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Author Topic: LF haystack  (Read 9384 times)

Luke Geis

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2021, 04:48:32 PM »

I go for flat as well. I prefer the sub-content to sound equal and relative to the mids and highs. I also run subs on an aux.

I do a LOT of board mixes and live recordings where I have to balance the live sound with the recording quality. I prefer taking the board mix hot off the main master. I balance the two worlds by running the PA through a matrix and tuning the PA to match what I hear in my ears. More or less the Dave Rat tuning trick. The prescription is simple. If you have a set of earbuds or headphones you trust, tune the PA to sound like they do. Then what you hear in your ears is nearly the same as what you hear in the room. Doing this I find I can get damn good 2-track board mixes and the room sounds great as well. No complaints so far.

The haystack thing I find is only reserved for music that depends on it ( hip hop, pop et all ) and when realistic recording of the media is not crucial or needed.
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Steve-White

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2021, 05:44:07 PM »

^^^ I do it similar Luke.  Dial it in with the equipment, then the final is tuning is done listening with known program material.

For a club or portable DJ system I tune it up and listen to known well engineered program material of the genre of the system intent.

Once it's dialed in pretty close, crank it up and walk out in front or onto dance floor and close my eyes.  When I can visualize it, it's right.  When I can see the brass shining off of the horns, see the band playing it - done.

When designing system, headroom is the name of the game.  Always have a bit more in the low mids for talk-over with compressors setup for ducking on the DJ mic.  Sounds real clean, clear, articulate and not ear piercing.
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Matthias McCready

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #12 on: April 17, 2021, 05:44:59 PM »


It would seem with an aux feed sub that if you have ~15dB of hay stack that when pushing the system you would run out of headroom in the subs much quicker.

If you are not already aware keep in mind when you haystack the subs, that you are moving the physical crossover of the system and your subs.

For example (obviously this is speaker dependent) if your system DSP crossover is set at  60hz, if you had an 18dB haystack your actual crossover frequency could now be 125hz.

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Personally I prefer flat as well. Let channel processing do its job  ;)

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As to board mixes it is REALLY nice when you have a fantastic system which is relatively flat, your room is great, and your mix position is in a great place. However as we all know this isn't often the circumstance.

My current house gig has a top brand PA; unfortunately the overall deployment of the rig and the mix position negates a great board mix. For a board mix recording (to examine mix decisions, show execution etc) I usually use a matrix that is getting the same groups as the PA, and I have found for most venues some processing on the record matrix can account for an imperfect system/deployment/room and help things to translate. With recording separated on a Matrix I can mix for the PA/Room and still have a valuable tool for afterwards.
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Luke Geis

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #13 on: April 18, 2021, 01:37:03 PM »

Matthias,

    The shift in acoustic crossover points is true, but not true. Once you set the levels, crossovers, and other DSP, you don't mess with the master levels. At unity gain, you are in theory, utilizing the system as it was set up to run. The acoustic crossover point will not change provided you don't change the master send levels.

Now where things differ is the relative send levels of each channel. If you send the kick drum at a very high level to the subs, its acoustic crossover point may be shifted in relation to the mains, but that is kind of the whole idea. However, as with anything, too much of a good thing is still too much. If you send the level to the sub aux too high, you may end up with a very weak and anemic sounding board mix because you allocated the energy too much towards the subs.

The name of the game is balance. I DO NOT like too much low-end; so I strive hard to keep it curtailed and under wraps. This is probably why I like systems that have very little or no haystack subs responses? I also never cared for the idea of boosting a bunch of 50-80hz on the kick drum. To me, it sounds unnatural. This is how you end up with live recordings where the kick drum is just a big fluffy pooooof and walks all over everything. With subs on an aux, you can tune things to sound right in your ears and in the main PA, and then add them to the subs as needed/desired. The subs simply become a way to fill out the rest of the sonic spectrum. If you gain a channel up past unity gain on a send, does the acoustic crossover point change? I purpose NO it doesn't, because the DSP and the rest of the system doesn't know if that sound was supposed to be that way or not. I.E. If the channel needed to be turned up that much to get the desired sound, it was devoid of that media to begin with and if it sounds right when gained up as such, then it is right, and you haven't broken the rules of PA systems design and deployment doing it :)

So once again, it is about balance. The trick I was taught many years ago as it relates to subs on an aux was to tune the channel with its aux send off. Once the channel sounded right in the mains, then you added the subs in to taste. This is where the headphone/earbuds trick really works well if you are doing live recordings. Your headphones give you a full-range response indicative of a full-range speaker system. If it sounds good in your ears, then it should also sound good out of your PA. If that is true, then from the PA with no subs it will sound weak and thin. So as you add in the subs from the channels aux send, it should fill out and sound wonderful again.

There is no rule that says you can't send every channel to the subs either, although objectively the idea is to not. Utilizing subs on an aux can free up LOTS of headroom for live band situations. I have found that with some tricks, you can free up as much as 9db, which may be just enough to take you from not nearly enough to just enough.

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Matthias McCready

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #14 on: April 21, 2021, 01:46:13 PM »

Matthias,

    The shift in acoustic crossover points is true, but not true. Once you set the levels, crossovers, and other DSP, you don't mess with the master levels. At unity gain, you are in theory, utilizing the system as it was set up to run. The acoustic crossover point will not change provided you don't change the master send levels.



Yes, this is what I had meant.

I have seen guys set the crossover (tune/tone the PA), and then do their giant haystack. Obviously if the haystack is accounted for when setting the crossover things will be fine.

The trick I was taught many years ago as it relates to subs on an aux was to tune the channel with its aux send off. Once the channel sounded right in the mains, then you added the subs in to taste.


This is also how I run things (when Subs are on Aux, which is most of the time for me).
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Tim McCulloch

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #15 on: April 21, 2021, 02:23:18 PM »

I like a system that is linear - what comes out of the loudspeaker system accurately reflects the signal from the console.  Other than as a special effect, I'd prefer to shape the LF of my mix *in my mix* because that's the way the artist will listen to the 2 track in the back lounge of the bus.

But there are at least 2 types of FOH mixerpersons - those that put on a track, twist some knobs and then say "I can (or can't) work with this" and those who want to hit "play" and have the rig make them smile, and if it doesn't it may be a long day.

That said, the perception of LF and it's spectral place in a mix has changed a lot over the last 30 years.  In general I think many consumers believe that LF sounds like "car stereo rap tunes" and anything less is not right.  Much of the public expects a good deal more LF/ELF than was customary in most live venues 20 years ago.

The difference between a live band being mixed and DJ performances - the DJ may or may not have the capability to do 'system processing' in the mixer (and I'd really not want that) so if proper performance of the system in the venue requires that DJ shows sound 'right', right out of the box, build in the haystack.  As a live band mixer I can shelve/HPF a post-record L/R feed to send to the system if I don't like it.  I'd rather not, but I think (hope) the BE can deal with that better than a DJ can deal with its absence.
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Art Welter

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #16 on: May 26, 2021, 04:25:55 PM »

I agree with playback and LF haystack sounds better. I do more system setup/design/tuning than mixing. So I tend to give the mixer person what they want/like.

So a few thoughts/questions:

1)-Most BEs seems to come into a new room and play a track. Do they complain if the system is “flat’?
2)- What about a venue like the one I am currently working on tuning that 50% of their shows are hip hop or DJs vs live bands? Flat or haystack?
3)I am a little surprised by the “flat” responses. I assumed it would be more of a mix or lean towards haystack.
Kent,

The "flat vs haystack" or loudness contour discussion has been around since aux fed subs were popularized around 1978, and dual purpose live/DJ systems had to "live together".
1) For the most part, I've encountered no complaints if the system set for flat amplitude response has the LF extension and headroom they desired.
2) Pre-sets for both.
Optimum speaker configurations for DJ/dance use may also be quite different than for live band use.
Some portions of the systems may overlap, while others would be best used independently.
3) Perhaps the "haystack" engineers got jobs on farms during the Covid19 fallout, and not have returned to audio yet ;^).
This is the "Audio Measurement and Testing" section, response from the Lounge, Church Sound, DJ and other forums would have more that want an arbitrarily boosted cartoon version of their mix, and less who desire an accurate representation of the output of their console's main output.
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Jim McKeveny

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #17 on: October 28, 2021, 09:12:03 AM »

flat amplitude response and has the LF extension and headroom they desired.
Thanks again Art. As we know, mixer "fiddling" with VLF on aux causes unwanted accuracy & perception issues up-spectrum in critical  LF response. If +30db between 25hz to 40-50(?)hz is desired it should be engineered in/produced at the source not poorly coerced into overall system performance.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2021, 09:22:36 AM by Jim McKeveny »
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Guillermo Sanchez

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #18 on: April 25, 2022, 03:21:26 PM »

I'm going to go against the popular opinion here. There is a lot of evidence that what constitute good sound for a statistically majority (>90% of the people) include at least a bit of low frequency boost and high frequency rolloff (see Floyd E Toole lifelong work). The same work point out that for most people, about 50% of perceived sound quality comes from bass quality/extension/punch, so most people perceive more bass as "better sound" (within limits of course)

I'm an independent system designer/tuner, which 90% of the time don't mix in the systems I tune. All systems I tune need to be approved by someone before I leave the premises, and in every case I need to leave it with a 6 to 18dB "stack" in order to comply with what the customer wants. It depends on the situation: for example in a theater or lounge they might be happy with +6dB, in an entertainment system with around +12dB, and in Latin music/Urban music/Reggaeton or similar they might want in excess of +18dB. By the way, had any of you ever installed or tuned a system in Jamaica? The norm there is 2 dual 18" subs per top box, and boy, they use it to the extreme! The numbers I'm talking about fall short of Jamaican expectations. In my tunings, I rarely leave the subs on an aux (unless requested) because sometimes I don't know who's going to mix on the system, and most people inexperienced with the technique will go for the channel eq instead the aux send and force your full range while under utilizing the subs.

I understand this is not ideal, but I might leave a system that will be in charge of people far from experts, to be kind. Others are just accustomed to a super huge bass bump and if they don't hear it, they will immediately dismiss the system or my work. The best compromise I had is to to send the subs over a matrix fed from L&R plus an aux. Then I tune the system to have a 6dB bump directly from the master, but you can add more energy to subs by pushing on the aux. Is the best of both worlds as if someone decides to push the eq on a channel that energy will find its way to the sub, but an expert will push it though the aux and still is going to go to the subs.

The only caveat is that nowadays that all consoles are digital, you have to deal with the extra latency caused by going through the aux. Last time I checked a CL5 (for example) added 0.04ms in that case, but since we are working with low frequencies, with their long wavelengths, the phase difference was negligible in the intended range.

Sorry for the long post.   
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Caleb Dueck

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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #19 on: April 25, 2022, 07:43:59 PM »

The best compromise I had is to to send the subs over a matrix fed from L&R plus an aux. Then I tune the system to have a 6dB bump directly from the master, but you can add more energy to subs by pushing on the aux.

I've run into systems like this, and have to say I really disliked them.  For me, aux fed subs are a way to 'hard cut' input channels like vocals from getting to the subwoofers, and this method kills that (primary IMHO) capability.  If the mixer persons are very inexperienced - I'd rather just L&R, no aux.  Just my personal preference.
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Re: LF haystack
« Reply #19 on: April 25, 2022, 07:43:59 PM »


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