EBS_freak

5 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

That's fair Russ, but I think the counter is that sound to light can give a band some additional visual energy for the audience? No?

 

Having said that:

- lighting is a missed trick for many bands and certainly not an area of great expertise for most;

- our lighting rigs tend to be fairly basic (and yet another thing for the put upon bassplayer to have to sort!).

 

I dunno, Id rather see a well lit band than a light show. You know you have hanging bolt points on top of your speaker cabs? Perfect place to put secure a led panel on top of the speaker to cross fire across the stage.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Agreed - that's very decent image and sound quality! A 1" chip does seem to be the magic number for indoor low light gigs.

 

Given the cost did you consider getting something like one of the Sony a6000 series with its APS-C chip + a Rode stereo mic, which combined will be in a similar price bracket?

Here's some low light footage from our gig on Fri night for you and Russ to give some comparison of that set up - Al Krow (@al_krow) • Instagram photos and videos

Biggest improvement would be to light the band so you can see your faces!

 

I know everybody has their own take on mobile, easy setup lighting... but if you flood light your band then have the other lights doing their thing, the presence of your band will be enhanced. At the moment, there's nothing different  between how you are being lit and the people on the dance floor.

 

(I hate sound to light lighting btw so I'm a tough crowd)

Im actually pretty impressed with that image quality. How does it do in low, low light?

1 hour ago, dave_bass5 said:

Just about noticeable. 
 

Whatever instrument you are playing, always a bass player.

Any sample footage you can share?

I don’t care - I already know I know best 😂

 

dinosaurs…

Just throwing it out there… have you noticed how angry people become when you suggest there’s an alternative to loud stages…?

You need to be treating yourself to some customs!

You don’t need a sub for a silent stage. Just a decent set of full range PA tops which can cover the lows in the same manner as your bass cabs.

33 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

No, through a combo. Hence "upgrade the vocal-only PA" and "find somewhere to store the active sub".

A combo does not do and will not do what a sub does, hence confused as why you think you’d need one.

30 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

OK. All I have to do is upgrade the vocal-only PA so it'll take bass too, find somewhere to store the active sub and employ a slave to move it, mic up the drums, and either mic up the guitar amps or persuade the guitarists to go through the PA. A couple of thousand quid and an extra hour of setting up per night should cover it.

Do you play through a sub already…?

57 minutes ago, Japhet said:

I can't help but wonder whether there will come a time when audiences too are supplied with headsets at large gigs. How surreal would that be? Huge crowd, band silence in the arena as they jump about and sing out of tune. I wonder what the reaction would be if you told potential punters that this is how a gig would work. I'd hazard a guess that many of them would be horrified and would much rather prefer the rawness of soaking up a conventional gig at normal volume.

I’ve already done it. Problematic wedding venue. The band went silent stage, the audience went headphones. It’s not that strange really - silent discos have been a thing for ages.

 

Only difference really, is that you better know how to mix when everything is crystal clear!

 

here’s an example -

 

 

1 hour ago, police squad said:

As a guitarist I understand that loud is great, it helps with getting your guitar to feedback and resonate better but in my duo (80s) I have to put up with the fact I can't get that experience, so I just play round that problem.

Digitech FreqOut

Couple of things here -

 

Quality of IEMs and the mix in them. Some people freak out at the clarity - you thought your playing was better than it really is. Different ball game when you can hear every fk up in crystal clear clarity - and you blame the tech when it unravels the reality.

 

Movement of air - if you can feel that amount of air, your backline is too loud to give a decent mix in most situations anyway... but most of the time, it's a myth. Stand next to an amp and put your fingers in your ears... and you feel through your jeans.... nothing. (And that cos you aren't playing any strings because your fingers are in your ears)

 

If you want then energy, go get a KT board or something.

 

But again, each to their own. Some people like old school. Some people like the tech. Some people like their hearing intact too.

 

I actually like playing without IEM too... but theres always somebody in the band looking to ruin the party. Guitarists and drummers I'm looking at you.

 

I've got to the point where I say try IEMs. Some people love it. Some people dont. Lifes too short to try and get people to come around to your preference.

Am I led to believe that unveiling this kick drum secret has exposed a load of hatred for it?  

 

As they say, with great power comes great responsibility. It's about knowing when to restrain yourself...!

It’s amazing how much extra energy a tight kick can give a band.

11 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

... though I still didn't get the "sine wave" bit. That was in the second part of @EBS_freak's answer...

 

Especially for you @Phil Starr - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/389429-the-iem-in-ear-monitors-bible-thread/?do=findComment&comment=5173832

 

 

...as I say, if your desk can't do this (or you haven't got the outboard), you can go the trigger route.

 

And apologies for that little slap run.  (I got carried away)

Sine wave on kick drums follow up...

 

This is a pub gig that I did with the band last year which I recorded multitrack.

 

Here's an explanation what is happening with each file -

 

01-Drums (no sine) : This is the drum bus using just the mics on the drums. (Kick, 2 overheads, 1 up 1 down toms and of course the snare). You can hear a bit of bleed from the vocalist in the overheads but as the rest of the band is on silent stage setups, you'll hear the bleed is pretty minimal.

 

02-KickOnly : this is the kick drum mic soloed. Listen for the fundamental (you can hear some resonance in the drum which kinda gives you a clue to where it's at). The key thing for a single kick drum mic set up is that you have are picking up the click. If you don't know what I mean by that, see if you can pick up the "tick" which sounds like a metronome. You want to hear that so give your drum some presence in the room, otherwise it will all be mush. This is a taste thing. Not too much click or your band may start sounding a bit metal when it's not. (Audix D6 is the mic which sounds like this by default with next to minimal EQ)

 

03-SineOnly: I was hearing the fundamental around 54Hz going by the recording. What you are hearing here is the desks oscillator going (sine wave at 54Hz) with a side chained gate being triggered by the kick drum mic channel. So you can hear the gate is tracking pretty close.

 

04-KickWithSine: This is the Kick and Sine channels soloed - so you should hear a lot weightier kick. Listen to this and back to 02-KickOnly and the difference should be immediately apparent. So this is really giving your the low end thud but without the mush you would get if you started pushing the frequency on the kick channel.

 

05-Drums(with sine): The drum bus with the sine wave. You can hear the drums have a load more energy and the compressor on the drum bus is crunching quite nicely due to the extra gain in the lows. Listen to this, then listen back to 01-Drums (no sine). Hopefully the difference is more than a little apparent!

 

06-MixWithSine: Lets bring in the band to see what it sounds like. Not bad for the Dog and Duck on a Friday night...

 

07-MixWithoutSine: And just to show you the difference... lets lose the sine wave.

 

And thats how you pin punters to the back wall and give it the "pro gig" sound in the pub. (I know the hyped kick drum is not everybody's thing - but loads of people commented how we sounded so different to every other band which went in there...!)

 

EDIT - dont expect to hear a massive difference through laptop speakers (majority are HPFed anyway), so use decent monitors or headphones to hear whats going on in detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sons of co-wrote this...

 

 

Always going to be a bit of a brave move putting anything out when your dads are who they are. (I can see why they removed the comments)

 

Seems OK to me. However, is it me... the tuning (especially at 6 seconds....)... and mix is a bit erm...

Also worth saying, cleaning up the bottom end and using a sine wave, or a trigger kick sounds freaking amazing in IEMs. (With the added bonus of not having to worry as much about processing and EQ)

On 11/04/2024 at 12:34, Al Krow said:

Can you talk us through your thinking and how you would go about applying "a sine wave on a gate" please? I'm not familiar with what you have in mind here! 

This one will need a quite feature rich digital desk or outboard (however, I will drop in an easy alternative once I've talked you through it)

 

Basically, kick drums on mics can be quite a pita in the live environment because they tend to pick up not only the kick drum but all the low end rumble crap on stage.

 

So theres a number of things you can do to address this. The common one, is to use two mics. One which is getting the all the beater frequencies and the other which is getting the lows - but the gain can be a lot lower as you don't need to boost the gain on that mic to capture the beater frequencies. Lower the gain and closer proximity to the drum means higher signal to noise ratio without all the bleed.

 

OK what else? You can also apply a gate. The gate stops any signal from the mic getting onto your mix bus. Once a threshold is exceeded (e.g. a kick drum is kicked), the gate opens and lets the sound of the drum through... before closing again. All this means is that you get the sound of the drum but the ambient mush which is present whilst the drum isn't being kicked doesn't go into your mix. However, the low end you are getting may be that fundamental plus still quite a lot of mush. So how can you get all the low end fundamental without the mush?

 

Answer? Fake it.

 

So you use a mic to capture the beater and roll off all the low end and associated mush. So how do you get that low end thump of the kick? Easy - that's where the sine wave comes in. So lets choose say 60Hz. Set up a sine wave (some desks have sine generators (usually labelled oscillators) - other desks without the functionality, you'll need to plug in a sine generator onto another channel - however, if you haven't got an oscillator, it's unlikely it will support the next bit).

 

Of course, what you have now is a permanent sine wave present on your mix bus. What you need to do is configure it to be side chained and triggered when the gate on the kick drum channel opens. When you've done that, you'll end up with the kick drum with the inferior low end being augmented with the pure sine wave. That will give you purest bottom end - and with some big subs, you'll be pinning people to the wall with the most precise sounding kick drum you've ever heard.

 

BUT>>>>> as I said, not every desk can support this. Whats the alternative?

 

Drum trigger. I always carry around a Roland TM-2 with a RT30K trigger. This gives you the opportunity trigger a sine... but if you are going to do that... you may want to trigger the complete kick drum sound completely. Whats not to like about a lovingly crafted studio quality kick drum sample in a live setting?

 

And that's it!

 

PS this is a cheat which is also used on more studio recordings than you would think. Gives you that low end precision which a mic simply can't deliver.

On 11/04/2024 at 12:34, Al Krow said:

 

Will defo try out applying hpf to the kick, which may reduce boominess we sometimes get, although our desk hpf kicks in at 100Hz and up till now the view has been to leave the 50Hz+ region for the kick and just hpf my bass? 

 

 

There is an easy response to this. For each venue, try and listen for what works best. If you are running an analogue desk without outboard, your options are more limited in terms of processing (compression, gates etc) but it worth remembering a HPF, at say 100Hz, is not literally cutting everything (e.g. hard cutting) below 100Hz. There will be a slope associated with that drop off and that drop off may not be behaving as you think. Let me try and explain how even with an analogue desk, and without the flash toys, you can make your kick drum thud at that fundamental.

 

For the benefit of this example I'll tell you that kick drum fundamentals (depending upon kick drum) are typically somewhere in the 50, 60, 70 Hz zone. (Depends upon type and size of drum, tightness of skins etc)

 

So... I've googled generic analogue desk and the Allen and Heath ZED something or other came up. Quite a common mixer the ZED... so I downloaded the manual to find out what the channel strip looks like -

 

 

So we've got (at the top) a HPF which is 100 Hz. I've looked at the specs of the roll off and it's 12dB/Octave. I'm not sure of the Q on the HPF as it's not stated in the manual - but I'll show that for the roll off, it's not that important anyway, especially when we're using the eq in the manner in which I'm going to show you.

 

So... here's our EQ with no gains applied on any of the EQ filters and no HPF applied.

 

 

As you can see, totally flat. If you feed in anything in the lows, it will get pushed to your output bus. First things first, let's push in the HPF button and see what that does to our frequency curve.

 

 

As you can see, with a 12db/Oct cut, it actually starts cutting above 100Hz and tapers down as the frequency lowers in accordance with that 12db/Octave gradient. Now let me show you what is actually happening at that 100Hz point on the HPF...

 

 

Before we move on too much, lets come back to the Q. In the above example, the Q (shape) is at 0.71... is we lessen it to 0.1, we can see how it impacts the roll off -

 

 

And if we boost the Q we can influence the eq quite dramatically...

 

 

But... it's worth noting, the last thing you want on a PA, is a huge bump like this when putting on a HPF (I'm just showing you for your understanding). In reality I would wager Q is probably around 0.75 or 0.71 so there is cut only (e.g. nothing going above the horizontal line in our graphs).

 

So just to get us back on path, as stated before, with the HPF button depressed, your EQ is going to look something like this.

 

 

OK. Now lets look at the LF filter on the channel strip...

 

 

As you can see, this is at 80Hz and is a low shelving filter (as shown by the logo under LF)

 

So lets whack that up to +15dB and see what we get...

 

 

You can see that shelf curve in action (curves upwards and then flattens out (the orange section). Our resulting EQ curve shows we are still getting a boost of low end from around 50Hz and above. So thats our target kick drum zone right there... however... it's also probably including a lot of unwanted mush because of the breadth of frequencies being boosted.

 

So what can we do...?

 

Lets set the LF back to 0 to get back to just our HPF being applied.

 

 

... and now lets draw our attention to those lower mids on the channel strip.

 

 

 

So bearing in mind I told you a kick drum fundamental could be typically found around 60Hz, lets apply a boost of 15dB with a Q of say, 2. (Obviously you'd be using your ears to determine how much you want to boost that frequency so it sounds right - and remember, the volume of kick controlled via this channel (for the overall mix) would be controlled via the fader)

 

 

Well, would you look at that! A kick drum fundamental which is poking out like mad but with some significant cut between 70 and 100 where all your mush resides. And on the other side of the equation, you have mega cut from just above 50 which is getting rid of all the sub mush and unwanted energy sapping, speaker punishing frequencies.

 

So there you go, you have EQed your fundamental on your kick drum channel... and you still have the upper mid to address any 200-400 boxiness. You've also freed up a bit of space in your mix for your bass guitar to reside! (although you may want to be EQing your bass channel with a different approach based on what you've just learned - e.g. still using the HPF albeit with maybe some LF and LM with different frequency centre points and Q.

 

Granted, it all depends upon how feature rich your filters are on your analogue desk... but hopefully this has demystified HPF somewhat!

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Yeah agree in part. We apply HPF on the desk to everything already, including bass, apart from the kick: and as I think I mentioned, we're pretty happy with our FoH mix.

I think the IEM issue I'm thinking about...is just an IEM issue.

HPF your kick drum and have a sine wave on a gate... Thumps like mad with none of the mud.

All depends on requirements.

 

Xvive can run into issues in a crowded 2.4Ghz environment - depends whats happening (try running 2.4 in a conference centre and you'll have a miserable time).

 

Also, depending upon what is in your chain, you could run into latency... and it's a bit of a non starter for stereo!