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Author Topic: Reverberant room  (Read 6759 times)

Mark Baker

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Reverberant room
« on: September 17, 2018, 01:17:59 PM »

Hi Guys,

i have a difficult room coming up this weekend, its a Town hall , theatre type layout, approx 100ft x 60ft with a maybe 40ft high ceiling, with a large balcony upper stalls at the sides and to the rear. and a deep 25 ft stage

The event is a cpl of tribute acts, vocals and backing tracks, nothing too awkward there,

i did this room a cpl of months ago and the promoter has asked me back, the stage is approx 6ft high with a block at the front about 10in high for footlights,

Its a local authority building and very restrictive on where i can place equipment and sound levels

the balcony wont be in use so i dont have to provide coverage.

last time i did this  i i used 4 QSC k12s mounted on a set of k subs and KW18's all stage mounted

i aux fed the KW18s and brought them in as needed. for the more dancey material

the problem i had was that there was a huge amount of natural reverberation in the room, i have to keep sound level to around 90DB/A by their (probably uncalibrated and uneducated) definition.  to be honest i had reasonable coverage for the type of event last time, ( a 4 piece vocal motown act) but from about half was back in the room the reverberation was quite heavy, right at the back of the room where the bar was it was awful,  no one else seemed to notice, but it concerned me,

the only way to reduce its effect was to increase the level of the system , which got me higher than the permitted level.

i cant put any delays in half way down the room as they wont let me put any pa on the   floor.

am i stuck with the reverb? or is there something i can do by equing that will help, i did find that putting more bass energy through made it worse, but at times it was a compromise as the dance floor was full and the majority of the room were on their feet at the front.

any advise gladly taken on board


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Kevin Maxwell

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2018, 01:48:22 PM »

Hi Guys,

i have a difficult room coming up this weekend, its a Town hall , theatre type layout, approx 100ft x 60ft with a maybe 40ft high ceiling, with a large balcony upper stalls at the sides and to the rear. and a deep 25 ft stage

The event is a cpl of tribute acts, vocals and backing tracks, nothing too awkward there,

i did this room a cpl of months ago and the promoter has asked me back, the stage is approx 6ft high with a block at the front about 10in high for footlights,

Its a local authority building and very restrictive on where i can place equipment and sound levels

the balcony wont be in use so i dont have to provide coverage.

last time i did this  i i used 4 QSC k12s mounted on a set of k subs and KW18's all stage mounted

i aux fed the KW18s and brought them in as needed. for the more dancey material

the problem i had was that there was a huge amount of natural reverberation in the room, i have to keep sound level to around 90DB/A by their (probably uncalibrated and uneducated) definition.  to be honest i had reasonable coverage for the type of event last time, ( a 4 piece vocal motown act) but from about half was back in the room the reverberation was quite heavy, right at the back of the room where the bar was it was awful,  no one else seemed to notice, but it concerned me,

the only way to reduce its effect was to increase the level of the system , which got me higher than the permitted level.

i cant put any delays in half way down the room as they wont let me put any pa on the   floor.

am i stuck with the reverb? or is there something i can do by equing that will help, i did find that putting more bass energy through made it worse, but at times it was a compromise as the dance floor was full and the majority of the room were on their feet at the front.

any advise gladly taken on board

Do you have a picture of how you setup these speakers in this room?
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Chris Grimshaw

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2018, 02:09:50 PM »

If you have to fire everything from the stage, it sounds like you're pretty stuck.
Using fairly narrow-directivity horns would help to keep sound off the walls will definitely help, though.

At the end of the day, it's almost impossible to make the entire audience happy all the time. Someone always thinks there's something that should be done differently. If the 80% of the people are at the front dancing, 19.9% people are further back and using the level drop to have a conversation, and 0.1% of people think the sound is bad, you're doing just fine IMO.

Chris
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Rob Spence

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2018, 02:38:56 PM »

If you can get narrow dispersion speakers, get them up high and aim the down pointing at the heads of the audience about halfway back it should help.
The key is avoiding the rear and side walls and the ceiling.
Without delay speakers, not much you can do about getting under the rear balcony.

Curious, why do they restrict you to keeping the pa on stage? Something must have happened at one time that caused that restriction.



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lindsay Dean

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2018, 02:57:51 PM »

Feeding the room more volume will not help.
 the natural Reverb feid will closely match any spl you put into the room.
       Like has been said a thousand times on this site, you have to get cabinets that are focusing the energy on the audience and elevated in order to cover the listening area as evenly as possible with a few cabinets as possible.
  but like we said above you might be overthinking it if they asked you to come back they're happy
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Dave Garoutte

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2018, 03:44:39 PM »

Speaker up and tilted down +3.
You need to keep as much sound off the reflective surfaces as possible and onto the absorbative water bags.

BT Tilters or my Anglers would definitely help.
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Kevin Maxwell

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2018, 03:59:43 PM »

Don’t those speakers (75 degree conical coverage?) have a built in downward tilt you can use? Since I don’t think in that room that you would need 150 degrees of coverage you could try the dual PA trick. Put the speaker fronts flat to each other and put just vocals in one speaker per side and instruments only in the other one on each side. This should give you more clarity and you won’t be shooting the speakers into the side walls because you splayed out the fronts like you would normally do when using 2 speakers a side. 
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Scott Olewiler

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Reverberant room
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2018, 07:08:15 PM »

Hi Guys,

i have a difficult room coming up this weekend, its a Town hall , theatre type layout, approx 100ft x 60ft with a maybe 40ft high ceiling, with a large balcony upper stalls at the sides and to the rear. and a deep 25 ft stage

The event is a cpl of tribute acts, vocals and backing tracks, nothing too awkward there,

i did this room a cpl of months ago and the promoter has asked me back, the stage is approx 6ft high with a block at the front about 10in high for footlights,

Its a local authority building and very restrictive on where i can place equipment and sound levels

the balcony wont be in use so i dont have to provide coverage.

last time i did this  i i used 4 QSC k12s mounted on a set of k subs and KW18's all stage mounted

i aux fed the KW18s and brought them in as needed. for the more dancey material

the problem i had was that there was a huge amount of natural reverberation in the room, i have to keep sound level to around 90DB/A by their (probably uncalibrated and uneducated) definition.  to be honest i had reasonable coverage for the type of event last time, ( a 4 piece vocal motown act) but from about half was back in the room the reverberation was quite heavy, right at the back of the room where the bar was it was awful,  no one else seemed to notice, but it concerned me,

the only way to reduce its effect was to increase the level of the system , which got me higher than the permitted level.

i cant put any delays in half way down the room as they wont let me put any pa on the   floor.

am i stuck with the reverb? or is there something i can do by equing that will help, i did find that putting more bass energy through made it worse, but at times it was a compromise as the dance floor was full and the majority of the room were on their feet at the front.

any advise gladly taken on board
No on ever seems to mention this but in addition to pointing them down you can also point them in  to keep sound off the walls. Sound is still going to bounce off the walls eventually but it will hit further back and with less energy than it will with the speakers facing forward.

Also, do you need to use 4 tops? Seems unlikely if you're already getting to much reverb in the room.

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« Last Edit: September 17, 2018, 07:10:25 PM by Scott Olewiler »
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Mike Caldwell

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2018, 08:06:50 PM »

Delays can help in getting more speakers closer to the audience and running the system at a lower level but that's not an option here.

As mentioned aiming the sound into the audience as best as possible will help the most.
If the room has a lot of low mid reverb/build up 200hz or so
try pulling some of that out of the system that will help a bit in not feeding the room so much of that energy in the first place.

How loud will the audience be in there?
« Last Edit: September 18, 2018, 07:29:22 AM by Mike Caldwell »
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Stephen Kirby

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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2018, 01:02:02 AM »

As said, if you can get a pair of the K12s up high and aimed down and toed in that will help a lot.  You can use the second pair as in fills or front fills turned down for the first few rows that are out of the pattern of the high speakers.  Again, aimed inward from the sides or towards the middle as lip fills.

Lack of crushing volume works in your favor here.  Explain to everyone that there are volume restrictions, make someone else the bad guy for lack of rock and roll levels.  You actually want things quieter.  Less energy into the room, less reverberation wash.
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Re: Reverberant room
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2018, 01:02:02 AM »


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