It’s the room, dude.
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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.It’s the room, dude.
You’ve mixed this band before. They were great. Now you’re somewhere else, and it’s just awful. You can’t make anything out; The intelligibility is somewhere south of “I can understand every fourth word, sort of.”
It’s, the room, dude.
You’ve used every EQ you have in a manner that could best be described as “neurosurgery with an artillery weapon.” The input channel EQs are carved up. The output channel curves look like the Himalayas. You’ve also inserted graphics on the outputs. The settings are not something you will share on Instagram. The show will NOT behave.
It’s the room, dude.
You’ve moved the speakers. You’ve tilted and twisted them, trying to miss the walls and ceiling just a little more. You could get a job as a civil engineer who designs bridges, because of your working knowledge of bizarre, load-bearing constructions. The system still sounds like the entirety of World War II being fought in an airplane hangar.
It’s the room, dude.
You’ve bought every toy and tweaker that the good folks at the gear retailer could sell you. You’ve got automatic feedback filters, frequency-dependent compression, wild-donkeyed gating, and a rack full of boutique, 500-series thingamabobs. It still sounds like you can’t mix your way out of a paper bag that’s been sitting outside in the rain for a month.
It’s the room, dude.
The lead singer gets your attention as soundcheck draws to a close. “Could you please pull down the reverb?” they ask. Nothing is going to any reverb processor that you have available.
It’s the room, dude.
The musicians are pretty happy. You have the monitors wound up to a level that frightens small children. You have the FOH mid-highs high-passed at 1 kHz. (I have done this in real life.) The sound in the seats is still a sort of indistinct, muddy garble.
It’s the room, dude.
Once you have tens or hundreds of arrivals of a single sonic event, you will never get the transients unsmeared. Once the low-mid builds into a seconds-long reverberant mash, you will never dig your way out. Once monitor-world hits that nice, huge, flat backstop behind the players, you will never get monitor-world out of FOH. Once the vocalist’s smashing crescendo slaps that back wall and starts racing home to their face, you will never stop them from getting walloped right in the chops with the world as it was 200ms ago.
It’s the room, dude. It’s the room.