Gain staging and live sound

GlowSounds · Post by **GlowSounds** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 6:55 am

Here's the abstract of my rambling below: I feel like I have a good handle on issues of audio, most gear, gain staging... But sometimes I feel very deficient when it comes to live sound. Are there some fundamental differences (especially regarding gain staging) between studio and stage?

So... my question for any sound guys or anyone with more experience than myself on this:
I'm a drummer and have remained blissfully ignorant about the fine points of live sound (sit down, hit the drum as asked during soundcheck...) But I started playing in a project where I'm playing drum pads, triggering backing tracks and playing a little synth.

After this group's first show the other night I had the chance to chat with the sound guy for awhile. He could tell I was out of my comfort zone and kindly gave me some advice about my set-up.

His main beef, which we tangled over a little during the hurried (surprise!) sound check was that all my stuff was too hot. He wanted much weaker levels so he could add the gain. And ya, overall my samples and output levels are strong, but not crazy hot: master output on sampler/synth at around 90%; drum samples/backing tracks averaging around -6/-9dB, never peaking over -3dB. I'm going on the gain staging principle of add the gain early, attenuate later as needed. But from this sound person I'm getting the message: weaker signals are better, let the FOH add the gain.

I know I can just adjust the master outs on my samplers but just wanted to get to the bottom of the basic concept here- I know the TOMB community can get me there!

Thanks for your input!

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 9:19 am

There are different mixing philosopies/approaches, but I'm guessing there's an analog/digital issue as well, depending on what kind of gear and inputs your sound guy has. I was always taught that healthy signal is good, but too close to zero is not, because the sound guys want to control the on-stage as well as house volume, and too hot an output to their input could be setting you up for distortion/clipping (think of how a guitar player gets distortion-- hot input, so if you're over-driving at the "trim" point...).

GJ

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 9:32 am

Sometimes a hot line level signal out of a keyboard will saturate or clip a DI box, or even bleed over snake channels into other things. So it may be better if what you send is ultimately closer to a decent mic level than a line level blast. Here's where you want to move beyond "what the knob/meter says" into knowing what the actual dBu or dBv level on the wire is going to be.

I've run into a fair number of line-level output devices that put out a sometimes unusably hot signal for some mixers. Rack mount CD players are a common offender.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:47 am

I can see where this would be desirable, and if he says it will make it better by all means. Its not like you are an acoustic instrument at this point where you have to fight over everything else.

dfuruta · Post by **dfuruta** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 5:53 pm

The best sound is probably less of a concern than avoiding disaster, and since things can get crazy in a live setting maybe he just wants conservative levels that give him some wiggle room.

Shane Michael Rose · Post by **Shane Michael Rose** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:33 pm

it may be the case that he is using a board that does not have pads on the inputs.

GlowSounds · Post by **GlowSounds** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:47 am

dfuruta wrote:The best sound is probably less of a concern than avoiding disaster, and since things can get crazy in a live setting maybe he just wants conservative levels that give him some wiggle room.

Ya- this is a good point, and the conclusion I've come to the more I think this over. The reasons for really good gain staging in the studio don't really apply that much to a noisy live setting.

Drone · Post by **Drone** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:38 am

Or he could just be wrong.

I've encountered a few bad 'uns, touring around, people that think because they can afford the equipment they know how to use it, people who follow a single 'recipe' for sound and can't deviate, even one guy in a local company that wanted everyone to turn down so low we couldn't hear our own instruments, never mind each others.

Chris_Avakian · Post by **Chris_Avakian** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:49 pm

Shane raises a great point. his board may not have a pad on it, or the pad may be only -10db, or something.

just from my experience running sound live, on line level stuff, if the signal is clean enough, its easier to bring the gain up than to deal with a hotter than necessary output level.

and again. on alot of lower level boards (which are in clubs more often than not sadly) , there is no pad.

On a side note....

Right now is a GREAT time to be buying used analog FOH consoles. The new digital consoles coming out like the studiolive, x32, ls9, etc. has brought the price of them down... WAY DOWN! i recently saw somebody who couldnt get rid of a 24 channel pm3500 (doghouse, and all) for 1500!

small clubs could be upgrading their setups to nicer analog consoles for a fraction of what it would have cost used even a couple years ago.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:34 am

Seems to me live sound is about a thousand variables and only time to deal with maybe 5 of them. Also, [almost] every setup I've seen has been ideosyncratic in some way. Like the guy's got limiting breakers on his horns so they don't blow, but you can't risk tripping them or you have to run up to the stage to reset them. Or there's only 4 channels on the board where the eq works and he religiously delegates them to bass, snare, vox and harp. Or whatever.

I say if the guy's not being a total douche about it, do whatever he says to do. And even if he is being a total douche about it you might want to do it anyway for the sake of not having him make it sound bad on purpose.

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:43 am

FRIZEYED wrote:Right now is a GREAT time to be buying used analog FOH consoles. The new digital consoles coming out like the studiolive, x32, ls9, etc. has brought the price of them down... WAY DOWN! i recently saw somebody who couldnt get rid of a 24 channel pm3500 (doghouse, and all) for 1500!

small clubs could be upgrading their setups to nicer analog consoles for a fraction of what it would have cost used even a couple years ago.

Assuming they have somebody who can repair those old consoles cheaply enough. Any pm3500 still in the wild is going to have a *very* white muzzle and gimpy legs.

LowG · Post by **LowG** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:15 am

This has basically been fully explored, but I'll add a couple of comments....

I may be wrong, but the line level signal would be best plugged into the line-in inputs on the FOH console. Most clubs don't have stage snake inputs that run to the console line-in's - just to the mic inputs. So the engineer must use a DI box to connect the sampler to the microphone input. This DI box is usually designed to plug passive guitars and such into, and may not have had a pad built in to best handle a louder-than-P-Bass line-level signal. This runs the FOH mixer channel pretty hot and the engineer had to bring the gain all the way down on the channel.

This is all no problem until the show starts....

The majority of the time that I've done live sound, anyone on stage who plays anything with a volume knob on it will turn it up during the show. It's just human nature - they want a bit more of their sound on stage, and it's much easier (and less distracting to the flow of the setlist) to turn the volume knob up than ask the engineer for more monitor.

If the instrument getting turned up during the show is already close to clipping the mic pre on the board, it will start to distort and the engineer can't turn down the gain to clear it up.

Solution: Get a DI that has a generous pad built in and bring it with you to shows.

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 9:17 am

Besides the comment on bad live engineers (which there surely are out there, just like there's bad and good everything), two serious truisms from this thread:

>>>>And even if he is being a total douche about it you might want to do it anyway for the sake of not having him make it sound bad on purpose.<<<<

I've seen this done on a grand scale. like the warm-up act on a major tour getting the shaft versus the head-liner, and both of them "big name" bands, so yeah, do your best to make everybody on the team happy.

++++The majority of the time that I've done live sound, anyone on stage who plays anything with a volume knob on it will turn it up during the show.++++

I've seen this from both sides of the board; frustrating when the act does it if you're running sound, but from the band side, well, I've done it to, because there's often no way around it in a less-thn-ideal club environment.
So, yeah, it'll happen every time.

GJ

Drone · Post by **Drone** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 11:42 am

I was support sound for a major headliner, they ran our board into their board, and the engineer just sat there turning us down if the audience got too excited.

Actually I was less than impressed by both the act, and their crew, gave America in general, and Texas in particular a bad name, acting like insert rude word here on foreign shores.

Any proper PA guy is going to have DI's on hand, I've never not DI'd a line level output, it has to go down the snake to the board anyway, so it's an XLR conversion, and most DI's have a 20dB pad at least.

My rule of thumb is, do as the sound guy asks, as long as it's not detrimental to your playing on stage.

Fave story, playing the show where the son of the sound guy was in one of the bands, and they weren't the headliner, yet they were the only band that got any kick or bass in their mix, quality work

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 11:57 am

Yeah, it seems like the unwritten rule. Actually, I was told as much by a guy that was a pro roadie/stage hand that had also done sound and monitor mix (Elton John, David Bowie).

GJ

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Gain staging and live sound

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