have you managed to see any of the My Bloody Valentine reunion shows? Ear splitters live I'm sure.

On topic: yes it would seem a lot of sound desk operators at most live music venues in SA are suspect to say the least.
The solution would be having your own designated touring sound guy as part of the band - who knows your band's sound inside out,
but in the real world that is simply not possible for poorly paid muso's in SA. Instead you have to do with the resident sound guy...

In defence of all sound guys out there - making live sound, sound good is a technical art form and a real hard one.

The venue also plays a big role I think (I don't know the venue in question), but concrete walls etc, bad natural acoustics, amount of people in crowd to absorb the sound, all add up to possibly dodgy sound... and then of course if you add a sound engineer who isn't up to par....and has a heavy finger on the volume and Mids....welllllll//

Malkav

In Cape Town I've found that the "sound engineers" who've studied and have a qualification to their name are the ones I wanna stay away from cause they know the theory but have no concept on how to implement it, where as the sound engineers who just had a healthy interest in it and went into it on a trial and error basis are the ones who get truly good results.

Generally because captain genius behind the sound desk has a piece of paper saying he knows how to be a knob fiddler he thinks he is therefore God and you the musician who's sound is at his mercy does not deserve to have an opinion of his mix. Obviously because if you play an instrument then you have no concept of EQ or how you'd like yourself to sound, didn't you guys know in order to play music you've gotta turn off the part of your ears that can pick up whether something sounds like shit or not and therefore they never have to listen to you, the audience or anyone else at the gig who cares enough to show some interest ?

This is just me though and as my band is lucky enough to play a form of music that gets us lumped in with metal bands it means that we'll play metal venues, where the engineer is either drunk or his ears are just fucked from years of abusive volumes or the rigs are just sub-par. Couple that with all the metal bands in this country who honestly don't know how to EQ (this is literally about 95% of them) and seem to think that midrange somehow makes their guitar tones less BROOTALZ!!! and I can see where a lot of the apathy comes from, though I still think it's as irritating as all hell.

There's really only one venue where we've gotten consistently great sound and unfortunately it's not one of the bigger venues...

singemonkey

Just wanted to weigh in on the POD issue. I agree that there's no sense whatever in a 100watt amplifier in South Africa. You're virtually never going to be in a position to use the power. But PODs can create new problems.

We played this mini-fest the other day in which we got quite bummed (at least I did) but forensic reports say that the audience sound was really good. Your onstage sound can be awful (I think we lost a monitor) and it's not out of the question to end up playing without monitors.

So even though a POD (or modern equivalent) will generally sound better than a badly miked amp, the amp acts as a monitor for the guitar player - without which you may find yourself - as I have on occasion - staring at your fret-markers trying to stay in key (and that's with an amp but miked up so the sound guy demanded it be at very low volume).

I'm sure the sound guys will be here soon. They have about as many problems with bands as we have with sound guys.