If you work at a venue like Fats Grill, you’re used to the idea of (very) finite limits. You’ve only got so many mains circuits available to power PA, lighting, and backline. You’ve only got a few light fixtures hung, so you have to make the most of ’em.

And you’ve only got about 1 kW that you can put across the FOH PA continuously, if you’re REALLY “going for it.” (Or more accurately, if the band is really going for it and you have to keep up.)

In short, you’ve got a small “amp power bank account,” and you’ve got to figure out how to spend it wisely. The problem for a lot of techs is that there’s a tendency to get starry-eyed (or is that starry-eared?) about making PA systems do things that are impressive in the short-term only. You know what I mean:

• The kick drum that sounds like an artillery piece.
• The toms that seem like they’re a minimum of 5 feet in diameter.
• The snare drum that distills everything good and right about arena rock into a sonic bolt that is released with every stick hit.
• The bass guitar that could convince a Norse deity that Ragnarok had started without them.
• The guitar amp that not only rules the world, but ALL worlds.

I think you get the picture.

All of these things are, indeed, cool. They’re very satisfying to hear. They’re very satisfying to create. They can also chew up a ton of your available system output.

“Available” Is Often Less Than Maximum

The “available” qualifier is an important one, because it reflects an important bit of reality: Just because a PA system can deliver a certain amount of power, it does not necessarily follow that you can actually use all that power.

The thing about small-venue PA systems is that they’re not necessarily “small” for the space they’re meant to cover. They’re often quite capable of producing levels that venue patrons will want to escape from. Producing that kind of SPL (Sound Pressure Level) unnecessarily is generally a bad move. With that in mind, you should usually assume that you actually have much less power to spend than the PA can deliver.

As a case in point, I have two brickwall limiters on the console outputs that feed the main, full range loudspeakers at Fats. There’s a “final” limiter, which kicks in just before the full range amplifier illuminates its clip lights, and in front of that limiter is my “sanity” limiter. I use the “sanity” limiter to keep my mix in the smallest possible “level box” that I think is appropriate. I often start the “sanity limiter” at a level that’s 10 dB below the limiter that prevents clipping, and if I raise it more than 3 dB then we’re having a rather louder than average night.

There are other technical factors to consider as well. You may not have full power available because of issues with GBF (Gain Before Feedback). You may have to run a little cool because the band brought a lot of power hungry equipment for lighting, and driving hard could trip a breaker. The audience may have an incredibly low threshold for “loud.”

In the end, “full power” just doesn’t equate with “available power.”

Spend Your Power On Essentials

The problem with chewing up your available output on things that sound cool in the short term is that you end up with a mix that does a poor job of accommodating the basics – basics that actually make or break the long term experience.

What do I mean?

Well, consider that most bands (not all of them, but most) tend to play, you know, songs. That is, music that incorporates lyrics. Ask yourself, what is it that makes the song an actual, recognizable song.

Yup. It’s the vocals.

Think about it. If there were no band playing at all, how would you identify the melody and narrative theme of the musical piece in question?

It’s. The. Vocals.

If you spend your available power on nothing else, spend it on getting the vocals clearly audible.

Next down the line are the instruments that, at any given moment, provide the strongest part of the musical piece’s structure. So, if the vocals are going, you should make sure that the instruments which drive the chord progression are audible. If the vocals aren’t going, and an instrument has stepped in to provide the melody (GUITAR SOLO!), then that’s what gets the nod.

Oh, and if the lead instrument is loud enough without extra help from the PA, then you don’t have to spend any power on it.

From there, your next candidates for a slice of the power budget are the remaining tonal instruments, often the bass. I should note here that there are times when the bass becomes more core to the song than other instruments – you have to know the context you’re working in, and pay attention to what’s going on.

Drums are last.

I don’t have anything against drums – I love drums that sound giant – but if I have to prioritize, drums are last in line (for most songs with a traditional structure).

Now, different strategies are appropriate at different times. For instance, when Stonefed is playing a show and it’s time for Ed’s drum solo, of course I spend my available power on making the drums “big.” The reason is because they’re now the most important musical element. Also, for most bands, I do start out by trying to sweeten the drums and other backline a little bit…it’s just that I’m prepared to yank those faders down if that’s what’s necessary to get the vocals where I think they need to be.

It’s Not Just Overall Levels, Either

I want to close up by mentioning that frequency ranges are also important to consider. This dovetails with the whole “huge drums and bass” thing that I mentioned at the top of this article. Low frequency material is fun and exciting. It can encourage people to dance. It’s a good thing to have.

However, trying to pile up a bunch of deep bass can require spending a lot of your available output power, or can chew up headroom in other parts of your signal chain. You can even fall into the trap of consuming output capacity with signals that your loudspeakers can’t really reproduce.

With drums, you may find that going for a lot of really deep “boom” is counterproductive when compared to getting a nice, complimentary “thud” that sits about half an octave higher. With bass guitars, I’ve often been in situations where an earth-moving rumble wasn’t what I needed. Instead, my power budget was best spent on the octave or two that lived just below the guitars. Heck, in some cases I’ve filtered everything below 1 kHz (really), and just used the PA to give the bass a bit of slap when everything else was in place.

Spend your power on what you actually need, folks. Everything else is optional.