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[Guillermo Sanchez]

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.

I agree that with inexperienced people is better to have everything through L&R, and that if your preference is to have subs solely on an aux when you mix, that is the way you should do it (and that I would do it if I was tuning for you). The approach mentioned, in my opinion, is a compromise between solely on aux or solely on L&R. Is it perfect? no. Is just a compromise that helped me in a particular situation.

60% of the systems I tune will work with people of dubious capabilities. 35% of them will be handled by people who believe they know what they are doing. 5% is handled by real, experienced professionals. In my experience, unless you are working at very high level touring, this numbers are representatives of what's on the market. When you tune systems for theaters, cruise ships, houses of worships and institutional venues, you have no idea who is going to work on that system tomorrow, much less a year from now. In that particular case the current engineer wanted to have a way to "enhance" punch on some channels, but was not experienced enough to leave the subs just on an aux. If I did that, the LF on mains will be destroyed sooner rather than later. And the engineer was supposed to be rotated to another venue in 30 days or so. So it was the best solution for the moment.

I tend to be pragmatic and have as many options as possible in my toolbox instead of applying one technique to every system I touch. If I was the one mixing, I would approach the system accordingly.

[John Schalk]

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.

According to Dave Rat's testing (see his YouTube content), the X/M 32 mixers have zero added latency no matter how many groups you assign the channel to, before taking an output from the console.  He did measure the added latency you note in the Yamaha CL mixer he was using for his tests.  Not sure if he's tested group latency on Digico or Allen & Heath yet.

[John A Chiara]

Another one for flat system. The PA should convey what's coming out of the mixing desk to the audience. The art/science line is (IMO) at the master outputs of the mixing desk.

Chris

But the audience only hears what’s coming out of the speakers…so you reference is removed from the room. Who is that useful to? An six sub system is still part of what the audience is hearing right?

[Steve-White]

But the audience only hears what’s coming out of the speakers…so you reference is removed from the room. Who is that useful to? An six sub system is still part of what the audience is hearing right?

That depends upon the size of the venue and stage volume.  In a 300-500 seat club with a loud stage the mix is basically filling in what's needed to make it sound good out front.

Whereas ACDC at River Plate the stage volume is insignificant and the mains carry the house ~100%.

[Guillermo Sanchez]

But the audience only hears what’s coming out of the speakers…so you reference is removed from the room. Who is that useful to? An six sub system is still part of what the audience is hearing right?

I read an article here at ProSoundWeb that measured latency of several mixing consoles through different paths. If I remember correctly, A&H, Midas and Behringer were "latency compensated", meaning that all paths lead to the same latency. The caveat was that the inputs should be coming from the same place. The local inputs always had less latency than the ones comiong from stage boxes (makes sense). Digico and Yamaha among others had different latencies for different signal paths. Something to be aware when doing tricks of the trade like parallel compression. What I do in those cases is to mimic the signal path on the two signal chains: Instead of sending one directly to stereo with no compression and the other to a group with compression (for example), I would send both to different groups, both with compression, but one with the threshold at maximum and ratio to minimum (the "clean one") and the other with the desired compression dialed in. It uses more resources, but on digital consoles in general that is not an issue.

[Guillermo Sanchez]

That depends upon the size of the venue and stage volume.  In a 300-500 seat club with a loud stage the mix is basically filling in what's needed to make it sound good out front.

Whereas ACDC at River Plate the stage volume is insignificant and the mains carry the house ~100%.

Still, on the ACDC at River Plate scenario, if the subs were aux fed, the "board recording" will be bass thin as it is only getting L&R, so it will not be representative on what's coming out of the system.

[John A Chiara]

Still, on the ACDC at River Plate scenario, if the subs were aux fed, the "board recording" will be bass thin as it is only getting L&R, so it will not be representative on what's coming out of the system.

No board mix is a real reference. I record L/R pre eq and my aux sub feed is post fader…so full range bass gets sent to the recorder. Aux subs CAN be useful for the live system especially where crowds change….like a big club dance floor. I can change the feel and heft of the system real time. In a concert setting probably not so much.

[Guillermo Sanchez]

No board mix is a real reference. I record L/R pre eq and my aux sub feed is post fader…so full range bass gets sent to the recorder. Aux subs CAN be useful for the live system especially where crowds change….like a big club dance floor. I can change the feel and heft of the system real time. In a concert setting probably not so much.

Since the board mix had been mentioned in this thread, I wanted to point that out. I'm not against using subs on an aux, I just say that is not always the best solution, specially with inexperienced engineers at the helm. Anyway, the thread is about LF haystack, which in my experience is neccesary at least a little bit in almost all occasions.

[Art Welter]

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)

Guillermo,

Not sure what Floyd E. Toole you have seen,  but he concludes in this work:
The Measurement and Calibration of Sound Reproducing Systems
Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Vol. 63, No. 7/8, July/August 2015

https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20220520/17839.pdf

"Bass performance alone accounted for about 30% of the overall subjective ratings—spectral balance matters.
This is a logical parallel to common experience in live unamplified concerts, where humans are able to substantially separate the sounds of instruments and voices from the sounds added by the different venues in which they perform, even though the venue is truly part of the performance.
The target for the direct sound should most likely be flat: neutral.

The movie industry has decided that the steady-state sound should be flat below 2 kHz, most of the music/audio industry has decided that a flat direct sound is the norm. The latter has the advantage of agreeing with natural hearing of live (unamplified) acoustical events.

The starting point would be the delivery of an accurate, neutral, direct sound. The fact that there is a rise in bass sound level in the short (<150 ms) interval following the direct sound is a variable for which there is no practical control—it is room and source-directivity dependent. It means that a steady-state room
curve should rise by some amount at low frequencies. We do know, however, that some of the present recommendations and industry practices are not optimum and others are simply wrong."


From what Floyd wrote there, doesn't seem he would suggest using an arbitrary "haystack"LF boost, more likely he'd put that practice into the "not optimum or simply wrong" category.

Art

[Mal Brown]

The only times I have wanted AUX fed subs were some local festivals with extremely variable acts.  Having that hard limit on what went to the tops was helpful.  Not necessary, helpful.

I prefer to mix on a system that is set flat and apply my own 'tilt'.  I want things to sound full but not overstated if you will.  I truly despise wnat I consider to be overly bright, isizzly systems.  I notice that older BE types, whose hearing in the 2k+ range may be iffy tend to have that exagerated high end.   I have my hearing checked annually.   I have some 4k damage - have for ages thanks to an Ampeg V4 on a couple of 4x12's back in the day...  If I can hear 4 K... I know there is way too much...

By the way, this term HayStack EQ ... where did this come from ?  It evokes a vision of a curve but not one I would ever think would be applied outside of car stereo, in someone elses children's car :-)

[ProSoundWeb Community]