Tone rant of the day...

SFW

SFW

Well-known member
You play in a band. You spend thousands of dollars on gear. You spend hours at home and at practice dialing in your tones. You play a show and on stage it sounds massive. Just juicy fat guitar tone. You hear the video back and realize that the "sound man" dialed out all the low end in your guitar tone and you sound like an angry can of bees. I have had more issues with "sound men" that can't mix a live band to save their ass in the past two years. Damn, it gets frustrating. That is all.
 
Did you check his mic placement and did you use your own mic? Sometimes sound men just grab the next mic and it’s a fubar mic.

Just trying to help avoid it. It does suck.
 
As a bass player and a soundguy I've had more problems with guitar players who think their bedroom tone works on a stage with a full band than anything else. Almost all of you have way too much bass dialed in, which usually makes your bass player turn up so he can hear himself. You have a bass player. Stay out of his lane. Shitty mic on whatever camera you were using or shitty SE are both possibilities in your case too. I'm not pointing fingers.
 
I've been going down a live sound / mixer rabbit hole recently and trying to get to the bottom of why some bands sound good and some sound woofy or too trebly. I get that they've got to fight the room and just make sure each instrument is heard, and yeah some of the mixers in bars and such have big scoops for the eq so they can't be precise ... etc etc

But I stumbled on a video of a supposed local pro doing mixing, he had a great tone on the guitars, great mix, and then intentionally thinned them out to sound awful and said "there, thats better"... Some of these guys legit do it on purpose. Often they prefer an over-bass'd mix and turn it all to mud

You gotta pay somebody and get a wireless so you all can hear wtf he's doing, its rough
 
I use very little bass and not much treble. Fitting in the mix instead of trying to “cut” thru. Also just loud enough I can hear myself so the guitar gets in the mix. Pointing the cabs away from the sound guys help too. Never a problem with sound guys. They always look forward to our band.
Sound guys can be frustrating for sure.
 
tjnx said:
I've been going down a live sound / mixer rabbit hole recently and trying to get to the bottom of why some bands sound good and some sound woofy or too trebly. I get that they've got to fight the room and just make sure each instrument is heard, and yeah some of the mixers in bars and such have big scoops for the eq so they can't be precise ... etc etc

But I stumbled on a video of a supposed local pro doing mixing, he had a great tone on the guitars, great mix, and then intentionally thinned them out to sound awful and said "there, thats better"... Some of these guys legit do it on purpose. Often they prefer an over-bass'd mix and turn it all to mud

You gotta pay somebody and get a wireless so you all can hear wtf he's doing, its rough
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In my last band I generally mixed from the stage in bars and smaller venues that didn't have their own system and SE. I had a L6 G50 and usually had a couple trusted people out front to let me know if something changed. It's a pain in the ass mixing from the stage and took a lot of the joy of playing live out of it for me so I ended up paying a local guy to mix for me on my gear. Dude was more experienced than I am but after a handful of shows, all of which I had people tell me we sounded much better when I was mixing I just went back to doing it myself.

The principles of live sound are basic and kinda static, but it's really important to understand EQ and know what frequencies you're hearing. Experience can speed up the process of tuning for the room on the fly and I think a lot of guys just set it and forget it. When the room fills up with bodies and the temperature changes things are bound to change. Being able to look at a room and have a good starting point for things like sub placement is important. Knowing how to mix outdoors is important. All my gear was analog. Powered speakers ( DSR tops and fills and LS801P subs).

After I got tired of all the work and shut the band down I still pimped myself out as a SE for local bands for a year or so. Eventually I just sold my shit. Cheap because it was heavy, analog and "Obsolete".

I miss it sometimes.
 
Floyd Eye said:
In my last band I generally mixed from the stage in bars and smaller venues that didn't have their own system and SE. I had a L6 G50 and usually had a couple trusted people out front to let me know if something changed. It's a pain in the ass mixing from the stage and took a lot of the joy of playing live out of it for me so I ended up paying a local guy to mix for me on my gear. Dude was more experienced than I am but after a handful of shows, all of which I had people tell me we sounded much better when I was mixing I just went back to doing it myself.

The principles of live sound are basic and kinda static, but it's really important to understand EQ and know what frequencies you're hearing. Experience can speed up the process of tuning for the room on the fly and I think a lot of guys just set it and forget it. When the room fills up with bodies and the temperature changes things are bound to change. Being able to look at a room and have a good starting point for things like sub placement is important. Knowing how to mix outdoors is important. All my gear was analog. Powered speakers ( DSR tops and fills and LS801P subs).

After I got tired of all the work and shut the band down I still pimped myself out as a SE for local bands for a year or so. Eventually I just sold my shit. Cheap because it was heavy, analog and "Obsolete".

I miss it sometimes.
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Agreed and I too have experienced the frustration. I have a whole folder I've dedicated to live shows from the audience's prospective on yt to try to get a common list of what's good and common mistakes. I think often sound guys are trying to make sure every instrument has a home and after high passing the guitars they then compete with the vocals and that's where the tin comes in. The bassist is often SOL, can't even hear him.

Also totally agree with guitar players having too much bass. Anything additional to just 1 guitar + bass, vox, and drums gets more challenging for clarity. For the metal, low-tuned guys you've got to flip flop and cut some lows and low mids on the bass while adding 1-1.2k so it pokes through with string attack rather than boom. But yeah going with what you said they may have a template they follow for everyone and it can screw you up.

The new digital mixers are amazing but trying to do it on a budget analog mixer sometimes just isn't gonna happen if the eq moves can't be made somewhere. I've become convinced that you gotta get an eq for everyone then rent a place and dial in at least once before it hits the sound engineer.

In this instance I was just shocked because he was doing it from preference vs utility and I always thought there was a good reason.. nope just sucked. Sucks even more when you pay someone and they sound worse!
 
i normally hi passed electrics at 180 Hz unless the player knew how to dial in their live tone—usually a pro session guy, hired gun or sound engineer/musician—who understood controlling low frequencies and managing stage volume.
i’d also narrow Q notch some 300-400 Hz cardboard box out of the low mids with a parametric and wide Q lift some top end in the high mids-highs.

had a conversation with a live sound engineer who did a tour with van halen. met him when he was mixing at our church for a guest band and he said he used to hi pass Eddie’s gtr channels at 120-140 Hz.

it’s good to remember those hi/low pass filters are sloped so those frequencies below the selected filter point are still there just attenuated less or more aggressively based on the filter type used (6/12/24 db per octave).
 
If you are truly being objective and listening to the band itself as a whole and not just one part or another there are some things that help.

The sound quality the audience hears is inversely proportional to the stage volume for a large number of reasons.

Any guitar leaking into the vocal mic will constantly be being phased and filtered by everything the singer does, even when not singing.

Any guitar leaking into the drum mics will be the same, but luckily usually a much lower part of those particular mics' signal.

Any bass guitar leaking into the guitar mic is going to have to be filtered out either from the bass guitar's FOH sound or the guitar's FOH sound, that issue is a textbook comb filter

Anyone who thinks they can stick a single mic in front of a cabinet with bass guitar leaking into it, cymbals leaking into it, the stand or mount vibrating all over the place, and variably being reflected into by people walking past (even the "null point of) the mic and beat a studio full of mics in a perfect room are fooling themselves. You might get something OK, but from what the audience hears, you are never going to beat an IR with that mic. I realize that that can be an impossible pill to swallow psychologically so I always have a mic on the cab as well for the performer's peace of mind and once in a blue moon it makes an acceptable sound and I'd rather have a happy performer playing well than a grumpy one that technically could sound better but plays crappy when upset.

As mentioned a few posts ago, you have to be sure the bedroom tone actually works in the mix. If you are running some modeller and playing with backing tracks at home and it sounds good, you might be fine. But if its just a giant amp in your room with no reference, it can be tricky to make it work in a show context.

Some of this is beyond your control as well. If the cymbals are beyond any sensible level for the room you are playing, there's nothing the soundman can do and the show is going to be garbage anyway.

For the OP, how was the video made? Was it somebody's phone? Was it a mic in a null point in a room? Go to your favorite club in an off hour and ask them to put up an 80 hz wave. Walk around the room and you will find several spots where you hear nothing, not a bit of 80 hz at all.

I always get a multitrack when I do shows as most modern consoles are also audio interfaces. The tracks don't sound anything like what the audience hears. Even with all the studio magic when I get it back to the studio for mixing, the fundamental problem of leakage can't always be dealt with, especially when there's a way too loud guitar leaking into the vocals.

I'm only pretty recent to live sound, as we are beginning to move some of our product focus to it, but I have a lot of help from very experienced soundmen, and for the past few years have been mixing mostly at small clubs to get first hand experience. But again, a lot of the above are my observations, but they are more confirmations of what the super pros tell me.

I've been putting up live recordings from a 200 person max (I think) club I mix at a lot, so its a lot more volume sensitive than a bigger place would be. There is a whole playlist but one that stands out, and not at all my type of music, but really impressed what something can sound like when the band is first and foremost concerned with what the audience hears as a whole:



Whole playlist here, but its a grab bag of traditional hawaiian, blues, hard rock, tributes...all sorts of weird stuff. https://www.youtube.com/@slackkeylounge5373/playlists
 
tjnx said:
But I stumbled on a video of a supposed local pro doing mixing, he had a great tone on the guitars, great mix, and then intentionally thinned them out to sound awful and said "there, thats better"... Some of these guys legit do it on purpose. Often they prefer an over-bass'd mix and turn it all to mud
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That's "The Bump(tm)". If you don't make that, you are an amatuer in many peoples' eyes, especially if its EDM or Metalcore. "What? You can actually hear what note the guitar is playing? Fired! That area is for vocals and snare reverb only".

I'm lucky that I mostly mix shows small enough where no suit is going to freak out that I'm not doing The Bump(tm), even when its jahwaiian/70's reggae and they expect a lot of bottom
 
I’ve also seen guitarist with their sick fat tone that sounds awesome alone… they spend all their time dialing in without the context of a band. Then they have a crap tone that doesn’t sit in a mix and then the sound guy has to try and fix that shit

Goes both ways
 
pipelineaudio said:
If you are truly being objective and listening to the band itself as a whole and not just one part or another there are some things that help.

The sound quality the audience hears is inversely proportional to the stage volume for a large number of reasons.

Any guitar leaking into the vocal mic will constantly be being phased and filtered by everything the singer does, even when not singing.

Any guitar leaking into the drum mics will be the same, but luckily usually a much lower part of those particular mics' signal.

Any bass guitar leaking into the guitar mic is going to have to be filtered out either from the bass guitar's FOH sound or the guitar's FOH sound, that issue is a textbook comb filter

Anyone who thinks they can stick a single mic in front of a cabinet with bass guitar leaking into it, cymbals leaking into it, the stand or mount vibrating all over the place, and variably being reflected into by people walking past (even the "null point of) the mic and beat a studio full of mics in a perfect room are fooling themselves. You might get something OK, but from what the audience hears, you are never going to beat an IR with that mic. I realize that that can be an impossible pill to swallow psychologically so I always have a mic on the cab as well for the performer's peace of mind and once in a blue moon it makes an acceptable sound and I'd rather have a happy performer playing well than a grumpy one that technically could sound better but plays crappy when upset.

As mentioned a few posts ago, you have to be sure the bedroom tone actually works in the mix. If you are running some modeller and playing with backing tracks at home and it sounds good, you might be fine. But if its just a giant amp in your room with no reference, it can be tricky to make it work in a show context.

Some of this is beyond your control as well. If the cymbals are beyond any sensible level for the room you are playing, there's nothing the soundman can do and the show is going to be garbage anyway.

For the OP, how was the video made? Was it somebody's phone? Was it a mic in a null point in a room? Go to your favorite club in an off hour and ask them to put up an 80 hz wave. Walk around the room and you will find several spots where you hear nothing, not a bit of 80 hz at all.

I always get a multitrack when I do shows as most modern consoles are also audio interfaces. The tracks don't sound anything like what the audience hears. Even with all the studio magic when I get it back to the studio for mixing, the fundamental problem of leakage can't always be dealt with, especially when there's a way too loud guitar leaking into the vocals.

I'm only pretty recent to live sound, as we are beginning to move some of our product focus to it, but I have a lot of help from very experienced soundmen, and for the past few years have been mixing mostly at small clubs to get first hand experience. But again, a lot of the above are my observations, but they are more confirmations of what the super pros tell me.

I've been putting up live recordings from a 200 person max (I think) club I mix at a lot, so its a lot more volume sensitive than a bigger place would be. There is a whole playlist but one that stands out, and not at all my type of music, but really impressed what something can sound like when the band is first and foremost concerned with what the audience hears as a whole:



Whole playlist here, but its a grab bag of traditional hawaiian, blues, hard rock, tributes...all sorts of weird stuff. https://www.youtube.com/@slackkeylounge5373/playlists
Click to expand...

are you in Hawaii?
 
lol. Live I’m either using IRs or am using my QC or Kemper. All of which are high and low passed- with fletcher Munson taken into account. My sounds are very much designed to sit in the mix with the band. Not for “bedroom” sounds. They are very mids forward. My video was recorded on a Zoom camera with and “X” pattern mic. Taken at the sound booth. As for stage volume, I keep the volume just loud enough to get controller feedback when needed.
 
SFW said:
lol. Live I’m either using IRs or am using my QC or Kemper. All of which are high and low passed- with fletcher Munson taken into account. My sounds are very much designed to sit in the mix with the band. Not for “bedroom” sounds. They are very mids forward. My video was recorded on a Zoom camera with and “X” pattern mic. Taken at the sound booth. As for stage volume, I keep the volume just loud enough to get controller feedback when needed.
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Then you are very welcome to come play many of the better venues in and around waikiki!
 
Floyd Eye said:
When the room fills up with bodies and the temperature changes things are bound to change.
Click to expand...
Isn't it wild how much that changes shit? 90% of the time we do our own sound, mixed from the stage, with the drummer actually handling it all. Not ideal but we've been doing it so long like that we have it pretty dialed. We do work with a couple of killer sound guys though and that's always preferred
 
SFW said:
You play in a band. You spend thousands of dollars on gear. You spend hours at home and at practice dialing in your tones. You play a show and on stage it sounds massive. Just juicy fat guitar tone. You hear the video back and realize that the "sound man" dialed out all the low end in your guitar tone and you sound like an angry can of bees. I have had more issues with "sound men" that can't mix a live band to save their ass in the past two years. Damn, it gets frustrating. That is all.
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It's a lost art man. Most modern soundman can't deal with a mic'ed up amp moving some air. They want quiet stages and IR's to be able to function. Huge beef of mine and one of the reasons I'm sorta glad my live playing days are over with.

I have friends that tour constantly and every single one is using IR's, except one which is Tony Higbee that tours with Tom Keifer. Some have even moved to Cortex and Kempers etc... And not because they want to either but because as one friend said, the soundmen almost go into meltdown when they have to pull out a mic.
 
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