Sound Design Live

Build Your Career As A Sound Engineer

How to develop a habit of logical troubleshooting, piece-by-piece

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with the creator of the Sound Bullet, David Scorteccia. We discuss building a habit of logical troubleshooting, how caring less can get you more gigs, and all of the Sound Bullet features.

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to troubleshooting signal flow?
  • Walk us through some of the features of the Sound Bullet and with each one, let’s talk about how it’s used in the field and maybe any personal stories you might have related to that feature.
  • Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
  • What’s in your work bag?

Take a deep breath and analyze it piece by piece.

David Scorteccia

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Jon Hopkins – Open Eye Signal, Unknown Mortal Orchestra – How Many Zeros, Mark Guiliana – Roast, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Melting.
  2. Workbag: Leatherman, Sharpies, Socket Tester, Cutting mat, p!ng, angle finder
  3. Books: Sound Systems: Design and Optimization
  4. Merlijn van Veen
  5. Quotes
    1. A lot of it is about body communication, because if you really want to have friends and attract more work, the tension you feel will express itself on your face.
    2. Take a deep breath and analyze it piece by piece.
    3. I can get into the habit of analyzing things in a thorough way so that the next time things happen in a rush I’ll be able to troubleshoot it faster.
    4. There’s nothing better than knowing that my little creature is being used.
    5. If I have 5 hours of setup time I would check every single thing that I see move or be still.

Guess How Many Measurements Positions You Need for Proper Output EQ (it’s more than 1!)

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with the Product Manager at L-Acoustics, Scott Sugden. We discuss the automation built into the new M1 measurement software, why you can’t trust measurement data above 10kHz beyond 80m, and the specific number of measurement positions you need to represent an audience for proper output EQ choice.

I ask:

  • How did you get your first job in audio?
  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to L-Acoustics systems?
  • What’s interesting for me about the P1 processor is that you have managed to automate some procedures that we would normally do manually. Would you talk about one or two of those procedures and maybe why L-Acoustics decided to pursue this kind of automation?
  • Tell us about one of the biggest or maybe most painful mistakes you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
  • From FB
    • Kevan Atkins: During a demo I attended for L-ISA, he made a claim that it addresses the problem of comb filtering in system design but didn’t really expand on it. I’d be curious to hear him talk about this in more detail.
    • Haniel Trisna: Explain the idea of boosting high mids in the middle boxes to air compensate for long throws instead of the top box (generated by auto FIR in Sound Vision), and where can we learn more about working with the auto FIR and auto splay.
    • Primož Vozelj: Are they working on vertical processing of their line arrays (like ArrayProcessing, MLA etc.)?
    • Calum Young: I’d love to know what sort of measurement equipment / facilities / testing procedures they go through while developing new units. Is most of the work and decision making done in simulation software pre building prototypes, or is there more extended testing / voicing of units?
    • Steve Knots: If Greek amphitheaters were designed to put the audience in the best place for sound, why are we not creating clubs, theaters and control rooms in similar architectural style?
    • Roy Sputtz: Is the idea of true stereo in live sound a myth?? And also why isn’t anyone making an all weather line array?
    • Ockert Marais: Are they planning on supporting, mic correction curves and z-weighted weighting curves on the P1?
  • What’s in your work bag?

About 8 microphone positions distributed evenly in the center mass of the coverage of a loudspeaker is pretty representative of the overall. The likelihood of a poor EQ choice because of that is pretty low.

Scott Sugden

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Bodo Felusch.
  2. Justin Vernon and Bon Iver
  3. Cadac J type
  4. L-Isa, Soundvision
  5. Workbag: iSEMcon 7150, DPA 4007, Digigram Cancun 442
  6. Book: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t
  7. Podcast: 20,000Hz, 538 Politics, Science Vs, Planet Money, Freakonomics, The Flophouse
  8. Quotes
    1. A common mistake made with a lot of systems is the expectation that you can solve your problems of a bad design after you install it.
    2. The lack of knowledge; it’s hard to be aware that you don’t know something. That’s one that only comes with time, experience, and making mistakes.
    3. If you have just one mic at FOH or one at FOH and one 20ft off stage of that, the likelihood of an EQ choice not being representative of the audience is really high.
    4. We have taken measurements outside in atmospheric conditions that are good and found that at 80m from measurement to measurement on average is ±5dB at 10kHz. This means that if you see a measurement with a bump of +1dB at 10kHz, you can’t know if that’s the reality or it isn’t. Even a long average doesn’t help.
    5. We tend to look at measurements and think they are some hard fact, but if you’ve used any measurement software outside at distance, you watch the curve move around and when you think it looks good you hit store.
    6. The best thing we can do is use the modeling environment to find the best result, especially at distance, and then get outside and verify behaviors.
    7. It’s hard for anyone to be an expert at all things. It’s an important part of career growth to identify what you can or want to be an expert at and then support yourself by surrounding yourself with other people that reinforce those skills, not reproduce them.
    8. It’s better to figure out what you like and hone down on that expertise than to try to cover every little thing.
    9. Once you get used to the workflow [of the P1/M1] the savings in workflow time and organization of your data is a 10x increase.

Merlijn’s Subwoofer Alignment Method Will Make You Feel like a Jedi Master

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with the senior technical support and education specialist at Meyer Sound, Merlijn van Veen. We discuss subwoofer alignment, subwoofer spacing, and M-noise.

I ask:

  • In Subwoofer Alignment: The foolproof relative / absolute method you describe a process of comparing two sources in the near-field when they are side-by-side and measurement conditions are favorable, creating an alignment preset, and then deploying that in the far-field with complementary delay to correct for any distance offset caused by moving the speakers apart relative to the listening position. Unfortunately, most of us attend a seminar where we learn how to align two sources and it seems pretty straight forward. Then we get into the field and the whole thing falls apart. Why can it be so challenging to get actionable data in the field and how did you came to develop the relative/absolute method?
  • You published a series of articles on your site called Mind the Gap, in which you share the performance improvements in directional subwoofer arrays caused by adding an air gap between enclosures. You end the articles with this: “the challenge becomes to determine the minimum required gap size for improved rejection without a noticeable increase in lobing.” Do you have an update for us on this subject and any further information on the minimum gap size?
  • Could you give us a run down of the settings you use in your audio analyzer? smoothing, graph limits, averaging, etc.
  • What is M-noise? Do I need to start using it as my test signal in Smaart?
  • From FB
    • Dave Gammon: If he had hair…. would he have a mullet or ponytail…
    • Swapnil Wakodikar: Accessible software for all which provides stimulation of Line array and subwoofer configuration.
    • Ockert Marais: If you could only teach a single lesson about sound system optimisation for your entire life, What would it be?
    • Thorsten Bunz: Did having your own education site and writing articles help you get the job at meyer? How did it change your career?
sound-design-live-touring-foh-sound-engineer-job-Merlijn_van_Veen

If you ask a violin player to describe their violin, you’re going to get an 8-hour lecture because he knows his instrument intimately. He knows everything there is to know about that instrument because that’s how he makes his money. Ask an engineer to describe the phase response of the loudspeakers that he works with regularly and chances are you will hear crickets.

Merlijn van Veen

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Derrick Bryant.
  2. Meyer Sound, MAPP XT, M-Noise
  3. Merlijn’s starting audio analyzer settings: 1/48oct resolution, ±30dB with 10dB divisions, MTW FFT resolution, Complex magnitude average type, 16 FIFO or 1sec average
  4. SC0403-A task group
  5. Sound system Design and Optimization: and em Español.
  6. Quotes
    1. It’s notoriously hard to absorb long wavelengths.
    2. If you have really unfavorable conditions, even using a gratuitous amount of smoothing, typically, will not rid you of those fake wraparounds.
    3. If you ask a violin player to describe their violin, you’re going to get an 8-hour lecture because he knows his instrument intimately. He knows everything there is to know about that instrument because that’s how he makes his money. Ask an engineer to describe the phase response of the loudspeakers that he works with regularly and chances are you will hear crickets.
    4. I don’t consider ripple a bad thing. It’s arguably the most important metric that there is in interpreting an analyzer because it gives you an understanding of the degree of interaction and direct to reverberant ratio.
    5. It’s not about wrong or right. If you know what you are doing, anything goes. If you want your analyzer to become an ally, then the analyzer should render the sound as crappy as it sounds, not paint a picture from a data sheet.
    6. It makes no difference which signal we use when it comes to obtaining a transfer function. M-noise does not change my calibration practice.
    7. Calibration is the process of making it sound the same everywhere. Voicing is the process of “How should the sound system ultimately sound?”.
    8. In the absence of a viable alternative, I think MAPP is still the ultimate sandbox to experiment with these things while looking at data that you will run into in the real world.
    9. Vince Lombardi: Excellence is achieved by the mastery of the fundamentals.

Dave Rat’s Simple Problem Solving Mindset for a Long Fulfilling Career in Pro Audio

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with the president of Rat Sound Systems, Dave Rat. We discuss artistic solutions to technical problems, the best mindset for a finding work and a long fulfilling career, and the time Flea shouted in his face for missing an entrance.

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to FOH mixing?
  • What is the biggest mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
  • From FaceBook
    • Roshan Malim: Ask him about his sub woofers configurations and which is his favorite and why? And what is his most common sub woofer configurations for gigs? His ideas between flown subs and ground stack subs.
    • Christian Michael Martinez: As an owner of one of the largest production companies, how did you cope with the possibility of failure in the beginning as a small shop? How do you cope with risk now that the company is a success?
    • Maurizio M. D’Errico: Ask him about his technique of tuning a pa using headphones as a reference and if he still feels the same way about it since he made the YouTube video: How to EQ a Live Sound Reinforcement System.
    • Craig Gordon: Balancing touring and family/health.
    • Stephen Mink: Since he has some videos on YouTube about sub placement/patterns/alignment, his thoughts on where in a room to align flown and ground subs.
    • Dave Gammon: Does he really see the M-Force driver as the future
    • Garrick Quentin: Has he seen or heard of anyone else not affiliated with Rat sound using the double hung array as he did with the RHCPs and perhaps any comments on the whole concept in terms of its popularity, or otherwise, within the industry.
    • Davide Bonetti: does he need an assistant? 😇
    • Steve Knots: What’s the worst setup disaster he ever recovered from to pull off a successful show in the end?
    • Marty America: How’s your dog doing?
    • Micah Muth: How’s the Tesla?

The way to be successful is to sell self confidence. Confidence that when you’re there it’s going to be as good as it can possibly be.

Dave Rat

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by The Funk Lives.
  2. See my deconstruction of Dave’s custom end-fire subwoofer array.
  3. Hardware: DBX 12xds Subharmonic Synthesizer
  4. Books: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
  5. Quotes
    1. We didn’t borrow money, take any loans or take on any debt until 1997. So, 17 years of business.
    2. We had no idea. Well, we kind of had an idea. Everyone told us we’d fail. “There’s no way you’ll ever survive doing this.”
    3. If I’m 100% behind it and I’m going to make it happen; it’s not whether it will succeed. It’s how long it’s going to take. So if you just don’t even let failure be an option then it’s just a matter of work.
    4. Avoid silver bullets. They don’t come.
    5. Avoid being giant. You want to be happy, stable, and profitable. Being giant is precarious, stressful, and makes you a target for people to come after you.
    6. Probably one of the most common things for green engineers; the kick drum is so loud! It’s distracting from the core purpose, which is to connect the artist with the audience.
    7. If you act like you have a problem, then you have a problem. If you don’t act like you have a problem, then no one knows you have a problem.
    8. The way to be successful is to sell self confidence. Confidence that when you’re there it’s going to be as good as it can possibly be.
    9. We don’t have any problems here today. We just have a big pile of solutions we haven’t found, yet. It’s Ok, because the ones we can’t fix, can’t be fixed. But if it can be fixed, we’re gonna do it.
    10. It’s that unphasability. Combine that with, “Gimme the tools I need to do the job and everything will be fine,” and you can write your own paycheck.
    11. The sub configuration I prefer is the one that covers the venue as best as possible.
    12. The worst thing you can possible do is run your subs mono.
    13. Having a separate L/R sub aux, I find to be extremely useful.
    14. No where in nature do you have two things that are perfectly in time and phase.
    15. No where in nature do multiple unrelated sounds radiate out of a single point in space.
    16. By trying to make it sound the same everywhere, you loose the ability to make it sound great everywhere.
    17. A world-class sound engineer has the ability to recreate a quality sound consistently throughout a variety of environments and challenges.
    18. One of the ways I kept myself happy and sane was to start an external project. One tour it was blogging. It kept me busy. One tour I decided to learn to weld.
    19. By spreading (the mix) out, you can beat the crap out of the bass guitar into the fifteens of one rig, but the low end of the vocals and the low end of the guitar would stay clean. And the guitar could beat the crap out of the sixes in that one rig, but the vocals would be perfectly clean.
    20. If you desire to learn everything you can.