Category Archives: Other Things

Selling Pink Floyd

Marketing our show was the selling of something that people knew.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Original image found on Pixabay at https://pixabay.com/en/prism-spectrum-star-nebula-fantasy-1874718/

I haven’t written a “business article” on this site in ages. Pigs Over The Horizon’s packed-out show at The Depot is giving me reason to change that.

Do I think that our own marketing helped get a good chunk of people out there? Yes I do.

Do I think that The Depot’s marketing helped get a good chunk of people out there? Yes I do.

What I DON’T think is that there was some kind of complicated strategy involved. I also don’t think that there was a giant pile of money required. What I think happened was that everybody played to their strengths and tried to sell what would actually…you know…sell.

In my mind, The Depot got a lot of mileage out of themselves being a “destination venue.” That is, they themselves have a following that is interested in what shows they’re bringing in. This is a rarity for bars and clubs. Many very good bars and clubs don’t have an audience of this kind. (I don’t think a place necessarily has to be pulling in regional and national acts all the time to become a destination venue, but my guess is that would commonly be a requirement.) In any case, there’s a population that’s receptive to what The Depot puts out there.

…but that group still has to be interested in the actual show. As such, the marketing team pushed hard on one aspect: That the gig was a tribute to Pink Floyd. Sure, our name was mentioned prominently, but the aspect that had the biggest chance of connecting with the general public was – you know – the band that everybody’s heard of. What was on the marquee? Pink Floyd Tribute. What was in all the Facebook posts? Pink Floyd Tribute.

I also spent a few bucks on Facebook ads. Who did I target? Pink Floyd fans. What did I make sure to mention very prominently in the ad? Pink Floyd. I also used our name, certainly: I want people to know the name of Pigs Over The Horizon and associate it with a great show. However, we are not yet at that point where our name is synonymous with “Awesome Pink Floyd Tribute.”

Now, Advent Horizon (the core group of musicians involved in this endeavor) did run their own ads to their own audience. The situation there was slightly different, because they were talking to the folks that know and love them. Yet, on top of that, they were also trying to reach the general public.

What was at the top of that ad post?

One guess.

What’s the message here, then? If you’re guessing that it’s something I’ve been saying for a long time, you’re right: Marketing is not a magical force that causes people to go to an event they’re not interested in. Marketing is a tool to get people to buy something they already want to buy – even if they’re not consciously aware of wanting it.

If you’re going to spend money on advertising, advertise something that people actually want. If you know that thing is very definitely your band, then advertise your band. If you don’t know that, pick something else – or just save your money. In the same vein, don’t be ticked at the venue because they didn’t spend hundreds or thousands on pushing your name. If your name isn’t bringing a whole slew of people to the door, the venue is much better served by advertising whatever it is that does. Like beer, maybe, or Ladies’ Night. This might sound really harsh, but the solution to building a draw is to be an amazing band that plays killer shows. Advertising dollars don’t do that.

People came to our event because they wanted to hear Pink Floyd played live. My strong suspicion is that many of them – maybe even a majority – didn’t give two hoots about who we were. I’m betting that might have changed a bit after the performance, but the order of operations can’t be ignored.


Losing My Cool

I get frustrated when problems that could have been avoided crop up and make us all look dumb.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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To be fair, it wasn’t a nuclear-detonation sort of event. Here’s what happened:

I was working an evening that involved Someone You’ve Heard Of. There was a choral performance that involved playback, and I was hands-on with that to make the FOH engineer’s life more manageable. (I handled pressing go, stop, and trimming channel levels.)

No problem, right? Easy.

Where things didn’t work out is that we had two stages going, and the schedule got a little mangled. Along with that, there was no communication about exactly what was supposed to be happening in the moment. In theory, one stage was supposed to be resetting while the other was playing, but nobody was “riding herd” on that, so the stages were starting to interlace their performances: The main stage would do a tune, then the second stage would jump in and do one if we didn’t seem to be getting to the next tune fast enough, and so forth.

This worked out to a point, and then crumbled a good bit. It seemed like the other stage wasn’t ready, so we went ahead with a tune…and then, suddenly, “Stop! Stop!” (The second stage had started up.) I yanked down the music fader and ended playback. A beat of silence, as both stages had now pulled themselves up short, and then, “Go playback.” A few seconds in, and the second stage started AGAIN.

“Stop! Stop!” said the stage manager. “STOP!” said someone in the choir, turning to look at me like I was a doofus. As I yanked my fader and cut playback for the second time, I made a clear gesture and facial expression of exasperation.

I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have lost my cool.

…and there’s no “but” coming here. I’m not going to defend doing something I shouldn’t have done. What I am going to do is to explain why it happened.

As I’ve gotten more experienced, I’m finding it more difficult to gladly suffer bad planning that leads to shoddy execution, or just shoddy execution in general. I especially hate it when that shoddy execution makes apparent idiots of me and the people around me. I double-especially hate it when, as in this case, such a thing happens at what should be an event featuring varsity-level execution from everyone. This was a high-dollar, high-powered production, and a simple lack of someone (anyone) being willing to actually manage the two stages led to all of us looking like amateurs. It was near chaos, done live in front of an upper-crust audience.

Un.

Effing.

Acceptable.

I used to be better at hiding my emotions. I was more stoic once. I don’t know if that’s good or bad in general. When that intersects with the amount of pride I take in doing this stuff in the best way possible, I sometimes react poorly. When I’m caught off-guard, that’s more likely to happen.

I don’t want to lose my cool. I want to be a rock. I’m not a rock, though, and I internalize things easily. As such, I lose my cool sometimes. It’s not a great thing, but it is a thing.


The Transcendent Experience

It’s the alignment of many variables, and is rarely produced on demand without a lot of time and effort.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

 
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One of the best, live-music vocal tones I have ever heard was produced by Katie Ainge. It was in a concrete and glass coffee shop, one of the most acoustically hostile places you can imagine. The mic was probably not anyone’s first choice; I think it was an SM48, or something similar. The PA system was nothing even close to a Vertech, VDOSC, EAW Anya, or…well, you get the picture. I think it was a Roland keyboard amplifier. There was no mixing console.

But the sound of Katie’s voice was still perfect. The basic timbre was rich and beautifully balanced alongside the intelligibility zone, with a studio-quality top end you’d swear was coming from a world-class condenser.

How was the result so perfect? It was simply because the entire setup completely fit in with Katie’s strengths and singular performance style in that room. It wouldn’t have worked quite so well for anyone else – although I’m sure it would have been reasonably okay, because the basic dial-in was probably solid.

All this is to say that “The Transcendent Experience” of sonic bliss is often driven by a whole bunch of factors lining up for a specific and very exact set of circumstances. It’s why an engineer who insists on getting “their sound” all the time will struggle with some bands (maybe even many or most acts), but then also meet the groups for whom nobody else will get results as good. The engineer’s aesthetic lines up with the band’s aesthetic like tumblers in a lock, and it’s magic when the key turns.

“The Transcendent Experience” is something that I have mixed feelings about. I enjoy it when it happens, and I think that there’s a certain worthwhile element to it. If an artist has the time and money required to go after every single factor that creates exactly the right sonic conditions for their shows, I say, go for it! At the same time, my own situation demands a certain kind of pragmatism: I need to fit my own workflow, but it’s not practical or advisable for me to cater to a niche sound. I might be running an acoustic-music show for one engagement, and then be doing rock the next. Consequently, my approach and my gear need to be generalized rather than specific. I can’t focus on making one act, or even one kind of act sound “beyond perfect.” Rather, I have to have a “works reasonably well everywhere” sort of mentality at most times. (I do enjoy working with and developing the sonic presentation of specific bands, though.)

My encouragement, then, to myself and others, is to embrace what you’re made for. You might be the person who’s going to work with the next Metallica, spending a career laboring over the perfection of the ultimate, heavy show. You might be more like me, working in a variety of situations that demand solid basics and adaptability. The key is to recognize what you’re trying to do, and not see “The Transcendent Experience” as the only measure of success. It’s important, yes, and great when it happens, yet we also have to deal with how elusive it is. Perfect is often the enemy of good, and being reliably good is the first and most achievable goal for any audio craftsperson.

 
 

 


Mercenary Maxims: Part 4

I will endure a lot – if the crew is great to work with.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version. Original image found on Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/ice-cream-cone-melting-hot-1274894/

If the Food is Good Enough, the Grunts Will Stop Complaining About the Incoming Fire.

I don’t think I can over-stress how important the “people factors” are in this business. Technical prowess, the right gear, logistics coordination…all those things are important, but they don’t stay glued together without excellent people.

Or, to present it the other way, nothing has ever made me dread a show more than the anticipation of working with unpleasant personnel. I can laugh-off most technical misadventures. I’m at peace with what audio humans can and can’t fix, from musical arrangements to acoustics. Terrible load-ins? Those can be handled. But put people who are hard to work with into the mix, and even a great show at a great venue isn’t so hot anymore. I’d rather be somewhere else.

The success threshold isn’t that high. What’s required is nothing more than general politeness, a strong sense of how the show is a “team sport,” and the ability to find the humor in all the foibles and fumbles associated with a gig. Being a guru at all things audio and lighting isn’t the make or break element, helpful though it is. Whether you can master the kindergarten-level imperatives of getting along with others is the fundamental element.

I’m spoiled, by the way. I regularly get to share workspace with some of the most professional craftspersons I can imagine. Folks who are highly proficient in technical execution while being patient, funny, kind, and helpful. We can load-out at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning with a smile and a laugh, because we’re a team. We’re there to help each other win as a group, rather than to feed our own individual egos. We can chuckle at ourselves.

In contrast, I’ve been in more than one situation where the importance of the above has been demonstrated in the negative. I am especially put-off by folks who turn around and bark at me because I didn’t telepathically ascertain what they wanted next. (This goes over even more poorly when I’m essentially bailing them out of a tight spot.) When such a thing happens, I think a couple of thoughts to myself:

1) “Dude, the color of your chakra alignment pathways is a sort of oxidized, black Camaro, and what we need now is more of a Caribbean azure.”

2) “I hope this person never calls me again.”

There’s almost no show out there, of any difficulty, that can’t be made at least tolerable by involving great people.

…and there’s no “plush,” easy gig that can’t be made intolerable by bad attitudes and an inability to be polite.


If You Can Hear It, You Can Measure It

Sound is a physical phenomenon, and is therefore quantifiable through measurement.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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I’m going to start by saying this: Something being measurable does NOT require the exclusion of a sense of beauty, wonder, and awe about it. Measuring doesn’t destroy all that. It merely informs it.

The next thing I’m going to say is that it drives me CRAZY how, in an industry that is all physics all the time, we manage to convince ourselves that there are extra-logical explanations for “stuff sounding better.” Horsefeathers! If your ears detected a real difference – a difference not generated entirely by your mind – then that difference can be measured and quantified. Don’t get me wrong! It might be very hard to measure and quantify. Designing the experiment might very well be non-trivial. You might not know what you’re looking for. Your human hearing system might be able to deal with contaminants to the measurement that a single microphone might not handle well.

But whatever the difference is, if it’s real, it can definitely be described in terms of magnitude, frequency, and phase.

Take this statement: “We need to run the system through [x], because [person] ran their system through [x], and it all sounded a lot better.”

That’s fair to say. In this business, perception matters. But ask yourself, why did you like the system better when [x] was involved? There has to be a physical reason, assuming the system actually sounded different. If you deluded yourself into thinking there was a difference (because [x] is much more expensive than [y]), that’s a whole other discussion. Disregarding that possibility…

Did the system seem louder? As long as the overall SPL isn’t uncomfortable, and all other things are equal, audio humans tend to perceive a louder rig as being better. If something was actually louder, that can be measured. (Probably with tremendous ease and simplicity.)

Maybe the basic system tuning solution created with [x] was just fundamentally better than what you’ve done with [y]. It’s entirely possible that you’ve gotten into a rut with the magnitude response that you tend to dial up with [y], and the other operator naturally arrives at something different. You like that something different. That something different is entirely measurable on a frequency response trace.

Maybe it wasn’t [x] at all. Maybe you were in a different room, and you liked the acoustics better. Maybe the different room has less “splatter,” or maybe it causes a low-frequency buildup that you enjoy. An RT60 measurement might reveal the difference, as might a waterfall plot, or maybe we’re right back to the basic magnitude vs. frequency trace again.

Maybe the deployment of the system was a little different, and a couple of boxes arrived and combined in a way you preferred. Maybe it’s time to look at your phase measurements…or frequency response, again, some more.

The basic human hearing input apparatus does not have capabilities which are difficult for modern technology to meet or exceed. If you’re reading this, you very probably can no longer hear the entire theoretical bandwidth that humans can handle. Measurement mics which can sense that entire bandwidth (and maybe more) can be had for less than $100 US. What can’t be easily replicated is the giant, pattern-synthesizing computer that we keep locked inside our skulls. That’s not really relevant, though, because imagination isn’t hearing. It’s imagination. Imagination can’t be measured, but real events in the world can be. What matters in audio, what we have a chance of controlling, are those real events.


The Biggest Scares In Audio

Spooky!

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version. This CC0 image was found here: https://pixabay.com/en/fantasy-spirit-nightmare-dream-2847724/

The following are very spooky for an audio human (or other show production crew) to hear. In no particular order:

“We brought our own wireless system. It’s super cool, because it has all four mics! Got it for $100 on Amazon.”

“We added a couple of openers.”

“I forgot to tell you that we have a percussion player.”

“We actually have two drumkits.”

“Everybody sings.”

“The drummer needs a mic for vocals.” (Some folks do this really well, but other people…)

“Could I have a mic? I do some screamo stuff on one song.”

“I just joined this loud rock band. I play acoustic guitar. There’s no pickup, so you’ll have to mic it.” Later: “Can you turn up my guitar in my monitor?”

“I just got this vocal processor today!”

“I’m almost done plugging in those big power cables. Haven’t done the green one yet – what’s that for?”

“I left that twist-lock on deck for you.” (While pointing to a power connector that is “hot,” but not connected to a distro box. I was almost guilty of this once, before I caught myself.)

“We can run a couple of circuits from the house.”

“Never worked with a chain hoist before.” (I’ve said this. There’s a first time for everything, you can’t get around that, but the first time a crew member is getting hands-on with flying gear is always a little stressful for everybody.)

“I’m pretty sure I can figure out the flyware for this rig.” (I’ve said this as well, in so many words.)

“Can you run down to [venueName]? Their regular monitor engineer can’t make it tonight.”

“The weather’s always good that weekend.”

“There’s a storm over the mountain, but it’ll miss us.”

“I wonder how far away that lightning strike was.” Alternate form: “I wonder how far away that light- ” *BOOOOM!*

“Can you guys make your setup smaller so we can have more room for dancing?” (To a six-piece band that has already been set up almost on top of one another.)

“Could you guys move your setup back a few feet?” (This is never said when making the move would be easy. Ever.)

“We’ll send out the check on Monday.” (Some folks are good for this. Other folks…)


Mercenary Maxims: Part 2

You might have seniority on the crew, but you might not be right about everything.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version. Original photo is a CC0 found at Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/fairground-lights-amusement-park-1149626/

A Sergeant In Motion Outranks A Lieutenant Who Doesn’t Know What’s Going On

It’s not uncommon that I’m a part of a show crew where a person who’s technically “junior” to me ends up being the smartest person in the room. They’ll notice something I don’t, or come to a problem with a fresh set of assumptions, and advise me on a better course of action.

When I’m being smart, I listen.

Essentially arbitrary measures of authority, that is, decision-making power, aren’t always helpful in the churning, kinetic fluid that we call concert production. They do have their place, of course. I definitely find it best when there’s a singular vision for overall planning, and when you have a person where the buck very certainly stops. A crew on a gig ought to have someone available who can and will say, “This is what we’re doing” when it becomes necessary to say that.

…but to assume that the higher-ranking human is always right, no matter what, in all times and circumstances, is shortsighted. If another production professional who’s farther down the authority-tree can’t say that the right way to execute might be something different, you have a problem. Further, when things are going badly, the crew member who’s clued into the snafu and taking action is the guy or girl to be listening to. An oblivious person higher up the chain can’t do much for you, and a show in progress is all about NOW. When monitor-world is melting down or FOH just stopped behaving, the crewmember ready to act and rectify the situation doesn’t need to get permission.

When a short-timer talks, you should perk up your ears. If they’re wrong, you can explain what they’ve missed, and if they’re right, you can benefit from their insight. Also, don’t forget that “short-timer compared to you” doesn’t necessarily mean that you automatically know more or have greater wisdom about any particular thing. The person teaching you all about that new console might be a decade behind you – and they might know everything there is to know about how to operate that monstrosity, because that’s where they’ve spent their time. Pay attention.


In Defense Of Smoothing Your Traces

In the end, you have to be able to read a graph for the graph to be useful.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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There are people out there who insist that, when measuring an audio system, you should never smooth the trace. The argument is that you might miss some weird anomaly that gets filtered out by the averaging – and, in any case, the purpose of graphing a transfer function isn’t for the picture to look nice.

I think that’s an understandable sentiment, especially because it’s a thought uttered by people who I think are knowledgeable, respectable, and worth working alongside. At the same time, though, I can’t fully embrace their thinking. I very regularly apply 1/6th octave smoothing to measurements, and I do it for a very specific reason: I do indeed want to see the anomalies that matter, and I need to be able to clearly contextualize them.

The featured image on this article is an example of why I think the way I do. I’ve got a bit of a science-project going, and part of that project involved measuring a Yamaha DBR12. The traces you see in the picture are the same measurement, with the bottom one being smoothed. The unsmoothed trace is very hard to read for all the visual noise it presents, which makes it difficult to make any sort of decision about what corrections to make. the smoothed trace gives me a lot more to go on. I can see that 90 Hz – 150 Hz could come down a bit, with 2 kHz – 7.5 kHz maybe needing a bit of a bump to achieve maximum flatness.

So, I say, smooth those traces…but don’t oversmooth them! You want to suppress the information overload without losing the ability to find things that stand out. The 1/6th octave option seems to be the right compromise for me, with 1/12th still being more detail than is useful and 1/3rd getting into the area where too much gets lost.

And here’s another wrinkle: I support unsmoothed traces when you’re measuring devices that ignore acoustics, like the transfer function of a mixing console from input to output. In such a case, you should expect a very, very linear transfer function, and so the ability to spot tiny deviations is a must. The difficulty is when you’re in a situation where there a gazillion deviations, and they all appear significant. In such a case, which I’ve found to be the norm for measurements that involve acoustics, filtering to find what’s actually significant to the operation of an audio system is helpful.


The Compression Factor

Don’t forget that “accidental” dynamics processing is a big part of guitar tone.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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Not so long ago, I was watching a YouTube video of Eddie Van Halen playing a guitar solo. I was struck by something as I took in the performance: Eddie’s guitar tone wasn’t very heavily distorted, but it was MASSIVE. The instrument sounded about fifty feet tall, with a tremendous amount of perceived power behind even the highest notes.

I realized in those moments that I’ve tended to forget a very important component of the quest for “ultimate guitar-tone bliss.” That component is dynamics; To be more specific, compression, and what it does to the sound of a guitar.

We certainly can’t ignore purely tonal components. Harmonic distortion – however it’s precipitated – is key to the signature sounds of rock and roll six-strings. At the same time, distortion doesn’t occur in a vacuum (though it may occur in vacuum tubes…sorry, I had to). When an audio circuit, or something pretending to be an audio circuit distorts, there is a necessary dynamic element involved. Some device is unable to produce output voltage that fully tracks the input voltage. Insufficient voltage can be swung at an output, and the device clips at its maximum. The audio doodad in question becomes a brickwall limiter with hyperfast attack and release, where the threshold is the maximum voltage the device can deliver.

When that comes into play, there are a good number of non-distortion related elements that become critical. Sounds that would be lost against an aggressive pick attack are smashed into clear audibility. Indeed, the guitar “gets more sustain,” because what would normally drop into the environmental noise floor is now running much hotter, where it’s easy to hear. Notes that would jump ahead of others in a chord are now rather closer to their counterparts, affecting our perception of how that chord is voiced…even if only in subtle ways.

My point in all this is to remind myself, and others, that tone is more than just the magnitude response of the amp and cabinet. It’s more than the proportion of generated harmonics to the original signal. The natural compression, or lack thereof, inside the totality of a guitar circuit has profound consequences.

And, as a parting idea, I wonder what would happen if a guitarist intentionally experimented with more consciously separating the compression aspect from the distortion. That is, if they started by playing around with compression and limiting that operated very cleanly, and then gradually added harmonic distortion components on top of it all – post the dynamics. If anybody does some experiments in that area, please do record it and put it on social media. I’d be interested to hear what you come up with, in any case.


The Other Problem With All Those Open Mics

It’s not just feedback – it’s sound quality in general.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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Sound craftspersons commonly moan and groan about having a ton of open mics – especially vocal mics – on their stages. The biggest gripe, of course, is feedback. Every single sound-to-voltage transducer on deck increases the system’s “loop gain” when their channel is open. More loop gain makes things more unstable.

There’s another complaint to be had, though. It’s the composite problem where bleed causes “defocus,” headroom consumption, and poor overall mix tone.

To be both snarky AND up-front for a bit, let me say that I almost always offer up an enormous, mental eye-roll when someone says, “There are [x] of us, and we all sing.” My instant judgement is: “Actually, there are [x] of you, and maybe two of you can actually sing. The rest of you can carry a tune, but don’t really have the power or consistency to compete with a rock band.” And inevitably, it’s a situation where people only vocalize when the fancy takes them, so I have to leave all those channels open and CRANKED, just in case someone has a two second harmony part here or there.

So, why all the snarking and sighing?

It’s because, in a live-sound situation, signal-to-noise is a fraught topic. That is, the concept goes beyond the traditional measure of random electronic voltage versus the desired signal in the circuit, and ends up in artistic and acoustical territory. In an environment with a real band in a real room, the sound that corresponds to the channel label (Lead Vocal, for instance) is the signal, and absolutely everything else is noise.

Absolutely.

Everything.

Else.

…and there’s a lot of noise, noise which is also considered signal when you get to the channel that’s supposed to be carrying it.

Anyway, you’ve got all these vocal mics, and they’re all wound up hot, and a very large percentage of the time they are amplifying a bunch of information that isn’t vocals. That’s the bleed problem, and it leads to the other issues I mentioned:

1) “Defocus” – Where other sounds on stage, especially percussive ones, end up having multiple arrivals due to going through their close-up mics AND the other mics spread around. The problem gets worse in more acoustically live settings, because the other open mics also amplify the indirect sound that arrives at a different time than the direct sound which ALSO arrived at a different time. This transient-smearing can make a mix much harder to “parse” for musical information, because the boundaries between different musical elements are no longer as well defined.

2) Headroom Consumption – Have you ever driven a system to its limits with, say, drums…through the vocal mics? I have, on more occasions than I care to remember. All the noise flowing through those open channels uses up your power budget very quickly. You end up with no room to make those big, fun, transients, because you’ve soaked up all your headroom with a continuous wash of everything except what you actually want. A further side-effect of all this is that your mix feels uncomfortably loud, because everything is smashed together without enough contrast.

3) Poor Overall Mix Tone – All the bleed being amplified tends to cause a buildup of midrange and high-frequency energy that can make a mix teeth-clenchingly uncomfortable for audiences. Sure, you can slap an EQ on everything, but now you’ve messed with your vocal intelligibility, so…

Now, of course, there are things you can do. You can get a a set list with pointers on who’s doing what. You can aggressively run mutes, assuming good sight lines and a fair amount of rehearsal time. You can try to isolate your mics in various ways. You can use rehearsal time to figure out how to get the backline down to a level that works well with what the vocalists can deliver.

But in the end, the best approach has been (and will always continue to be) vocalists with excellent power and tone, and the giving of vocal mics only to those people.