System EQ and the Big Picture

My friend Dave Stagl recently posted this on his blog and I think it really gets the point across on why I like to tune my PA a certain way and will open the door for maybe a few more posts regarding system optimization and tuning. I Know I'm always searching for the flattest response so that what I capture is reproduced with the least amount of coloration from the PA allowing me to have the cleanest starting point to create my mix. So read Dave's post already! :) Oh, and please follow his blog, it's full of amazing info and knowledge that will definitely help anybody in the live sound world!
Harsh Reality: Part 1 – All Things Not So Equal

Snapshots,Snapshots, Snapshots......

Well today was a day that reminded me why I absolutely love the VENUE's snapshot automation! Granted I had to put in the time to setup the snapshot and test it to make sure it would fail me in a live situation, but it was totally worth it. I have a lead singer that sing's once a month, and when she sings there is usually BGVs singing parts that don't normally have to cover with our other lead vocalists. The reason I needed a snapshot for this vocalist was two parts. First my own, almost lazy reason: I don't want to have to re-label the input,FX channels,IEM outputs, and FX sends, or have to recall my saved EQ for her channels and IEM output. Second reason being that she likes a totally different style of stereo mix in her ears as well as her mic level needing to be different in the rest of the band. Oh, almost forgot; all her FX plugins themselves. So all that being said, I created a snapshot called "AMBER LEAD". I scoped pretty much everything but 'midi" and "vca" and took the time to dial in the bands IEMs during a rehearsal with this vocalist. After about an hour in rehearsal with this vocalist and the band, I felt comfortable using it live. So this morning as I was bring the board online I just scrolled down and recalled "AMBER LEAD" and everything to do with the lead vocal section changed for her and the band required zero monitor adjustments and her vocal needed to dynamics or EQ adjustment. What a time saver on a already packed Sunday morning! Now if you are wondering why with a VENUE I can't just have a separate set of channels for each vocalist and their FX returns here's why: I have the drums, main vocals, and rest of the band all on bank 'A' just like you'd find on a traditional analogue console. I do this because when I work with a band I want all my main stuff on top so to speak. Fader bank 'B' is BGVs,Loops,iPod,DVD, speak mics(headsets) and other items that will only be touched at specific times. Bank 'C' is the entire band and vocals double-patched to be EQ'd,compressed,gated,and tweaked for the band's IEMs just as if I had a separate monitor console. That's a whole other topic/post so I'll save that for next post......maybe tomorrow. Also I'm going to try my best to take a lot of pics to help describe visually what I'm writing about here. Especially since I just got the iPhone 4 with the HD camera. That's all for now!

Local Club Trends

One of the things I've noticed mixing at pretty much every club in Dallas is that the system EQ seems to be the same everywhere.......HARSH with trashy low end. House of Blues was the only place I went where I only had to make like 3 or 4 adjustments to the system. Every where else it's like there's this obsession with 2.5k,3.2k,5k,8k, being 4db louder then everything else! Lets not even get started on low end.......on place had their subs crossed over at 400hz! This was not some small club either! Needless to say my growing communications skills I was taught in the police academy helped a lot! In every venue I've walked into I've been able to get the house guy to let me either tune the system a bit before the doors opened or store my own presets in the FOH processor or graphic. The most recent show I mixed at was this past Saturday at Trees in Dallas.(pic on the left) Soundbridge line arrays(XYON™ 7208XY) and Soundbridge subs. The system processor was and Ashley Protea 4.24C with QSC amps for the tops and Powersoft amps for the subs.....not too shabby. Definately the most beefy system in the local club scene. FOH console was a Yamaha LS9-32. While I was happy to break away from the mid-size analogue desks that are found at all the other clubs, I almost started wishing for one during sound check. Unlike the M7CL...NO TOUCHSCREEN! Very big speed issue when you wanna move quickly but you have to tab up,down,left,right with arrow keys instead of a trackball or touching the screen. If I ever mix here again I will definitely be using the StudioManager Yamaha offers and setting up my show before hand to make it easier on myself. One thing I tried at this show was using the house mic package. Trees is probably the best equipped club so I felt relatively comfortable with their selection of Sennheiser and Shure stuff. It definitely cut my time in half in terms of any EQ adjustments on the channels just because they were relatively close having been used with that system in that room all the time. I think with the exception of lead vocal mics, or just a horrible mic selection I may leave my mic package at home next time to help eliminate some time before the band starts. I'm looking forward to some shows that we'll be able to bring our own console and mics and be completely independent of the house setup. More then likely that will be another House of Blues show in late August. Until then, I guess I'll keep mixing in the trenches! Yes, I know I'm spoiled, but what can I say?! I love the VENUE and would it, well an SC48 even for a 4 channel wedding if I could. Musicians have their favorite brands and models of instruments, FOH guys have their favorite mics and consoles. Anyways, hope I can start being a resource for people all over as I start posting alot of the stuff I've been learning lately and dealing with on the job as an audio director. Also if you want to follow me on Twiter my ID is just JamesButera.

LONG TIME NO BLOG!

Wow my last blog post was Febuary 22nd of 2008! I can honestly say I just forgot I have my own blog. I've been so busy since Febuary of 2008, really busy. For starters I got married; August 8th of 2009 to Audrey Katherine Butera. Well she's Butera now but her last name was Young. I've also attended a regional police academy and become a certified Texas Peace Officer.....aka cop. I'm still the audio director of Church in the City in Dallas, and going to be reserving with Dallas Police Department that way I can still do all my audio work and get to do police work once or twice a week. I've been doing more freelance audio work for corporate events, weddings as well as working with several local bands regularly. It's been a huge technical growing experience just because in all the clubs around Dallas even the nice ones you don't get to have all you boutique stuff even if you bring you own mic package it's still low quality in everything else. I have to say though if you have the chance to get out and mix "in the trenches" do it! It's made me a better engineer and a better communicator. Now every time I mix on the VENUE I appreciate it WAY more! Lot's more stuff has happened since then and I promise to start posting regularly to keep this thing updated.

Business Conference

Well, this weekend I'm helping out some friends from church with a business conference by the airport. I went into this never having done conferences outside of church based meetings. Wow! What a change! Not having the pressure of bands and live video is really relaxing. I chose a loadout based on what the initial discussions of what would be happening during the conference. By the time we setup, and began tuning the PA, I knew I had brought way too much gear. We went from 3 floating wireless mics and a LAV; to a wired podium wired mic, and a LAV. The room: more than half the size I was planning on. Ya, I had way too much PA. I'm running the LAV and al the other mics through DBX DDP processors and I have a DBX 2231 on the LAV as well just to ring it out for different speakers. PA has a DBX DriveRack feeding it, and that's it. I needing to have 2 recording splits off the FOH console as well as a video feed for a guy taping from the back so I brought an old Yamaha analogue desk: MC24/12. Nice little desk although I wish it had recallable mutes. Anyways, today is day 2 and so far so good. Everyone is very impressed with the sound and the error free operation of it. I'm guessing that their past experiences have been pretty bad. Do any of you ever do small conferences on the weekends? What's your loadout?

House of Blues

Well, Tuesday night I saw One Republic at the House of Blues Dallas. The show sounded really good. At FOH they were running a Klark Teknic DN9340 Grapic EQ and a DBX 4800 series DriveRack. Awesome punch and alot of mid-range clarity. Something I find alot of smaller venues lacking these days. What DSP do you use at FOH?

VENUE Plug-In Action

I've always been an AUX-fed EFX kind of guy. Maybe its due to the fact that I learned on an analogue system that was wired a certain way and never changed; but recently with the VENUE I've been trying to free up some of our AUXs. The VENUE offers up to 16 FX returns and so I would have enough room to work with. Something I didn't know is that you can route the input off of one of the 4 available inserts on the VENUE, and then patch the output to the FX returns. All digitally of course. Yet another cool feature that makes the VENUE system worth every penny! If you already were aware of this awesome feature.....good for you hot-shot! Anyways, if you have any other creative ways to setup your FX plugins please leave a comment and et me know.

JBL VRX Arrays Anyone?

I'm curious to hear what some of you think about the VRX series from JBL. They also make a self-powered version of these as well. Our youth group meets in the school gym and I'd like to eventually move to a line array to get audio in the back of the room a little better. With the the point and shoot boxes we're running now, our sound is at its best up until FOH. Anything past FOH gets swallowed by the gym. I know.....gym swallowing sound instead of reflecting it everywhere you don't want? Yep. We have this weird rubber style floor and there is significant sound paneling around the entire walls of the gym. Recently our numbers have been increasing and now most of the kids have to stay in their seats due to room down front filling up. So now our focus is shifting from tweaking for worship down front to worship around the entire gym. Although I would prefer to go M'elodie series from Meyer in here, our budget isn't that large quite yet. Most of the reviews on audio blogs are very mixed. I can tell you this: we like to keep it at 105db at FOH usually during worship. So anyone with live experience with these cabs let me know how they stack up! Side note: anyone ever play around with the QSC WideLine array? Specs look pretty good, but haven't gotten to hear one in person just yet.

LOST Season 4

This show just gets deeper and deeper every 10 minutes that it plays. Does anybody just think its going to end without ever telling us about who Ben really is and what the crap that black smoke is? That would suck. I personally believe that at the end of the day, the whole island is just going to be some awesome super-secret government project to operate in different parallels of time. Or something like that. The minute they found all of that money and those passports for Ben I thought,"wow this reminds me of The Bourne Series." Anyways, any of you out there more in-tune with the TV show LOST please feel free to comment.

Start of Something New!

Well, this is my first post on this blog thing so here goes:

Being the Technical Director of my church is a little bit more demanding than I imagined. Before actually being named TD; I pretty much functioned as one as far as the Youth department was concerned. Ok, so I manage 2 systems instead of one? Easy, right? Not hardly. Alot more expectations from the big guys to have things running perfectly in both venues even though you can only be in one at a time. That's where having a great crew comes into play.

My youth crew has consisted of 5 guys for several years now, but recently dropped to 4 due to one leaving for college. These guys are all heart. I've spent many a late night with these guys and they truly are great. We've got an event coming up where the youth group will pack-up and head to a hotel for what we call an Advance. I thought I would do something special for these guys and rent a Digidesign Profile for the trip. We have a VENUE back home in the main sanctuary and they love working with it. Granted our youth groups budget isn't high enough to purchase one, but I've got a guy giving me a great weekly rate on one. So with a month and a half to go; I'm slowy setting aside some personal funds to make sure we get that console. My guys need to finally come out ahead for once and have it easy. Would they kill me if they knew I paid for it? Yep.....but it's such an awesome console! :) Anyways, this is my first of many entries to this thing. All you fellow FOH or Lighting guys feel free to leave comments or email me!