As very well known Greece is on crises of economics which obviously means like any other business also big Pa systems and related events are down .
Latest couple of years we operate many much smaller events for smaller venues and less people .In my company beyond other systems for this type of rental we use currently Behringer 2222 FX series mixers small cheap and effective .
here is the problem :
in a simple set up that includes 2 voices 1 electro acoustic guitar and may be one Yamaha electric piano 2 15" 2way speakers and 2 monitors for an audience of 50 people it seems that instruments and voices are mixed up too much with each other.
I don't know if my description is correct but sounds like the piano is messed up with the vocals or the guitar is messed up with the piano and so on .
It seems that there is no proper analysis in the system and remains an issue since i tried this mixer with many Pa set ups as a front system also been working with those mixers for more than 2 years now so in a way i am loosing the touch ...
we also have many other mixers but actually too big for this kind of set up so we hardly ever use them .
Of course in the coming events will play with some other mixer to find out but in between can anybody share an opinion about this ??
I know provided info might not be enough but i will keep an eye in the thread and post more info if needed .
Kind regards
Sakis
Latest couple of years we operate many much smaller events for smaller venues and less people .In my company beyond other systems for this type of rental we use currently Behringer 2222 FX series mixers small cheap and effective .
here is the problem :
in a simple set up that includes 2 voices 1 electro acoustic guitar and may be one Yamaha electric piano 2 15" 2way speakers and 2 monitors for an audience of 50 people it seems that instruments and voices are mixed up too much with each other.
I don't know if my description is correct but sounds like the piano is messed up with the vocals or the guitar is messed up with the piano and so on .
It seems that there is no proper analysis in the system and remains an issue since i tried this mixer with many Pa set ups as a front system also been working with those mixers for more than 2 years now so in a way i am loosing the touch ...
we also have many other mixers but actually too big for this kind of set up so we hardly ever use them .
Of course in the coming events will play with some other mixer to find out but in between can anybody share an opinion about this ??
I know provided info might not be enough but i will keep an eye in the thread and post more info if needed .
Kind regards
Sakis
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Hi....
First of all. Gigs are down scaling all around. At my home Slovenija is pretty bad. I moved to London this year but I must say that I feel some bitter taste here too....
At home I have rental company and my H3000 and my Legend 3000 are just sitting in cases for most of the time. But we must survive so....
Question....Such strange feeling of ,,too mixed,, sound when you cant determine source of the sound and everything is somehow blurry is sometimes result of actually too low level at the sound system. Part of the sound comes from stage and part from the sound system....and if stage is small in most cases you have everything in all microphones. Even at some bigger club event such case can happen if there you have really loud instruments on stage, such as big guitar amps and drums...in such case you really must crank it up and the result is very high level sometimes hitting over 120dB......so we always try to keep level down but it is impossible to achieve it at some gigs......so try to go ,,over the band,, with pa....
Best regards, Taj
First of all. Gigs are down scaling all around. At my home Slovenija is pretty bad. I moved to London this year but I must say that I feel some bitter taste here too....
At home I have rental company and my H3000 and my Legend 3000 are just sitting in cases for most of the time. But we must survive so....
Question....Such strange feeling of ,,too mixed,, sound when you cant determine source of the sound and everything is somehow blurry is sometimes result of actually too low level at the sound system. Part of the sound comes from stage and part from the sound system....and if stage is small in most cases you have everything in all microphones. Even at some bigger club event such case can happen if there you have really loud instruments on stage, such as big guitar amps and drums...in such case you really must crank it up and the result is very high level sometimes hitting over 120dB......so we always try to keep level down but it is impossible to achieve it at some gigs......so try to go ,,over the band,, with pa....
Best regards, Taj
You have to mix differently, and look at mic placement. I used to do a lot of folk gigs, and many of the instruments have exactly the same tonal range, which ends up sounding very muddy if you go for exact hi-fi style sound for each instrument. Don't be afraid of the EQ on the desk, you may end up with individual instruments sounding quite strange in isolation, but get a mix that works and conveys the correct impression.
ok ...thanks for the input ...what actually makes real sense is what Taj said .....placing of mikes and how much they pick up from stage monitor ... weird think is that i have seen no comments around the mixer and seems that none relates this to the mixer so far ....
i will keep the info though and check my setup a bit better next time .... thanks ppl for your help ... i will post my findings here
kind regards sakis
i will keep the info though and check my setup a bit better next time .... thanks ppl for your help ... i will post my findings here
kind regards sakis
And of course what Pinkmouse said ....sometimes you have to use eq quite radically. As a matter a fact in most cases.. 
And here comes first comment around the mixer itself. Cheap mixers have bad preamps and equalizers so it is funny sometimes how you turn it in extreme position and still nothing happens.....uf I hate that.
Very best regards, Taj
And here comes first comment around the mixer itself. Cheap mixers have bad preamps and equalizers so it is funny sometimes how you turn it in extreme position and still nothing happens.....uf I hate that.
Very best regards, Taj
all very well said ... obviously separated Pa is out of the question since is not cost effective ...and room effective especially in a small gig ....
as about the eq ...some times i find it more nice to have a clean and nice mixer even though the cut or boost facility in the tone control changes minor things ...
one thing i am willing to try is to play the same gig and mix ( where i originally noticed the problem) but reduce the gain of the over all inputs to pick up less from the stage monitor ...
will work like this tonight and let you know
kind regards sakis
as about the eq ...some times i find it more nice to have a clean and nice mixer even though the cut or boost facility in the tone control changes minor things ...
one thing i am willing to try is to play the same gig and mix ( where i originally noticed the problem) but reduce the gain of the over all inputs to pick up less from the stage monitor ...
will work like this tonight and let you know
kind regards sakis
last night i run the same set up ..... for a costumer ...that will be 2 guitars one percussionist 4 voices .... set up was even worst since behind the band was a glass made wall ..
2x 15'' 2way eon 15 ,2 x monitors AD 162,and the xenyx 2222 mixer ...
decided to try to reduce the gain more than 30% ...previously aim was to get best signal to noise ratio and that will mean that tuning was made to achieve a 0db level at the input of the mixer at the peaks of one voice or one instrument ...while sound check this sound ok but let us not forget that in first stages of sound check is always one instrument at the time results that with his setup and approach when it comes to more than one organ or voice then splatter effect starts .... things loose analysis and get too mixed up with each other..
with almost 30% decreased gain was a better spread of peaks in the input of the mixer and things got by far more sharp in the PA mix .... no probs with stage monitor and my only concern was that the musicians will notice the absence of gain and actually did but at the end the all thing got a lot better also in stage monitor so problem solved ..
now simple as that one with electronics engineer background will of course will go for the best S/N ratio but proved that this is not the issue compared to a much more detailed and analyzed sound ...
one way or another even cheap mixers like xenyx 2222fx hav very good noise figures so targeting for best S/N ratio is not the number one issue .....
thanks for putting me more in to the picture
kind regards
sakis
2x 15'' 2way eon 15 ,2 x monitors AD 162,and the xenyx 2222 mixer ...
decided to try to reduce the gain more than 30% ...previously aim was to get best signal to noise ratio and that will mean that tuning was made to achieve a 0db level at the input of the mixer at the peaks of one voice or one instrument ...while sound check this sound ok but let us not forget that in first stages of sound check is always one instrument at the time results that with his setup and approach when it comes to more than one organ or voice then splatter effect starts .... things loose analysis and get too mixed up with each other..
with almost 30% decreased gain was a better spread of peaks in the input of the mixer and things got by far more sharp in the PA mix .... no probs with stage monitor and my only concern was that the musicians will notice the absence of gain and actually did but at the end the all thing got a lot better also in stage monitor so problem solved ..
now simple as that one with electronics engineer background will of course will go for the best S/N ratio but proved that this is not the issue compared to a much more detailed and analyzed sound ...
one way or another even cheap mixers like xenyx 2222fx hav very good noise figures so targeting for best S/N ratio is not the number one issue .....
thanks for putting me more in to the picture
kind regards
sakis
sounds like your fighting your mix. peace man....
When my first years students have issue like this I tell them to relax and think. What needs to be amplified. Live sound is supposed to be an extension of whats happening on stage, transparently helping the sounds that are naturally on stage.
I tell them to set all monitors eq flat as well as FOH. master fader at unity. Then play music though them make all the speakers sound the same (it really helps if all the speakers are the same). Then turn on one microphone on stage, don't mix it in the monitor, just the foh. Set the mic pre gain all the way down, bring the channel slider to unity, then turn up the mic till its on the verge of oscillating cut that in the foh eq. now, set the aux output half way (unity) setting. do the same thing with the monitor. bring back the maser fader back down and trim back the monitors output a little. then adjust levels to the room, and musicians monitor level.
On a side note I use 15" eons as monitors, I run the bass flat and trim the highs just a little.
When my first years students have issue like this I tell them to relax and think. What needs to be amplified. Live sound is supposed to be an extension of whats happening on stage, transparently helping the sounds that are naturally on stage.
I tell them to set all monitors eq flat as well as FOH. master fader at unity. Then play music though them make all the speakers sound the same (it really helps if all the speakers are the same). Then turn on one microphone on stage, don't mix it in the monitor, just the foh. Set the mic pre gain all the way down, bring the channel slider to unity, then turn up the mic till its on the verge of oscillating cut that in the foh eq. now, set the aux output half way (unity) setting. do the same thing with the monitor. bring back the maser fader back down and trim back the monitors output a little. then adjust levels to the room, and musicians monitor level.
On a side note I use 15" eons as monitors, I run the bass flat and trim the highs just a little.
well .... thanks for the tips but its not always working like that .... i could if this was a permanent set up and or musicians cooperate we both know very well that these two facts never come to help the sound engineer ..
Where i come from we say that the sound engineer is the devil's lawyer between the musicians and the owner of the club ....
hardly ever i listened any musician to ask me to keep stage monitor down ..they like to have it as loud is possible or at least louder than the next musician of course this will effect how mics are working on stage....and then the general mix .
finally since i am very careful with stage monitoring now days i just keep my gains a bit lower than i used to and all is fine
thanks
sakis
Where i come from we say that the sound engineer is the devil's lawyer between the musicians and the owner of the club ....
hardly ever i listened any musician to ask me to keep stage monitor down ..they like to have it as loud is possible or at least louder than the next musician of course this will effect how mics are working on stage....and then the general mix .
finally since i am very careful with stage monitoring now days i just keep my gains a bit lower than i used to and all is fine
thanks
sakis
thats why I have Special monitors for those guys ( monzilla: a 15 inch two way monitor with a 15" EVX180a and a Peavy RX44 2" 400w compression driver, crown macro-tech 3500 on the 15 (1100 watts rms ) and a crown macro-tech 2400 (500W) on the horn)
The guitarist for Grand Funk Railroad said to me "I better hear my monitor" I said ok I'll turn it up half way . he hit an "A" cord and flew back 1 meter-- mission accomplish.
No. they do tell me to turn them down, except for Dr. Hook, but he seems like he's almost deaf, what a tragedy.
The guitarist for Grand Funk Railroad said to me "I better hear my monitor" I said ok I'll turn it up half way
. he hit an "A" cord and flew back 1 meter-- mission accomplish.No. they do tell me to turn them down, except for Dr. Hook, but he seems like he's almost deaf, what a tragedy.
First of all the PA MUST be at least 6dB over the stage volume at the house mix
Turn the PA off and meter their stage volume.
The things that bleed do cause some problems, but if you do your best on mic placement that is all you can do about it.
Use your headphones and see what kind of bleed you have on critical instruments such as Piano with the lid up. If it is a loud stage put mics in the piano on foam rubber and close the lid. Tell the Piano player if he opens it back up you will shut him off.
One of the problems you can have on a big concert stage is the back line can be 20 feet from the front vocal line.
I know at least one engineer that used a delay on all the back line so it would line up in time with the bleed that was going through 20 feet of air before it went through the vocal mic.
If you are doing small tight stages this you do not have to worry about.
On the mixer question you have to identify its weaknesses and figure a way around it.
If you do not have full parametric EQ on the channel EQ bands you need to go about this in a different way.
What I did was pick the mics that would give me very close to what I needed with the channel EQ near flat.
For bar gigs I used Beyer M-500 ribbon mics for star vocals. They are expensive and do not take clumsy handling. Also they are expensive to repair.
BUT...The vocals sounded like I had a big Midas rather then the 16 Channel Biamp that had only four band fixed EQ.
On just about everything else I used decent Condensers. Even on the lead guitar and snare.
Two places I used something else was kick drum and large floor toms. Season to taste.
With all the instrument mics the same when they "bleed" it will not be near as much of a problem.
If you have a board with lots channel EQ feel free to use SM58 and SM57 if you must. At least you have the tools to fix the response.
thats a handfull of useful information ... thank you for that
generally though this type of information is by far out of the picture since the set up is way too smaller than the ones you describe .. there is no drums or real piano ... the piano is electric
as i said the problem is solved and was my intention to aim for best s/n ratio and obviously that was the mistake .... with "cold" musicians and during sound check i asked them to play and set the gain to almost 0db ....obviously when the musicians warmed up started to exceed these levels 6-10db more and this is what made the mess ..
I am more realistic now with the settings and leave room for the musicians to expand their peaks and all is by far more analytic and clean.
Interesting remark was the 6db level above monitor mix min as you described it .... i agree totally end also find the 6db marginal .... still in small set ups this is actually impossible to achieve since musicians like the stage monitor as loud is possible while the bar owner doesn't want to keep the neighbors awake ha ha ha ha ...
Thanks for your info
kind regards
sakis
generally though this type of information is by far out of the picture since the set up is way too smaller than the ones you describe .. there is no drums or real piano ... the piano is electric
as i said the problem is solved and was my intention to aim for best s/n ratio and obviously that was the mistake .... with "cold" musicians and during sound check i asked them to play and set the gain to almost 0db ....obviously when the musicians warmed up started to exceed these levels 6-10db more and this is what made the mess ..
I am more realistic now with the settings and leave room for the musicians to expand their peaks and all is by far more analytic and clean.
Interesting remark was the 6db level above monitor mix min as you described it .... i agree totally end also find the 6db marginal .... still in small set ups this is actually impossible to achieve since musicians like the stage monitor as loud is possible while the bar owner doesn't want to keep the neighbors awake ha ha ha ha ...
Thanks for your info
kind regards
sakis
Back when I was still working I used to leave a guitar run in the center, but let the effects run stereo.
There have been some lively arguments about "Stereo" mixes in Live Audio.
One thing for sure a very few people actually hear enough of Left and right to call it "Stereo". Even mixing in small rooms I mostly had to aim the left and right FOH for coverage and almost no one in the audience heard both speakers.
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