biggest pain in the ass for live sound

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 9:49 am

you know what really sucks?

when i have to setup my FOH mixer on the side of a stage because the venue is small and has no accomodations for sound professionals, even though they claim to be a "music venue"

ug, nothing worse than having to mix in headphones, then run around the room to make sure it sounds good, then back to mixer, around the room, mixer, room, mixer, room, etc etc

YUCK.

although by now i've gotten pretty good at it. i had to do it in some room last night, and i'll have to do it again tonight too.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:50 am

Welcome to live sound!!!

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:00 am

he he he he he

Did it so many times.

Every wedding gig!!!!

I tried to get the idiots working for me to give me hand signals and help with the mix. Waste of time......I paid them top money, they were musicians and total morons.

It was either sell everything or become a DJ.....So I sold everything to a DJ.

That's one reason I made sure I had enough compressors and I went with the feedback destroyers. It made my life easier. One little feedback at a $100,000 wedding and I was gone. Who cared about a little loose of tone. All they wanted was dum dum dum so they could all dance and a lower volume when those stupid love songs were sung.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:19 pm

mixing from the sides a drag... but my pet peeve is way too loud stage volume...

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:47 pm

You don't know you're born! Try mixing at the venue in Camden where some bright spark decided to build a shed around the FoH desk. Or the venue in Leeds where the desk is in the worst sounding spot in the room, but if you leave it for a second you risk some drunk chav taking over and randomly twisting knobs. Or the one in Durham, where the stage was raised at some time in the past but no-one bothered to move the stage box, so you have to crawl through a 2 foot high gap to plug in each mic. Or the one in Manchester, where every 30 seconds I had to explain yet again that "no I'm not a DJ. See those people on stage with drums and guitars? They are called MUSICIANS. If you want to hear the Sugababes you will have to ask them to play it."

Its been a while since I did any of those gigs, but the memories of them are seared into my brain!

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 8:44 pm

Yeah? Try mixing from some of the funky places the mouse likes to put us:

On rooftops, behind the stage, around concrete walls, in a glass booth with one sliding window that faces the entrance doors, in an attic space with a 3 foot x 2 foot door to look through, underground about 1/4 mile away - monitoring with LCD screens and Sentry 100s!

Haha!

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