Live situation, using the PA

fretfinder

shaunm said:

timmysoft said:

p90fool said:

Superlux do a good replica of the Sennheiser for about 40 quid, it really is excellent. 

Yeah they are really good, I've got one in my gig bag for emergencies, best bang for the buck mic on the market!

Glad to hear it as I've just ordered one. 

Is this the one that's a replica of the Sennheiser?

https://www.thomann.de/gb/superlux_pra_628_mkii.htm

timmysoft

fretfinder said:

shaunm said:

timmysoft said:

p90fool said:

Superlux do a good replica of the Sennheiser for about 40 quid, it really is excellent. 

Yeah they are really good, I've got one in my gig bag for emergencies, best bang for the buck mic on the market!

Glad to hear it as I've just ordered one. 

Is this the one that's a replica of the Sennheiser?

https://www.thomann.de/gb/superlux_pra_628_mkii.htm

yeah, mines an earlier one with a squarer head, i think sennheiser probably took them to the cleaners over the shape and form. Its not really a replica, its a similarly designed mic. It doesn't sound as good as the e609 in recording situations or in very big venues, but for smaller PA's and rehearsals its fine, certainly much less fatiguing than the SM57 to listen to and much easier to get good placement on.

sgosden

simonk said:

For smaller venues I tend to use the Palmer PDI09 or Radial JDX - it's just easier and eliminates spill. For bigger stages I'd be quite happy with a '57 although my personal favourite is the AT AE3000.

which do you prefer? Palmer seems to have more options

simonk

sgosden said:

simonk said:

For smaller venues I tend to use the Palmer PDI09 or Radial JDX - it's just easier and eliminates spill. For bigger stages I'd be quite happy with a '57 although my personal favourite is the AT AE3000.

which do you prefer? Palmer seems to have more options

Probably the Radial as it sounds slightly bigger. It's bulkier and heavier than the Palmer though, and requires phantom power or its own PSU.

andyoz

I personally hate smaller gigs were the band try to get the majority of their guitar volume through the PA and forget about getting a decent level from the onstage amp (I'm talking crowds of less than say 300 people, i.e. medium sized pubs really.)

Most PA;s aren't nearly as good as people think and what goes in can be very different to what comes out.  The truest sound still comes direct from the amp and I prefer to hear the PA just used for a bit of spread but not swamping the on stage amp.  It's a hard trick to pull off though and you need a band very confident in their levels (and not constant amp knob fiddlers).

impmann

andyoz said:

(and not constant amp knob fiddlers).

99.999999% of guitarists fall into this category. And of that 99.999999%, 100% of them think that potentiometers can only be turned clockwise.

Danny1969

andyoz said:

I personally hate smaller gigs were the band try to get the majority of their guitar volume through the PA and forget about getting a decent level from the onstage amp (I'm talking crowds of less than say 300 people, i.e. medium sized pubs really.)

Most PA;s aren't nearly as good as people think and what goes in can be very different to what comes out.  The truest sound still comes direct from the amp and I prefer to hear the PA just used for a bit of spread but not swamping the on stage amp.  It's a hard trick to pull off though and you need a band very confident in their levels (and not constant amp knob fiddlers).

300 people is quite a lot, more than what a medium sized pub would hold. I certainly would use a lot of PA to serve 300 people, the amp would have to be pretty dam loud onstage otherwise. I do have friends who did hundreds of gigs like that though ....trouble is now they all have irreparable hearing damage

andyoz

Yeah, I got that 300 wrong the more I think about it, probably more like 100-150 people the more I think about it.  The main thing I hate is when I'm standing in a pub only 20 feet from the guitarist and I'm getting blasted by a messy signal through an average PA (most are) that is swamping the direct signal from the stage.  I'm drawn to the PA as the sound source and the mix has totally forgotten that there's a band on stage.

True re. hearing damage but that's what the proper moulded plugs are for. AC/DC in their early days never forgot about the onstage energy and driving it from the stage even when they were playing to 1000+

Cabicular

I supported AC/DC UK at the 02 recently and they had 3 full stacks on stage 
it was a bit much

andyoz

Really, why?

Cabicular

It was overwhelming
so much on stage volume
i don't know how they can take it night on night
great players and amazing stamina but their heads must be mush 

andyoz

Class comments @Cabicular
Good to see the boys still haven't lost their Rock N'Roll roots. I'd always assumed they used a couple of offstage 1 x 12's and IEM's..!!

professorben

Cabicular said:

It was overwhelming
so much on stage volume
i don't know how they can take it night on night
great players and amazing stamina but their heads must be mush 

I can only imagine it's because that's how it was done back in the day, when you call the shots like AC/DC do, I'm guessing your decision is final. 
Looks like it's done for Brian tho. 

Cirrus

Yeah, it's great until you destroy the final years of your lead vocalist's career.

I think it's pointless too - In the '70s you needed all those stacks not so much for outright volume but more because 4x12 cabs suck at dispersion - you need lots of them to cover the venue, and you need side fills so when you walk around on stage you don't have that annoying treble beam of death with muddy sound anywhere else on stage. Dispersion issue solved, side effect is insane volume to the point that the drummer, sitting surrounded by his own drum kit, needs monitors to hear himself.

These days it's pointless, even if you want the sound of a cranked Marshall stack a single 4x12, a head switcher to go between your favourite heads, mic the lot up properly and put it through the monitors to fill the stage clearly with less volume.

Then again, if you've spent 45 years destroying your hearing maybe there comes a point where you just *can't* turn it down any more.

Plectrum

Brian's hearing was damaged by going out in a racing car without earplugs NOT by singing in a loud rock band.

ESBlonde

andyoz said:

  I'm drawn to the PA as the sound source and the mix has totally forgotten that there's a band on stage.

We hear the first sound to reach the ear and unless it's been delayed that would be the PA. When rigging a proper sound system in a smaller venue it is desirable to delay the speaker stacks back to the loudest sound source on stage (snare or kick drum). That way an audience member hears the acoustic sound fractionally before the amplified sound (which can be greater) but the ear is tricked into thinking the sound came off the stage rather than from the speaker stacks.

On larger stages and bigger venues it's more likely to have delayed speakers for the mids and highs further back in the room, again these are delayed back to the stage or more likely the subs in a concert hall or arena. The same principle applies that the ear thinks the sound came from the stage hundreds of feet away and not those speakers just off to the side of you.

ChrisMusic

ESBlonde said:

On larger stages and bigger venues it's more likely to have delayed speakers for the mids and highs further back in the room, again these are delayed back to the stage or more likely the subs in a concert hall or arena. The same principle applies that the ear thinks the sound came from the stage hundreds of feet away and not those speakers just off to the side of you.

 Hence the reason that at big outdoor festivals, the speakers rigged half way down the field are called delay towers (or at least they used to be), cause they are delayed to sync to main stage rig timing and they are on towers !

It would all sound like an old British Rail announcement otherwise !

Cirrus

Plectrum said:

Brian's hearing was damaged by going out in a racing car without earplugs NOT by singing in a loud rock band.

Hearing damage is cumulative, but since I'm not Brian's doctor (or a doctor at all) I wouldn't like to get into an argument about it.

ESBlonde

ChrisMusic said:

ESBlonde said:

On larger stages and bigger venues it's more likely to have delayed speakers for the mids and highs further back in the room, again these are delayed back to the stage or more likely the subs in a concert hall or arena. The same principle applies that the ear thinks the sound came from the stage hundreds of feet away and not those speakers just off to the side of you.

 Hence the reason that at big outdoor festivals, the speakers rigged half way down the field are called delay towers (or at least they used to be), cause they are delayed to sync to main stage rig timing and they are on towers !

It would all sound like an old British Rail announcement otherwise !

Thats it in a nutshell, known as the Haas effect or Preceedence effect, it's something related to our survival in the jungle and being able to locate the source of a sound which might be a predator, or a small offspring etc. plenty online to read up on, the prosoundweb is a good source for anyone interested.

andyoz

ESBlonde said:

andyoz said:

  I'm drawn to the PA as the sound source and the mix has totally forgotten that there's a band on stage.

We hear the first sound to reach the ear and unless it's been delayed that would be the PA. When rigging a proper sound system in a smaller venue it is desirable to delay the speaker stacks back to the loudest sound source on stage (snare or kick drum). That way an audience member hears the acoustic sound fractionally before the amplified sound (which can be greater) but the ear is tricked into thinking the sound came off the stage rather than from the speaker stacks.

...the Haas effect.  They use the same trick in theatres where there are ceiling speakers under the balcony to cover those seats and you're never aware that there is sound coming from the front and directly above you.  You hearing integrates the two sources to be just one louder source but localizes it to the first sound source it hears.  You're ear/brain is clever. You've got about a 40-50ms window of delay to work with (our sight does similar integration and why we need min 24 frames per second film before we see the 'gaps').  We are still cave men in terms of hearing evolution... back then we needed to know where the initial sound source was (i.e. a predator coming to eat you) even if there was stronger delayed sound energy coming at us from other directions.

I was getting more at the situation where the PA is just so overblown and distorted that even the your ear/brain has given up on trying to figure out whats going on (fatigue sets in).  We've all heard it in pubs where there's a cracking band that's been totally let down by someone that doesn't know the limits of the PA.

Also, re. delay stacks, another reason they are used is to keep down the overall concert levels to achieve off site noise limits.  In some cases it has been taken to extremes though.  Was less of an issue 30 or so years ago.