eq'ing/mastering my samples to sound good for live sound p.a

[goldenmean]

hi all
after a few weeks of rehearsals with my band (we use live drums and mpc) we had to do quite a bit of tweaking our samples and loops to get them to sound decent through our powered monitors to start playing shows. we initially fleshed stuff out on the mpc's through studio speakers and they sounded ok, but once we had to crank stuff loud in the room through our powered monitors w/ a live drum kit slamming away alot of the range changed on the samples and loops. mostly stuff became tinny (our mixer eq didnt really resolve too much, just got a cheap mackie) and our synth bass hits were across the board...some hit nice...some sound too loud..not right freq etc. to complicate things we are using wah and moog processing pedals on some of the samples so they tend to float in weird places in the live mix. i really just want things to sound as clear, balanced and loud as possible. its been a long struggle w/ samples and live sound in this manner and im getting a little frustrated. often we play shows with live djs, and the records through the same pa sound so much better than when start running our tracks through.

while i understand alot of this is like mastering and just comes down to subjective tweaking over and over until things sound right when its cranked, is there any pointers and reference anyone can offer me? im thinking about putting the all the samples in some mastering plug in like ozone or something and tweaking it all as it runs through the pa together unil it sounds right, and then putting them back into the mpc. seems like a pain in the ass, so if anyone can offer any advice id appreciate. im in the dark as far as what is a good eq for bass and things regarding live sound or if i should master it the same as if it were for a clear studio recording.

[rocky]

I used to run lots of backing tracks over a live drummer.

We did hit into a few weeks of rehearsals with a full range PA/Monitor set up in a venue before ever playing a show.

I had the pro tools sessions right there and we tweaked on a few level / minor eq issues.

We used a good PA system that we knew well (I was a live engineer for 6 years before the band) in a room I'd mixed many shows in.
We also used a dedicated sound guy.

I have to say, when you're using a mix of live and sampled/pre recorded material and you want it to be perfect every night, I'd recommend getting a FOH engineer and rehearsing.


From that first rehearsal, moving forward with additional songs in the future we knew how to deliver recorded tracks to a standard that we could easily adjust them during soundcheck.

I'm not sure I'd be making my judgement calls on your powered monitors, unless you can compare relatively to other tracks that you know work through various PA systems. You just won't be hearing certain things in that situation.

I know from rehearsing, even with 2 dn'b wedges for playback, that we weren't hearing what we did in a gigging situation. You're literally judging the PA sound by only listening to the monitors.

I never mastered any of our tracks for live.
Nothing in the mixes ever needed reigned in our enhanced out in order to make them sit properly.


For the synth bass we used Moog/Roland synths. The sounds were solid and huge
and needed very little EQ or FX, they worked. If you're tracks are consistent and work and are the backbone of the show, then using the many eq tools in each venue will make it work.

So yeah, if at all possible roll into the best sounding local venue/room with a great PA and work from there. Make sure the change to a live venue and the change in how everything sounds doesn't spook you, if it does have someone there that you trust will make the right judgement calls.

If you have good relationships with this venue they'll possibly let you do it for free when nothings on, although maybe I've just been lucky.

At least then you'll be hearing it how it's supposed to be, instead of making adjustments to compensate for insufficient PAs, monitors or rooms.

In other situations of mixing bands with samples that when it wasn't working, a bit of separation helped things. Drums on one track, bass on the next etc. That's transformed a few productions for me in the past.

Also, if you're not already, pay some attention to Hpf's on your samples/mix, make sure you're not filling things up down at the bottom that will just take power out of the systems while not actually sounding good.
Equally make sure you're not letting rumble and roar slip through.

Sorry, that was awful long winded and ramble-tastic.

Hope some of it helps.

[kslight]

I used to be the frontman in an electro/industrial act, which was primarily unfortunately backing tracks. And our backing tracks were for the most part composed of beats, samples, and synths... Our stage was setup with one guy with a laptop and a sampler (which was mostly extra auxiliary samples to play between songs, not actual parts of the songs) and a vocal mic, myself singing and playing electric guitar, and sometimes a bass player. Sounds like a really lame setup I know...notice how I'm not in the band any more...I wanted at least a drummer and all I got was a bassist that didn't show up half the time. But regardless our live sets usually sounded pretty good.

The simplest way for us to do the electronics (which may work for you even) was to run the laptop and the sampler into a small Behringer (or whatever) mixer and then give the sound guy the feeds from the mixer. Then we could control levels of individual elements, because more often than not the sound guy would assume to crank the guitar all the way and leave everything else low in the mix. This way we didn't fight the sound guy, it made his job damn easy in fact. At smaller venues sometimes I just ran my guitar through an amp modeler into the mixer as well, to keep it really simple.

What might also help is perhaps if you've got a compressor or something to even out the levels of your samples...a pedal comp might even be okay for live use.

+1 On the guy that said use HPFs to control samples. I was more or less responsible for programming and sequencing most of the songs and their samples, and so within Reason I usually filtered the crap out of everything to make sure everything fit it in its own space and wasn't overbearing. Especially since you've got a live drummer, I'd say that making sure your samples "cut" is more important than how big they sound, so I would carve as much bottom out as you can, and compress.

[anthonypayton]

Thanks for this post and the replies... I needed to read this... Thanks