?Well I put in 2 nights of live sound this past weekend. As stated before, I would usually prefer to be kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery than spend two nights behind a live sound console, but one way or another I let myself get suckered into doing it. Here I am, 2 days later, and my ears are still ringing!

The band that I was originally asked to run live sound for, Promise To Burn, has an adequate PA for just about any bar gig around here. I don't remember much power the mains have, but I know we had 4,000 watts for the monitors. This is probably not that impressive to a real deal sound guy, but in a bar with a fire code limit of 180 people or so, this seams to be more than adequate.

Promise To Burn offered to let Friday night's band use their relatively massive PA to spread the usually massive setup time out over 2 days.

Live Sound Consoles

I was torn between using two different live sound consoles. A relatively inexpensive Peavey board and the Yamaha 01V digital console. The Peavey board is extremely simple to use without much thought. It's not much different than my Mackie 1604 which still performs monitoring duties in my studio from time to time. The Yamaha 01V96 is MUCH more complicated. This means it's also much more powerful. (Notice I said it was complicated first, and powerful second!). Actually, the Yamaha 01V96 would not be that tough to learn if I could use it on a regular basis. So far, I haven't had that luxury.

Learning the Yamaha 01V is about like learning a new software program like Steinberg Cubase or Adobe Photoshop. It just takes time to learn what it can really do. The only problem is that when running live sound, you don't have the luxury of time. Choices and solutions need to be found immediately.

I was very much considering using the Yamaha 01V the first night to put in a little more time on the board, but I ended up deciding against it. The Yahama has so many great features that great problems are caused as well. For example, I thought I had started with a brand new mix (not a recall). But when channel 9 was getting signal but not sending any sound out to the PA, I knew something was up. It turned out that I had re-routed the return from Aux 1 (a delay) back to the fader 9 so that I could easily control delays from the main page. I hadn't plan on doing any fancy rerouting this time. But I still had to figure out how to reroute the fader. (You see complicated and powerful!)

I'm glad I waited until Saturday night to use the Yamaha 01V because I had all day to work out the kinks.

My main decision to use the Yamaha 01V96 was mostly due to the fact that this band is loud and I figured I'd need the extra EQ. The Yamaha has a 4 band EQ on every single channel. On top of that, there is another 4 band eq on each bus, so I could have 8 bands of parametric EQ if absolutely necessary. This completely blows away a typical mixer with a 3 band EQ with only sweepable mids.

Serve The Song, Not The Ego

The biggest lesson I learned this weekend was to use some of the same fundamentals that I employ at the studio each and every day. The idea is to make the song the best it can possibly be. The same is true with live sound.

On the first night, I kept the level down a little bit and just went for a great blend. You could feel the kick pretty well, but it wasn't tickling your ribs or anything. I just tried to keep the vocal harmonies clear and that was about the end of it.

On Saturday night, things were different. I was instructed to make the PA so slamming that it would kill babies. In other words, the band didn't want the kick to tickle ribs. They wanted the kick to knock a hole right through every person's chest.

While this has it's merits, I guess, it turned out that by going for the mindblowingly loud kick drum, we were causing big problems elsewhere (read on about the “Acoustics Disaster”). It turned out that by turning the PA down just a tad to be just a “loud rock show” we were able to greatly increase fidelity, clarity, and the power of the songs. When we turned down just a little bit, the dance floor filled up as well. (Of course, this could be due to liquid reasons).

There were certain songs that had parts where the kick drum should be highlight and it was no problem bringing in the impact when needed. But I learned that everyone seams to be happier with the level down just a tad. It seams “kill babies” isn't a good idea after all. (Who would have though it?)

Acoustics Disaster

Well, the sound from the mix position was pretty good. The PA was thumping nicely and the overall fidelity was actually pretty high. I was quite pleased with what we had. Then I walked on stage. There was literally NOTHING but deep bass (coming mostly from kick drum). It has to be something with the the way the subwoofers sat on the stage. (Maybe the subs shouldn't be on the same stage as the band at all?). Either way, the monitors were almost totally useless. The kick drum was about 30dB louder on the stage than it was to the crowd. I'm serious.

The bass players said he couldn't hear himself, yet to the crowd, he was the loudest instrument. It seamed that everything was backwards. This reminded me of studio monitor acoustics issues I often deal with only without the luxury of time to make sure the mix translates.

I didn't come up with a decent solution for this problem until the second set. The solution for the acoustics disaster came from sucking out everything at 25Hz, about 6dB at 40Hz and turning the kick drum down by about 4dB. That combination seamed to change everything for the band. We also turned the bass guitar down on the amp itself since it was loud enough without the help of the PA.

I have a feeling that the subsonic filter on the PA (on stage and out of my control) was turned off. On recordings I make, I have no problem sucking everything out under 35Hz. For the next live show, I may go as has as something like 50Hz. (Who knows? That may be mistake as well).

De-esser Required For Vocals

So far, I haven't been able to find a de-esser for the Yamaha 01V. Part of the idea of buying the Yamaha 01V96 was having all of our effects built in. Well, I consider a de-esser to be a requirement for live use on lead vocals. In the studio, I can find the right mic for a singer and control the position of that mic to avoid sibilance problems. In the live sound world, I can not control these things. I mean that I'm stuck with what they give me. Usually, it's an SM 58 or something similar that is quite aggressive in the upper mids and total hell in singers that are prone to sibilance.

I think a $100 de-esser might make a night and day difference in the quality of live sound next time around.

Crank Up The Guitars

It appears that every band member was having hell hearing themselves at this show. We've always been a little scared of the guitars being too loud and me not having the ability to turn them down. We may want to get a little more aggressive with our guitar volumes on stage. I had to use quite a bit of gain on the guitars to get them up to the right level. On top of this, the band couldn't hear them well either (mostly because of the acoustics problem).

For the next show, I may try to get the cabinets shooting into the face of each guitar player. We'll see how that works out.

Don't Do Live Sound

I think the biggest lesson here is if you are studio guy, you should stay there. There is no place for recording studio engineers behind a console in a bar....EVER!