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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with Michael Lawrence who is Document Jockey at Rational Acoustics, Technical Editor at Live Sound International, and a freelance audio engineer. We discuss lots of tips for fighting microphone feedback without a graphic EQ (and without Smaart!) while mixing stage monitors from FOH in a reverberant room.
I ask:
- How did you get your first job in audio?
- Looking back on your career so far, what’s one of the best decisions you made to get more of the work that you really love?
- Running monitors from FOH? Here’s some tips.
- Like me and many other people, you often work by yourself. You are the system designer, system tech, A1, etc. You’ve developed a lot of processes to efficiently get it all done. Can we go over some of your best tips for running stage monitors from FOH?
- Why don’t you use Smaart with your stage monitors?
- Walk me through your process for ring out the monitors.
- And from Facebook
- Manuel Elias Costa: What does he know about automix and machine learning algorithms research? It would be interesting to hear more about the developments in mixing and automation.
- Andrey Andreev: What does he think of the way music industry is developing production-wise and is audio quality still a thing? How are decision been made for speccing a certain sound system? Why is point source so much neglected when it can be so many times better sounding than the usual line array type of systems? (Of course line array has its place but it’s hardly always the right solution)
- Dave Gammon: Does he see sound being more immersive in the future. Less about right and left but more about a total experience and encapsulating the audience.
- Garrick Quentin: With the new advancements in line source technology, where do old line arrays go to die? What’s the next game changer in line array technology that we don’t yet know about?
- Lou Kohley: How do you stay relevant to opposite edges of your market? The novice just starting at a bar gig to working professional to industry veteran.
I hate graphic EQs. I don’t use them unless I don’t have a better choice. You’re talking about 1/3 of an octave. That’s like a C to an F on a piano.
Michael Lawrence
Notes
- All music in this podcast by Bionik.
- Running Monitors from FOH? Here are some tips.
- Verify all outputs with pink noise. If they are all the same model, they should all sound the same. Check settings (line/mic switch, gain).
- Practice identifying feedback frequencies. Sing it to yourself.
- Hardware: X32, Midas Pro1, LS9
- My Results from 30 Days of Ear Training, Download the Aiming Triangles Business Card
- Quotes
- I treat everything like I’m on tour even when I’m not on tour; doing the same things in the same order every time.
- Before you do any test, have an idea of what you expect it to look like.
- I always have a cue wedge at FOH. If you don’t have one, you’re guessing.
- I hate graphic EQs. I don’t use them unless I don’t have a better choice. You’re talking about 1/3 of an octave. That’s like a C to an F on a piano.
- We ignore the polar pattern of the mic. That’s super important. Buy yourself every dB you can get.
- I always double patch my money channel.
Hey, Nathan!
I have a question about the podcast – probably i’m missing something, but why double patch input channels to do a different mix for monitors (in contrast to the FOH mix), rather than doing it on the output channel? Especially if your workflow doesn’t need much EQ aimed at countering feedback. We’re obviously talking digital consoles and pre-fade-pre-EQ type of patching your monitor outputs. My reasoning – If max volume out of the monitor is the goal I wouldn’t be way too concerned with how it sounds tonally, and if best possible sound is aimed than i probably wouldnt need much of the EQ points for tuning and have them free for toning. Hence, per Occam’s razor, I would go with the simpler solution. What am I missing? 🙂
Hey Martin, you aren’t missing anything. It’s just a choice. To maximize GBF and artist comfort, often different processing is needed for the input channel going to the monitor vs going to FOH. That being said, I fully support and more efficient solution. If you can get away with your input channels doing double duty, I say go for it.
Hi Martin –
I never use a pre-EQ send if I can help it. At that point it’s pretty much a direct out, which leaves me no tools to make changes as requested by the artists. I also mix a lot of artists on IEMs, including a band that I work with regularly, so there’s no concern about using PEQ for feedback, however how they want to sound in their ears – and how they want EACH OTHER to sound in their ears – is often much different than what I am doing with them in the mix out front. For example, our lead vocalist likes a ton of her own vocal in her ears, along with reverb and her acoustic guitar and not much else.
In the main mix, both her vocal and the acoustic are pretty severely high passed to get them to sit with the three other guitars and keyboards (and four other vocals…) but if I put that in her ears, she’ll think it’s thin sounding. Because it is. She’s listening to elements in pseudo isolation, whereas I’m shaping them totally to fit in a 35-input mix. So a double patch allows my artists to hear whatever they want, completely independent of what I’m doing in the house. I also try to avoid much compression in the IEMs because it can really affect the musicians’ playing – and, even more critically, cause vocalists to tire themselves out, so the two processing paths end up looking pretty different.
My output EQ on the ears mixes is pretty much just a low shelf cut (I remove from their ears everything that they’re getting from the subwoofers, which really cleans up the elements a lot) and I rock that up or down depending on what the LF is doing in the room that day.
Of course, that’s all stuff I developed over time to help deal with specific needs of specific artists – so William of Ockham would indeed posit that others shouldn’t necessarily do the same thing just because I do it 😀
Thanks for tuning in…
m