Metal Storm logo
Why Do Venue Sound Operators Hate Guitars?


Written by: corrupt
Published: November 24, 2024
 
Event: War Against War III (Website)
Location: ORWOhaus, Berlin, Germany
Organizer: Asgaardian events


It is 1 am on a Sunday morning. I’m sitting in my car on the way from Berlin to my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, trying to make a 2:50 hour trip according to Google in as close to two hours as I can (after all, there are no speed limits on most of Germany’s interstates). The weather is miserable. Temperatures are just above freezing, the night is overcast, it’s foggy, and there’s a light drizzle. Visibility is terrible; no stars or moon in sight. The weather matches my mood. I’m on the phone with my partner, trying to stay awake, and trying to explain why the weekend I just had was more of a disappointment than the amazing time it should have been.

I’m returning from a two-day black metal festival in Berlin. The kind of event that should be right up my alley. Organized under an anti-war slogan, featuring mostly bands from the wider RABM spectrum (I’m using that term generously here, put the gun down!), held in a self-organized concert venue owned by a collective dedicated to the local music scene, called ORWOHaus (their website is unfortunately only in German).

Almost everything fits. The worst bands some people had on a patch were Burzum and Taake. Not a Rammstein shirt or patch in sight, no one showing their edginess by wearing shirts with sexist or borderline racist statements or imagery, as you see at so many other events. Just friendly people trying to have a good time and great bands like Uada, Non Est Deus, Kanonenfieber, Sear Bliss, Ghost Bath, and Vulture Industries. Harakiri For The Sky unfortunately had to cancel, but they would have fit in very well. You can tell someone put some thought into this lineup.

What should have been an amazing two-day event, turned into a huge disappointment for a reason I’ve been frustrated with for a good 20 years now: really, really bad sound. Specifically the kind of live sound where all instruments are completely drowned in the drums to the point that the whole soundscape is only drums.

Flashback to 2010/2011. A much younger and more handsome version of myself is hanging out at shows and festivals all over Europe, trying to find the best sound, spending time with other Metal Storm members active at the time. A lot of my time at live events is spent walking around trying to find a spot where I can clearly distinguish all the instruments in the live sound. Most bands play with two guitars, a bass, have a dedicated vocalist (who sometimes is the guitarist or bassist at the same time) and a drum kit in the background. So why is it that most of what I hear is the bottom end of the bass drum sound and the snare, both with added bass that completely drowns out the full soundscape?

I have really good hearing protection. A custom fit, molded to my ear canals to completely seal them off with a receiver for 15 dB linear attenuators. I had them made when I was about 18, and they have been the best investment in my concert-going experience I could have made. I replace the attenuators about once every 12-18 months or so, as they get clogged with dust from festivals over time, which changes their attenuation curves. Because they are linear, they dampen the sound evenly without modifying its characteristic too much. I’ve tested them extensively over the decades I’ve owned them, both at parties, while listening to music at home (to test their characteristics), and – of course – at concerts and festivals. I know what to expect from live sound, and I can tell when something is off.

Something was very off this weekend.

As I’m contemplating the day I had while speeding toward my own bed to get some well-deserved sleep, I realize, that I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. There’s a recurring problem with the sound at metal shows where the FoH places the drums right in the very center of the mix, altering their sound with what feels like an artificial low end boost, and drowning out every other instrument. It’s become almost second nature for me to walk around a venue or festival grounds looking for that one spot where I can hopefully hear guitars and bass as part of the mix. And for over 20 years I’ve had more bad luck than good.

I get it, live sound is hard. Even without any training in live production, I can say that with confidence. Many bigger events feature bands with vastly different studio sounds and I’ve seen bands like Sunn O))), Bloodbath, and Arcturus play on the very same stage within a few hours of each other. Getting the mix just right in the little time festival crews have for a soundcheck between shows must take some serious skill and experience. It’s probably impossible, given the limitations of the equipment they sometimes have to work with. People who are good at this job have my utmost admiration.

But skill and dedication are both on a spectrum. And the other end of that spectrum, apparently, is terrible, bass-heavy live sound that has nothing to do with the artistic vision of the bands on stage and, frankly, can be an insult to both the audience and the string instrumentalists on stage.

I have about as many memories of walking away disappointed from a show I was really looking forward to as I do of being happy. One of the worst among them was a Dimmu Borgir show at Wacken Open Air 2012, after the band’s disastrous implosion, which I had hoped would be my last chance to enjoy some of their classics performed live before the band would fade into obscurity. I was spot-on with my prediction of the latter, but couldn’t have been more wrong about the former.

I’m pretty sure they did perform said classics. There are setlists out there that tell me so. But all I could make out for the roughly 90 minutes or so they played was a constant pounding of double bass. Hardly any vocals, zero guitars, and definitely no keyboards. Just a never-ending punch in the gut while the FoH people did their best to drown out the whole soundscape with nothing but drums.

Until that night in my car, contemplating what I had just experienced, I had thought that this Dimmu show would remain the worst I would ever experience at a live concert. For a while, I even felt like things were getting better across the board. I saw venues investing in better equipment, setting themselves up to be better live venues in addition to being clubs, bands bringing their own sound roadies, even Wacken Open Air re-plowing their entire infield to even it out for - among other things - more balanced live sound.

Metal has over 50 years of history as a live music culture. Presenting and enjoying music live has always been an important aspect of it, and it is what gives our scene its much-lauded social cohesion. In his 2019 book Rockonomics, author Alan Krueger writes: “[...] half of every dollar spent in the music industry goes to recorded music, and about half goes to purchases related to live performances”. He notes that this is mainly data for the US market and that he had to do some guesswork to compile it, but it serves to prove my point that live music is an important aspect of metal - nay, music in general. If not for the sheer love of it, then for its economic value to artists.

What I experienced at ORWOHaus this weekend, however, took me back to my worst concert experiences of the early 2000s, and didn’t feel like doing justice to either the culture, or the economic value.

I went to this event with Liafev, who I met through this very site. We’d been friends for a couple of years at this point, mostly going to shows in Berlin together, whenever I could make the trip. We introduced each other to new music, even went to bigger open air festivals together. At this point, I know I always have a place to stay at Liafev’s place, and that makes going to these events very convenient and fun. You could say that we are the embodiment of what Metal Storm is all about. Meeting like-minded people in a progressive, inclusive community who share a common passion for music, both on record and live.

Liafev is a drummer himself, and a more educated listener than I am. He is constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest material, and his metal spectrum is broader than mine. He also goes to a lot more shows than I do at this point in my life. However, we both look for the same thing at a show, something we discovered pretty early on when we first met: a good live representation of a band’s studio sound. Not at all a 1:1 reproduction of a studio recording, but a good live interpretation of it.

We were both looking forward to spending two days listening to cool bands, meeting new people, and just having a good time. I left work early on that Friday, jumped in the car and drove as fast as I could, just to make it to the second half of Inferno’s set. The first day was great. I even recorded a video of Non Est Deus’ set to send to some friends because I was really impressed with the sound mix. Antrisch were on stage that day with an 8-string, a 6-string, and a miked acoustic guitar used for effect in some songs. Everything was perfectly audible, clear and well-placed in the overall mix. The drums were a bit bassy, but not obnoxious. We drank a lot of beer that day and walked away at night really happy, excitedly telling our taxi driver about the day, and looking forward to the next one.

When we arrived the next day, however, it immediately felt like we were at a completely different event. Arriving just in time for Horn, we were greeted with that dreadful drum-forward sound that I didn’t think was possible anymore. A sound that would unfortunately set the trend for the rest of the day.

As we left after an absolutely horrible sounding Kanonenfieber show at around midnight, I was as disappointed as I could be. We tried to approach the staff, and ask them to talk to the FoH, but they just shrugged it off and ignored our pleas. We skipped Vulture Industries because at that point it seemed like my time was better spent driving home than suffering through another show that would be the equivalent of listening to a Rock Band drum track with vocals on top. Liafev felt the same way and went home as well.

It’s honestly baffling to me how a venue whose main reason for existence is to promote music can be okay with such a terrible live experience. But more than that, I’m wondering why. What’s the point of mixing the drums so far into the foreground that they drown out everything else on stage? I can only assume that the monitor sound that the bands receive is to their liking, so why not treat the audience to the same mix? Or, to be more polemical, why do live sound operators hate guitars?

I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. But unlike the loudness war, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with modernizing listening habits, or trying to get more streams or sales. It does the opposite, albeit at a time when tickets are already sold and punched, so returns are impossible. We both paid over 100€ for this event (not counting gas costs, which are about the same), and I’m happy for ORWOHaus and the promoter that the event fully sold out (apparently for the third time in a row). Events like this are important for the scene and I want them to succeed and keep happening. But I don’t think I’ll be going to another edition of this one in particular, or any other regular show at ORWOHaus. Not unless I know the situation with their live sound has improved considerably.

The crux of the matter, though, is that we can never know in advance. I used to write to venues 20 years ago when I came home disappointed from a show, and I was usually met with sympathy and promises of improvement. But at the end of the day, I have only two choices: keep trying and possibly ending up disappointed (not to mention feeling robbed of my money), or stop going to shows altogether. Both feel like poor solutions to what should be an easy problem to solve. The first day of this event proves that.

I spent several days trying to figure out how to finish this text. It’s not like I can tell anyone what to do better. I’m a consumer in this landscape, I come to be entertained - and a lot of the magic of live music for me is not knowing how things are done. My friends sometimes accuse me of being too analytical about music, but I'm really just looking for that special feeling. That feeling you get when the sound is just right and all the pieces come together to form something greater than the sum of its parts - something magical. I know myself well enough to know that I will keep looking for that magic. I will continue to hope that sound engineers of the next show pay attention to the entire soundscape and create a well-balanced mix that includes all the instruments and reproduces a band's sound as faithfully as possible.

But I do wish that this conversation would become more central to our live scene, that venues would understand that we care about good sound, and that promoters would not stop caring about this side of the live experience once the tickets are sold. And if anyone reading this has the training and knowledge to explain to me why this is even an issue, I will be happy to listen.





Comments

Comments: 18   Visited by: 84 users
24.11.2024 - 15:03
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Staff
Quote:

more handsome version of myself

Highly doubt that.

Quote:

I have about as many memories of walking away disappointed from a show I was really looking forward to as I do of being happy.

Sadly that's very relatable.
----
Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
Loading...
24.11.2024 - 16:46
musclassia
Staff
I've found in the past couple of years of festival-going that certain styles seem to be more prone to sound issues than others. Slow/mid-tempo sludge, doom, post-metal fare? Generally you can rely on a heavy sound that delivers what the band is intending. More technical bands? I've seen great shows (Dvne), and I've seen shows where the finer guitar details all disappear in the mix (also Dvne). Black metal, blackgaze, post-hardcore - anything with higher-pitched guitar tremolos and lots of blasting? More often than not, it turns into an amorphous soup of sound where you can tell that something is happening on top of the drums, but good luck distinguishing what; Fen had this issue recently at Damnation, and the bands with the least discernable sound at ArcTanGent over the summer that immediately come to mind also fell into this category (Frail Body, Glassing).

There's clearly overarching challenges with these styles of music that make nailing a proper mix more challenging for sound engineers, and yet I have heard enough good black metal and technical metal shows to know that it's not impossible. I guess festivals are probably just more prone to it due to having to account for so many bands on a stage on a given day, and I also have no experience of sound engineering to have any real knowledge of what is and isn't possible on any given stage, but I do occasionally wonder why the accumulated knowledge from the sheer amount of live music of all genres occurring every year hasn't taken live sound engineering towards a point of standardization where the potential for truly terrible and unbalanced sound is largely nullified.
Loading...
26.11.2024 - 00:18
Vombatus
Potorro
a common issue, many anticipated shows ruined this way. seems to be more prevalent in festivals, with so many bands going through stages and not so optimal setups.
it's one of the reasons I'm not too interested attending fests anymore, or shows with lots of bands. odds of not great sound increase, more so with a hurried schedule. also a bit anticlimactic to have funeral doom playing right after a thrash band, or an obscure black metal at noon in an open air stage. if checking a dozen bands a day, the memories become vague with the intense schedule, booze and fatigue.
club shows, especially if small, solve most the problems. but never safe of bad mixing, as it was the case here. I guess extreme metal must be harder to nail, with all the instruments so fast and loud.

anyway, over the years, live music has become less exciting to me. just part of evolving into an old fart, probably.
Loading...
26.11.2024 - 08:21
nikarg
Staff
I'd change the title to "Why Do Venue Sound Operators Hate My Ears"? I also have no knowledge of sound mixing or engineering, but it always seemed to me that the idea is to have everything loud, since "it's noise anyway". There are very few times when I have been amazed by the sound; this year it was Green Lung, which was absolutely perfect. Another distinct example I remember was in spring, I think, when Aephanemer played in a very small club, but I saw that they had their own sound guy (instead of the club's), and their sound was so good that I couldn't believe it. I don't know how hard it is to have a decent sound, really.
Loading...
26.11.2024 - 10:12
InnerSelf
proofread free
Written by Vombatus on 26.11.2024 at 00:18

it's one of the reasons I'm not too interested attending fests anymore, or shows with lots of bands. odds of not great sound increase, more so with a hurried schedule.

After attending the Servants of Chaos festival (Debemur Morti debut festival) last month i came to the same sad conclusion; festivals are just not for me anymore.

@corrupt: you hit the nail on its head with this article. It's not only disappointing but also frustrating (and sometimes really triggering) having to sit/stand through 50 minutes of blast beats with the rest of the music being indecipherable, seeing the bands giving their all but only hearing that bassy double bass sound the whole performance. Akhyls was one of the more anticipated bands for me during the festival but the sound was AWFUL. It seems that going to a black metal show is a risk that i won't be taking as oft as before.

Hopefully this article reaches the club in question but also gains enough traction that more clubs take notice.
----
He who is not bold enough
to be stared at from across the abyss
is not bold enough
to stare into it himself.
Loading...
26.11.2024 - 10:52
corrupt
With a lowercase c
Admin
Written by InnerSelf on 26.11.2024 at 10:12
@corrupt: you hit the nail on its head with this article. It's not only disappointing but also frustrating (and sometimes really triggering) having to sit/stand through 50 minutes of blast beats with the rest of the music being indecipherable, seeing the bands giving their all but only hearing that bassy double bass sound the whole performance. Akhyls was one of the more anticipated bands for me during the festival but the sound was AWFUL. It seems that going to a black metal show is a risk that i won't be taking as oft as before.

Hopefully this article reaches the club in question but also gains enough traction that more clubs take notice.

Thank you. I'm not looking to single out ORWOHaus though. All I can fault them for (except for having terrible sound) is ignoring our plea when we talked to them. But even there I can understand how two people out of a couple of hundred complaining isn't exactly a call to action. It was just particularly frustrating that weekend because there was so much money and logistics involved to be there, and I really, really like the idea behind the venue.
----
Loading...
26.11.2024 - 16:25
Zap
I can think of a few causes for this, although these are just my theories and any time you're experiencing a lack of guitar it might be due to one or more of these things, or something else completely.

I notice this more in small and midsized venues (although it certainly happens in bigger ones as well). This aligns with my first two theories:

1. Stage sound. Small and/or inexperienced bands usually don't have great gear, which makes it harder for the sound operator to get a decent sound to the audience. More importantly, ignorance and inexperience might lead them to turn their amps up so they can hear themselves better (or because they think louder is better) instead of asking for more guitar in the monitors. This results in a louder stage sound, which is just harder to work with for sound operators. I find that bands without amps usually have clearer guitar sound when playing live, even when it's a small venue and band.
2. Budget. Small venues don't have enough money to hire professional sound and light operators. Oftentimes, it's some volunteers, and often enough, it's one person doing FoH, monitors, and light, while their expertise or interest might actually be just the lights or monitors. I did some sound work as a volunteer at one point so I know the kind of inexperienced morons these venues recruit.

My third theory is a lot simpler and less thought-out: today's music listening is often focused on bass. This probably has some influence on the metal world. Mid sized venues often have their "in-house sound guy" that could be doing sound for some techno party one day and for Some black metal band the next. A lot of bass might work for one, but not the other.

It could also depend on the band (obviously not in the case where a whole day of performances has bad sound). I've seen Opeth six times and Mastodon four times. They're similar sized bands that often play the same venues. Every time I saw Opeth they had good, usually great sound, while Mastodon's was only really good once.

Finally, it could just be bad acoustics. Higher pitches die out more easily (when you're outside a venue with a band playing inside, you can still hear some bass, but not much else) so any venue that isn't optimised for live sound can be very hard to get the sound right in, even for an experienced sound engineer.

As you can tell by how much I've thought about this, I feel your pain. I've more or less stopped going to small extreme metal gigs because the sound is so often terrible.
Loading...
27.11.2024 - 00:22
musclassia
Staff
I've just got back from a black metal gig at a smallish-sized venue (500 capacity), Panzerfaust supporting Kanonenfieber, and overall I found the mix to be reasonably good for both bands. The former did lose some of the higher-pitched intricacies at times, but also some of their dissonant texturing came through very clearly. The latter was one that had me thinking a bit more; Kanonenfieber had audible black metal tremolo riffs, and they were quite often fairly clear in the mix, but it was how 'flimsy', for lack of a better word, they felt that had my mind drifting back to this thread. Even beyond making those riffs discernible, there's an additional challenge to making more treble-heavy guitar parts emphatic, and while I found they were reaching a better balance on that front towards the end of the set, it was still clearly an obstacle. Black metal just must really hit upon a bunch of different audio challenges for mixing that other metal genres encounter less of, purely due to the combination of instrumental intensities and pitch ranges.
Loading...
27.11.2024 - 11:39
Ivor
Staff
As far as my understanding goes, high frequencies get trapped inside the room while low frequencies leak out through the structural elements of the building, to some extent. So if the venue is acoustically untreated, say an average sports hall or a hall of an old industrial building what you get is a hardly discernible ringing mess because of the slow decay of high frequencies, or in other words it echoes too much (think of churches). When the room is treated acoustically to bring echoes down you'll start discerning different elements in the sound as well as their spatial placement. Problem is that while high frequencies are easier to kill - at home think of carpets, curtains and thin acoustic panels - bass frequencies are extremely hard to tame the lower you go. Bass can also easily hit structural resonant frequencies. Moreover, I would assume sound engineers account for that but probably boils down to experience, sound-check is done in an empty room. Throw in about a thousand squishy soft-bodies and the frequency response of the room changes drastically. In short, it's complicated even if you're experienced, every band and every venue are different. But one thought that's been on my mind in regards to pounding bass is that it's the only part of the sound frequency that is not only heard but felt viscerally giving you a physical experience to complement the auditory one. Not sure I'd sign off on this school of thought. More often it seems to be about the physical experience. Getting beaten up by the bass is more important than getting caressed by the sound of music.

I.
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 04:14
SethM
Lol. Black metal and sophisticated ear plugs just dont go together. Black metal is supposed to be ugly
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 10:59
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Staff
Written by SethM on 30.11.2024 at 04:14

Black metal is supposed to be ugly

Then why do black metal bands recording albums even bother hiring mixing engineers?
----
Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 12:07
Ivor
Staff
Written by SethM on 30.11.2024 at 04:14

Lol. Black metal and sophisticated ear plugs just dont go together. Black metal is supposed to be ugly

Ugly by design and intention is not exactly the same as shit by circumstance and incompetence. If you don't care for the live sound at the concert and are there only for the visual aspect then it makes me question why you listen to the music in the first place. The whole point of it is that it's an aural experience by deliberate design.

I.
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 12:23
koob
Same experience at Fortress Fest, the sound was HORRID, so loud that people were leaving the venue 3 songs into Thy Light
Then later played Der Weg Einer Freihet whose songs I know by hearth : could barely make out what they were playing
Tried to talk to the sound guy, who, of course, despised us and just walked away without saying a word : man, you SUCK despite what your ego tells you

Same story in Paris at the Machine du Moulin Rouge a few days ago, Oranssi and Solstafir sound SUCKED
How could you now hear that Oranssi's lead guitarist is almost absent ? do you have shit in your ears ? maybe your ego is blocking your ear canals ?

Oh, and don't get me started about the sound of 90% of the ArcTanGent bands, I think I might stop going because of this

I can remember more concerts/festivals where the sound utterly SUCKED than the opposite

Yeah I'm pissed off
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 12:46
ForestsAlive
Nice article!

I have stopped attending metal concerts for a long time now due to the horrible sound. Bands with high enough budget typically don’t disappoint, but anyone else just violates my ears.

Metal is a difficult genre to even mix in the studio, let alone mix in a live situation. And the amount of professionals that can handle it is too little.

At the same time, bands need to stop relying on mic’ed amps for their guitar sound. That stuff is prone to noise, and a single misalignment can lead to horrible highs. It’s almost 2025, and it is fine to use IR’s , Neural DSPs and the rest.
Loading...
30.11.2024 - 14:33
Karlabos
Written by SethM on 30.11.2024 at 04:14

Lol. Black metal and sophisticated ear plugs just dont go together. Black metal is supposed to be ugly

Mmmm... No.
----
"Aah! The cat turned into a cat!"
- Reimu Hakurei
Loading...
04.12.2024 - 11:39
Andrew_Deer
None,really
If I can chime in a little, I am slowly becoming a bit of a sound person (I sometimes mix shows for my friends in clubs around Prague but also my day job is a sound engineer in the national radio (just to reiterate, I'm not an amateur/volunteer in the field but I wouldn't consider myself a pro-pro either)). That is, I'm slowly getting into it, with hopes of becoming more prolific and better at the craft.

If I set aside problems like coming to the club for the first time and realizing the state of the equipment and, more importantly, the sometimes obscure ways in which the PA is connected up into the console (like, for example, uncontrolable subwoofers since they are set under the stage and you have no fader that would send sound individually to them etc.), sometimes the issue I'm dealing with, as was already mentioned, is the stage sound. I often find myself being forced to increase the monitors since many people tend to depend heavily on hearing themselves a bit too much for my taste, which of course disrupts the sound in the room. Moreover, there's worse things, which come up when you do sound especially in smaller clubs: the cymbals. Often times, the reason the sound is so loud (which somebody mentioned here and that's VERY understandable in my view as well) is to make the band cut through the cymbals alone. They are a horrible part of the kit, it does not need amplification in the slightest but, in contrast, everything else has to go up to compensate.

The way I see the guitar problem: in many ways, the guitar sound is shaped by the sound in the rehearsal room of the band. The way to best shape your sound comes in times of relative peace, where the whole band comes together to work on the music and the sound. When you move the equipment to a new space, sometimes this doesn't translate well and the role of the engineer is to adapt the picked-up sound from the amp to fill the venue. I myself tend to, in smaller stages, have the guitarists play from the stage (since that is inevitable anyway) but would EQ the miced sound to complement for the space the guitar is suppossed to fill. Also, one of great problems of guitar cabinets is how hopelessly directional they are. In the UK, there exists [url=www.barefacedaudio.com]a company[/url] that makes cabinets which disperses the sound around the room, potentially solving the problems of bad sound from guitars and the dependence on engineers to make the sound heard. Another problem is sometimes the fact that the guitarist makes his tone in isolation of the rest of the band and then that doesn't work in the context... but for experienced bands, that will problably not be the case as much.

To conclude, I unfortunately do not have answers to why somebody would overhaul the whole band with kick and snare apart from that you in fact need those to be standing from the mix but not to the point you describe. With that being said, one should hear what you describe here for themselves as this is really a subjective field and one's "too loud" is another's "not loud enough", although I do believe your points are beyond reasonable... This might also be why the house staff would not react to your pleas. In my experience, if I were to oblige to everybody giving me advice, the sound would fall apart in another aspect, not to mention these tips from people often contradict one another so, in the end, you sometimes just need to tell yourself "I am the one doing sound, not the other people". I grow tired of people coming to me after the show and telling all I did and didn't do and what I should've done better and whatnot (those are individual cases, usually I'm told the sound was great, just to reassure ).

Also, the shows I do are usually in clubs for around 100 people so maybe what I'm describing here will not apply fully to what you all are describing here.
Loading...
07.12.2024 - 18:51
theFIST
It"s quite weird when bands get different sound quality at the same venue on the same day
can remember 2 occasions when the headliner was the only one to get utter shit sound, at concerts at the same venue in vienna, at least 10 years apart.
first one was Kataklysm, the bottom end of the snare drum, the one drum to not do anything interesting at all, drowned out everything.
the other bands before, don"t remember any more who, had good sound.
and then Archspire.
before them, Entheos, Psycroptic and Benighted all got good sound.
then for Archspire, treble was completely missing, no way to tell what was happening in the busier parts.
----
http://metalstormmusicianscorner.bandcamp.com
Written by Warman on 07.11.2007 at 22:39
Haha, that's like saying "compose your own Metal album and upload it here, instead of writing a review of an album". :lol:

Loading...
07.12.2024 - 22:44
qlacs
"The Quaker"
Well a lot depends on the setup. I've only done live sound on single night events (and only twice), but what you're describing makes sense to me in the context of what I've seen and heard from others: most likely they could ask someone more experienced for the first day to set things up, and someone else to stand in the next day to just "keep it going", as the main man was busy for the next day. Then I imagine the backup guy sending a default on the mixer, not having a clue how to recall settings (if it was a modern mixing board to begin with). In almost every mix the drums will be the loudest part by default (just by number of mics all adding up, and in small venues also the direct volume). Less frequently it's the stage hands not having a clue how to mic up instruments, but this I've rarely seen and a good mixing engineer can still work them in to at least having a decent balance, which was in total lack from what you're describing.

I'm not frequently going to live events post-Covid, but I can back up guitars being buried 50% the time and even more frequently vocals being left behind, the latter of which is extremely annoying for bands whose singers are legit. My recent shows were Symphony X having near pristine sound in a small room, Nothing But Thieves and Bad Nerves in the same mid-size hangar, the former had the clarity of their records while the latter had no vocals and guitars to be found. Also seen Sleep Token recently in a big arena, and the singer still got buried in the mix despite the high-level production value.

If you can, just approach the sound booth and try to get their attention with the most alarming problem. Half the time I find they are willing to act upon feedback. I find that happening less in festivals and in arenas you're out of luck getting near - it also doesn't guarantee it's staying good, with Bad Nerves for example I asked them to at least turn up the vocals, which they did, but then with the next song the programming kicked in and just pushed the vocals back down...

Sound mixing can be a very deceiving job since the louder it is the quicker your ears get fatigued, and from that point on every decision on the board will be the wrong one. Engineers will work long hours and often they forget having properly isolating headphones. I think the ones who ignore these reports (especially from multiple people) think they are better than they actually are, and/or are ignoring ear fatigue.
----
Loading...

Hits total: 1396 | This month: 464