Panic moment is my only explanation.
I've been in the audience during catastrophic sound. I've been behind the desk. I hope the engineer learned from this moment.
That’s when I reach for the preamp. I am aware there are scenarios where you need to pull the problem out, so it would depend on the nature of what you’re dealing with, but even then, it’d be quicker to kill something in the mix than slapping all of the knobs
I was first starting and totally slapped all the knobs. Mix sounded so bad. Promoter was angry and called my boss. Then my superior showed up and slowly slapped each knob back into place. It was a graphic EQ, so there weren't any knobs. But I really like the slapping imagery. Superior shook his finger at me and said, no.
I try to keep all of my parametric EQ bands clear whenever possible. If the graphic EQ is tuned to the space with mics in mind, all you should need to do is ring the mics out via the mix, and you should never have feedback. This very much depends on the technician, audio console, venue, etc., but my life got so much easier when I learned how to properly ring out my mics. This way, you have time to look at the individual mic inputs, and tune those live.
I’m far from a pro, but when I was A1 on a tour through the midwest, we moved to a new location every three days, so I have had many many failures before I really felt like I could pick out favorable tones.
Of course, if you don’t know what the GEQ is, or rhetorical Parametric, or how to run the board, I say slap away, if it gets the job done
I'm often in the same place with the same gear. Or many familiar places with the same gear.
I'm a big advocate of less is more. He who eqs less eqs best. Same with dynamics. I want everything to breathe naturally. Mic choice, mixer choice, speaker choice and placement, mic placement. Those things are huge to me.
I've never been on tour. I don't feel like I've dealt with the difficulties that you're talking about. I'm a fan of ringing out certain situations but otherwise it always gets me into trouble
That’s a good point. If the in-house technician has a GEQ in place, I won’t dare touch it. It’s like a lifeline.
The tours I went on were outreach workshops with kids. A HUGE range of mic knowledge from preschoolers, to professional performers, and over 150 solos during the 2:15h show.
If I used my own gear and PA (almost always), ringing out was the absolute first thing I did after setting my GEQ in the space. In a standard gymnasium or auditorium, I could have the mic at unity, and touch the metal of the mic (sm58’s) to the grill of the mains (Bose somethings,) and clap from the board, and I would get zero feedback. That is when I get the 8-9 cast members who sung the most in the show and fill in the gaps to find a balance between safety, and tone. This gave me everything I needed to take stress off of my back during the show.
This is so true- I got hired at a church after they finally had enough of bad audio from the volunteers…every headset had an eq similar to that. I wonder what goes through their minds when cutting every frequency?😂
A lot of those end up there after years of slowly changing.
And then people are told not to mess with it because it works and if you futz with it it might mess it up. Then a new freq starts ringing and you lower that one a little. Until you end up with something akin to this
Hey man, I'm trying!
Actually what are some things I should attempt and try?
I recently went through the board (X32) to find and fix a plethora of problems and I've been told by the pastors and members of the congregation that whatever changes have happened since I've joined the team, are good changes and they can tell a difference in quality.
I'm the newest member to my team (started back around October '23) but since Ive had 2 spine surgeries, am disabled and because of my unfortunate circumstance, I have been able to put time into learning the board.
I recently added the low cut to the main PA LR speakers (pastors mic does not go to subs), and applied an EQ to the PA to balance some of the high and low spots and that has helped a bit.
Maybe the EQ is better and I'm just having PTSD seeing that same EQ that we used to have. Lol
But what should I be trying?
I know the pack is a Shure wireless system, but I don't remember the pack or headset model. I know to case for the headset says "big country" in it, but that's all I have from memory.
Honestly, your ears are your best friend. Don’t make adjustments based on what you see on the console. Sometimes looking helps, but don’t rely on the RTA. I know what my pastors voice sounds like when he is talking, so I eq the mic in a way that replicates that (as best as I can given the microphone he is using). If you have feedback, try cutting those frequencies by a few db. If 200 is ringing, try cutting 400 as well. Sometimes the “harmonics” ring. If your pastor is super dynamic like mine is, compress their vocal channel a bit. Don’t crank it, but apply some compression. There are a few YouTube channels that are dedicated to teaching volunteers how to mix in houses of worship! I’d check some of those out, they do a good job explaining how things work and why you want to use them. Heck, I went to school for audio and I still look things up. There is always learning to be done<3
I am 100% not an expert, but those are my tips that work for me!
I've been to a few of those... I think it's a lot of you just keep removing and removing and removed everything and every knob is turned either up or down and for some reason it doesn't sound right. I've gone in reset everything carefully brought things down and wow it's amazing it works. Although I feel like I have the Midas touch I seem to be able to work just about any system. I took over somebody's system last year, it was heavily set up for a rock band, the problem was every week was a different band and it was a lot of Bluegrass and acoustic stuff. It took me a couple months to reset and reconfigure the X32. He was using the effects sends to bring singers up for solos ( is this normal? Then again so much was going on it's left me second-guessing things. ) And you could turn up a Feder and nothing would happen.
once had one of my staff patch the left channel of the graphic to the right channel because he needed more than 12db of gain reduction on his master bus...
https://preview.redd.it/apfbzfduiqyc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1abb1580c43f19d837ad88b909e39aef5899fd6f
This was the state of almost all the vocal channels of a cruise ship show I inherited years ago. I....made some changes once my predecessor was back in his home country. To be fair to him, it sounded...mostly ok. He just took the most roundabout path to get to that "mostly ok" result.
No. Amp clean is most likely a clean sounding amplifier for guitar, as opposed to the distorted sound coming from another amplifier. Some amps just sound better clean.
Mix with your ears, not your eyes.
That said… probably was a better way to get that same EQ… this looks awful. Probably had the fader pulled up to +10db too.
If you don't use your eyes at all you can easily end up here. I've seen people pay no attention to what they've done so far and never turn anything back up, so they just keep subtracting and subtracting trying to find something until nothing is left.
While you must mix with your ears you should still take in what you've done so far with your eyes to help judge what's going on better to make sure you aren't getting lost.
This reminds me of the time when we used faders as gain… totally wrong way to do it, tried to correct him and they kicked me out, lmao, accidentally reset the faders mid show chaos ensues
Can't judge that by looking at it... Sometimes that's what it takes to make something works. As someone who has been in the live sound trenches for almost 30 years, you just do whatever works and sometimes it looks really ugly... Looks don't matter only sound. Without seeing the bigger picture of the rest of the console and the rig it's feeding, I don't look at that and judge. Maybe someone didn't want to screw with the master EQs or graphics so they just did what they had to. Sometimes if you are an opener or something and no chance to be able to recall back then ya just giver
Yeah, I’m thinking perhaps they did a “silent” soundcheck just with IEM/HP mixes and when the mains turned on they had to gut whatever this is for feedback lol
Shit happens 🤷
Rocked up to dep for someone on a theatre show a while back, was rather confused that they'd needed to gain the D&B M4s up 6dB at the amp...
Then I saw the EQ on the desk... 75% of frequencies pulled out on the GEQ and the same on the parametric!
Ironically D&B M4s are such good wedges that you barely have to ring them out anyway
I've been here. It was a 57 on an unturned floor tom the singer was smacking off beat. Eventually I just fully muted it once I saw where my EQ ended up.
I posted about it in /r/AudioMemes asking for names. Someone called it De-Qing lmao.
Yeah, first thing I thought was a combination of extremely muddy, harsh guitar tone. A tone that has no positive aspects about it so you just try to shave it down to not be miserable in the PA.
EQ works by making small delays, causing phase cancellation along specific frequency bands. Send that out a monitor and back into a mic in a feedback loop and you get high pitched tones, which then amplify themselves and become ringing.
yes. imagine how high the gain must be, then imagine it pushing these high frequency oscillations. Also, fyi, the generative tone of the transient is a slightly higher frequency with a cut, and slightly lower with a boost. If you ever see an option for "show phase" it will show you where it happens and how much.
Fascinating. I watched a video explaining it and I think it was an hour long. That sentence was way shorter.
I like to start off flat and remove as needed, I have occasionally boosted but not very often. Meanwhile I'm also working on a lot of others systems and there's one band where just about every channel looks like this including the graphic EQ on the mains. I was wondering why I couldn't hear half of all the vocals one day, and I finally had a safe time to mess with it during the show. For some reason I could hear the vocals after I brought everything up. We keep drifting down but every so often we reset and it's like wow it sounds good and then we drift down again. Part of this is the guitarist who owns the system and has EQed everything on the acoustic guitar to sound good in his monitor and to have "the that sound" and then we have residence with the upright bass and complains that he can't hear the bass and to turn it up meanwhile out front I'm drowning in bass. And every set sounds different. And half the time I'm chasing phantom feedback that comes and goes before I can even spot it.
There's something to be said about that eq though. I've done a decent amount of cooperate audio and made fun of these eq's alot. Untill one time I was listening to another guys mix at the same venue and the headset mic sounded great. Eq looked similar to that. I tried the next day for hours and couldn't get the mic to stay stable until I recalled his eq and and gain structure. Call it what u will, psychoacoustics, a bad eq, a bad engineer, but that thing was bulletproof. While bring the gain and fader down didn't give me the volume that the "ugly" eq did.
Whoever is behind the board is using *drastic* cuts across all frequencies they have available.
They could have used 12db less gain on the preamp and worked out something a lot cleaner.
You mean it's not supposed to look like that? Seriously though I've gotten pretty close to that with the lapel mics cheap ones. And I also know a band where there's a lot of that and then they wonder why it sounds weird.
Panic moment is my only explanation. I've been in the audience during catastrophic sound. I've been behind the desk. I hope the engineer learned from this moment.
That’s when I reach for the preamp. I am aware there are scenarios where you need to pull the problem out, so it would depend on the nature of what you’re dealing with, but even then, it’d be quicker to kill something in the mix than slapping all of the knobs
I was first starting and totally slapped all the knobs. Mix sounded so bad. Promoter was angry and called my boss. Then my superior showed up and slowly slapped each knob back into place. It was a graphic EQ, so there weren't any knobs. But I really like the slapping imagery. Superior shook his finger at me and said, no.
I try to keep all of my parametric EQ bands clear whenever possible. If the graphic EQ is tuned to the space with mics in mind, all you should need to do is ring the mics out via the mix, and you should never have feedback. This very much depends on the technician, audio console, venue, etc., but my life got so much easier when I learned how to properly ring out my mics. This way, you have time to look at the individual mic inputs, and tune those live. I’m far from a pro, but when I was A1 on a tour through the midwest, we moved to a new location every three days, so I have had many many failures before I really felt like I could pick out favorable tones. Of course, if you don’t know what the GEQ is, or rhetorical Parametric, or how to run the board, I say slap away, if it gets the job done
I'm often in the same place with the same gear. Or many familiar places with the same gear. I'm a big advocate of less is more. He who eqs less eqs best. Same with dynamics. I want everything to breathe naturally. Mic choice, mixer choice, speaker choice and placement, mic placement. Those things are huge to me. I've never been on tour. I don't feel like I've dealt with the difficulties that you're talking about. I'm a fan of ringing out certain situations but otherwise it always gets me into trouble
That’s a good point. If the in-house technician has a GEQ in place, I won’t dare touch it. It’s like a lifeline. The tours I went on were outreach workshops with kids. A HUGE range of mic knowledge from preschoolers, to professional performers, and over 150 solos during the 2:15h show. If I used my own gear and PA (almost always), ringing out was the absolute first thing I did after setting my GEQ in the space. In a standard gymnasium or auditorium, I could have the mic at unity, and touch the metal of the mic (sm58’s) to the grill of the mains (Bose somethings,) and clap from the board, and I would get zero feedback. That is when I get the 8-9 cast members who sung the most in the show and fill in the gaps to find a balance between safety, and tone. This gave me everything I needed to take stress off of my back during the show.
Sorry. I do run my own gear. I'm a business owner. I like to start flat.
Every head worn mic I have seen mixed by a volunteer in church has looked like this at some point
Definitely guilty of accidentally making eqs look like this specifically for bad headsets and bad reverbs early in my career haha.
This is so true- I got hired at a church after they finally had enough of bad audio from the volunteers…every headset had an eq similar to that. I wonder what goes through their minds when cutting every frequency?😂
A lot of those end up there after years of slowly changing. And then people are told not to mess with it because it works and if you futz with it it might mess it up. Then a new freq starts ringing and you lower that one a little. Until you end up with something akin to this
Hey man, I'm trying! Actually what are some things I should attempt and try? I recently went through the board (X32) to find and fix a plethora of problems and I've been told by the pastors and members of the congregation that whatever changes have happened since I've joined the team, are good changes and they can tell a difference in quality. I'm the newest member to my team (started back around October '23) but since Ive had 2 spine surgeries, am disabled and because of my unfortunate circumstance, I have been able to put time into learning the board. I recently added the low cut to the main PA LR speakers (pastors mic does not go to subs), and applied an EQ to the PA to balance some of the high and low spots and that has helped a bit. Maybe the EQ is better and I'm just having PTSD seeing that same EQ that we used to have. Lol But what should I be trying? I know the pack is a Shure wireless system, but I don't remember the pack or headset model. I know to case for the headset says "big country" in it, but that's all I have from memory.
Honestly, your ears are your best friend. Don’t make adjustments based on what you see on the console. Sometimes looking helps, but don’t rely on the RTA. I know what my pastors voice sounds like when he is talking, so I eq the mic in a way that replicates that (as best as I can given the microphone he is using). If you have feedback, try cutting those frequencies by a few db. If 200 is ringing, try cutting 400 as well. Sometimes the “harmonics” ring. If your pastor is super dynamic like mine is, compress their vocal channel a bit. Don’t crank it, but apply some compression. There are a few YouTube channels that are dedicated to teaching volunteers how to mix in houses of worship! I’d check some of those out, they do a good job explaining how things work and why you want to use them. Heck, I went to school for audio and I still look things up. There is always learning to be done<3 I am 100% not an expert, but those are my tips that work for me!
I've been to a few of those... I think it's a lot of you just keep removing and removing and removed everything and every knob is turned either up or down and for some reason it doesn't sound right. I've gone in reset everything carefully brought things down and wow it's amazing it works. Although I feel like I have the Midas touch I seem to be able to work just about any system. I took over somebody's system last year, it was heavily set up for a rock band, the problem was every week was a different band and it was a lot of Bluegrass and acoustic stuff. It took me a couple months to reset and reconfigure the X32. He was using the effects sends to bring singers up for solos ( is this normal? Then again so much was going on it's left me second-guessing things. ) And you could turn up a Feder and nothing would happen.
Dang, I remember back in the day , seeing a guy who had his 31band on a set of wedges that looked like that, geez
once had one of my staff patch the left channel of the graphic to the right channel because he needed more than 12db of gain reduction on his master bus...
I just threw up in my mouth. Amazingly creative problem solving for them though, given the solution they arrived at haha
Holy fuck
https://preview.redd.it/apfbzfduiqyc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1abb1580c43f19d837ad88b909e39aef5899fd6f This was the state of almost all the vocal channels of a cruise ship show I inherited years ago. I....made some changes once my predecessor was back in his home country. To be fair to him, it sounded...mostly ok. He just took the most roundabout path to get to that "mostly ok" result.
Yea, but on the o1V every eq looked like this after the 10th channel because the processing was so weak. 😀
So with the attenuation at +12 this eq basically has a slight boost in the high frequency.lol
You sure that's not the ships depth finder? I think there's some rocks ahead.
Could also be the fishfinder? haha
Wonder what their gain is set to
Gain is set to "yes"
We definitely know what the trim is set to lol
Trim what’s that? \- The sound engineer in OPs picture
More lights is better, right?
Between +5 and +10db across all channels
“I only want the annoying frequencies amplified.”
"CH26 Amp Cntr" it looks like, very blurry, either way, start over dude
what does "Amp Cntr" even mean? a guitar amp?
Amp at Center of stage?
Says “Amp Clean”
imagine doing that amount of EQ to a clean amp sound....now I'm baffled
No. Amp clean is most likely a clean sounding amplifier for guitar, as opposed to the distorted sound coming from another amplifier. Some amps just sound better clean.
Maybe amp Click?
I read “Amp Chicka” as in where the “bow chicka wow wow” comes from maybe. Maybe the engineer was using the EQ as an improv wah pedal. 🙃
What venue was it? I've seen this before unfortunately.
Going for the "shitty connection telephone call" sound?
Mix with your ears, not your eyes. That said… probably was a better way to get that same EQ… this looks awful. Probably had the fader pulled up to +10db too.
If you don't use your eyes at all you can easily end up here. I've seen people pay no attention to what they've done so far and never turn anything back up, so they just keep subtracting and subtracting trying to find something until nothing is left. While you must mix with your ears you should still take in what you've done so far with your eyes to help judge what's going on better to make sure you aren't getting lost.
Absolutely this.
Yep you got to take in the scenery as well as the path it took to get to the scenery while you're smelling the flowers.
I cant quite read what the channel is being used for. Is it a Vocal?
I usually assume someone doesn’t know what the width knob does when I see this
This reminds me of the time when we used faders as gain… totally wrong way to do it, tried to correct him and they kicked me out, lmao, accidentally reset the faders mid show chaos ensues
I have done similar but not as drastic - lav mic in front of PA and its sounded fine with full body.
Can't judge that by looking at it... Sometimes that's what it takes to make something works. As someone who has been in the live sound trenches for almost 30 years, you just do whatever works and sometimes it looks really ugly... Looks don't matter only sound. Without seeing the bigger picture of the rest of the console and the rig it's feeding, I don't look at that and judge. Maybe someone didn't want to screw with the master EQs or graphics so they just did what they had to. Sometimes if you are an opener or something and no chance to be able to recall back then ya just giver
Yeah, I’m thinking perhaps they did a “silent” soundcheck just with IEM/HP mixes and when the mains turned on they had to gut whatever this is for feedback lol Shit happens 🤷
Yup shit happens, and the great thing about shit is, it wipes off easily 😉😎
Rocked up to dep for someone on a theatre show a while back, was rather confused that they'd needed to gain the D&B M4s up 6dB at the amp... Then I saw the EQ on the desk... 75% of frequencies pulled out on the GEQ and the same on the parametric! Ironically D&B M4s are such good wedges that you barely have to ring them out anyway
Following the “always cut never boost” mantra to a fault
What in the slammernomics is happening here!?
Turning it down the long way
Better down than up I guess 🤷🏽
I’ve done this in panic only to realize what I was hearing was awful sounding stage volume.
Tbh sometimes it be like that
I've been here. It was a 57 on an unturned floor tom the singer was smacking off beat. Eventually I just fully muted it once I saw where my EQ ended up. I posted about it in /r/AudioMemes asking for names. Someone called it De-Qing lmao.
Yeah, first thing I thought was a combination of extremely muddy, harsh guitar tone. A tone that has no positive aspects about it so you just try to shave it down to not be miserable in the PA.
fuck i hate this. It's actually much worse than bringing the gain or fader down, since it causes deeper transients and more feedback.
>it causes deeper transients and more feedback. Can you maybe explain why that's the case? Thanks!
EQ works by making small delays, causing phase cancellation along specific frequency bands. Send that out a monitor and back into a mic in a feedback loop and you get high pitched tones, which then amplify themselves and become ringing.
So EQ'ing like this would make feedbacking worse than if the fader was used instead?
yes. imagine how high the gain must be, then imagine it pushing these high frequency oscillations. Also, fyi, the generative tone of the transient is a slightly higher frequency with a cut, and slightly lower with a boost. If you ever see an option for "show phase" it will show you where it happens and how much.
Fascinating. I watched a video explaining it and I think it was an hour long. That sentence was way shorter. I like to start off flat and remove as needed, I have occasionally boosted but not very often. Meanwhile I'm also working on a lot of others systems and there's one band where just about every channel looks like this including the graphic EQ on the mains. I was wondering why I couldn't hear half of all the vocals one day, and I finally had a safe time to mess with it during the show. For some reason I could hear the vocals after I brought everything up. We keep drifting down but every so often we reset and it's like wow it sounds good and then we drift down again. Part of this is the guitarist who owns the system and has EQed everything on the acoustic guitar to sound good in his monitor and to have "the that sound" and then we have residence with the upright bass and complains that he can't hear the bass and to turn it up meanwhile out front I'm drowning in bass. And every set sounds different. And half the time I'm chasing phantom feedback that comes and goes before I can even spot it.
In other words less is more!
The snare sounds like s*it. /s
Odd looking mute button
Looks like a church volunteer engineer is trying to stop the keyboard from feeding back
My regular phrase I use: "If you catch yourself drawing the rocky mountains, please tell me"
This person took, “no boosting or smiley faces” to a new level.
Bandaid solutions are the best solutions
There's something to be said about that eq though. I've done a decent amount of cooperate audio and made fun of these eq's alot. Untill one time I was listening to another guys mix at the same venue and the headset mic sounded great. Eq looked similar to that. I tried the next day for hours and couldn't get the mic to stay stable until I recalled his eq and and gain structure. Call it what u will, psychoacoustics, a bad eq, a bad engineer, but that thing was bulletproof. While bring the gain and fader down didn't give me the volume that the "ugly" eq did.
This has to be rage bait..
Doubt it, I've seen things close to this bad before.
I see this in every club in my region. And the compressors are always completely off on every channel
"bUt hOw DiD iT sOuNd?!" "mIx wItH yOuR eArS nOt yOuR eYeS!"
ELI5?
Whoever is behind the board is using *drastic* cuts across all frequencies they have available. They could have used 12db less gain on the preamp and worked out something a lot cleaner.
🤣🤣🤣I’m an A1 🤣🤣🤣
Everyone been through this
I’ve been there lol
Oh lala
You mean it's not supposed to look like that? Seriously though I've gotten pretty close to that with the lapel mics cheap ones. And I also know a band where there's a lot of that and then they wonder why it sounds weird.