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[Mike Galica]

Ok, so here's the situation.  Large, highly reverberant (3 1/2 second RT60) room; may as well be a gym for mixing purposes.  Of course, what happens in this room but the youth service.  So I find out that morning that I was going to be mixing it.  Never having mixed in the room before I went in pinked it, then rang out the system.  I had almost no gain-before-feedback and when the system rang it rang for a LONG time before it stopped.  By the time the band finally got there I tried to get them to do a sound check with me.  Their idea of a sound check apparently is to do part of a song then stop.  Not the easiest way to mix.  So anyways, I finally get the vocals ok, not great, but at least somewhat intelligible in that nasty nasty room, and right when I'm ready to mix the rest of the band they decide to take a break.  Not cool.  So while they're doing their thing, I just sit and twiddle my thumbs until they come back.  They do more of the play half a song business and after a good bit of "gentle prodding" on my part they finally play a few songs all the way through.  By the time the service actually starts I'm still a little nervous.  But, somehow, right when they started their worship set with the congregation everything came together.  So there ends my little rant.  Hopefully I won't have to post another for a while

[Kevin Maxwell AKA TheMAXX]

I wrote a long reply regarding sound checks and then decided to reread your post to see if there was any particular point I should address. And after a reread there may be some basic questions I should ask first before posting my long sound check reply.

You said “I went in pinked it, then rang out the system. I had almost no gain-before-feedback and when the system rang it rang for a LONG time before it stopped”

I used to use RTAs to find frequencies but I never used pick noise on a system until I started using SMAART. So can you clarify your above statement? What kind of equipment and how did you EQ it? I get the feeling that you are using some sort of feedback suppression device.

A little trick I use is I EQ the system for linearity, what goes it is what comes out. I then insert an EQ on the vocal sub group and set that for the best gain before feedback.

I know what you are talking about regarding the band only playing part of a song. If I haven’t had a proper sound check I am usually expecting them to play more so I can tweak things. But they usually don’t play long enough. Now if the show is already under way I have a different mind set and I can usually throw together a decent mix fairly quickly and then go about fine tuning the different inputs.

[Mike Galica]

Quote:

You said “I went in pinked it, then rang out the system. I had almost no gain-before-feedback and when the system rang it rang for a LONG time before it stopped” I used to use RTAs to find frequencies but I never used pick noise on a system until I started using SMAART. So can you clarify your above statement? What kind of equipment and how did you EQ it? I get the feeling that you are using some sort of feedback suppression device.

The only tool I trust when using pink noise is my ears.  I haven't used SMAART and the only time I've used RTAs to pink a room I had less than stellar results.  So the equipment used was just what God gave me.  And there will never EVER be a feedback killer in my equipment rack.  If I get feedback that means I didn't set the parametric right.  

[StephenG.]

I can feel your pain on almost everything you said in that post. Having worked church events and some club gigs, it always seems that if something just isn't coming together at the church gig during sound check that it is always 20x better once it starts, through no fault of my own I'm sure, but it doesn't seem to work this way at club gigs, hmmm? I would say that i don't know what makes church gigs come together at the last second but i would assume its the great cosmic system engineer in the sky, .

About the half a song thing, well when i work with a new band i state very clearly to them what i expect of them for sound check. Which usually includes at least one full song maybe 2 or three, no more than three cause then I'm just mixing the show without anyone in the room.

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