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Title: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 03:59:15 PM
hello all,

im new to the forum. I'm touring FOH for an electronic musician. we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people. I've been searching the web for advice but haven't found much. Does anyone have any advice on things to keep in mind?



Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Art Welter on January 03, 2014, 04:50:43 PM
we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people.
If the performers are in the center and the quad PA in the corners of the room, the delay will be problematic for them, and generally won't be very coherent for most of the audience

If the quad PA is at the corners of a stage (or flown in the round) it won't be effective effect wise for the audience.

Stereo is hard enough to implement to effectively cover large areas, quad is almost impossible, other than for use as ambient effects, as used in movie theaters with L/R/C, side and rear locations.

Anyway, good luck- quad probably quadruples the audio workload as well as a large increase in hardware cost.


Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: g'bye, Dick Rees on January 03, 2014, 04:52:27 PM
hello all,

im new to the forum. I'm touring FOH for an electronic musician. we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people. I've been searching the web for advice but haven't found much. Does anyone have any advice on things to keep in mind?

Get your money up front...
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: John Penkala on January 03, 2014, 05:05:18 PM
hello all,

im new to the forum. I'm touring FOH for an electronic musician. we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people. I've been searching the web for advice but haven't found much. Does anyone have any advice on things to keep in mind?


Check your coverage predictions. You may find you need more PA ($) than you think. The last "in the round tour" I did we needed 6 points for PA.
Additionally, venues that small may not be designed to do a show "in the round" i.e. no points etc.
Your costs for labor ($) will at least double
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Steve M Smith on January 03, 2014, 05:30:00 PM
Do you actually need quad?  i.e. the ability to move sound around the room (as used to great effect by Pink Floyd in their live shows) or do you just want all around sound?


Steve.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Evan Hunter on January 03, 2014, 05:52:12 PM
hello all,

im new to the forum. I'm touring FOH for an electronic musician. we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people. I've been searching the web for advice but haven't found much. Does anyone have any advice on things to keep in mind?

for 1000-2000 people I doubt its worth the time and effort to do a quad PA. You would probably get better results with less gear and less setup/teardown time with a more standard LRC PA.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Tim Perry on January 03, 2014, 05:55:35 PM
My guess is it would take 8 mains at the stage alternating LF/RF  and 8 rears at the perimeter alternating LR/RR to implement quadrophonic sound in the round.

1/2 the audience would get a mirror image or reversed left right.

Costs for equipment and setup will be much larger then a more traditional approach.   The "sweet spots" will be limited to seats that are approximately equidistant ti the 4 nearest speakers.

Bleed from the  far rear speakers facing any part of the audience may  turn your hoped for audio experience into an audio nightmare.

Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 06:19:12 PM
Do you actually need quad?  i.e. the ability to move sound around the room (as used to great effect by Pink Floyd in their live shows) or do you just want all around sound?


Steve.

its actually both. the show will consist of a few sections and one will be more experimental with with pieces written for quad another section will be dance oriented and require even bass distribution around the room.

i saw setups like this at a few festivals last summer at stages that were meant for electronic music only and we were inspired.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 06:30:41 PM
the festival i saw this at was outside of berlin last summer called Melt festival. they had 4 of these as mains in quad formation

Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Ivan Beaver on January 03, 2014, 06:49:33 PM
Quad-especially with the performers in the middle is going to be pretty bad for most people.

But it depends on what you are "going for".  If it is sound quality-then it will probably be a big bunch of "mush"

If sound quality doesn't matter and you simply want to "surround" people with sound and the "experience" is what is most important then you may be fine.

Just remember that the more points of sound-the lower the quality will be.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 06:51:59 PM
Quad-especially with the performers in the middle is going to be pretty bad for most people.

But it depends on what you are "going for".  If it is sound quality-then it will probably be a big bunch of "mush"

If sound quality doesn't matter and you simply want to "surround" people with sound and the "experience" is what is most important then you may be fine.

Just remember that the more points of sound-the lower the quality will be.

thats a really good way to sum it up thanks.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: duane massey on January 03, 2014, 07:53:49 PM
I'm going to go against the flow here, BUT with conditions.
If you're going to do a conventional live show, bad idea.
If you're doing a show with specific music (mostly recorded or electronic) that is composed and intended for the discrete 4-channel experience, totally different. We did a few shows back in the 70's in medium-size rooms (1000 people) and it was pretty amazing. Was it worth the effort? To us, yeah. To you, maybe not. However, with today's technology I would love to do some shows like that again. It has to be specifically planned out, and I would think that the "quad" speakers would have to be treated as special effects, which would imply that you would need a separate FOH system as well.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Mac Kerr on January 03, 2014, 08:05:54 PM
hello all,

im new to the forum. I'm touring FOH for an electronic musician. we're in the preproduction phase of a tour and were talking about renting raw space and bringing in our own PA. we're talking about doing the PA in Quad with the performers in the center. maybe 1000-2000 people. I've been searching the web for advice but haven't found much. Does anyone have any advice on things to keep in mind?

I can't see any way this could work with the performers in the center. That layout will make it very difficult to get coverage of the entire audience from each of the 4 speaker positions. In addition the performers will be hearing a loud PA (that has to project far behind them) way out of time with themselves. This is not a good situation.

If the performers remain on a stage in the traditional sense with left and right mains as well as left and right rears it should be much easier to cover the audience equally from all the speaker sources and the performers will be out of the PA.

Mac
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 08:20:45 PM
i see what your saying. the "best seat in the house" will be taken up by the performers/stage.

Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 03, 2014, 08:26:16 PM
I'm going to go against the flow here, BUT with conditions.
If you're going to do a conventional live show, bad idea.
If you're doing a show with specific music (mostly recorded or electronic) that is composed and intended for the discrete 4-channel experience, totally different. We did a few shows back in the 70's in medium-size rooms (1000 people) and it was pretty amazing. Was it worth the effort? To us, yeah. To you, maybe not. However, with today's technology I would love to do some shows like that again. It has to be specifically planned out, and I would think that the "quad" speakers would have to be treated as special effects, which would imply that you would need a separate FOH system as well.

thanks for saying that. i am really inspired by things that were tried in the 70s. i see what your saying about having it be a separate system.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Ivan Beaver on January 03, 2014, 09:37:24 PM
A friend of mine saw The Who Quadraphenia  tour.

He said that the sound really sucked when they were using the quad effects.

It depends on where you are listening.  I am sure that at some seats it was fine and really cool.

But most of the people were not in the "good" seats.  So their experience was not as good as others "thought" is was.

Just consider your audience and consider that they paid their money and will all or at least most of them get their moneys worth?

It depends.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Steve M Smith on January 04, 2014, 02:52:47 AM
I would think that the "quad" speakers would have to be treated as special effects, which would imply that you would need a separate FOH system as well.

Pink Floyd used to do it with left, right, front and back so it could be done with a standard stereo system with additional front and rear speakers, only being used when the effect is required.

Probably no need for separate front and rear subs. Some full range speakers at front and rear would be enough for a small venue.


Steve.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Ivan Beaver on January 04, 2014, 08:14:46 AM
Pink Floyd used to do it with left, right, front and back so it could be done with a standard stereo system with additional front and rear speakers, only being used when the effect is required.

Probably no need for separate front and rear subs. Some full range speakers at front and rear would be enough for a small venue.


Steve.
And depending on where you were seated-the effect could be more annoying than cool.

Quad setups can work in smaller places.  But once you get into  larger places the additional distance and coverage requirements make it much harder to do right.

Even in a large space-the middle seats will still work-but in this case that is where the stage is.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: John Roberts {JR} on January 04, 2014, 09:02:57 AM
I'm not sure this deserves much discussion. The OP/band seems to have some misperceptions about sound reinforcement. The basic concept of sound reinforcement is to make it appear like the sound is coming from the live performers on stage, which is generally on one wall. There are round stages where the audience surrounds the stage, but again the sound is designed to come from the stage and performers.

Quad or surround sound is generally not a live performance practice while there are notable examples (Pink Floyd) where songs were engineered/produced with specific front, and rear or surround content. An alternate quad set up is dual or crossed stereo for playback of stereo material in venues like dance clubs.

FWiW stereo presentation is not about presenting sound with L-C-R content, but tricking our monkey brains into perceiving a recreated sound field that has directional content. In live sound reinforcement we have plenty of that and visual cues, so stereo PA would only make sense if the band was spread 50' wide.   

Good luck...   

JR
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Jim McKeveny on January 04, 2014, 11:30:02 AM
For a playback only situation many things are possible.

If live performer(s) are involved, they become "time zero" and add multiple challenges regarding physical spacing of reinforcement devices.

Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Steve M Smith on January 04, 2014, 12:55:10 PM
And depending on where you were seated-the effect could be more annoying than cool.

I have never witnessed it but I suspect that you are right.

I think it would work well for special effects like flying an aircraft over the heads of the audience but I can't see it working well musically.


Steve.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: g'bye, Dick Rees on January 04, 2014, 12:57:42 PM
I have never witnessed it but I suspect that you are right.

I think it would work well for special effects like flying an aircraft over the heads of the audience but I can't see it working well musically.


Steve.

I think it's not "music", it's performance art with a sound component.

This is the kind of stuff we used to think up in Junior High, stuff with a high "gee whiz" factor and thanks to grant money people are now able to stage this stuff somewhere other than their garage...
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Jim McKeveny on January 04, 2014, 02:25:06 PM
Where is all of this grant money of which you speak??
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Mark McFarlane on January 05, 2014, 06:11:04 PM
If you do quad, consider IEMs for the performer(s).

I'd also consider putting the mains at the stage and then place other speakers around the back and treat them more like rear speakers in a surround movie system.  Just push effects there, never vocals,...  If you can handle it, go 8 channels in the rear around the perimeter,then you can do some cool circular effects that the audience will experience more uniformly.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 06, 2014, 12:59:22 PM
If you do quad, consider IEMs for the performer(s).

I'd also consider putting the mains at the stage and then place other speakers around the back and treat them more like rear speakers in a surround movie system.  Just push effects there, never vocals,...  If you can handle it, go 8 channels in the rear around the perimeter,then you can do some cool circular effects that the audience will experience more uniformly.

yeah i think this is the best option. thanks.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Al Schatz on January 06, 2014, 01:03:54 PM
I'm not sure this deserves much discussion. The OP/band seems to have some misperceptions about sound reinforcement. The basic concept of sound reinforcement is to make it appear like the sound is coming from the live performers on stage, which is generally on one wall. There are round stages where the audience surrounds the stage, but again the sound is designed to come from the stage and performers.

Quad or surround sound is generally not a live performance practice while there are notable examples (Pink Floyd) where songs were engineered/produced with specific front, and rear or surround content. An alternate quad set up is dual or crossed stereo for playback of stereo material in venues like dance clubs.

FWiW stereo presentation is not about presenting sound with L-C-R content, but tricking our monkey brains into perceiving a recreated sound field that has directional content. In live sound reinforcement we have plenty of that and visual cues, so stereo PA would only make sense if the band was spread 50' wide.   

Good luck...   

JR

But what if there are no instruments being played? whats the concept then? the idea of this show is to remove the stage entirely and have a shared experience between audience and performer.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Ivan Beaver on January 06, 2014, 01:14:58 PM
But what if there are no instruments being played? whats the concept then? the idea of this show is to remove the stage entirely and have a shared experience between audience and performer.
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But the experience can never be shared-no matter how hard you try.

The performer (if actually performing) is going to produce a sound of some sort (or why is a sound system needed?).

When they produce that sound THEY experience it-no body else does (unless it has an onstage amplifier.

Then the will hear the delayed signal getting back to them.

The audience however-does not get the original sound and only the sound from the system.  So they have 1 arrival while the musician (can you say that if there are no instruments????) gets 2 sources (original nd from system.  It is this delayed signal that would cause the problem with performance.

Of course if IEMs are used then it is reduced.

HOWEVER consider that if there is signal point toward the stage-then the stage mics will pickup this delayed signal and amplify it-causing even more delay and a smearing of the sound.

And before people talk about directional microphones-consider that the sound is coming from 360° around the stage-so the mic WILL be pointed towards a sound source.

Unless I am missing something is what is going on.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: g'bye, Dick Rees on January 06, 2014, 01:45:37 PM
But what if there are no instruments being played? whats the concept then? the idea of this show is to remove the stage entirely and have a shared experience between audience and performer.

All together now (all together now)...

The Beatles
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Corey Scogin on January 06, 2014, 02:15:27 PM
All together now (all together now)...

The Beatles

That red-haired girl looks confused because her headphones are on backwards.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Jerome Malsack on January 06, 2014, 02:38:29 PM
as far as the music aspect,  I think it is fun to do the wedding march that follows the bride.  Music starts in the back and works its way to the front.  Following the brides step and the focus.   Less effective for the exit however. 
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Randy Pence on January 07, 2014, 09:56:25 PM
One of the guys ive worked is also a performer and did a surround performance at berlins tresor club when it had a surround system installed.  I don't remember hte mixer used, but he panned things around on a lemur and hte system processing included multiple rme sound cards.  There might have been something like 8 zones per side, or 4, i forget.  This particular dancefloor is longer than it is wide.  I found that the effect was well pronounced in the middle of the dancefloor, but was largely lost even moving 2m away.  granted, this dancefloor  probably held no more than 600 people.

I'm certainly in favor of a 4 point system concerning electronic music.  The point of the experience is not necessarily to share what the performer is doing, but to be immersed in what is happening.  A classic foh system is going to be more accurate, but it forces the visual epicenter of the experience.  Somewhat decentralizing where hte music is coming from allows the punters something else.  Electronic performers are not that interesting to look at, no matter how impressive the efforts of their button pushing and knob twiddling.

If microphones are involved, it gets much more complicated.  i was once involved in a production of an 8piece swing band and 8 prominent electronic musicians where i wanted to experiment a bit and route the band through the inhouse foh system and the stereo feed from the stage mixed electronic musicians had its own front and rear stereo system.  The production was a bit of a disaster, with many crucial other issues getting in the way of an outstanding performance experience, including a transit strike screwing up traffic and thus deliveries and production schedule, the electronic musicians not being prepared to play with each other, foh mixer file not getting saved and then reset  (i was not invovled in foh mixing).  I'd like to think it was a worthwhile idea, but I'm not sure that I wouldnt stick to standard foh should a similar project arise.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Bob Leonard on January 08, 2014, 01:55:17 AM
In the 70's when quad sound was all the rage I owned some very proprietary JVC Quad equipment. All of the equipment was manufactured specifically for quad reproduction and all the best JVC could manufacture at the time. Being in the navy at the time I literally auditioned and purchased the equipment from JVC in Tokyo, which was then shipped to my next duty station near Pensacola, FL. I was sure I had the world by the balls.

Six months after hitting the deck in FL I had managed to put a decent soul/rock band together and had talked the leading chief into allowing me to use a small reserve hanger on base that was not being used, for use as my space for practice and staging with the promise of a free concert or two for special occasions.

I set up the equipment with speakers in all four corners of that hanger and spent over a month moving and arranging the system. Source music was pre recorded in Quad surround and fed to the system using the best four channel Sansui reel to reel money could buy at the time.

Using the studio recorded quad tapes was an eye opener. Instruments magically moved around the hanger, vocals were overwhelming when coming from front, back, left right, all four corners, all moving with as if the vocalist was anywhere they wanted to be. everything moved, separated, joined again, soloed from near and far. Wonderful, just what I had dreamed of, and I didn't know of anyone else that had a system like this. Shit, I could probably do three sets of farting on stage and people would be throwing money at me.

Well so much for studio material, because in the end what works in a studio will never work on stage. There's no way to achieve full separation of the instruments without putting them all in their own separate sound proof rooms, there's no way to work the faders and groups quick enough to accomplish the spatial separation and feel of movement, and even if you could the stage wash and just being able to see the band killed all hopes of achieving the same effect achieved with the studio material.

After a month of very hard work by many people it became a fact that true quad separation could never practically or realistically be achieved outside of a studio environment, and in the end the system became on hell of a home quad system, then eventually a nice stereo system as the sources for true quad material dried up and the fad ended. That system was finally sold in 1982 never to be seen again. It was not a total loss with the lessons learned concerning sound, movement of sound and separation of sound, but never again for any reason.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Adam Cooke on January 11, 2014, 10:25:28 PM

Well so much for studio material, because in the end what works in a studio will never work on stage. There's no way to achieve full separation of the instruments without putting them all in their own separate sound proof rooms, there's no way to work the faders and groups quick enough to accomplish the spatial separation and feel of movement, and even if you could the stage wash and just being able to see the band killed all hopes of achieving the same effect achieved with the studio material.

Interesting. I can see how this concept could actually work well for electronic music, especially the more experimental stuff.

If all the instruments/sounds are outputs from a sampler, the separation of sounds is no longer a problem.

If the mix is performed/recorded in digital automation (via Ableton or DAW or a digital console) the difficulty with working the faders and groups is no longer a problem. Using IEMs for performers, there's no stage wash, either.

It does seem like we now have the technology, and there is music out there that seems well suited to this.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: Ben Brunskill on January 12, 2014, 02:19:55 AM
I work occasionally for a very good Pink Floyd tribute. We do quad, but there’s not much in the back most of the time - just reverb returns and 20% or so of the main mix.

The intros and so on however are mixed in 4.1 and fly around the room and it’s pretty fantastic. For sure hard if not impossible to implement for normal music.
Title: Re: Quad PA
Post by: duane massey on January 13, 2014, 03:39:24 AM
Quad/surround sound is very impressive if well-done, BUT only with performances specifically arranged for the effect. Electronic music, some dance music mixed in multi-channel format, some dramatic passages for live music, but for the most part, live music does not really work in large quad systems for all the reasons mentioned.
I've always wanted one more crack at a dance club with custom remixes and original recordings in a 4-ch environment. The technology now would make it very easy to do, both from a design/install standpoint and from a musical production standpoint, especially if you incorporated lighting and/or video into the experience. Definitely not live bands.