Live performance sound/stereo issues (Page 2 of 3)

There are reasons why groups like The Orb and Pink Floyd used to bring their own quadrophonic sound rigs: if a spacial effect is that important to you, perhaps you should be prepared to create it yourself.

The rest adapt to what is available.

im not sure if you realize it, but saying  a thing like 'i see giant subs under the stage' to a soundguy while you are on stage isnt being kind to him. that is being confrontational and the kind of thing i mean when i speak of punishing the soundguy. its possible that you dont realize it. you are not the one who uses his equipment night after night or knows their board and its capabilities, you dont know whether or not the stuff is even functioning or blown up. you dont know the guy or how he likes (or has to or is told) to mix, or if he is new to the board or to the club, or even if he has confidence in his mixing abilities. these are just a few factors out of many that can end up not working in the favor of the crowd, and i say the crowd because ultimately they are the ones who either benefit or suffer.

you said you dont care about a pa being mono when that was the crux of initial question, so if you are not sensitive to these types of details that can be an issue when every club is a different and often complicated setup, you might be best off actually making it as simple as possible. clearly its a concern if you havent made yourself some mono mixes yet. come prepared with a mono mix that you have on an ipad or another .wav capable device. obviously dont use 128kbps mp3s. i used to prefer using minidiscs because of the digital grit i could get off them and how it translated to a pa. take a look at what kind of setup a club has both speakerwise and ampwise when you first walk in and take it from there in choosing which mix to use as you prepare for soundcheck. whether or not they have a setup that can benefit from a mix that has different eq, or even a more flat mix if the place has great gear. take advantage of the potential of what is there at your disposal with your mixes and make a few of them to use in different spaces and test in a soundcheck, and certainly make them all mono. these are factors that helped me a lot when i played solo shows. ditching the gameboys altogether and mastering the stuff in a way that everyone benefits from in doing it live might end up being your best option. an ideal mix isnt gonna be running the stuff off a gameboy.

your wording tells me that you hold reservations of what any random soundguy is capable of. perhaps it would work in your performance's favor and in the favor of people hearing the music to consider these things instead of being dismissive or being baffled by the details on the other end of the stage. there is more often than not snakes and spaghetti and boards with people who are new to them or 9 times out of 10 dont even know what a chiptune is and who knows what other kind of stuff inbetween you and it. and every club is going to be different. you cant ever hope for john peel quality of mixing in a live setting with music that can potentially blow lots of other peoples equipment up, above all else, thats probably the most important thing to keep in mind. i know this isnt what you want to hear, but it is what you should hear.

tl;ra :3 Good stuff.

TSS, I wouldn't be so quick to judge danimal's treatment of soundguys, especially considering his credentials and multitude of live shows that he's played everywhere. You're running very close to sounding condescending, and I know that's not your intention. I'm sure we've all thought of the ways we can accidentally tell a sound guy how to do their job and made sure we haven't insulted the sound guy, but I can also think about how many times this kind of stuff has bitten me in the ass, especially considering that I try to make it as simple for sound guys as well (I only ever send 1/4" outs, because I'm pretty certain that every place has DIs, or at least a mixer that I can send the cables to). not every sound guy is bad, so the problem has to lie somewhere else.

I think that it's more an issue of stereo signals not being common enough at venues for it to be worth memorizing how to receive a stereo signal cleanly. Venues like bars and such mainly deal with rock bands, and in most cases, there isn't a direct line-in signal ever sent, much less sent in stereo. It seems like a really simple thing to cover for! But there are a bunch of places it can go wrong (your signal to DI, DI to stage, stage to mixer, mixer settings, etc.), and chances are that your sound guy has simply forgotten about it, if only because it's not something they have to deal with. It could be something as simple as flipping the "mono" switch to "stereo", or it could be as complex as a bad house configuration that phases you out, like thebitman experienced. And then when you bring in some gear that cuts out half your track because you're only receiving the left signal, they assume it's a problem with your gear because in most cases, stereo signals aren't so hard panned as to literally play only half the song. It's basically a case of square peg, round hole, but in this case, the square peg is a rock band-oriented approach to setting you up, and the round hole is you not being a (traditional) rock band.

Even if it's a simple case of sending you into the wrong channels on a mixer, sound guys will hesitate to change their configuration up because a lot of time has been put into setting up the venue to just WORK without having to change their configuration over and over again (here I'm defining configuration as which signal goes where, etc.). Even sending an auxiliary signal like an iPod or something usually remains in the same channel, and that channel has been pre-configured to receive and broadcast something like an iPod. Having to switch up their configuration to accommodate you means a potential headache in the future when they inevitably forget that they put their DIs into a different channel or something. Not to mention that a lot of venues have multiple sound people because their main person isn't available all the time. I'm not trying to make excuses for having a simple setup, I'm just trying to reason out why this kind of thing could very easily happen.

--BEGIN UNWARRANTED ADVICE REGARDING VENUES AND SOUND PEOPLE AND YOU--

This is more for everyone else than it is for Danimal, because I'm going to assume that he knows his shit re: telling the sound guy that it's stereo, etc. The best way to prepare for this kind of thing is to make your setup as easy to RECEIVE as possible -- you can have as much complexity as you want on your end, but a sound guy will like you WAY MORE if you end up throwing the entire thing into a mixer that just outputs XLR or 1/4". I've played with a guy who literally has a van full of his gear, and has to take out three giant drawers to hold the multitude of pedals, synths, and MIDI devices he uses, but he usually ends up condensing his output to a single mixer. The most important thing to consider regarding your output is to make it so that your sound guy doesn't have to change his/her configuration too much to receive you.

The next thing is to make sure you output in a format that's common to most venues -- XLR and 1/4" are the most cited because they're the most common and easiest to throw into a DI or stage signal, which is the difference between you plugging your mixer in cleanly and you having to play next to the sound booth because there's no way to translate an RCA cable to a DI without adapters that neither of you have and the only mixer that gets you to the house is at the sound booth. It makes it easier on you too! Now instead of having to remember your 1/8" AND your 1/8" to 1/4" adapter, you just have to remember the 1/4". No venue likes it when you make it difficult for them to even receive your sound, and they would sooner have YOU gimp your own show than mess with a thing that both the venue and sound guy have labored over months, if not years.

Contingency plans are always good -- having a mono setup ready just in case is never a bad idea.

The last thing to do when dealing with any venue is to TALK TO THE SOUND GUY and DON'T BE A JERK about it, as has been mentioned above. Just a simple question of "I'm sending x, is that ok?" goes a really long way to being a good performer in general, if only because it shows you being concerned about the venue AND yourself. Then you can approach being in stereo

--END UNWARRANTED ADVICE REGARDING VENUES AND SOUND PEOPLE AND YOU--

Last edited by spacetownsavior (Oct 9, 2013 3:04 pm)

damn! touche

i wish the soundguys were underpaid in chicago... most gigs that i've played here, they made more than all the artists got combined

royalties? never been paid any of those in the past 12+ years. literally gigs with 6 acts, 50+ attendees and after venue, soundguy and doorgirl get their cuts, they say theyve got $37 for the acts to split.. sometimes nothing at all