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April 18, 2020

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I believe the function of live sound is to project the illusion that what the audience is hearing, is directly from the performers and not a bunch of speakers.  The purpose of the speakers is to reinforce the sound so a large audience can hear the sound exactly as they would in a small intimate room. To this end I believe live sound engineers can learn a lot from audiophiles.

 

The name of my little portable live sound company is NE Acoustic Sound, but not all sound is really acoustic. The sound from a theremin, or a synthesizer, or electric guitar is, by nature, electronic.  My maxim still holds: the sound the audience hears should faithfully represent the sound the performers are producing. The key idea is the sound should be transparent… as if there were no sound reinforcement.

 

My job as a sound engineer is to support the performer and to maximize the audience experience.  I am not a performer, I am the technical support person. There is a difference. If a performer comes on stage with a footboard full of FX modules, then this footboard has become an extension of their instrument.  If I am requested by the performer to add some FX or EQ, then it is still under the performers control, and still really an extension of their instrument. However, if I simply add some FX or EQ because I think it makes the performance sound better, then I have become an adjunct performer, altering their sound as if I was part of the group. Yes, some groups do have their own sound engineer who really is a part of the performance.  But normally the sound engineer and the performers are distinct entities.

 

Let me enumerate the three cardinal sins that are far too prevalent in live sound:

 

1. Loud is not better!  Loud is loud. If loud is over 95 dB, we are damaging the audience's ears.  Oh, you say younger audiences love it! While younger audiences may love real loud, to some older folks, loud is literally painful.  Do we have the right to harm the audience's health? Put another way, if the audience were our employees, playing really loud music is against the law.  

2. Bass can add depth, feeling, and realism to a performance.  Too much bass is artificial. Bass is like a strong spice, it can make everything tastier, but it can also ruin the experience.  An audiophile will tell you a subwoofer should never be heard, it is there to fill in what is otherwise missing. And finally, overdone bass makes the human voice unintelligible.

3. Reverb is much like bass, a little makes the music full and more interesting.  A lot makes the music artificial, and also makes the human voice unintelligible.

4. OK, this is four, my bonus NO-NO.  There are times you need compression and makeup gain.  You simply have too much dynamics. But dynamics are a big part of music.  Many FM radio stations use a lot of compression, mostly because they are listened to in a car. Live sound should not sound like a typical FM radio station.   When you over compress, you flatline the sound. A whisper becomes a shout and a shout becomes a whisper and everything becomes dull..  

 

I like a lot of different genres of music, from classical to folk, and even some hard rock.  Recently I went to a festival that featured the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I own four of their CD’s.  The whole idea of highland bagpipes as rock instruments is far fetched, but it really does work.

 

I was about 2/3rds of the way back in the tent.  The sound level was over 100 dB. Painful for me and damaging to everyone’s ears.  Solution: foam ear plugs. Not a perfect solution, as they attenuate the highs more than the lows, but still an easy solution when  a sound engineer is attempting to see how many dB’s his speakers will really put out.  

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Bass … well again, a lot more than on the Red Hot Chilli Pipers CD’s, so I have to assume this overblown bass was the sound engineer’s idea.

 

What threw me was there was an instrument playing I could not recognize.  It was not the bagpipe, but what was it? By closely watching the stage I figured out there really were only two kinds of instruments being played: bagpipes and some drums.  It had to be a drum, but it did not remotely sound like a drum. Maybe some form of drum synthesizer? No, the drums were real acoustic drums.

 

Finally I figured it out.  Too much compression and lots and lots and lots of reverb.  The crisp sound of the drum was converted into the sound of distant thunder, just rolling noise.  

 

When I left the tent, and walked 200 ft away, what I heard was not music.  At that distance the high frequencies were all but gone and all that was left was this noise… It sounded like a heavy freight train.  

 

I wished this was an isolated case, but it is not.   Can we please return to live sound that does not damage one's hearing and which is musical?