This past Saturday, I implemented my plan for delay speakers at IAMA’s Bluegrass Night. I can report the following:

1) The plan basically worked as expected, with a few caveats. I ended up setting the delays at around the 70-foot mark rather than 80, because 80 felt like it was a little too far back. (There were also some handy trees at 70 feet that worked as natural barricades for the delay stands.) I just “eyeballed” (ear-canaled?) the delay-speaker sound level.

2) Switching out the time-correction on the delays had a very interesting effect. They were loud enough, and close enough to the main PA that de-aligning them didn’t sound like a total mess. The extra volume tended to mask some of the “slap” from the propagation delay. However, when all was time-aligned with the main rig it seemed that the two setups blended into one another nicely. With the correction bypassed, my brain instantly “localized” the delay speakers as a sound source. In some cases the effect was fairly subtle, but when listening to playback that had strong timing cues the result was very noticeable.

3) I’m not sure if it was really the fault of the delays, or if it was more to do with my mix position overall, but I did get the sensation that achieving clarity/ intelligibility in the mix was a touch challenging.

4) I must have guessed right about the level for the delay speakers, because nobody complained at me about the overall mix being too hot or too quiet.

5) What I might do differently on my next attempt would be to set up the delays as another full PA with subwoofers. My decision to cluster all of my subs at the front of the stage seemed basically okay, but I also got a bit of a sense that it would have been better to have more bottom-end support for the crowd sitting further back.

Not bad for a first try, I’d say.