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Author Topic: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2  (Read 35900 times)

Evan Kirkendall

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SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« on: October 28, 2009, 07:52:50 PM »

Well, here we are again. Smile

I'm at the House of Blues in Houston, TX tonight. This time last year, they had a pretty slammin' poorly installed vertec rig in the house. It covered the venue just fine, but half of the PA was firing into a balcony wall. You can see the old thread here: http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/38909/6178/

Anyway, they decided to "revamp" the rig and get a Soundbridge PA. I'll start off with the positives this time around instead of going straight to the bad. The good news is, the PA was at least installed better this time around. They have it split into 2 sections:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e194/HarfordSound/sb1.jpg

The top 4 boxes hit the balcony, and then bottom 6 hit the floor. Well, it's better then before, but sadly, still doesn't sound great. it really thins out up toward the top of the balcony. I wish I had control of the top boxes so I could mellow them out some and make it less piercing up top... Those 8's just don't keep up with the rest of the box.

Down on the floor, coverage is pretty good. The box few boxes could use a little more downward angle to hit the first few rows though. In the middle of the crowd there is no coverage from the PA until about 10' out from the stage. I'd be screwed if I wasn't carrying front fills. Down front, it's just a muddy mess. There needs to be something done about that, otherwise the people up front are not going to be able to hear anything except stage wash...

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e194/HarfordSound/sb2.jpg

Now, I will say that my experiences are more positive then last time I had an SB rig already. But, the upper mid range of this box is out of control. This is the EQ curve it took to smooth the boxes out:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e194/HarfordSound/sb3.jpg

I mean, come on guys. The boxes are so bright that they burn. I could not listen to them at any level without pain. I don't know anyone that would tune a box like that and be happy, unless they're almost deaf! And yes, I asked the house guy "has anything changed in the DSP since this system has been installed?" His answer: no. So, this had to sound good to someone...

But, on a good note, the low mid side of the boxes sound decent. They're a little thin below 130hz, but the low mid gak and "mega phone" effect I had on the last SB rig is not nearly as present with this system. It gets a little honky when you start to really lay into it, but that seems to be be tamable.

Sub wise, they have 8 of the "quad focused" sb1000 rip offs under the deck. They're good from about 90hz to 40hz. Above that they really start to sound boomy, and below that you hit driver excursion very quickly. They work fine for what I'm asking out of them. My B2's are taking care of everything below 60hz, so the house subs have a fairly easy night...

I've done 2 sound checks on the PA, but will report back at the end of the show once I've really gotten to give it a good run.



Evan



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Joseph Yoon Jr.

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2009, 11:42:34 PM »

I knew there was a point to reading up on the old SoundBridge thread...

Interested in what the full battle report will contain.
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Tim McCulloch

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2009, 12:27:27 AM »

Evan-

Once again, this is a deployment issue.  The vertically split hang is exactly the wrong thing to do.

It sounds thin upstairs because the line is about 3' long; it lacks sufficient length to develop any pattern control and lacks sufficient low/mids to keep up with the HF in this short hang.  I've heard this with almost every brand of line array that is deployed in such a manner.  You'd probably have been better off cutting with a shelving filter starting around 1k6, with a small (3 or 4 db) bump in the top octave with a parametric filter.  Think "constant directivity horn EQ."

In the room there is nothing in the middle, down front, because it's hung so far offstage left and right.

Who knows, the Sound Bridge products might be useful if they weren't being Installed By Fucktwits
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Evan Kirkendall

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2009, 01:43:43 AM »

Before I begin, here's a link to the old thread, just so people have some background on my previous SB experience: http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/37385/6178/

Some background on the room first... It's your typical rock concert venue. Concrete floor, with a raked seated balcony. The room is very well acoustically treated- just like all other HOB. The walls were concrete with curtains hung throughout the place.

I mixed 2 of the 4 bands tonight, and the other engineer on the tour shared the same experiences as myself. I'll start with the balcony... 4 boxes a side, as mentioned earlier, it was thin. Tim's right, 4 boxes isn't enough length... But to top it off, horizontal coverage is piss poor. I wanted to word that nicer, but that's really the only way I can describe it. I walked across the full coverage pattern of the boxes, and it is just miserable. Off to the sides, it's honky as hell, throughout the pattern 2-4k randomly pops out at you and 800hz just did not go away. It was a lost cause upstairs.

Down on the floor, things were a little better. It was a little thicker, but still had issues. Here's the EQ curve I ended up with for the night:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e194/HarfordSound/sb9.jpg

I also had a 3dB notch on the graph at 160, 250, 500 and 5k. I ended up putting some 2k back in mainly to compete with the screaming fans. I had to pick between smooth and on the verge of mud, or harsh and having some cut... So, I found a decent halfway point. I haven't had to fight a PA like this in such a long time. Just as I would start to clean up one part of the box, something else would start jumping out. It was a lost cause, so I found a decent point and settled for what it was.

If I were to offer suggestions to "fix" the rig, I'd start by slapping my EQ curve on the rig, splaying the boxes in 5 degrees or so and coming up with a new solution to covering upstairs and downstairs.

In the end, I got a workable sound and survived through the show. The kids probably never knew the difference, but it really wasn't a good experience at all.  House of Blues normally prides itself with good quality production and good quality staff. This was the exact opposite. I would be embarrassed to say I had a Soundbridge rig in my venue.

Oh well, live and learn. SoundBridge still is not going on my rider, and the bold print "NO SOUNDBRIDGE" remains in tact.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e194/HarfordSound/sb4.jpg




Evan
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RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2009, 02:04:14 AM »

With a big balcony like that I think the venue would probably be much better served with a properly deployed trap system than with an improperly deployed line.  Let's just hope that the major manufacturers continue to build and support high end trap boxes!
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Milt Hathaway

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2009, 07:34:20 AM »

Tim McCulloch wrote on Wed, 28 October 2009 23:27

Evan-

Once again, this is a deployment issue.  The vertically split hang is exactly the wrong thing to do.

It sounds thin upstairs because the line is about 3' long; it lacks sufficient length to develop any pattern control and lacks sufficient low/mids to keep up with the HF in this short hang.  I've heard this with almost every brand of line array that is deployed in such a manner.  You'd probably have been better off cutting with a shelving filter starting around 1k6, with a small (3 or 4 db) bump in the top octave with a parametric filter.  Think "constant directivity horn EQ."


I've heard this line array "properly deployed" and it had exactly the same problem.
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Ivan Beaver

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2-What I don't get----
« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2009, 04:39:04 PM »

WARNING-A rant coming on.

Let's keep all brand names out of this-and forget how well or poor a particular product performs.

In a place like HOB, how does the guy who designed/speced etc the system get away with having such poor coverage?  Are they not held responsible in some way?  How do they get away with it?  

Do all the engineers that come in there complain like Evan did?  Or do they not care? Or do they not realize the problem or what?  Do they say anything to the people running the club? and do they care?  I suspect the answer to most of the above is no. Crying or Very Sad

It is one thing to bring a portable rig into a place and not have even coverage, but an installed system?  That is quite a different issue..

It would be one thing if Evan said "The rig would not get loud enough for his tastes-or he didn't like the "tone-but at least it sounded the same everywhere".

But his complaint seems to mostly be the overall freq response of the system and how uneven the coverage was and how different it sounded in different places.  You would think a system should be setup as a linear tranfer of signal-what goes in comes out.  Then you can adjust for taste/musical style etc.

This is not the first rig that has been in that venue-I would have thought that in the discussions about buying a new rig the topic of what was wrong with the old one would have come up and would be expected to be addressed by the designer-maybe not.

Things were different years ago, but today we have all sorts of tools to both predict and measure the performance of a sound system.  Yet we still have a lot of very bad systems that are not even close-an in a lot of cases the lack of money was not the problem-I see it some very expensive systems.

I run into systems all the time that have top notch gear-but it is simply deployed wrong Rolling Eyes .

Even the right tool for the job can be used wrong.  Let's say you want to frame a house.  You go out and buy the best framing hammer you can buy (the right tool for the intended job), but then you try to nail using the claw end  Shocked  Confused .  You don't end up doing a good job.  Is it the hammers fault?  Maybe a different brand would do a better job of nailing with the wrong end Laughing

It is not just the club world where this type of bad design is going on-just look at churches-schools-sporting events, paging systems and so forth-it is all around us.  Why is somebody not held responsible?  They do is so many other industries, but ours get a free pass. Rolling Eyes

Just yesterday I was asked to substitute other loudspeakers than the ones speced on a job.  I first asked to see the plans to make sure the design was at least a valid design.  This is using some fairly expensive gear.

When I got the plans-it took about 2 seconds to realize that there is no way the intended loudspeaker system would even cover the room.  The last time I checked, there is no way 3 40
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Bennett Prescott

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #7 on: October 29, 2009, 07:45:20 PM »

Evan Kirkendall wrote on Thu, 29 October 2009 01:43

Oh well, live and learn. SoundBridge still is not going on my rider, and the bold print "NO SOUNDBRIDGE" remains in tact.

That wording was on your rider before this show? You need to work on enforcement, bubba.
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Lee Jacobson

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2009, 08:20:48 PM »

The rig was installed in the venue... If "no XXXX" is on the rider, and XXXX is the rig in the house, and the band does not have the pull to hire in their preferred rig, what choice do they have?? Take the gig on XXXX, or not, yes??


Just sayin'.....
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Andy Peters

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Re: SoundBridge XYON, Round 2
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2009, 09:10:08 PM »

Bennett Prescott wrote on Thu, 29 October 2009 16:45

Evan Kirkendall wrote on Thu, 29 October 2009 01:43

Oh well, live and learn. SoundBridge still is not going on my rider, and the bold print "NO SOUNDBRIDGE" remains in tact.

That wording was on your rider before this show? You need to work on enforcement, bubba.


This all makes me wonder, again:

Every rider I've seen has a list of stuff that is "NOT ACCEPTABLE."

Yet, when push comes to shove, exactly how many bands cancel a show because the provider brought something unacceptable, or the house install was unacceptable?

And furthermore, in Evan's case, one assumes that he advanced the show and was told what was installed, so it's not like he's walking into a big surprise. His rider says, "NO SOUNDBRIDGE" (and presumably some other "NO ______" items). So why accept this? Why not demand a different rig that actually meets the rider specifications?

-a
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