In what situations do you like to use sidefill speakers as part of (or all of) your monitor system? What kind of mix do you usually send to them? I've seen them used in several situations including one small festival where the sound crew used them as the only monitors (fairly small stage and nice big arrays - worked quite well). I have a particular application in mind with our church praise band, but I'll put up another post that gives the details of our situation later. Right now I'd like some general opinions and dos and don'ts.
Cheers, Bob
Comments
I've used sidefills for instruments (keys/drums, mainly), but fo
I've used sidefills for instruments (keys/drums, mainly), but for the reasons already posted by Bos, I've kept live vocals outta them. It really does depend on the scenario, because you're going to have these boxes blowing sound at the side of the vocal mics. Depending on the particular vocal mics you are using, this may not be cool. Ex: Sennheiser 835, which requires it be "eaten" to pick up much, this isn't so bad. Shure SM58, with it's relatively wider "sweet spot" and presence boost, this invites bleed and feedback issues when side wedges are firing at them.
I got away from sidefills a while back, and started using "butt shakers" for the drummer and keyboardist (this keeps a lot of LF info from building up onstage), with small wedges placed in close proximity to each performer so that you're not attempting to blow sound across half the stage. This has worked pretty well, and has kept those hollering for IEMs (which I have issues with) off my back...
It depends entirely on (a) the venue and (b) the performers. I'v
It depends entirely on (a) the venue and (b) the performers. I've used a combination of sidefill and floor wedge where specific performers want their own mix and the others just want a general mix, but I find that sidefills on their own are difficult to mix for and make problems with microphone positioning to avoid feedback. No matter how much you lecture the singers to leave the mics on their stands, you always get those who, in the heat of the performance, wrest the vocal mic off its clip and walk too close to the foldbacks. Maybe your praise group is better behaved.
On odd occasions I use what may be termed a "frontfill", an array of floor wedges at the front of the stage, all carrying the same general mix with no individual performer wedges. This can work well with hypercardioid or supercardioid performer mics positioned so the speakers are in the nulls of the polar pattern.