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[M. Erik Matlock]

360-Degree Tuning: Cleaning Things Up On Stage & Behind The PA
Paying as much attention to what comes off the backs of the loudspeakers as what comes out the front.
By Jim Yakabuski • May 24, 2019

When you’re all finished tuning a PA system, how does it sound out front? Fantastic I hope! But maybe we should also ask ourselves a follow up question: “How does it sound in back – behind the PA?”

I’m sure, at one time or another, you’ve felt the pressure of having to tune a PA system in a very small window of time. Maybe the truck was late getting to the gig, or the lights have been floating a foot above the stage for the past two hours, keeping any other work from happening. (By the way, this is where an old audio engineer inserts an equally old joke: “Why are lights made of aluminum these days? Because if they were made of steel, they’d rust waiting to be raised to trim height”).

Whatever the reason, we’ve all had to “cowboy in” a quick system tuning in way less time than we’d like. When it happens, we tend to focus on the meat and potatoes tasks first and deal with the less imperative tweaks later. If we can get the main L/R arrays tuned up and time-aligned with the subwoofers, and the front fills and side arrays making some kind of noise, we can do a show even if it’s not a work of art...

Continue reading here: https://www.prosoundweb.com/channels/live-sound/360-degree-tuning-cleaning-things-up-on-stage-behind-the-pa/