Tag Archives: Bang For The Buck

Let ‘Em Get Away From It

Maximum coverage isn’t always appropriate for small venues.

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 love the idea of a high-end, concert-centric install.

It excites me to think of a music venue where the coverage is so even that every patron is getting the same mix, +/- 3 dB. Creating audio rigs where “there isn’t a bad seat in the house” is a point of pride for concert-system installers, as well it should be.

Maximum coverage isn’t always appropriate, though. It can sometimes even be harmful. The good news is that an educated guess at the truly necessary coverage for live audio isn’t all that hard. It starts with audience behavior.

What Is The Audience Trying To Do?

Another way to put that question is, “What is the audience’s purpose?” At my regular gig, the answer is that they want to hang out, listen pretty informally, and socialize. This is an “averaged” assessment, by the way: Some folks want to focus entirely on the music. Some people barely want to focus on the tunes at all. Some folks would hate to be stuck in their seat. Some folks wouldn’t care.

The point is that there’s a mix of objectives in play.

This differs from going to show at, say, The State Room or, even more so, at Red Butte Garden. My perception of those events is that people go to them – paying a bit of a premium – with the intent to focus on the music.

At my regular gig, where there’s such a diversity of audience intent, perfectly even coverage of all areas in the room is counterproductive to that diversity. It forces a singular decision on everyone in the room. It essentially requires that everybody in attendance has the goal of being primarily focused on the music as a foreground element. This is a bad thing, because denying a large section of the audience their intended enjoyment is likely to encourage them to leave.

If they leave, that hurts us, and it hurts the band. As much as possible, we should avoid doing things that encourage folks to vamoose.

So, I’m perfectly happy to NOT cover everything. The FOH PA is slightly “toed in” to focus its output primarily on the area nearest the stage. The sound intensity is allowed to drop off naturally towards the back of the room, and there’s no attempt at all to fill the coverage gap off to the stage-left side. People often seem to congregate there, and my perception is that many of them do it to take a break from being in the direct fire of the PA. They can still hear the show, but the high-frequency content is significantly rolled off (at least for whatever is actually “in” the audio rig).

If I knew that almost everybody in the room was primarily focused on the music, I would take steps to cover the room more evenly. That’s not the case, though, so there are “hot” and “cool” coverage zones.

Cost/ Choice Parametrization

Another way to view the question of how much coverage is appropriate is to try to define the value that an attendee placed on being at a show, and how much choice they have in terms of their position at the show. This is another sort of thing that has to be averaged. Not all events (or people) in a certain venue are the same, so you have to look at what’s most likely to happen.

When you state the problem in terms of those parameters, you get something like this:

coveragenecessity

If the cost of being at the show is high (in terms of money, effort spent, overall commitment required, etc.) and the choice of precisely where to take in the show is low (say, assigned seating), then it’s very important to have consistent audio coverage for everyone. If people are paying hundreds of dollars and traveling long distances to see a huge band’s farewell or reunion, and they’re stuck in one seat at a theater, there had better be good sound at that seat!

On the other hand, it’s not necessary to cover every square inch of an inexpensive, “in town” show, where folks are free to move around. If the coverage isn’t what someone wants, they can move to where it is what they want – and, if they can’t get into the exact coverage area they desire, it’s not a huge loss. For a lot of small venues, this is probably what’s encountered most often.

Now, please don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. What I’m definitely NOT saying is that we should just “punt” on some gigs.

No.

As much as possible, we should assume that the most important show of our careers is the one we’re doing now.

What I’m saying is that we need to spend our effort on things that matter. We have to have a priorities list. If people want (and also have) options available for how they experience a show, then there’s no reason for us to agonize about perfect coverage. As I said above, academically perfect PA deployment might even be bad for us. They might not even want to be in the direct throw of our boxes, so why force them to be? In the world of audio, we have finite resources and rapidly diminishing returns. We have to focus on the primary issues, and if our primary issue is something OTHER than completely homogenous sound throughout the venue, then we need to direct our efforts appropriately.


Interface Importance

Packing lots of control into a small space is possible, but there’s a tradeoff.

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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Let me tell you a story.

Last Sunday, I was running the audio for my church. The building we’re in has a brand new AV system that we tie into, and lots of people can get their hands on that system during the week. That being the case, every service is a small adventure in “how much gain is applied to the signal, post our mixer?” Some weeks it’s +30 dB, some weeks it’s zero.

Anyway.

The rig doesn’t necessarily stay substantially the same from service to service, so every time I’m there I tend to “futz.” I sit there and go, “does the wireless headset really need to sound like that?” and start making subtle changes. I’m always trying to get that little bit of resonance to go away, or maybe squeak out one more dB of gain before feedback.

The key word up there is subtle. Doing all kinds of weird and wild finagling during a church service (or any “presentation AV” style gig) is a serious no-no. The goal is to marry excellent production values with invisible production process.

Well, something happened that made me not very invisible.

The insert EQ on the pastor’s headset is a an old Feedback Destroyer by Behringer. It’s one of their best products. Ironically, it’s incredibly mediocre at automatically killing feedback, but it’s stupenfuciously (I stole that word from Penny Arcade) good at being an insanely flexible parametric EQ. I haven’t found anything else like it for the money. It does, however, live in a sort of odd world, interface wise. It comes from a time before high-res, miniature displays were a practical and affordable sort of creature. You communicate with the thing via a single knob/ jogwheel dealio and an array of toggle buttons that connect that single knob to various parameters. The thing communicates with you through lights in the toggle buttons, and also with a delightfully “1980’s vintage” sort of calculator-esqe LED display. The display has two numerical characters, a special character to display plus or minus signs, and a set of on/ off indicators that tell you what the number you’re looking at means. Press a button, and you’re looking at numbers that mean decibels. Press another, and the display is indicating a certain number of 60ths of an octave. (Bandwidth, in other words.)

This is all delightfully campy, to an extent. Where it can bite you, though, is when it’s not clear what the display is showing you. It’s entirely possible to be in the mode where the wheel selects a different filter, then make an absent-minded button press, and now be in the mode where the wheel selects an entirely different device-wide preset. The hilarity becomes even more unbridled when the filter you had selected and the preset have the same number.

Maybe you can see where this is going.

So, the pastor is talking to the kids, and I’m working through the filters to see where they are and maybe fix some low-mid that I don’t like. I get to filter one. I take a look at the frequency it’s set to, and then accidentally press the “Filter Select” button twice. This puts me in the mode where the wheel selects a complete preset, and I’m already on preset one. The display looks the same, and I don’t notice the absence of an indicator light on “Filter Select.” A fraction of a second after I roll the wheel and “2” appears on the display, I realize my mistake – but it’s too late. I watch with mute horror as the EQ de-instantiates all the filters standing between me and hard feedback.

I yank the pastor’s fader down just as the system starts to take off, knocking about 10 dB away from the level of his speech in the room. I quickly recall the first preset on the Feedback Destroyer, and push the fader back up. Exactly what happened might not have been obvious to anyone else, but the fact that SOMETHING weird had occurred was glaringly obvious.

So…what does all that distill into? Well:

The more abstract an interface, the more likely it is to be confusing.

Less Interface Doesn’t Necessarily Mean “Easy”

When you’re buying gear, it can be tempting to fall into the trap of believing that fewer buttons and knobs means simpler to use. This isn’t necessarily true. It CAN be true, if fewer buttons and knobs means that fewer operational parameters are user-controllable. For instance, there are classic dynamics processors (like the LA-2A) that have most of their operational parameters in a fixed state. An average user can’t change the attack and release times. Only two compression ratios are available. Control over the audio parameters of the device comes down to a toggle switch and two knobs, and each one of those controls does exactly one thing at all times.

An LA-2A is very simple to use. Inflexible, but simple.

You can contrast that with the difference between something like an MG166CX and an X32 Producer. That analog Yamaha has a lot more knobs than the X32. Its control surface is pretty dang crowded.

But the 166CX is a far less complicated animal than Behringer’s digital machine. If we’re talking about using a significant and comparable fraction of each console’s capabilities, I can assure you that driving an X32 is much more demanding of an operator. Even for some simple things, the X32 requires a greater level of awareness. For instance, the Yamaha has lots of preamp gain knobs. One for each preamp. The first preamp gain knob shows you the gain being applied by the first preamp, the second one shows preamp number two, and so on. The Behringer, on the other hand, has exactly one control dedicated to preamp gain – but that single control can relate to any one of 16 channels (or 32 if you connect a digital stagebox). What that gain control is showing you is dependent upon what channel you have selected, so you have to keep that straight in your head while you’re working.

Then, there’s the matter of those knobs below the Behringer’s display. They’re “soft” knobs, because what they control changes based upon what channel you have selected…AND what the screen is displaying. The second knob from the left might control an EQ filter’s center frequency one moment, and a compressor’s threshold just two seconds later. This is how interface abstraction can cause a lot of confusion. The more things that a single interface element can control, the greater the possibility that you may lose a handle on exactly what that element is controlling at a particular time. If you’re used to the idea that one knob does one thing, or even just a class of similar things, you can get flustered.

“Whaddya mean that’s not the compressor’s output gain? That knob is the gain for EQ band #2! It should be a gain control on this screen, too.”

“It’s the gain for EQ band #2 on the EQ screen. This is the compressor screen, so the knob controls the threshold now. That’s how the console designer set things up.”

“You people live in a world without logic or reason!”

Anyway.

While an X32 Producer’s layout is rather more sparse than an MG166CX, the amount of control available is actually incredibly dense. Furthermore, you have to pay attention to the state that the console is in if you want to work on the correct thing. It’s not just a matter of having your finger on the right control. That control has to be ready to talk to the correct parameter.

And this is a GOOD THING. The amount of audio control available in an X32 producer is, when compared to the Yamaha, immense. It’s almost on the order of the difference between holding a power-drill battery and a thunderbolt. No, you may not trade me a 166CX for my X32, thanks.

Interface abstraction is not bad. It lets us build compact, relatively inexpensive devices that have functionality which rivals what you find on enormous, spendy pieces of gear. I am a great lover of the “capability explosion” that has engulfed the world of small-time production. We’re at the point where the limiting factors on what we can do have mostly been relegated to what will physically fit in limited venue space. I love it, and I do not want to go back. I personally have no need for “one knob = one function on one channel” sorts of control systems. The abstraction doesn’t bother me, even if I do have a hilarious-in-hindsight brain fart every so often.

(By the way: A development that’s helping to keep interface abstraction in check is that of informative, high-resolution displays. They help a lot in keeping changing control states unambiguous, because they can display status information clearly and in natural language.)

However, an abstract interface may not work for you. If you’re new to this whole thing, or just aren’t experienced in the kind of device management required, you might need to start off in “the forest of dedicated knobs and switches.” There’s no shame in it – heck, some of the industry’s top production craftspeople wouldn’t be caught dead without a large-frame control surface for sound or lights. There are folks who could handle a great deal of abstraction, and simply choose not to. If they’re getting results that make bands and fans happy, that’s what really matters.

So, make whatever choice of gear that you want. As you’re making that choice, simply be aware that what looks simple may not be. A reduced number of visible, physical controls is not a guaranteed indicator of device simplicity. You have to dig deeper, and find out what’s hidden under the hood.


If It Doesn’t Work, I Don’t Want To Do It

Not doing things that are pointless seems like an obvious idea, but…

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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This is going to sound off-topic, but be assured that you haven’t wandered onto the wrong site.

I promise.

Just hear me out. It’s going to take a bit, but I think you’ll get it by the end.

**********

I used to have a day-job at an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. If you don’t know what SEO is, then the name might lead you to believe that it’s all about making search engines work better. It isn’t. SEO should really be called “Optimizing Website FOR Search Engines,” but I guess OWFSE wasn’t as catchy as SEO. It’s the business of figuring out what helps websites to turn up earlier in search results, and then doing those things.

It’s probably one of the most bull[censored] businesses on the entire planet, as far as I can tell.

Anyway.

Things started out well, but after just a few months I realized that our product was crap. (Not to put too fine a point on it.) It wasn’t that anyone in the company wanted to produce crap and sell it. Pretty much everybody that I worked with was a “stand up” sort of person. You know – decent folks who wanted to do right by other folks.

The product was crap because the company’s business model was constrained such that we couldn’t do things for our customers that would actually matter. Our customers needed websites and marketing campaigns that set them apart from the crowd and made spending money with them as easy as possible. Those things are spendy, and require lots of time to implement well. The business model we were constrained to was “cheap and quick” – which we could have gotten away with if it was the time before the dotcom bubble popped. Unfortunately, the bubble had exploded into a slimy mess about 12 years earlier.

So, our product was crap. I spent most of my time at the company participating in the making of crap. When I truly realized just how much crap was involved, things got relatively awful and I planned my escape. (It was even worse because a number of us had ideas for fixes, ideas that were supported by our own management. However, our parent company had no real interest in letting us “pivot,” and that was that.)

But I learned a lot, and there were bright spots. One of the brightest spots was working with a product manager who was impervious to industry stupidity, had an analytical and reasonable mind, and who once uttered a sentence which has become a catchphrase for me:

“If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to do it.”

Is that not one of the most refreshing things you’ve ever heard? Seriously, it’s beautiful. Even with all the crap that was produced at that company, that phrase saved me from wading through some of the worst of it.

…and for any industry that suffers from an abundance of dung excreted from male cows, horses, or other work animals, it’s probably the thing that most needs to be said.

…and when it comes to dung, muck, crap, turds, manure, or just plain ca-ca, the music business is at least chest-deep. Heck, we might even be submerged, with the marketing and promo end of the industry about ten feet down. We need a flotation device, and being able to say “If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to do it,” is at least as good as a pair of water-wings.

The thing is, we’re reluctant to say (and embrace) something so honest, so brutally gentle and edifice-detonatingly kind.

We’ve Got To Do Stuff! Even If It’s Stupid!

I think this problem is probably at its worst in the US, although my guess is that it’s somehow rooted in the European cultures that form most of America’s behavioral bedrock. There’s this unspoken notion (that nobody would openly admit to embracing, even though we constantly embrace it by reflex) that the raw time and effort expended on something is what matters.

I’ll say that again.

We unconsciously believe that the raw time and effort expended on an endeavor is what matters.

We say that we love results, and we kinda do, but what we WORSHIP is effort – or the illusion thereof. The doing of stuff. The act of “being at work.”

In comparison, it barely matters if the end results are good for us, or anyone else. We tolerate the wasting of life, and the erosion of souls, and all manner of Sisyphean rock-pushing and sand-shoveling, because WE PUNCHED THE CLOCK TODAY, DANGIT!

If you need proof of this, look at what has become a defining factor in the ideological rock-throwing that is currently occurring in our culture. Notice a pattern? It’s all about work, and who’s doing enough of it. It’s figuring out how some people are better than other people, because of how much effort they supposedly expend. The guy who sits at the office for 12 hours a day is superior to you, you who only spend 8 hours a day in that cube. If you want to be the most important person in this culture, you need to be an active-duty Marine with two full-time jobs, who is going to college and raising three children by themselves. Your entire existence should be a grind of “doing stuff.” If you’re unhappy with your existence, or it doesn’t measure up to someone else’s, you obviously didn’t do enough stuff. Your expenditure of effort must be lacking.

I mean, do you remember school? People would do poorly on a test, and lament that they had spent [x] hours studying. Hours of their lives had been wasted on studying in a way that had just been empirically proven to be ineffective in some major aspect…yet, they would very likely do exactly the same thing again in a week or so. The issue goes deeper than this, but at just one level: Instead of spending [x] hours on an ineffective grind, why not spend, say, [.25x] hours on what actually works, and just be done?

Because, for all our love of results, we are CULTURALLY DESPERATE to justify ourselves in terms of effort.

I could go on and on and on, but I think you get it at this point.

What in blue blazes does this (and its antithesis) have to do with the music business?

Plenty.

Not Doing Worthless Crap Is The Most Practical Idea Ever

For the sake of an example, let’s take one tiny little aspect of promo: Flyering.

Markets differ, but I’m convinced that flyers (in the way bands are used to them) are generally a waste of time and trees. Even so, bands continue to arm themselves with stacks of cheap posters and tape/ staples/ whatever, and spend WAY too much time on putting up a bunch of promo that is going to be ignored.

The cure is to say, “If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to do it,” and to be granular about the whole thing.

What I mean by “granular” is that you figure out what bit of flyering does work in some way, and do that while gleefully forgetting about the rest. Getting flyers to the actual venue usually has some value. Even if none of the actual show-goers give two hoots about your night, getting that promo to the room sends a critical message to the venue operators – the message that you care about your show. In that way, those three or four posters that would go to the theater/ bar/ hall/ etc. do, in fact, work. As such, they’re worth doing for “political” reasons. The 100 or so other flyers that would go up in various places and may as well be invisible? They obviously don’t work, so why trouble yourself? Hang the four posters that actually matter, and then go rehearse (or just relax).

Also, you can take the time and money that would have been spent on 100+ cheap flyers, and pour some of that into making better the handful of posters that actually matter. Or buying some spare guitar picks, if that’s more important.

I’ll also point out that if traditional flyering does work in your locale, you should definitely do it – because it’s working.

In a larger sense, all promo obeys the rule of not doing it if it doesn’t work. Once a band or venue figures out what marketing the general public responds to (if any), it doesn’t make sense to spend money on doing more. If a few Facebook and Twitter posts have all the effect, and a bunch of spendy ads in traditional media don’t seem to do anything, why spend the money? Do the free stuff, and don’t feel like you have to justify wearing yourself (or your bank account) down to a nub. You may have to be prepared to defend yourself in some rational way, but that’s better than being broke, tired, and frustrated for no necessary reason.

It works for gear, too. People love to buy big, expensive amplification rigs, but they haven’t been truly necessary for years. If you’re not playing to large, packed theaters and arenas with vocals-only PA systems – which is unlikely – then a huge and heavy amp isn’t getting you anything. It’s a bunch of potential that never gets used. Paying for it and lugging it around isn’t working, so you shouldn’t want to do it. Spend the money on a compact rig that sounds fantastic in context, and is cased up so it lasts forever. (And if you would need a huge rig to keep up with some other player who’s insanely loud, then at least consider doing the sensible, cheap, and effective thing…which is to fire the idiot who can’t play with the rest of the team.)

To reiterate what I mentioned about flyering, there’s always a caveat somewhere. Some things work for some people and not for others. The point is to figure out what works for YOU, and then do as much of that as is effective. Doing stuff that works for someone else (but not you) so you can get not-actually-existent “effort expenditure points” is just a waste of life.

There are examples to be had in every area of show production. To try and identify them all isn’t necessary. The point is that this is a generally applicable philosophy.

If it works, you should want to do it.

If you don’t yet know if it works, you should want to give it a try.

But…

If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to do it, and neither do you (even if you don’t realize it yet).


Tuesday Thoughts

Just some ideas to chew on.

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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If the singer is being drowned it is better to partially drain the bathtub than to buy flippers and a snorkel.

Meditate upon this.

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It’s not a “binary” choice. There are plenty of grey shades. Even so…

At some point, you will probably have to figure out what means more to you: The craft, or the money.

Only the very lucky get all they want of both.


On Powered Speakers (And Other “Black Boxes”)

The commoditization of live-sound is enabled by manufacturers removing unknowns from their equations.

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.

When I talk about a “black box,” I’m not thinking of an aircraft’s flight recorder. I’m not even thinking of a device enclosure that’s black.

And seriously, as much as we say that there are a lot of ugly, black-colored boxes in live-sound, let’s be real. Most of them are really just a very deep gray. If they were actually black, they would absorb all light and completely disappear when they were in shadow. Like ninjas. Ninjas that amplify bands. (That would be a great movie.)

Okay, where was I?

When I say, “black box,” what I’m getting at is a concept. It’s the idea that the user of a device doesn’t know how the device works – or, they might now, but they aren’t required to know. Whether or not people are conscious of it, this is a central factor in the commoditization of technological devices. That is, for people to regard technological thingamabobs as “common, everyday” sorts of tools, those folks have to be in a world where understanding the internal functioning of the tool is not required.

A fine example of this is the personal computer. As the years have gone by, hardware and software manufacturers have progressively “black boxed” their offerings. In the computer’s infancy, operating a computer meant you had to have a lot of detailed knowledge about what the computer was doing. Nowadays – not so much. Almost everything is handled invisibly (which is great, until something breaks). Whether or not you think this is good or bad, this reality of “it just works” has allowed the personal computer to become a thoroughly mundane item. Having and using a computer isn’t a special thing anymore…in fact, it’s rather more surprising if someone DOESN’T have a computer that they use regularly.

In the same way, live-sound is also far more commoditized than it used to be. For instance, I’m betting that most readers of this site have never constructed a power amplifier. I know that I haven’t. Most of you probably haven’t built your own mixer. I know I haven’t.

But, in the early days, building your own gear from the ground up was often required. You couldn’t just head on over to the store and browse a vast selection of poweramps, loudspeakers, mixers, and whatever else. Before pro-audio (as we know it) really took hold as a market segment, the people pushing the boundaries were working by building things that either didn’t exist, or didn’t exist in enough quantity that they could be easily gotten “off the shelf.”

Now, pretty much every audio device you can think of is already in existence. You can go online and positively drown in a million iterations and manufacturer-specific takes on all manner of gear. Even if you’re thinking of something rather narrowly defined, like a 2-way active crossover, you won’t have any trouble finding a bunch of options to pick through.

It’s funny that I just mentioned active-crossovers, because it’s possible that you may never have to buy one. That’s because of one particular class of “black box” product: The powered loudspeaker.

Encapsulation

The powered or “active” loudspeaker is hardly a monolithic sort of entity. They exist in all shapes and sizes, with some being vastly more capable than others. There are plenty of active loudspeakers that put on a facade of advanced engineering, but really aren’t much more complicated than you or I connecting a rackmounted power amp to a “full-range” loudspeaker. Even so, every powered loudspeaker on the planet shares a common trait:

They all encapsulate devices with diverse operations into a single, functional unit.

In other words, powered loudspeakers stick components with very different purposes into one box. In the most basic case, you have a power amplifier bundled up with a loudspeaker. The power amp takes a relatively small input voltage and delivers a corresponding, high-voltage, high-current signal to a load. The loudspeaker takes a high-voltage, high-current signal and transduces it into sound-pressure waves. Obviously, these two actions are complementary, but they’re also very different. Encapsulating the two actions reduces complexity for the user. Where they once had to manage and connect the amplifier and loudspeaker as separate units, they now only have to look after one unit and one signal connection.

What can be missed, though, is that this simplification by encapsulation involves a very profound “exchange.” This exchange puts tremendous capability in the hands of people who would not be able to access it otherwise.

Many Unknowns For The User, Almost No Unknowns For The Manufacturer

A non-encapsulated system is a pretty complex thing to build and deploy. Let’s take the case of a fully-processed, biamplified loudspeaker. (Biamplification is the use of independent amplifiers for low and high-frequency signals.) To construct and operate an un-encapsulated, fully-processed, biamped audio rig, the following has to happen:

  1. You have to pick out, purchase, rackmount, and connect some sort of equalizer.
  2. You have to do the same for an active, two-way crossover.
  3. You might also want some dynamic filters – or even full-fledged dynamic EQ – for each crossover output.
  4. For both crossover outputs, you will need to have a limiter. If you want to get fancy, you’ll need two limiters – one that can determine and limit the RMS level of a signal, and one that “brickwalls” peak levels.
  5. You’ll need an alignment delay for one channel or the other. (Alignment delay is fraction-of-a-millisecond control over when a signal arrives. Effect delay has much coarser control over the time involved, and it’s also mixed with the unmodified signal to create the sound of an echo.)
  6. You will need two channels of amplification. The power available from each channel will need to be more than what the drivers can handle. I’ll explain why in just a bit.
  7. Now you can add a cabinet with an LF and HF driver.

If you’ve got all that done, now you get to do a bit of science. First, you pre-configure the crossover based on recommendations from the loudspeaker manufacturer.

You next have to figure out what input voltages to the amplifiers correspond with output voltages that – just barely – won’t destroy your drivers. You set the peak-stop limiter accordingly, with the RMS-sensing limiter in place as a backup. The reason that you got a “too powerful” amp is that even VERY heavily limited signals usually end up having a continuous power that’s one quarter of the peaks. As such, getting the maximum, “sane,” real-world performance possible means using amps that can deliver more continuous power than the drivers are rated for…and then limiting the continuous power to something safe while letting some of the peaks through. (If you want to be really dangerous, you could set RMS limiter only. It will probably be a while before something gets destroyed. Maybe.)

By the way – if you end up trying any of this, and you blow something up, I am NOT liable. It’s your funeral, okay?

Now you have to find an environment that’s as anechoic as possible (or go outside), and set up a measurement rig. The first thing to do is figure out which driver’s sound arrives “late” when compared to the other. You then apply the alignment delay to the “early” driver, so that signals from both the HF and LF elements hit the listener at the same time. Next, you measure the whole thing and apply EQ to make the response as flat as possible. If you’re ambitious enough, you run up the system to full-throttle and note how the response changes. You can then set dynamic EQs to keep the response flat (or filter out damaging LF energy) at high levels.

Oh, and you can always try some different crossover slopes to see what has the best phase and amplitude response.

So, yeah. You could buy all that for hundreds or thousands of dollars, and spend all that time dialing it in (assuming that you know what you’re doing), or…

…you could live with all of the above being unknown to you, but known to the manufacturer. If you’re willing to do that, then for a few hundred bucks you can purchase a powered box. That powered box will have had that whole mess up there done for it already. You just plug it into the wall, put some signal into it, and off you go.

See, when all of those components are encapsulated by an equipment builder, there’s an exchange that’s basically inevitable. The inner workings of the system become an unknown for you, the user. In trade, the configuration of all those components is now intimately understood and highly optimized by the manufacturer. This creates an integrated, powerful, black-box system that you can just use, with minimal effort. This especially gets around some of the problems I discuss in Dirty Secrets About Power: Manufacturers don’t have to deal with as many unknowns regarding how their equipment will be used, and you don’t have to deal with semi-knowns about what amp to mate with what loudspeaker cabinet.

In closing, let me be clear. I advocate being curious. I’m in favor of knowing what’s happening inside your gear, at least to whatever extent is practicable. I’m all for building things, and doing experiments. I’ve got access to some gear that I want to rebuild, to see just how effectively I can do a “biamped, externally powered and processed” loudspeaker rig. At the same time, the reality is that black-box products have created a world where you can just plug something in and get decent (if not stellar) results.


Dirty Secrets About Power

The amount of power actually being delivered to your loudspeakers might not be what you think. What power IS getting delivered might not be doing what you think.

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.

I’m pretty sure that power – that is, energy delivered to loudspeaker drivers – is one of the most misunderstood topics in live-audio. It’s an area of the art that’s often presented in a simplified way for the sake of convenience. Convenience is hardly a bad thing, but simplifying a complex and mission-critical set of concepts can be troublesome. For one, misinformation (or just misinterpretation) starts to be viewed as fact. Going hand-in-hand with that is the phenomenon of folks who mean well, but make bad decisions. These bad decisions lead to the death of loudspeakers, over and under spending on amps and speakers, seemingly reckless system operation…the list goes on.

So, with all the potential problems that can be caused by the oversimplification of the topic “Powering Loudspeakers,” why does “reduction for the sake of convenience” continue to occur?

I think the answer to that is ironically simple: The proper powering of loudspeakers is, in truth, maddeningly complex. There are lots of “microfactors” involved that are quite simple, but when they all get stuck together…things get hairy. At some point, educators with limited time, equipment manufacturers with limited space in instruction manuals, and established pros with limited patience have to decide on what to gloss over. (I’ve done it myself. Certain parts of my article on clipping let some intricacies go without complete explanation.)

With that being the case, this article can’t possibly cover every little counter-intuitive detail. What it can do, however, is give you some idea of how many more particulars are actually out there, while also giving you some insight into a few of those particulars.

So, in no particular order…

Dirty Secret #1: Amp And Speaker Manufacturers Assume A Lot

You may have heard the phrase “Assume Nothing.” That saying does NOT apply to the people who build mass-produced loudspeakers and amplifiers. It doesn’t apply because it CAN NOT apply – otherwise, they’d never get anything built, or their instruction manuals would be gigantic.

Amplifier manufacturers, on their part, assume that you’re going to use their product with mostly “musical” signals. They also assume that you can put together a sane system with the “how to make this thing work” information they provide in their documentation. Further, they make suggestions about using amplifiers with continuous power ratings that are greater than the continuous power ratings of your speakers, because they assume that you’re not going to drive the amp up to its clip lights all the time.

Loudspeaker manufacturers also assume that you’re going to drive their boxes with music. They also ship products with the assumption that you’ll use the speaker in accordance with the instructions. They publish power ratings that are contingent on you being sane, especially with your system equalizers.

The upshot of it all is that the folks who make your gear also make VERY powerful assumptions about your ability to use their products within the design limits. They do this (and disclaim a lot of responsibility), because a ton of factors related to actual system use have traditionally been outside their control. Anytime you read an instruction manual – especially the specifications page – take care to remember that the numbers you see are simplifications and averages that reflect a mountain of assumptions.

Dirty Secret #2: Musical Signals Don’t Get You Your Continuous Power Rating

The reason that technical folks distinguish between signals like sine waves, pink noise, and “music” is because they have very different power densities. Sine waves, for instance, have a continuous level that’s 3 dB below their peak level. Pink noise often has to have an accompanying specification of “crest factor” (the ratio between the peak and average level), because different noise generators can give you different results. Some pink noise generators give you a signal with 6 dB between the peak and average levels. Others might give you 12 dB.

Music is all over the map.

Some music signals have peaks that are 20+ dB above the average power. Of course, in our current age of “compress and limit everything,” it’s common to see ratios that are much smaller. I myself use rather aggressive limiting, because I need to keep a pretty tight rein on how loud the PA system can go. Even so, my peak levels tend to be about 10 dB above the average level.

So if you’ve got an amp that’s rated for “x” continuous watts, and you drive the unit all the way to its undistorted peak, music is probably giving you x/10 watts…or less. In my case, the brickwall limit that I set is usually 10 dB below clip, which means that my actual continuous power is something like 5 watts per channel. This calculation is pretty consistent with what I think the speakers are actually doing, because they get about 96 dB @ 1 watt @ 1 meter. Five watts continuous would mean about 103 dB SPL per full-range box, and there are two full-range boxes in the PA, so that’s 106 dB total…yup, that seems about right.

Yeah, so, your system? If you’re driving it with actual music that isn’t insanely limited, you can go ahead and divide your amp’s continuous power rating by about 10. Don’t get overconfident, though, because you can still wreck your drivers. It’s all because…

Dirty Secret #3: Power Isn’t Always Evenly Distributed

Remember that bit up there about manufacturers making assumptions? Think about this sentence: “They publish power ratings that are contingent on you being sane, especially with your system equalizers.”

Dirty secret #2 may have you feeling pretty safe. In fact, you may be thinking that secret #2 directly contravenes some of the things that I said about cooking your loudspeakers with an amp that’s too big.

Hold up there, chum!

When a loudspeaker builder says that the system will handle, say, 500 watts, what they actually mean is: “This system will survive 500 watts of continuous input, as long as the input is distributed with roughly equal power per octave.” Not everything in the box will take 500 watts without dying. In particular, the HF driver may be rated for a tenth – or less – of what the total system is advertised to do. Now, if you combine that with a system operator who just loves to emphasize high-frequency material (“I love that top-end snap and sizzle, dude!”), you may just be delivering a LOT of juice to a rather fragile component…

…especially if the operator uses a huge amp, because they’re under the false impression that amp headroom = safety. A 1000 watt amplifier, combined with a tech who drives hard, scoops the mids, and has boxes with passive crossovers, is plenty capable of beating a 50-watt-rated HF driver into the ground.

On the flipside, a system without protective filtering on the low-frequency side can get killed in a similar way. Some audio-humans just HAVE to “gun”the low-frequency bands on their system EQ, because “boom and thump are what get the girls dancing, dude!” Well, that’s all fine and good, but most live-sound speakers that are reasonably affordable can’t handle deep bass at high power. Heck, the box that the drivers are in often acts as a filter for material that’s below about 40 Hz.

Of course, there may not be an electronic filter to keep 40 Hz and below out of the amplifier, or out of the LF driver. Thus, our system operator might just be dumping a huge amount of energy into a woofer without actually being able to hear it. The power doesn’t just disappear, of course, which means that “driver failure because of too much power at too low a frequency” might be just around the corner.

Dirty Secret #4: Accidents Aren’t Usually Musical Signals

Building on what I’ve said above, I should be clear that folks do get away with using overpowered amps (for a time) because of feeding them “music.” They end up keeping the peaks at a reasonable level, and so the continuous power stays in a safe place as well.

Then, something goes wrong.

Maybe some feedback gets really out of control. Maybe somebody drops a microphone. All of a sudden, you might have a high-frequency sine-wave with peaks – and continuous level – that’s far beyond what a horn driver can live with. In the blink of an eye, you might have a low-frequency peak that can rip a subwoofer cone.

Ouch.

Dirty Secret #5: Squeezing Every Drop Of Performance From Something Is For Either Amateurs Or Rich People

This secret connects pretty directly with #3 and #4. Lots of folks worry about getting every single dollar’s worth of output from a live-audio rig. It’s very understandable, and also very unhealthy. To extract every possible ounce of output from a loudspeaker system requires powerful, expensive amplifiers that have the capability to flat-out murder the speakers. For this reason, “performance enthusiasts” are either people who can’t afford to buy both more power AND more speakers, or they’re people who can afford to buy (and fix, and fix, and fix again) a lot of gear that’s run very hard.

The moral of the story is that your expectation needs to be that – in line with secret #3 – getting continuous output consistent with about 1/10th of a rig’s rated power is actually getting your money’s worth. If you don’t have enough acoustical output at that level, then you either need to upgrade to a system that gets louder with the same number of boxes, or you need to buy more loudspeakers and more amps to expand your system.

Dirty Secret #6: More Power Means More Than Just Buying More Amps

This follows along with secret #5. If you want more power, then you need more gear. That seems simple enough, but I’m convinced that linear PA growth is accompanied by geometric “support” growth.

What I mean by this is that getting ahold of a more powerful PA is more than just getting the amps and speakers together. More power means heavier and more expensive amp racks, or more (and more expensive because of quantity) amp racks. It may mean that you have to construct patch panels to keep everything organized. More PA power also means that you need more AC power “from the wall” in the venue. Past a certain point, you have to start thinking about an actual power distro system – and that can be a major project with huge pitfalls in and of itself. You need more space for storage. You need a bigger vehicle, if you’re going to transport it all.

Getting more power doesn’t just mean more of the “core” gear that creates and uses that power. It means more of everything that’s connected to that gear.

Dirty Secret #7: The Point Of Diminishing Returns Occurs Very Quickly. Immediately, In Fact.

The last secret is also, in some ways, the biggest bummer. Audio is a logarithmic affair, which means that the gains you get from spending more money and providing more power to a system begin decreasing as soon as you even get started. I’m dead serious.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a loudspeaker that averages about 95 dB SPL @ 1 watt @ 1 meter. You put one continuous watt – one measly watt – across the box, and stand roughly three feet away. That 95 dB SPL seems pretty good. Now, you go up to two watts. Did you get 95 dB more? Nope – that would mean that you could get “space shuttle takeoff” levels out of one loudspeaker. Not gonna happen.

So…did you get 20 dB more?

No.

10 dB?

Nope.

You doubled the power, and got three decibels more level out of the speaker. That’s just enough of a difference to definitively notice that things have gotten louder. If you want three more dB, you’ll have to double the power again. So far we’re only at four watts, but I think you can see just how fast the battle for more output starts to go against you. If your system is running at full tilt, and you want more output, you’re going to have to find a way to “double” the system – and even when you do, you’ll only get a little more out of it. If you want to get 10 times as loud, you need 10 times as much total PA.

The vast majority of a PA system’s output comes from the first watt going into each box. It’s a fact that’s in plain sight, but it (and its ramifications) often aren’t talked about very much.

That makes it one of the dirtiest secrets of all.


“It Was On Sale” Is A Bad Reason

A great price on something that doesn’t work for you is not a good deal.

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.

The wrong gear at the right price is still the wrong gear.


Two Simple Steps For Finding A Great Drum Mic

It’s both incredibly easy and very difficult.

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.

To find a great drum mic:

1. Obtain any microphone that essentially sounds like what it’s pointed at.

2. Point the mic at a kit that sounds wonderful, and that is being played by a really excellent drummer.

Modified versions of this technique work for vocalists, guitar players, bassists…


More Is More…And More Of Everything Connected To That More

A Small Venue Survivalist Saturday Suggestion

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.

The guy with the most toys…

…has the longest load-in.

And load-out, but one thing at a time, okay?


The Peavey PVXp-12

As usual, Peavey delivers a competent product with only a few downsides.

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.

I’m sure that Peavey encompasses many adjectives that start with “P,” like “proficient” and “pugilistic.” (They’re feisty.) My favorite Peavey adjective, though, is “predictable.”

Now, don’t get me wrong! I love innovation and “cool new stuff,” but I also love being able to get cool new stuff that I know is made well. That’s where Peavey delivers: They make affordable gear that delivers usable performance and holds up under the rigors of live-audio. You know what to expect when you order a box with the Peavey badge, and that is tremendously valuable for live-sound humans.

When it comes to speaker enclosures, the big “P” has never let me down. Even when a box has suffered some sort of problem, the issue was either too subtle for most people to notice, or correctable with a few minutes of work. Almost every Peavey loudspeaker that I’ve ever owned is either still in service somewhere, or was traded up for the next box. I had some cheap subs that I overpowered (because I was young and dumb), and they endured the punishment that I was dishing out for gig after gig after gig. The voice coils did get pushed a bit out of true, but the drivers never entirely quit – in fact, the only component to actually fail was the crossover on one of the boxes. A quick bypass operation later, and I had a working sub again.

It’s fitting, then, that my monitor-wedge woes would be brought to an end by a bevy of Peavey units. After some disappointing misadventures with offerings from Avid/ M-Audio and Seismic Audio, a sextet of PVXp-12s has put the smile back on my face.

I Don’t Have Lots Of Numbers, Because I Don’t Need Them

When I did my review of the monitor wedges I procured from Seismic Audio, there was a fair bit of testing involved. Numbers…you know, quantitative analysis.

I haven’t done anything like that for the PVXp-12s. They might be able to do what Peavey claims they can do, or they might not.

But I don’t care.

Why?

Because, whatever the PVXp boxes do, they do enough of it to satisfy my needs as a small-venue audio human. What’s more, they do what they do in a seemingly effortless way.

You might not think that says much, but it actually says a lot – and loudly. I measure when a piece of gear is giving me a reason to be skeptical. If I have no reason to “pick at” a manufacturer’s claims, then I don’t. Peavey claims that PVXp-12s can produce a peak of 127 dB SPL with music. Of course, every time a manufacturer says “peak,” you can subtract 3 – 6 dB to get an idea of what the box will actually do in real life. My guess is that a strong vocal input through these units has a fighting chance of doing 120 dB SPL continuous at a listener’s position. That guess is backed up by the fact that, over a good number of shows, I have never been able to observe the DDT™ (Peavey’s proprietary limiting system) indication on the units that I have. In contrast, other monitor wedges that I’ve had in service would either light their limiting indicators regularly, or be in audible distortion.

The bottom line is that I don’t have to nitpick the PVXp-12s. I don’t care if they can actually reach the claimed 325/ 75 watts continuous into the LF (Low Frequency) and HF drivers, because whatever wattage is actually being dissipated is plenty. I commonly “double up” two units, which gives a theoretical “maximum continuous vocal output” of 123 dB SPL.

Quite frankly, if you need more than that on stage, your show doesn’t belong in a venue that seats 200 people or fewer. Either that, or somebody is playing WAY too loud and needs to be fired.

I’ll also mention that, at one show, the lead singer asked for a pretty good amount of kick in the wedges. A box loaded with a 12″ LF driver can’t be asked to deliver crushing “boom,” but for that show (which was of about average overall volume), the PVXps delivered enough thump that I didn’t need any kick in the FOH (Front Of House) PA. Not bad for a box that retails at $350 – at least, in my opinion.

As far as sound-quality goes, I don’t really know what to say. PVXp-12s “sound like music to me,” which is to say that they seemed to be tuned in a pretty sane fashion. No, you’re probably not going to have a spiritual experience when you listen to these boxes, but that’s not what they’re for. The primary purpose of a sound-reinforcement box is to deliver sufficient output, cleanly, with a smooth response across the critical frequencies for music (about 100 Hz to 12 kHz, or a little more depending on the application). That’s what these Peavey’s seem to do.

If your experience is similar to mine, you may actually need to apply a 3 to 6 dB, 1 – 2 octave wide boost at around 2 kHz, along with a less pronounced, 1-ish octave wide boost at 8 kHz to make the boxes “flat.” It all depends on what you want, though.

Again, there just isn’t much to say. As monitor wedges, my PVXp enclosures pass signals and don’t make me struggle. That’s all I want, and judging by the number of compliments I get regarding the sound on deck, that’s all that most bands seem to be looking for. I know there are better sounding boxes out there because there is ALWAYS a better sounding box out there, but everything beyond the basics is gravy…and gravy is pretty expensive.

The Quibbles

Another piece of Peavey’s predictability – at least for me – is that they always seem to make some kind of design decision that causes me to scratch my head. It’s a different thing for every product line, but I swear, it isn’t Peavey unless I want to write a letter to them that reads: “In regards to this design aspect of this product…REALLY?”

The PVXp-12 is no exception in this regard.

To start with, the XLR input on the boxes is connected to circuitry with much higher gain than the TRS input. On one hand, this makes some sense. It allows people to plug a microphone directly into the box and get results without having to hit a mic/ line switch. On the other hand, not having a switch to select mic/ line gain means that using the XLR jack for line-level input requires that the input potentiometer be set quite low, in its “finicky” range. Even there, I have to trim my monitor send masters down about 6 dB to keep my on-channel sends in an operational area that’s consistent with other things.

Now, this isn’t a huge deal. It’s certainly a “first world problem,” which can be corrected with just a bit of doing. I can acknowledge that. Still, I’m a little surprised at Peavey apparently thinking that a robust, multipin connector shouldn’t be the first choice for line-level AND mic-level audio.

There’s also the issue of how the input plate is located. For some cables, you may find that a monitor placement causes a certain amount of shearing (sideways) force on your cable’s strain relief. This may or may not be enough to cause a problem – it’ll depend on your usage patterns, though.

Another oddity is that the Peavey design department apparently lives in a world where only one side of a box needs to be angled for monitor usage. This means that, whether you want it or not, a PVXp-12 doing monitor duty will have the HF horn on the stage-right side. If you want to “bookmatch” a pair of these boxes when doubling them up, you’re out of luck. It’s hardly a critical issue, but I swear, even manufacturers who build questionable boxes have figured out how to let you lay the enclosure on either side.

Going back to the level potentiometer, I’ve found myself wishing that it would be easier to get a “repeatable” setting for the knob. If you’re using the XLR input for line-level signals, it’s impossible to accurately see where the knob is if the box is in a monitor placement. In fact, to accurately set the knob, the box has to be rotated onto its face. Further (and this isn’t just a Peavy thing), the knob is of a “continuous sweep” variety. I just don’t understand why – on a piece of gear that is probably going to be used in multiples – level controls aren’t given clickstops for easy and accurate repeatability.

All of this is just nitpicking, though. Sure, you can spend more on a speaker enclosure. Sure, there are other boxes which may be more or less “your taste.” Still, my opinion is that the PVXp-12 is a great example of how far we’ve come in terms of affordable gear. Think about it: These boxes are biamped, with all kinds of nifty processing that’s been set at the factory, and it’s all been stuffed into a pretty compact package. I got started in pro-audio during the ’90s, and the functionality in a PVXp-12 wasn’t even something we were dreaming about then.

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a lot of “bang” in these Peaveys for the bucks you’ll pay for them. The boxes aren’t flashy, and there’s no hype surrounding them…

…and there’s no need for any of that, because these units just go to work, get to work, and consistently deliver.

Well, they do for me, anyway.