View the full album here.

For more information, or to book Eoin for a show, please visit EoinOGrady.ie.

Please take a look at the price list below and get in touch to discuss your requirements.

FP1 – Small Outdoor Festival

• 4 x 600 Watt subwoofers and 2 x 600 Watt Tops
• Total system power: 3,600W RMS
• 3 x Stage Monitors
• Cable, mic and DI package
• LS9-16 Digital Mixing Console
• 2 crew members – one stage tech and one sound engineer

FP2 – Medium Festival

• D&B Line Array consisting of 6 Q1 and 6 QSub
• Total system  power: 4,800W RMS
• 4 D&B Max12 as stage monitors
• Cable, mic and DI package
• LS9-16 Digital Mixing Console
• 2 crew members – one stage tech and one sound engineer

FP3 – Larger Festival

• D&B Line Array consisting of 8 Q1 and 8 QSub
• Total system  power: 6,400W RMS
• 6 D&B Max12 as stage monitors
• Cable, mic and DI package
• DiGiCo SD9 Digital Mixing Console
• 2 crew members – one stage tech and one sound engineer

Cheap PA Systems for the masses!

Is the availability of pro audio equipment to the masses making sound in general better or worse? A quick search on Thomann can get you a little PA system like this, ready to go. Just throw in a mic or 2 and for under a thousand quid you have a gig!

With the rise in technology, and the affordability of equipment like this, a new breed of “sound engineers” has appeared in the world. A group of amateurs who think they can achieve the same results as a professional would have. They can suddenly be at the same level as someone who took years to study his art, and years to perfect it.  Now this new guy on the block, money in hand,  goes to Thomann and buys the same equipment that a pro would have and voila, a new genre of professionalism is born.  The lack of experience doesn’t matter anymore.   He can now buy his experience – because as far as most people are concerned, having sound equipment is all that you need. As long as someone knows how to plug it in, it will be fine.

But is this good or bad?

There are many parts to that answer, but before I answer it I must point out that I am aware that there are some cases where “anyone” can do the gig and that is perfectly fine. It will sound just fine, and realistically, a professional wouldn’t do any better. But these cases are always at the very low end of live sound – an area where good engineers don’t want to be anyway.

I am not for one moment trying to say that anyone who buys equipment from Thomann and does a gig for very little money is a bad engineer. Some of them are very good. And your gig might sound great! That is brilliant for you – hang on to him/her for as long as you possibly can.

But these guys are cheaper…

Well they are obviously going to be a lot cheaper than a reputable sound provider. Of course this is good for the band or musician. But what happens if you take this analogy on board:

You have the option of paying a doctor in your local GP’s office €60 to diagnose your symptoms and provide a cure. But you could also go to a back-alley doctor who is operating a practice illegally and most likely without proper qualifications. Yes, he will only charge you €20, but I severely doubt that you will go to him!

But how can this real doctor charge 3 times more? Because he has spent years studying his art, and you are not paying for the 5 minutes you are in with him – you are paying for the years he spent learning how to be a doctor.

Now take that example further – the doctor is your sound engineer, and your health is your bands sound! If the doctor messes up, you will be worse off!

But his last few gigs sounded great…

If you were smart enough to pop along to some other gig that your new potential “engineer” is mixing, it will give you a great insight into the quality of his work. If it sounds crap, you can just go and get someone else. But if it sounds good, does that mean that you should book him straight away? Certainly have a chat with him, and see if he is available.

But again there is a caveat to this. He may have worked with that band many times before, and after months of fine tuning has managed to get it sounding great. Your show will be a lot different, and you will need someone who can adjust quickly and notice and resolve problems instantly. A good engineer will know straight away what is wrong with the mix, and fix it. This will make your first show sound as good as any other show you will play. “I don’t know the band” is no excuse.

Basing your judgement on a past gig may not answer all your questions. His equipment might be working fine at the gig you saw, but what if something goes wrong? Does he carry spares? Probably not. Does he know how to fix things when they do go wrong? Probably not. A good engineer has gone through all these problems before, and has the experience to deal with them correctly. He also will have connections or possibly the sound company to back him up with replacements.

But you did it too…

He knows his stuff...

Yes I did! It’s how most people start. But I also made mistakes at those gigs, and learnt from those mistakes. Mistakes that will never happen at one of my gigs now. All I am saying is to not to skimp on your sound budget. If you want it to be done right, pay for it to be done right.

There are plenty of gigs where the amateurs can practice and learn. Leave them doing those gigs. Lots of them will develop into very experienced and skilled sound engineers. Book them when they reach this stage. If you are only at this stage yourself, then thats fine. But as soon as you are at the higher level, book a sound engineer who is at or above your level.

You get what you pay for is the most true statement when talking about sound engineers.

Look at an engineers portfolio. Check up on his/her testimonials. If an artist was genuinely happy with the sound, they will be happy to pass this information on. Do your research. If it is too good to be true, then it probably is! You get what you pay for!

When DiGiCo introduced the SD9 – a complete, integrated system, which includes the mixing surface, a D-Rack digital stage interface and CAT 5E digital multicore, with the additional ability to simultaneously record 56 channels – we were immediately interested.

After reviewing many other digital mixing solutions we quickly found that the DiGiCo SD9 ticked all the boxes.

It’s functionality and feature’s gave us everything we needed for the continued pursuit of delivering the highest quality audio to our clients. The audio quality surpassed that of any other console we tested. The excellent sound quality of the SD9 was the main reason for us purchasing this desk. It’s ease of use let our engineers get straight to what they do best – mixing your show – rather than fighting through pages and menu’s. It’s small frame size and portability ensures that we do not need to increase prices to our customers in the form of extra staff or transport costs.

The excellent sound quality of the SD9 was the main reason for us purchasing this desk.

It is planned that the SD9 will primarily go out to our musical theatre events as it is perfectly suited to the job. The neatness and aesthetics of the board lets it fit into your theatre without making too much of a visual impact or taking out too many audience seats. The well thought out snapshot features also help with complicated shows. However, this will not be it’s sole purpose. The board will be attending many other events and we also look forward to taking it out on a rock ‘n’ roll tour early next year.

AMP Sound Systems would like to sincerely thank James Lawford of DiGiCo for taking the hours of phone calls to ensure any question we may have had were answered. We would also like to thank Michael, Sean and Gerry from Rea Sound (the Irish distributors for DiGiCo) for allowing us to take the SD9 out for a demo and ensuring our purchase went without a hiccup.

Yeah it's pretty!

The budget has been set aside for the new console – but the search continues to try to find the best performing mixing platform that will add to our already impressive inventory of pro audio equipment. We need something with the highest audio quality, 100% reliability, and a small footprint to keep staff costs down for our customers.

And no more tape!!

So we decided to take the Avid (formerly Digidesign) VENUE SC48 out for a test drive. It ticked all the boxes we were looking for – except one. The console was beautifully simple to use. 2 of our engineers who had never seen the desk before took to it like a duck to water. The audio quality blew the Yamaha’s out of the water. And to keep with the H20 references, we sank like a stone when we tried to lift it! The desk was beautiful, but just too heavy! It immediately added a bill for another staff member for the day, and we were not happy with passing this cost onto the customer.

Easy to love!

We will certainly take it out as much as we can on shows where we have the staff anyway, but for the moment, the search for a compact, small/medium size digital desk continues!

But on the bright side, it does have an awesome Vegas mode! Check out all the flashing lights and buttons in the video below!

Enjoy!

All Ireland Champions arrive!

The 2010 All Ireland Senior Ladies Champions returned to Na Fianna on Friday night to be greeted by over 1,000 people and a sound system supplied by AMP Sound Systems. An amazing evening was presented by Na Fianna GAA Club to welcome the girls home.

Dublin Team welcomed onto stage

The Dublin team arrived in an open top bus to an adoring crowd. Marty Morrisy of RTÉ then gave them a warm welcome to the stage before interviewing some of the key players who enabled Dublin to take home the Brendan Martin Cup

.

Thousands cheer for the girls!

We were always aware that it was going to be challenging to cover the entire sports field so every word could be heard. But with clever speaker placement, every member of the audience heard the inspiring speeches from the team.

Congratulations to the girls, and thanks to Na Fianna for hosting such a well organised event.

Will that Midas desk really make your band sound better? Surely that Klark Teknik graphic cant make a whole lot of difference? Pay €100,000 for a PA or €10,000?

€18.50

€109

All the above questions are questions that I have asked myself before – other than the band bit, so in my case my client’s band. I ain’t gonna say buy the most expensive gear you can find, and I ain’t gonna say “just buy cheap shit”. With a combination of skill and knowing “the right tool for the job”, this post will show you how to maximize the rewards of spending your hard earned cash!

I like examples to help illustrate my points – so lets base this example on a recent gig. A few months ago, I set up a full PA system in Conary Community Hall. Quite a big system for a small venue – 4 subs and 2 tops. I placed 3 wedges on the stage. I set up a desk for front of house mix. The gig was a stop on a headline tour with Clive Barnes and Luan Parle, so audio quality was paramount.

Click for a larger view of the setup

I had planned to use Shure SM58′s as the mics for all the vocals – Gav Ralston, Luan Parle and Clive Barnes. But all of my 58′s were out on hire, and the person got stuck in Galway so couldn’t deliver them back in time. I had to dig to the bottom of the mic drawer, and embarrassingly had to bring a bunch of Behringer mics to the gig. I had bought them ages ago for dry hire to singer/songwriters etc. Ideal for that type of gig, but I didn’t put much faith in them for a very high end show!

Anyway, soundcheck time came and went. Then gig time came and went. Then many comments like the following came:

Best sound on the tour

- Gav Ralston (Musician with Luan Parle)

You outdid yourself tonight. The sound was fantastic.

- Pat Nolan (Conary Community Hall)

Thanks to Eoin on Sound. It makes our live’s so much easier when the sound is good.

- Luan Parle

Surprisingly these €20 mics sounded amazing!

Gav and Luan giving it socks!

So what just happened here? If I was buying equipment specially for this gig, and had known how these cheap mics would sound, would there be any point in spending 6 times more money to get Shure mics? No is in fact the correct answer. A different mic may have sounded different, but probably not better. In this case, the cheap Behringer mic was the right tool for the job.

But, there are many other factors to consider. Factors about the gig that I purposely neglected to mention at the start. I had a very high quality PA system for front of house. Monitors were exceptional EV wedges. I was mixing on a Yamaha 01v digital mixing console. The room naturally had nice acoustics. I spend 3 times longer setting the EQ on the mics than I would have if they were SM58′s.

So where does this leave us in regard to the original questions:

Will that Midas desk really make your band sound better?

If your PA system is crap, then no desk will make it sound better. If your sound engineer is crap, no desk will make it better. If your desk is crap but all the rest of the equipment is amazing, and you have a good sound engineer behind that crap desk – then it is very possible to have a fantastic sounding gig.

Surely that Klark Teknik graphic cant make a whole lot of difference?

Again, if the engineer can’t set a Behringer graphic EQ correctly, what makes you think a more expensive EQ will sound better? However, a quality engineer with a quality graphic can lead to stunning results!

Pay €100,000 for a PA or €10,000?

Again, if any part of the signal chain is degraded by worse equipment or people, your €100,000 PA can sound like a €100 PA. And the flip side to that… Good equipment and a good engineer can make your €10,000 PA sound like a €100,000 PA!

I’m confused… Do I buy the cheap shit?

Well, I think the main bit of advice is to invest in knowledge rather than expensive equipment. Do not get expensive equipment as a compromise for someone who knows their stuff. No matter how much you spend, your sound will not magically get better.

If you can’t drive, buying a flashy new expensive car won’t make you pass your test! Same goes for audio equipment!

Gavin Ralston, Luan Parle & Clive Barnes