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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!

Sunday the 12th of September meant an early start for the AMP Sound Systems crew! Just off from a late night at Darver Festival, we were in Phibsborough in Dublin for Phizzfest. AMP Sound Systems was subhired by The Sound & Music Co. to provide sound equipment and staff to the event.

The gig consisted of everything from rock to trad! The sun shone down all day – with the clouds only bursting as the case was put on the desk and the punters had gone home! It was a fabulous festival, and we hope to get the chance to work on it next year. Well done to all the organizers and thanks Vinny for putting the gig our way.

Now just for Vinny… The rig consisted of a centre-cluster of 4 x 600W DAP Subwoofers, 2 600W Mid-Highs and 3 EV sxA250′s for monitoring. FoH and wedges were mixed on a Yamaha LS9-16 by Eoin O’Grady.

Now the rest of ya’s can go enjoy some pictures:

I replaced the audio on this video, as I have not yet got permission from the bands to use it, but the video should give you a quick overview of the buzz at the festival this year.

Monitors were D&B Max 12′s and the console was the Yamaha M7CL.

Enjoy! And don’t forget to click the Share button below if you know others who underestimate the work involved!!

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On the 5th of May 2010, AMP Sound Systems was booked to provide the PA system and crew for a show by the Dublin Glee Choir in The Bank, Newry. I knew this would be a great gig, so decided to engineer it myself. My day went like this:

It all starts the night before at the warehouse...

...cases are picked and loaded...

...the D&B Max12's will be used as monitors...

17:22 – All the equipment is pushed into the venue

17:46 - Speakers are positioned

17:52 - The backbone of the wiring is installed

18:21 - A rough layout of the stage is created

18:21 - Mic stands placed on stage

18:22 - Stage coming together

18:28 - Mix position is set up

18:33 - Things start to get patched in

18:50 - Studio Manager is connected...

...and the show is loaded

20:15 - Wiring on the stage is complete

20:15 - Connected. Now to start tidying up.

21:20 - Leads tidied up and taped where required

21:20 - The band arrives...

21:25 - ...and sort out their positions

21:29 - Souncheck starts

21:41 - Rough levels are set and a song is run

21:56 - Final adjustments before the doors are opened

22:22 - Mix position tidied

22:23 - And show is saved as a backup

22:23 - Then lots of muted channels as we wait...

23:13 - Time to check out the controls of those rather cool screens!!!

23:13 - And say hello to the DJ who was playing music dangerously loud

00:23 - Quick check that I am receiving signal on all channels

00:25 - And the place starts filling up

01:05 - The choir arrives on stage

02:17 - Starting to get loud now!

The last photo of the stage, as we were too busy packing up the gear to take photo's!

04:03 - Yes, that does say I will be home at 5:59 AM!

04:17 - On the A1 just about to leave the North of Ireland

04:18 - How depressing - the sat nav says turn left in 92.1 km!

04:41 - The fact that the sun is coming up just makes you realise that it is in fact the next day...

...so its Red Bull time!!!

05:47 - The sun is fully up now, so I just want to go to bed!

06:16 - Does this really need an explanation???

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It was only a school’s graduation mass. But it was in an Olympic sizes basketball court, and there was a choir and a small band to work around! The place came also with a free 12 second reverb!!

The Room

The venue - an Olympic sized basketball court!

The first challenge was getting over the extra long reverb that the room naturally created. You could not understand someone shouting across the hall at you! It would be impossible to have a conversation.

So we deployed a system of “delay” speakers midway down the hall. The aim of this was to keep the SPL, or overall volume lower but with even coverage throughout the entire hall. There will be a blog post soon on this very topic which will go into more detail on delays and how they work.

Basically though, we measured the distance between the main speakers and our delay speakers, and taking the air temperature into account, we worked out the time it would take for the sound to travel from the main speakers to the delays and programmed the system accordingly.

The Stage

The Stage

The stage contained an alter and a podium. I put a nice goose neck AKG podium mic on the podium, and a Shure SM87 on a stand in front of the alter.

There were many different guests and students speaking at the podium, so I compressed that channel quite hard to save me mixing it too much. When some people were talking it took nearly 18dB’s of gain out, while others didn’t even hit the compressor.

The same went for the alter – sometimes the priest was directly in front of the mic, and other times he was quite far away and off axis to it. I just compressed it very hard to keep it even.

The Band and Choir

The "Choir"

Ok, band may be a bit of an exaggeration. There were 2 acoustic guitars and an electric piano. We DI’d all of these, and placed 2 wedges in the area so the choir could hear the band. I also sent a small bit of the Alter mic to those wedges so the choir could hear their cue from the priest.

In front of the choir, I placed 2 AKG condensor mics quite high. In between these 2 stands there was a Shure SM58 for some solo songs.

The Mix!

Small size, but all the power I needed - 01V!

I decided to mix on the Yamaha 01v for its flexibility and power in such a small size. I needed lots of compressors for this gig, and the 01v was the right choice with these built in.

I wasn’t aware that the lights were being turned off half way through the mass to show a slide show presentation, so I grabbed the nearest candle and managed to see the desk again! Other than that, the gig couldn’t have gone better – a bit of maths and lots of smart thinking rescued a gig which could have been a disaster!