The snag with this is you can improve any delay effects at one point in the station - but it will actually make it worse elsewhere. It can be useful for sound reinforcement from a stage etc where you want to mix the acoustic and speaker feeds - but beware if recording such an event the effects might be heard in the recording.
I think the improvements in stations are due to more and better DP speakers and from a much higher quality audio chain than used to be the norm. I've often thought the old adage that you don't need decent quality for mere speech rubbish.
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*You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Delays only work where the 'audience' is relatively static. The whole problem with highly reflective areas such as railway stations is the multitude of reflections from all the hard surfaces bouncing every which way. The secret is to use far more speakers at much lower volume which is what we are seeing in railway stations these days. The TOA mini line arrays seem to be very popular atm.
So, since we're talking drums and how to get the proper sound from them, and as you are from the other side of the pond to me, can you explain why drummers on a live gig seem to get shoved inside a glass cell ? I have seen it on a number of occasions in Vegas, and a few minutes ago, I was watching a Rod Stewart concert in New York on VH1, and again, the drummer and his kit, were in this glass gas chamber looking thingy. Now the last time I actually stopped to take notice of one such setup in Vegas, I gotta tell you that the drums sounded awful. It was like the guy was playing - well - behind glass, really ... Muted, no punch, no zing on the metals, no tap or rattle on the snares. Cow bell sounded like it was on one that had fallen down a ravine ! You get the picture, I'm sure. So, even if those drums were mic'd up and fed to the PA, they still lacked that 'live' sound that no matter how good a recording engineer is, and how good your hifi is, is practically impossible to reproduce. Is it a health and safety thing perhaps ? Are drums considered to be dangerous compared to other instruments, because there is a lot of physical thrashing going on, with the potential to break sticks ?
But to what effect, exactly ? Surely if the sound engineer knows what he's doing, such dubious techniques are not required. I can't say that I've ever seen it done here in the UK. And if the sound engineer was any kind of professional - and I can't believe that in a place like Vegas where the production is everything, that he / she would be anything *other* than a proper professional - then surely, when he stepped out into the main body of the hall, he would have to be thinking that the sound from the drum kit was bloody awful, and sounded nothing like percussion should.
I mean, I am no recording engineer, but I've seen enough bands playing live, and listened to enough recorded music, to know that what I heard, didn't sound even remotely 'right' ...
That's not the point. A loud instrument can spill onto the mics for quiet ones to the point where they drown out the sound from that quiet instrument. A favourite example would be strings. In this sort of band you'll often see the violins with mics mounted on the bridge in an attempt to get the maximum 'clean' signal from them - regardless of it being a dreadful place to mic up strings. Same with saxophones, etc.
It's commonplace.
Difficult to comment on this individual case, but if that enclosed drum kit was properly mic'd up and balanced it should sound ok in the hall.
Right.
The other problem is that the sound engineer doesn't always have the final say in the layout of the band. Some sort of set designer often has. And may go for a 'look' that isn't sound friendly. Happens all the time in TV.
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*Real men don't waste their hormones growing hair
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
It`s to keep the sound of the drums out of all the other mikes on stage. A heavy handed drummer on a loud kit can appear on every mike channel on the desk, particularly where mikes are set at high gains such as strings and vocals. Separation is the key to great live sound.
The screens are made from perspex (plexiglass in leftpondia) which has a high sonic density. A sheet of perspex stood in front of a guitar combo has a marked effect on it`s apparent loudness, sadly most guitarists regard such ploys as evil and not to be encouraged!
I can't say that I've ever
Me neither
And if the sound engineer was any kind of
Once you remove the room ambience from a drumkit, it`s not easy to put it back. From what I`ve heard of US shows, the drums are generally processed to hell. Phil Collins has a lot to answer for ;)
Yup. Also gives the sound people ultimate control as to how the drums appear in everyone's monitor and lessens feedback by isolating several mics from the stage mix. Isolation also helps for those who use those in-ear monitors where you can't just step back from your floor monitor if someone is too loud.
Well, I guess that I gotta bow to the superior knowledge of all you guys who are into this sort of thing for a living. I just don't rememeber seeing it at live concerts featuring such worthies as The Beatles, and the Stones and Roxy Music and Dire Straits and The Who and so on. All of whom had loud drum kits, but didn't seem to suffer from live sound balance problems. I think that there is maybe a touch of 'fad-ism' involved here, and it's just becoming the norm, because it's becoming the norm, if you see what I mean.
Anyway, if it solves one problem, it certainly leaves other new ones, not the least of which is crap live sound in each of the instances where I've seen it done (in America). Apart from which, it also *looks* bloody stupid, and must leave the drummer feeling like he doesn't belong to the rest of the band ...
Oh, and the last one that I saw it done on, during the last visit, was a simple 4-piece plus girl singer. No strings or brass or anything fancy.
When I saw the Stones they had 30 watt guitar combos and a 50 watt bass amp, and the PA was a glorious 50 watts. I could hear the vocals just fine, of course in those days drummers were taught how to play quietly yet dynamically!
One thing has just struck me, maybe the bands you saw were using drum screens because... horror of horrors the drummers you were hearing were not the drummers you were seeing? It happens a lot on big live shows, either the music (or part of it) is on playback and they are miming, or the real orchestra/band are elsewhere in the building.
I remember reading a write up on a show (I think Celine Dion, but I could be mistaken), where the real band were backstage while the all girl band on stage happily mimed along. It`s not easy to mime playing drums without hitting them.
Ron
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Lune Valley Audio
Public Address Systems
Hire Sales Maintenance
www.lunevalleyaudio.com
I would have to say, Ron, that I don't believe that the drum playing was 'staged' as such. Unless the drummer was exceptionally skilled at mime, then from what I could see, which was only just in front of them, I would have to say that he was genuinely beating the living shit out of those skins ...
I have seen just about all of the shows in Vegas, including Celine Dion at Caesars, now ended, and they really are massive productions. Whilst it is common for the orchestra to be out of the way, particularly in the case of Cirque du Soleil productions, which many of them are, the musicians are genuinely playing, and I have never seen any pretence of it being otherwise. In a couple of the shows, the orchestra are in 'columns' at either side of the stage and, whilst they are not on 'open' display, they are also not hidden, and are their enclosures are subtly internally lit such that you can see them playing if you care to look, without them being intrusive to the main stage action. In Celine's case, the musical director or writer or whatever he was, who was also the keyboard player, was out front of the main stage, but not *on* the stage, and was gently lit, along with his multiple keyboards, so he was a feature, without being a 'feature', if you see what I mean.
So there doesn't in general seem to be any issue over there with 'fake' musicians in the big productions, so I don't see any reason that it should be particularly different in the 'open club' type environments that I saw the bands in question, playing in.
Is there really honestly a problem with the 'one at the back, three at the front' format that all bands have adopted since the 50's, with the drums creating such an issue, that they have to be screened, and then PA'd ? If this is the case, would it not be better to stick the singer over one side of the stage with their sensitive full-range mic, and put the drum kit at the opposite side ? Worst case, you could just stick an acoustic blocking screen to the side of the drummer, instead of putting him in a ridiculous looking plastic jail ...
That's also a good point. Never thought about drum syncing. I see it all the time in movies though. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. Sound effects and Foley artists. Things like watching a Honda 4cyl bike take off and hearing the sound of a V twin engine. Watching a car spin its tires in dirt and hearing squealing sounds of tires on pavement. I once saw a movie where a guy on a Harley jumped over something and the bike changed in mid air to a dirt bike then back to a Harley when it landed :)
I contribute it to the evolution of technology and not being satisfied to leave the old school way of doing sound as it was. I like the in-ear monitors myself. Anyone who has played as I have on a large stage will appreciate not having to get used to the slight delay there is from when you pluck a string and when you hear that attack from your amp if your amp is far enough away. And it doesn't have to be very far either. 15 or so feet is enough.
Sadly one of the legacies of the 60`s is exactly that drums in the middle and back line either side set up that was the norm back then.
I often work with young bands, and it`s almost impossible to convince them that these days that`s not the best way to set up. After all, the Shadows did it that way, why shouldn`t they? Often, the onstage sound isn`t what I want the audience to be hearing
I try to get them to at least angle their amps across the stage so that they can all hear each others amp, even better if they would put their amps at the front facing backwards as their own personal monitors - I don't need to hear their speakers, neither do I want the a narrow section of the audience to be blistered by the narrow 'beam' from a guitar speaker that`s too damn loud ,(call me a control freak, but that`s what I`m paid for)
Don't get me wrong, I dont like the look of those plexiglass booths either, and I`ve never had to work on a show where one has been used. Maybe you're right and they are a leftpondian fad, you dont see em on 'Jules' do you?
Anyway, I would have thought that the musicians on a Vegas show should be sufficiently experienced and professional enough to be able to control their playing style, maybe it`s just the production team playing safe
Yeah he might have been, (maybe that`s why the acoustic screen was there) but you've no guarantee that what he was playing was what you were hearing, He`s not miming, he`s playing along to a pre-recorded track, almost all show drummers these days play along to at least a 'click track' Often Bass drum, snare and hi hat are on a playback track which is what the rest of the band are hearing.
Or.. that show might just have had a really crap sound engineer - there are a lot more bad ones than good ones you know :)
Careful now, you don't want to spark off a torrent of drummer jokes!
A lot of Bass guitar players can`t use in-ears for that very reason, they are used to the slight delay and can`t cope with the instant response in the ears. Some even go to the trouble of having a slight delay reintroduced so that it all syncs up properly.
Boy oh boy ! Whatever happened to the good ol' days when I used to go and watch bands like Uriah Heep playing in Johnny Walker's local just up the road from me ? Makes you wonder how a heavy rock band like that was able to set up in a pub concert hall, and just play, without all of this nonsense of having to mic up the drums and then put the drummer in a plastic tub. Damn, the musicians and roadies must have been good back then ... :-)
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