don't you hate it when....

[alarmo]

So, last night I was helping out some friends by recording a small show (pre-festival warmup show), and would up "getting" to run the PA as well at the last minute. Which was fine - except that when we started I was getting a lot of hellacious low boom and high shriek feedback in the room. I swapped out a couple of the crappy available mics with better dynamics I'd brought, but that only made it somewhat better... until I finally stopped looking just at the board and checked in the rack cabinet below it, and noticed that whoever had perpetrated things in that room before me had left all the EQs - house and monitor - with these big reaaaally deep V curves; carved-out mids and maximum-boosted lows and highs.

Why, on a live room PA, in the name of all things loud??? I could've saved myself some embarrassment if I'd just assumed the whole setup made no sense from the beginning ("trust nothing!"). At least whoever's in there next will now have a decent starting place.

(The recording came out well, listening to the tracks this morning, once the bizarre PA setup was fixed. I do love the modern age where I can bring a case of mics, two half-rack units, and a mac laptop and have a setup whose results I can be proud of....)

[signorMars]

This reminds me of a show we played where the band who booked everything didn't ask the club to make sure they had a sound guy there, nor did they get a sound guy on their own to run the PA... so when I got there they said "Hey! You do recording... can you help us get the PA working?" Went through, checking that all the amps were hooked up and turned on, all the mics plugged in and their appropriate channels turned on and up on the mixer, etc... the basic one button syndrome kind of stuff and still nothing. swapped some cables, swapped some mics... finally, seeing a few compressor/gates in the rack, i decide to see if they are patched in and set such that no signal was getting through. i open the doghouse thing on the mixer and discover that the soundguy who worked the last show wrapped up by unplugging EVERYTHING including the snake, the outputs to the speakers.... everything. 32 some-odd UNLABELED cables in a big wad behind the mixer. fortunately these guys were using an old Peavey powered mixer as their bass head, so we just plugged the club mains into their bass head, and ran all the vocals from onstage.

This was also the show where the promoter had promised the touring band a modest $75 guarantee, but then tried to not pay them anything because he had promised his 13 yr old niece that he would pay her $60 for running the door at the show and the show didn't bring in enough to pay either... ended up taking all the money from the door and giving it to the touring band and telling the girl to take it up with her uncle. good times.

[dsw]

Went to a church to do a PA system consult.

The system sounded like shit.

Went up to the rack and saw the EQ's had security screens over them and the screwiest setting I had ever seen. Someone had set it so that each fader was alternately all the way up or all the way down, effectively creating a giant comb filter.

I see your problem I told the guy and started to take off the screens. Oh no, don't change that he says. Says he paid an "expert" who came in with analyzing gear to "shoot" the room. He shot it all right.

My client was amazed how much better flat EQ sounded than what they had.
Of course the guy who put on the security panels was just traveling through, no way to hold him accountable...

[TapeOpLarry]

My friends were traveling the same direction as us post SXSW this year so we agreed to meet at their gig in El Paso and hang for a night on our way home. We get to the venue and the opening band has this little PA, probably from GC, with a little Behringer mixer, amps, crossover, and stuff. The openers play and I'm like, "Oh man, the sound is awful. I'll help you out when you get ready to play." So I go over to the PA, look at the routing and decide to unpatch everything (I asked first!), run two vocal mics into the mixer, go right to the power amp and reset all knobs and faders. Sounded 1000 times better. I even got to dial up some reverb and it sounded okay. The kids in the opening band seemed sorta shocked. I never said what I did for a living...

[rwc]

In audio, it seems almost religious tradition to insult the work of the last guy, in both tech, recording, and mixing.

[JGriffin]

In audio, it seems almost religious tradition to insult the work of the last guy, in both tech, recording, and mixing.

I've definitely seen evidence of that.

[RefD]

In audio, it seems almost religious tradition to insult the work of the last guy, in both tech, recording, and mixing.

I've definitely seen evidence of that.

in certain circles, i practice this routinely.

[rwc]

It sucks. Sometimes it's warranted but many times it is not.

I noticed I showed symptoms of it because I was conditioned to act this way by my coworkers. I have to admit that they were very good at what they did. If someone complimented my work on a project over the last project they were involved in, I would do it. It seemed natural and made me feel better about my work. However once someone pointed out the behavior I worked to correct it.

The problem with this is someday you might be forced to work in a really crappy situation and no one will care. They will figure you can just "deal" because you're the guy who always complains about the last person's work, when the last person was able to get the job done.

I now try to think about it in every situation. Is there a reason things were done this way? Were there extenuating circumstances? If there were, were they overcame and did it allow for a good show/product?

These are all important questions to ask, IMO, before shitcanning someone.

[Nick Sevilla]

I had this happen once.

I mixed a show for an artists that had all her own PA system, and insisted on using it everywhere, instead of the house PAs. I set it up with my two assistants, as the house engineer guy watched and commented with sh^%&y remarks all the while.

The house guy acted like a total dick, until I set him aside, bought him a beer, and reminded him that he was getting paid to do NOTHING. Afterwards, he looked over my shoulder as I mixed the show, and was helpful at the offload at the end of the night. I did notice the venue manager looking over to the mixing area often, and when she did so, this dude would start acting "as if" he were doing something. I just told him if he actually touched my desk or my gear he would become part of the show, in a bad way.

He did comment a couple of times on "why are the knobs on the mixer where they are, I never do that like that". I simply asked him if he liked the way it sounded. "Yes."

[Recycled_Brains]

I do FOH in a 2 floor venue. The upstairs is a bit bigger, bigger stage, bigger console, more things to mic, etc.

Downstairs is really small, so we generally on mic vocals and sometimes kick drum.

Anyways... There was this dude that got hired to work the downstairs part of the club, and he would always take ever single band of the house graphic and turn them all the way down whenever he was on for the night.

Once, I asked him "why?" and he said something about it providing more headroom. I didn't even no how to respond. I just said "cool" and proceeded to do my job. Proper gain-staging eludes so many in the field.

Hell of a nice guy though.

[Brett Siler]

It sucks. Sometimes it's warranted but many times it is not.

I really try to not get involved in that shit. I wanna be a part of a community of sound guys and recording engineers. Thats why I like tapeop so much cause it has that sort of feel. I'm not into the whole cut throat rat race free market bullshit. People will wanna work with you if you are good and treat your clients right. Talking shit does nothing. There is more than one way to skin a cat and just because the last guy before you or after does it differently doesn't mean its not as good, unless it actually sounds horrible or isn't working because of something they have done. We should start the trend of not talking shit and being respectful.

[RefD]

We should start the trend of not talking shit and being respectful.

this would be a wonderful thing.

[jsull]

Wow, what a flashback. (This is by no means a Pro-level story.)
One time my band played a dive bar along with a friend-of-friend band. We were all poor nobodies, so between the 2 bands we hacked together a sound system. For the "mains" we used my old Kustom monitor amp. Before anything is powered up one of the other band's doodz says, "No, man. The EQ sliders are supposed to be in a curve like this!" and puts them in a full-on smiley face. I say something like "Oooohhhh-kayyyy" and let him do it. A few feedback problems. Things went better for our set.

Oh yeah, but not before, when they're done, they start taking down their speakers to head home. A spirited discussion ensued. We won.
And then the owner gave us pretty much all of the door (not a huge prize) because my bandmates were 2 really pretty women.

Good times.

[kevin206]

I think that we all have done or seen the 'smiley face' EQ at some time or another. I ALWAYS had my home stereo set that way, so it's good for live sound , right? I've been getting calls lately to do benefits (FREE) and I've been leaving the main EQ almost flat with good results. My trick has been with the monitors. I use an upside-down smiley face. They ask for more kick and bass and I give them shrieking mids and then they tell me how great the monitors sounded!!! We musicians are a wierd sort!

[JGriffin]

First time I ever had to re-amp a track, it was because the bass player had a graphic EQ on his amp set to Smiley. We threw it through a Peavey combo with a 10" speaker and things got much better.

This was long ago; I didn't know people called it "re-amping," so I just used the film term "worldizing,' which is functionally inaccurate but made me feel better.