FOH ENGINEERING

[jesterroot4]

this should be good,,



if we all focus away from whole andy sneap stuff and production on recordings and stuff,

i'd like to know peoples techniques as a FOH engineer.

things such as

how do you guy mic your bass drums for live gigs to get a dirty, beefy metal kick sound out of it? what chains do you go through to get your sound? mic selection? getting the perfect balance.. all sorts!

theres so much to being a good FOH engineer and its like a whole other type of skill from recording etc.

and in my time i've heard some realy fukin bad ones and yet sum amazing ones.

i dunno .. lets get some ideas up.

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

I get my kick drum sound these days with a mixture of a sm91 (but more recently the sennheiser 901) and a D6 and gate em both.
If Im only single micing Id go with the 91/901 and slam the channel input hard if its a decent desk to get some channel compression going on. Havent found a compressor that gets the same sound.

Oh yeah and dont forget you can turn everything else down rather than turning one thing up. If Im in a small club Ill make sure Ive got a VCA for everything apart from the vocal. If your struggling for vocal level rather than trying to push more gain out of that channel you can just drop everything else down a bit. Ive seen to many people try and make everything louder than everything else and end up running out of fader.

 

[Seizure.]

If i'm in a Small club i just listen to the bands sound without any FOH added and then i just start thinking what needs filling in soundwise and what would benefit from turning down and having more sound coming from the Front of house.

In a Reasonable venue where you can fit in like 400/500 people half the sound comes from the stage and half comes from the P.a..

I also made the mistake alot of wanting my boardmix to sound cool on its own (when checking with headphones for example..) this is not done in small venue's.. your boardmix will probably sound ultraweird but good in combi with the backline of the band when you mix while listening to the sound in the venue.

Also, stepping upto the middle of the venue where most people are listening to the music tends to help, that were your mix should sound best!

Btw elmuchoescadawg did you do Obitchyourhairy on Waldrock this year aswell?

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

Btw elmuchoescadawg did you do Obitchyourhairy on Waldrock this year aswell?

Im afraid not. So far Ive only done the the Camden Underworld show with them. I do quite a bit of work for Candlelight Records which involves a lot of one offs on London. From what the band have said it looks like Ill be doing some more with them in the future. Good band to mix and pretty simple compare to a lot of the bands Candlelight throw my way.

 

[James-Doolan]

Im afraid not. So far Ive only done the the Camden Underworld show with them. I do quite a bit of work for Candlelight Records which involves a lot of one offs on London. From what the band have said it looks like Ill be doing some more with them in the future. Good band to mix and pretty simple compare to a lot of the bands Candlelight throw my way.

Did you ever work with dead man in reno think they did a show in london?

If so what are they like live?

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

Did you ever work with dead man in reno think they did a show in london?

If so what are they like live?

Ive heard of them and Ive heard good things about them live but no Ive never worked with them. Without sounding to up my own arse Ive only worked with the bigger candlelight bands, basically because some of the more grass roots bands dont have a budget for crew.

 

[GeertSamuel]

Seizure did 2 shows with my new band..(Docile)..
The shows he didn't do deff. sounded worse...
I have to say I was really pleased with the first one (Emmeloord)....
Even on the kit we didn't bring triggers it sounded awesome...

How do you do that on your dr doom shows? Do the preset yourself and have a standin to the rest?

 

[sorceron]

i will always walk around the room to hear what the audience is hearing because it is always different from what it sounds like at the board.

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

i will always walk around the room to hear what the audience is hearing because it is always different from what it sounds like at the board.

FOH positions in clubs always seem to be in the least practical place. Either up a corner or raised off the ground or both or in the case of a large london venue, in a large metal spaceship type thing. Having a wander is always good. You dont have to stay at the desk all the time

 

[TheDude]

The FOH place should be in a (sort of) perfect triangle with the PA as the other two corners/angles. The sound will then be optimized for what the PA can perform. Then, the sound will at least be good in ONE place in the venue.

Yes I know... The FOH console is always everywhere else, but that's the concept of having a desk in the middle of the crowd. If it's not.... The problem of moving around is that you don't get good sound anywhere because you're compensating for all the bad venue-based flaws that appears as soon as you're moving around. Basic audiophile stuff, really.

 

[andrea:::shank]

how do you guy mic your bass drums for live gigs to get a dirty, beefy metal kick sound out of it? what chains do you go through to get your sound? mic selection? getting the perfect balance.. all sorts!

nothing special: i just put my D-112 with its grille just inside the reso head's hole, heavily cut around 400-500 hz and boost 'tween 4K-8k, slightly cut the highs and if needed slightly boost the lows. a pillow inside the bass drum that stops unwanted resonances from the skins and gives a fairly muted sound helps a lot

if needed i'll insert my aphex 106 in the chain

i know it all sounds quite obvious, as we call this in italy: "the discovery of hot water" but hope it helped somehow

 

[jesterroot4]

my main thing with kick drums live is defo the EQ. were ever i am i ALWAYS try to get my kick running through a 30 band graphic equaliser or as close as posible, purely for the fact that with this, i can focus in on all the right frequencies realy realy tightly and get a perfect tight sound out of it that never fails to impress

parameteric EQ's are good for most other intruments live but just not fine enough for bass drums. i feel like it will always sound too muddy eq'ed this way. so give it a try using a massive graphic eq to pull in really tight in all the right spots.

most graphic eq's are sterio, giving you a 'channel 1' and 'channel 2' which gives you the option to put one more think through it.

now you could either put another mic through it.. ( i would normaly use snare or toms) ....

BUT what i do as most gigs is

-find the sub out on the desk
-plug that into the equaliser with XLR
-output of equaliser obviously going to the subs inthe venue
-take down everything above 75Hz -100Hz
-fine tune everything below untill it sounds perfect

the reason i do this is because mixing the bottem end of a mix perfect is the hardest part. so doing this you have soo much more control over the bottem end coming out of the subs giving you a clearer mix rather than and big bass blur through the whole set.

so with a perfectly toned kick and nice tight control over the bottem end of the venue, you can make everything sound quite alot better.

i like to use gates quite abit too

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

-find the sub out on the desk
-plug that into the equaliser with XLR
-output of equaliser obviously going to the subs inthe venue
-take down everything above 75Hz -100Hz
-fine tune everything below untill it sounds perfect

So basically your using a stereo 31 band (or 30) as a low pass filter to feed the subs? Any PA system that has powered subs would have a cross over or speaker management system that does this for you anyway.

Feeding the subs off an aux isnt that unusual but that isnt what your talking about here.

my main thing with kick drums live is defo the EQ. were ever i am i ALWAYS try to get my kick running through a 30 band graphic equaliser or as close as posible, purely for the fact that with this, i can focus in on all the right frequencies realy realy tightly and get a perfect tight sound out of it that never fails to impress

parameteric EQ's are good for most other intruments live but just not fine enough for bass drums. i feel like it will always sound too muddy eq'ed this way. so give it a try using a massive graphic eq to pull in really tight in all the right spots.

Parametric EQs are fine for all other instruments. I know there are no rules but graphics and parametrics are designed with different purposes in mind. Theres no reason why you shouldnt use a graphic as an insert on a channel (even if a low pass filter will do the same job) apart from losing 3u of your rack for no reason.

The whole point of a parametric is that you can be specific and finetune a signal. They seem to work for everyone else to be fair.