Electronic Music mailing list archives

I'm totally a fan of those guys, but there's some simple things they
can do on stage to fix the sound out front, like ask for more bass in
the monitors or ask for a sub onstage. Given how professional dance
sound is set up you are going to get massive bass out in the audience
if there's merely sufficient bass coming out of the performer's mixer.

That being said, it's effing stupid that they couldn't get a
sympathetic sound man running things.  The subs and the full range
speakers are separately amplified, so it's criminal to overcompress
the full range signal before feeding it through the monitors.  In fact
any fool with an ounce of sympathy could make those guys sound good:
put limiters after the crossovers, but set the nominal signal level
into the limiters so that they catch just the occasional out of bounds
peak.   You might end up with _only_ 115dbA 20 feet from the speakers
instead of 135dbA, but it would sound great and still have physical
impact.

There are also some specific frequencies, usually right around the
crossover point that are going to sound farty if they're too strong.
If your sound system starts having that ugly 'brown' sound, try a 3dB
cut around 100hz.

Moron sound guys who aren't happy unless they're damaging the
audience's hearing shouldn't be doing live sound.  Of course those
guys are all half deaf already.



On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 7:01 AM, theREALmxyzptlk
 wrote:
>     Just to clarify, I have a chat with Rod Modell every year at the Detroit
> fest and this year I brought up both the 'shift in style' from record to
> floor plus the muddied sound, which plagued the Movement set a few days ago
> as well. I think it was Tristan who speculated that someone probably advised
> them to roll out a dancier set for the European crowd, and that is *exactly*
> what happened. In fact, they was told that although Berghain, Fabric, etc.
> really like their recorded material, they had no interest in booking them
> unless they modified the set accordingly.
>     As for the mud in the mix, they're trying to sort that. Apparently there
> has been a tussle with techs over the bass levels and Modell suspects the
> protective techs are compressing the sound to the point where it leave
> littles else but bass thuds. For the record, Rod is no babe in woods when it
> comes to engineering sound; he bought his first synth in 85 and has been
> working at it since.
>     It IS a shame he can't hear what it sounds like in the crowd; he knew it
> was a fight with the sound techs, but had no idea it's coming off as thuddy
> as it is. Normally I'm a bit standoffish when it comes to hobknobbing
> (shyness, really), but I know Rod a bit and felt I owed that to him.
>
>                                        jeff
>
>
> I'm sure Tristan will elucidate far more than I could, as he was fuming! The
> sound was
>>>
>>> muddy, so you couldn't hear the treble at all, but this was an hour of
>>> relentlessly dull dub techno with no variation or subtlety
>>> whatsoever, and a real shame because one of them (not mr Modell) was
>>> having the time of his life behind the laptop. A shame he
>>> couldn't obviously hear what sh*te we were hearing.
>>
>>
>>
>