Mixing the band

[rustyrat]

Is it better in small clubs to go with a stage mix and just vocals thru the pa or mike everything and run low stage volumes? I have always used a sound company but now we have a very nice, powerful pa and have to do it ourselves. I prefer to mic everything and mix it right than stage volumes mix but my band mates disagree with me.
Thanks for the advice guys.

[johniss0001]

For small places i would use the vocals through the PA but mind you a small place in the states or anywhere is bigger than a small place where i am but for average halls you want to mic everything talkin about 1000 people here, if you are playin to 250-500 probably just the vocals through the pa will be fine

[Eoin]

What's the rms of the PA? And how small is a small club?

[rustyrat]

Lets see we have around 2600 watts. Club size about 200 people.
Thanks

[johniss0001]

tip remember watts is quality not volume so to speak well try just the vocals through the pa at sound check if they are too loud mic everything up.

[rustyrat]

I'm just getting into this a little more. We are using crown power amps cross over etc. I think its 1000 on the subs 800 on the mids and 800 on the highs. (Not sure on the highs seems like an awful lot!)
I have been anal about my guitar tone for years and now I'm getting real anal about our mix. Nothing worse than listing to a decent band with a shitty mix.
Thanks

[Eoin]

Wattage is a measure of power. The sensitivity of the speakers will dictate how loudly that translates, but it's a useful ballpark for judging the size of the rig. "Quality" will be down to other factors, power is not directly related to it - there are plenty of shitty high powered PAs around (crown aren't one of them, thankfully ). What people often neglect is that you need quite a bit more headroom for live music than you do if you're playing cds etc, because there's a much larger dynamic range. The vocal should be comfortably loud above everything else, and then some. If you don't have enough headroom, be prepared for a nightmare of a gig (and definitely reconsider putting bass and guitars through the PA). flemingras wrote a great post on optimising your gain structure near the start of this forum. Check it out. He also had a post with a detailed explanation of what "wattage" actually is.

Anyway, I'd say the bottom line is : having a mic on everything doesn't mean you have to use the mic on everything. You can mic up a whole kit, the amps, the bass, and all the vocals - and then pull everything on the desk except the vocals. If you find that's all you're doing after a few gigs, then stop micing the rig. But if you have a sound engineer worth his salt, you should probably be micing up the whole gig reasonably well with those kind of numbers, imo. The vocal is going to be the (relatively) loudest thing in the PA anyway, but giving everyone else a little bandwidth is important so you can actually have a mix.

[flemingmras]

Now I've been reading the posts here and everyone seems to have forgotten option 3:

Get your stage volume to where you'd have it normally when you just mic vocals, then mic everything and get the PA volume above the stage volume. The guitars will be better spread out while the drums and bass will be a lot fuller and punchier, plus you'll have a stage volume that you're all happy with.

This is the trick to getting the "live rock concert" sound if that's what you're after. And trust me, the more "live rock concert" it sounds, the more professional it will sound and the people will totally dig your band.

However this does require a substantial amount of power and decent subwoofers to pull it off. I HIGHLY recommend the Cerwin Vega EL36B Earthquake folded horn subs for this purpose. LOTS of punch, but with TONS of PHATNESS!!!

I have a total of about 8,000 watts in my PA. It's a 3 way stereo system and each speaker is on an amplifier that has the capability of supplying more power than the speaker's peak power rating. This enables me to get a nice, full, clean "live rock concert" sound, but at that volume the amps are pretty much just chillin'. They're not being hardly worked at all, which eliminates my chances of clipping, the #1 speaker destroyer.

Always remember this - Amplifiers DO NOT "PUSH" power into a speaker. The speaker "draws" current from the amplifier. The impedance rating(measured in ohms) of the speaker will determine how much current it will draw from the amplifier with a given voltage across that speaker. The amp is merely just an adjustable power supply. You're using the main mix volume control on the mixer to control how much voltage appears at the amps output terminals. That voltage will allow the speaker to draw a certain amount of current, which is based on the amount of voltage across that speaker and the ohms rating of the speaker. For example, let's take an 8 ohm speaker with about 40 volts across it. Now we'll use Ohm's Law to figure out how much current that speaker will draw from the amp with that voltage placed across it:

E=I x R where:

E=Voltage
I=Current measured in Amps
R=Resistance/Impedance, measured in Ohms

So, we know that the speaker has 40 volts across it. We know that the speaker is 8 ohms. However we want to know how much current the speaker will draw under those conditions. So we will rearrange the equation to figure that out:

I=E/R

I=40 Volts/8 Ohms

I=5 Amps

Now we can find out how much power the speaker is consuming, measured in Watts with this equation.

P=I x E where:

P=Power measured in Watts
I=Current measured in Amps
E=Voltage

From this equation you can pretty much guess that Power is basically Voltage and Current combined. We know that the speaker has 40 volts across it and it's drawing 5 amps of current from the amplifier. So:

P=I x E

P=5 Amps x 40 Volts

P=200 Watts

So you can now see that with 40 volts across an 8 ohm load, the speaker will draw 5 amps of current, totalling 200 Watts of power consumed.

I mean, average max speed limit anywhere is about 70MPH. So are car makers gonna design a car with an engine that has JUST enough power in reserve to get you up to 70MPH and that's it? No! They're gonna put a motor in that car that will not only get you to 70MPH, but at 70MPH that motor is just cruising, and it STILL has more than enough power for passing. Just because you have amps with X amount of power doesn't mean you have to use all of it. So I am a firm believer in getting amplifiers that have more power than what your speakers can handle. You won't overpower the speaker because it will be loud enough to rip your head off LONG before you hit the overpower point.

And one more thing...the controls on the front of the amp are NOT volume controls and they DO NOT control the amp's output. Those knobs are called "input attenuators" and their purpose is to allow you to match the amplifier's input sensitivity to the output of your mixer. You want to set them so that the amp is reaching full power output at the same time your mixer is reaching its max output level as well. This allows for the highest signal-to-noise ratio and the highest amount of headroom.

Jon

[Bad Kitty]

I make my living playing small places and the most important thing I've found is your volume. I've gotten more gigs and repeat gigs by being quiet then I ever have being loud. Nothing is more annoying then going into a club and having your ears assaulted while trying to talk to your wife, girlfriend, or that tasty piece of tail.
If you look up at the bar and the bartender is having to lean over the bar to hear orders, your too loud.
The drummer is the most important part of this equation. You can only get as quite as he can. Micing the drums in a small room is the worst thing a band can do. In a small room you shouldn't have to mic anything.
Split you cabinets if your able to. I ran a full stack with the slanted cab behind me and the straight cab on the other side. The same for the bass player. That way you get more fullness with less volume.
Since I do it for a living, time is money. I have the PA and I can get it setup and running in 30 to 45 minutes. That includes whatever guitar setup I'm using and my wifes rhythm guitar amp.
Use a wireless. My wife is setup right next to the PA rack so when I go out front I'm not trying to be the guitar god, I'm listening to the mix. Then with simple head signs I tell her who's vocals need to come up or go down. That's on the first set. You shouldn't need to mess with the PA after that.
The most important rule for me personally is not being afraid to tell someone to turn down. I'm a real a$$hole in that respect. Ask any of the umpteen drummers and bass players I've worked with. It's our band, our mix, our gig. Screw it up for me once and your out of there. You want to get loud, stick to the garage. I've got a mortage to pay.
It's not always easy but that's what works the best for us.

[flemingmras]

Now my question is...

What is your definition of "loud"?

I think what most people perceive as "loud" is when the mix has too many upper mids. The key to being able to play loud and get away with it is all in how you EQ the mix. There is a such thing as the "Fletcher/Munson Curve". This curve basically illustrates how the human ear hears things. For example, lots of engineers are always saying "You want the system as flat as possible" etc etc. Then they'll use an RTA(Real Time Analyzer) and a pink noise generator to flatten out the system. However...

The Fletcher Munson Curve shows us that the human ear does not hear flat by any means. The human ear seems to be more sensitive in the upper mids(2-4kHz range) than it does in the low - low mid frequency range.

A lot of bands that I hear people saying "they're too loud"...I find that they have WAY too many highs and upper mids in their mix, and they usually don't have any subs on their PA for the low end required to balance with the loud mids and highs. That's just flat out annoying. I find that when you have a PA with decent subs and enough power to really make 'em work, they tend to "mask" a lot of that high end harshness that people perceive as "too loud".

Another BIG BIG mistake is people underpowering their PA. People are believers of the big misconception that the amplifier somehow PUSHES power into the speaker, when actually the amp is just a "reserve" of power that the speaker DRAWS from. Because of this they will use amplifiers that are rated for exactly what the speaker can handle or lower, thinking that they're in the "safe zone" and that they won't blow their speakers. Well here's the problem with that. When they do get their PA up to concert volume, the amp is having to work very hard, most of the time at its max output point. Well what happens here is you run into power compression, and eventually clipping, which will definitely fry speakers. Also, when the amp has to work really hard you run into Harmonic Distortion that gets generated by the amp, which is not good. This distortion generates a lot of harsh harmonics that are harsh to the human ear, and again cause a lot of what people perceive as "being too loud". And these harmonics tend to be in the upper mids. So once again, you end up with upper mid harshness, which people do not like.

This is why I preach to people to use amplifiers that are rated for WAY MORE than the speaker can take. When you rate them like this, then you will be able to get up to concert volume, but without the amp having to work very hard to get there. This eliminates the harsh harmonics that get generated by the amp getting worked hard, and the sound comes out very clean, tight and punchy, with lots of smoothness and clarity. I've done shows where I've measured 115-120dB SPL, yet it sounded more like around 105dB. And the people were DIGGIN' IT! Yet I've heard other systems where I measure about 100-105dB, yet the sheer volume was just ripping my head off!

How much power you have and how well you EQ your mix has LOTS of bearing in determining whether or not the people will perceive the band as "being too loud".

Jon

[BashCoder]

Preach it, Jon!

[flemingmras]

Damn straight! I got tired of people bitching "Oh, it's too loud", yet those people are the same people you'd see at a Motley Crue or a Ted Nugent concert. But OH! IT'S NOT TOO LOUD WHEN IT'S A FUCKING CELEBRITY!" Sorry, but I wasn't buying that.

So I knew there was a science behind it, it was just all a matter of learning it.

[rustyrat]

Great Info. I printed it and gave it to our sound guy!
Thanks.
RR

[Andy]

1st step: The guitarist sets their volume for best tone.

2nd step: Adjust all other levels to accomodate. If the guitar isn't loud enough then mic' it.



Simple enough.

-Andy

[flemingmras]

Thank you Andy! I couldn't have said it better myself!

Jon