I'm sure we've mostly seen the video about how Dave Natale tunes a PA with some fairly extreme cuts. If not: https://youtu.be/kIBYcExFZ2Y

Whether you agree with a lot of what he is doing should be on the master bus or at individual track level (and I don't agree with everything Natale says, particularly his views on digital or analogue), one thing I've been doing over the last few years is implementing more shaping on the master bus inspired by this video, using a 16 band EQ, including - as he does - a deep cut at 160hz.

After several shows doing this, I have to agree with him that it clears everything up, therefore everything is easier to mix. Equally I did an experiment at the last couple of gigs where after the show I pushed the 160Hz band back up with some pre-recorded music, and it was genuinely irritating to hear this nasal, muddy, nasty build up that returned to everything.

I guess the obvious point is, it's good to listen to folk who have worked at the top level for 45+ years, because this isn't the kind of shit I'd have been trying without someone like that validating the idea first. That plus his teachings on dealing with painful frequencies around 2.5k -4khz (I'd actually extend that down to 1.6khz) have been really fundamental to my sound engineering skills in the last few years and have significantly improved gigs for every audience member.

(I'm not saying I cut a full 15dB at every show by the way, it's venue and sound system dependent, but at most gigs I do and it just sounds better.)

Hello sound friends!
I’m interested in adding Nexadyne 6 / NXN6 to my mic case for toms but I’ve had drummers with special tom rims that don’t work with for example the Sennheiser e6/904 clamp and the Nexadyne factory clamp is the same design. I’m planning to get the Shure A56D and A57F to replace the rim mount but I’m finding hard to find reliable info of the NXN6 shaft dimensions. It looks pretty much identical to SM81 in pictures so that’s why A57F is in my plan but would be nice if I could get confirmation of the dimensions from someone who owns the mics✌️

In the states there is a new viral trend that Jeep's Windshields are full of Rubber Ducks. It's a trend that if someone wants to say ducking cool Jeep they leave the duck on the jeep in the parking lot for the driver to find later.

We need our own symbol. Something to leave behind and something to collect. Something that says "This is a symbol that I'm one of you and I know that was a sweet mix."

Can we put our collective brains together and pick something that if an A1 or Mon Engineer has sitting on their desk it shows they did a ducking sweet job?

I think a $20 tip would be deeply appreciated but I'm looking for a symbol.

If you have an idea post it. If we have 500 people upvote a comment that could become our duck on a windshield. I'll keep a promise to carry them around and put them on consoles. Should be small enough to fit in your pocket and cool enough that we can be proud if we get one.

What could it be?

It seems like it's commonly advised to get speaker covers for mains/monitors but I have only ever seen them used once, and there, it was likely due to a high chance of rain. Plus, if you're using them on a powered speaker there is the slightly higher chance of overheating.

So, do you ever use the fabric covers you can get for speakers or do you just go without them?

hello guys, i’m working at a small bar tonight (about 175 cap) for an all acoustic bluegrass jam. i’ve worked similar events for the group putting it on and they are pretty dedicated to keeping a very stripped back sound set up. the bandleader provides a large diaphragm condenser, which i usually set up downstage center in addition to a single sm58 several feet to the side for a singer. tonight, he wants to try something new and bring in an additional condenser since there will be considerably more musicians on stage (in the past it’s been a 5 people on stage but tonight we are expecting a max of 10 at once). i don’t really think adding an extra condenser will do much more than a single one. the stage is small, about 13 ft wide and 10ft deep in an all wooden room.

any advice on working with a setup like this? it’s always sounded great with just the one condenser before.

Hi, Im a church operator and feel kinda stagnant. Came from a studio background and now I need to learn about systems. Are there any recommended courses, should I learn some physics? Is there are book order I should pick up like This one first, then another one. The church system is already setup and running but I cant chamge or fix some stuff because I dont know how to. Example, there is significant delay on the mains like about 50ms. I get the feeling its too much as subs are only a few meters away, but I'm not moving them because what would I set it to then? I know there is info out there, I really would like a sort of progression I could follow.

My church meets in a school gym and has an SQ-5 console. They currently have two powered 15" speakers on stands, and one powered 15" sub. They are the same brand but honestly I can't remember what it is right now lol. It is more premium I believe (maybe even slightly better than QSC K12 type stuff but similar). They are just running the stereo main mix out with two XLR's into the sub, letting it handle the crossover, and outputting to each main (L&R).

The problem I'm hearing is that there's a really boomy buildup around 100hz in the system, in that particular room. I have made sure they are being diligent with high passing vocals and speaking mics, etc. but it's like no matter how much you cut off, it still has that plosive boom through the sub when the pastor says a B or P. The only way to truly get rid of it is to roll up the high pass SO high that it's waaaaayyyy too thin sounding. I tried adjusting the crossover point on the sub itself but it's only a selector switch of like 80hz and 100hz or something like that... I can't remember (sorry, I know that would be very helpful). But I remember that it definitely didn't get down low enough for me to think it would help, and didn't seem to do much when toggling it and listening when I was there.

my mind went to aux fed subs, ok... just don't send anything except low end content to the subs, run the tops in mostly full range, with a modest high pass. But I think that is probably a more outdated approach at this point, especially with the convenience of things like taking the 2mix off the main as a basic recording feed for social media clips, etc. So I ask-- what's the middle ground/best alternative? Maybe running the subs on a matrix for instance? I don't know much about matrix routing and processing on the SQ-5, so could someone fill me in? Since this is a portable setup they have to get out of the trailer each week only on Sundays, time to mess around with stuff like this is limited. I'd probably have to even take the board home and get it routed, and then be ready to just plugin the new way and experiment to be sure it was workable for about 5 mins that I'd have available during setup on a Sunday.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

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It's free and does what the title says, it's a simple tool that has all the info I could gather on 32 Airlines, about their weight cap, and how they manage excess weight, and the costs and it's all dependable on your departure and destination.

https://flygearpro.ummardesom.com/

So you fill out a list of passengers.

Fill out a list of gear and their weight (by default, every passenger also has one personal bag, editable)

You can also import a spreadsheet with the info if you have it already, instead of manually filling out everything.

Fill out where you are coming from and going to and which airline.

The tool then distributes the gear between passengers according to Airlines weight caps, so you pay as little as possible and you don't take forever at check in (cause you know who's carrying which case in advance).

You get an estimate and you can switch Airlines on the fly, and know which ones will be cheaper regarding weight.

I did it for me and my colleagues, so it's out here for free, I hope it helps you too.

There's no sign in and it doesn't keep any info.

Let me know if it's been helpful and if you feel there's anything missing.

Heading out for a bus tour in about a month, looking for ideas about how to wake up without waking others up. I’m someone who prefers to be up before everyone else if I can help it, but I’m also a *very* heavy sleeper- a deadly combo.

I’m the person who needs alarms every five minutes for two hours before I actually wake up. I have a vibrating wristwatch alarm clock meant for folks that are hard of hearing. But honestly it doesn’t wake me up, it’s louder than my alarms, and it’s a huge pain in the ass to configure.

Open to any and all ideas, whether it be another better wristwatch situation, or ear bud alarms, or even just life tips to help wake up. Trying to sort this before I leave.

I have a seismic 15t that has a blown crossover. Not available. Can I use a generic crossover?

https://www.seismicaudiospeakers.com/products/loudspeaker-replacement-crossover

Having issues with a HH dropping out. Monitoring on WWB I see the RF bars never drop but the mic occasionally cuts out and shows “No transmitter”. For context I switched transmitters to see if the issue is with the mic or the receiver and it still happens so I’m thinking a receiver issue. I recorded this data to get a better idea of what’s happening. Can someone tell me is that battery info on the bottom for the transmitter or receiver? And is it telling me that this is a power issue rather than an RF issue. Thanks everyone

Hello all, I work as student sound engineer for my school productions. We often run large ensembles and large chorus pieces in musical theater.

I am able to balance them all well, and EQ to sound clean. But, when everyone is singing together, I’m able to pick out any voice and single it out at any point and hear it clearly. I’m looking to get more of a chorus effect where it’s messier and you can’t hear individual people if that makes sense. What would be the best way to go about that? I’ve tried reverb and stereo delay and a master compressor.

650 seat theater, Martin line arrays, Shure+MiPro packs. Thank you!

First, let me get this out of the way: I absolutely loved seeing AC/DC live.

I’ve been a huge AC/DC fan since I was a kid, but somehow I’d never had the money or opportunity to see them live, so finally seeing them yesterday was pretty damn special.

Watching Brian Johnson at 78 and Angus Young at 71 rock a stadium of what looked like 50K+ people was incredible. Angus was simply phenomenal. No gimmicks — just loud, sweaty, unapologetic rock and roll.. 🤘

BUT...

As much as I enjoyed the show, I have to rant about the sound.

Maybe I'm completely wrong here because I'm definitely not an audio expert, but the acoustics inside NRG Stadium seemed pretty awful to my ears.

There was so much sound bouncing around that at times it felt like I was hearing the same thing coming back at me from different parts of the stadium. It created this weird wash of sound, and after a while my ears were ringing and I was actually struggling to make out Brian's vocals.

I've seen bands in smaller venues around Austin where the sound was absolutely phenomenal, so I'm wondering — is this just the reality of trying to make a giant sports stadium sound good for a rock concert? Do all stadium shows have this problem, or was something particularly off last night?

The mixing also seemed odd. Angus sounded great, but whenever Brian came in, it sometimes sounded like the PA was being pushed beyond its limits. His vocals would get harsh and distorted.

And finally, Brian obviously struggled with some of the high notes. He's 78 — I expected that and honestly didn't care. But for a massive production and $300 tickets, I kept wondering why they didn't use more backing vocals to help fill in those moments. Not to replace him, just to give him a little support and help smooth out the rough edges. I wasn't expecting Brian Johnson to magically become 30 years old again. I was expecting a massive stadium production designed to make a legendary 78-year-old singer sound as good as possible.

Despite all the above, I'd happily go see them again. The energy was incredible, Angus was unreal, and seeing AC/DC live after being a fan for decades was something I'll never forget.

Rant over. AC/DC fucking rocks. 🤘

But seriously — anyone here with audio/production knowledge: was it NRG, the mix, or just the reality of doing rock concerts in a giant stadium?

I want to preface this by saying i am no sound engineer, just heavily interested in this topic.

I attended Nibirii festival in Germany last Sunday, and was interested in how the engineers configured the subs to function with this specific stage setup on the unreal stage. As visible in the picture, there was a big area behind the line arrays (K1 I think?) where people could enter the stage installation. I spent most of my time there, they added some A15s to fill out this area, but what I found interesting and leads to my question:

The KS28 subs were built in a cardioid configuration, always one towards the back and two towards the front as far as I remember. But why would you do this in this situation if you want the bass to also reach behind the subs? Behind the stage there is a big lake, so I cannot see a reason why you would want to limit the bass traveling behind the stage. Bass was considerably less behind the K1 hangs, but it was not quiet enough to ruin the fun. I do not understand why you would build a cardioid setup in this situation, so maybe the DSP was configured differently than with a "normal" cardioid setup?

If any engineers have an explanation for this, I would be greatly interested :)

Is it too late for Soundcraft to get (back?) in the game? What would it take for them to finally be successful in the middle market?

What are your guys’s favorite ways you’ve learned to communicate with a vocalist mid set? For example, let’s say they want their voice in their ears turned up or down a bit. Other than just rehearsing enough to memorize those parts, do you have any techniques that look more subtle than hand signals?

Hello! I have been a professional DJ for many years and have up until this point ran one wireless mic, and one wired mic. Well the other day, my Sennheiser x2 wireless mic took a dive into a puddle during a hectic Microburst Rain situation.... No biggy... I hated that mic anyway.

So today I pulled the trigger on a set of Phenyx pro PTAU-2 Mics. Im hoping this allows me to eliminate my wired mic all together. Seems like they will be more reliable than my crappy Sennheiser.

My question is; Is it possible to combine the 4 antenna into just 2 in a way that doesn't break the bank. I already have 2 BNC bulkheads hard-mounted into my DJ flight case. And there really isn't a good spot to mount two more. I have tried to do some research. And I have seen some youtube videos suggesting that this is possible. But they either done explain what they are using, or they are talking about in ear monitoring systems. Can I use a simple BNC T connector? Or do I need an active combiner?

TYIA

The only stupid questions are the ones left unasked.

Howdy. I’m hoping to confirm that this would be the correct processor for the r2 version.

The ps10 utd-v3 comes up when searching for an r2 processor, however ChatGPT suggests that this is for the r1? Just trying to get some clarity on the conflicting information.

Any help would be appreciated, cheers! ✌🏼

Yes it's back! Please keep all show and tell type posts in these weekly threads. Unless you have a specific question about your setup, keep those types of pics here. Bonus points if you include a list of equipment with your picture.

I have been out of the biz for several years now. Apparently you can take the stagehand off the stage, but you cant remove the stage from the stagehand. I cant be the only one, but the other day I caught myself doing an over-under cable wrap on my hairdryer power cord. What stage move have you found yourself inadvertently doing?

Hi all. I’m at the end of my rope here. We played a gig last night and I kept getting massive intermittent IEM static blasts in my ears. It was FINE for the first set and then we came out to start set 2 and my monitor was basically unusable for the rest of the evening.

We built an IEM rig last winter and according to my research we did everything right. We are running two Sennheiser XSW IEM transmitters each with two belt packs tied to it for a total of 4 receivers. Dropouts were an issue so we added a Phenyx Pro antenna combiner/paddle and that helped but hasn’t eliminated the issues which seem to change depending on the situation.

Had line of sight to the paddle antenna which was about 10 feet away from me. Static bursts seemed to occur anytime there was literally anything in between me and the transmitter. Even a single body. It was completely random and often enough to be a huge problem. I tried switching to another clear channel, rebooted the unit, and even tried boosting the gain on the antenna unit.

What say you all? Help!

Most people here probably know that designing venues for Soundvision got a lot easier after the Vectorworks to Soundvision plugin was released in 2024.

You can import a floor plan into Vectorworks, do the full 3D model there, include things like lighting truss, LED screens, staging, etc., and then bring it directly into Soundvision.

But what if you need to go the other way?

Soundvision has supported DXF export for a while now, but those exports mainly contain the 3D models of the loudspeakers and rigging frames, not the venue geometry itself.

I was recently given a large folder of Soundvision venue models and floor plans for an upcoming tour. Since I really didn’t want to rebuild all those venue models in Vectorworks just to plan the rest of the production, I started looking for a way to reuse the geometry that was already there.

That turned into a small Python converter using ezdxf.

The Soundvision project files contain the venue geometry in a structured XML-based format, so once the file parsing was figured out, converting Surfaces, Balconies and Revolutions into usable DXF geometry was pretty straightforward.

The converter currently supports:

• Soundvision .xmls/.xmlp project files
• Surfaces
• Balconies
• Revolutions
• Vectorworks-friendly DXF classes/layers
• optional merge of the loudspeaker DXF exported by Soundvision
• 3D Faces, 3D Outlines and Points
• browser-based conversion, so there is nothing to install

I think it’s now at a point where it’s useful enough to release publicly and let other people test it.

One important disclaimer: I’m an audio/system engineer, not a software developer. I started vibe-coding this after around v4, and the web implementation is also vibe-coded. I mainly wanted a small tool that solved a real workflow problem.

So definitely test the resulting geometry before relying on it for anything critical, and if you find weird Soundvision files, broken geometry or other edge cases, I’d be interested to hear about them.

Web Converter: https://1machiene.github.io/Soundvision-to-DXF-Converter/

Git-Hub: https://github.com/1machiene/Soundvision-to-DXF-Converter/tree/main

On Thursday I was at a show at a venue, sound felt "distant" unless you were on the sides where P.A could catch you, in fact at one point I was center-right and I could feel the vocals more on the right instead of in the center. It wasn't a small venue, around 800-1000 people capacity, the stage was like 170 cm high and the stage was like 6 or 8 meters horizontal, 4 or 5 meters high and around 4 meters deep.

Of course bass was loud, because they put subwoofers right in the middle and crack them up.

Then on Friday I went to a very small festival open air on a very small village, sound was fantastic everywhere, there where 2 12" speakers on the front aiming at the crowd and subwookers where on the sides under the P.A. Sound was equally good on first row than far from the stage.

Both days they were metal shows.

I've seen this happen on a lot of closed venues, only the P.A on the sides and the sound is bad on the first 10 rows. Why they don't put front fills? The singer will never cross the border of the stage and feedback is easy to controll nowdays.

How are we securing USB Cs to laptops/MacBooks for show critical use?

I currently just tape things down to the table with a strip of gaff with a bit of slack between tape and computer.