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[Jeff M Hague]

For those doing the smaller club or outdoor thing.
Typical club - 300 or less cap, powered mains and wedges with DSP, X/M, QU/SQ, Si, etc. Aside from monitors, only mix needed is L/R - no balcony, no lobby, no press room, etc.
Why are so many of these systems set up with channels feeding busses, busses feeding matrices and matrices feeding mains?
I run in to it all the time and several times, it has really tripped me up - particularly when the house guy doesn't even know it's set up that way.
I can almost understand using busses - a pair for drums, a pair (or more) for instruments and a pair for vocals - so you can do bus compression or maybe eq. But live, for events that size, even that has limited benefit in my mind since the audience hears the acoustic sound from the stage as well as the PA.
And they aren't needed for easy control of a group of inputs on fewer faders because of DCAs.
But matrices? I can see no good reason for those in a typical club system.
Thoughts?

[dave briar]

For those doing the smaller club or outdoor thing.
Typical club - 300 or less cap, powered mains and wedges with DSP, X/M, QU/SQ, Si, etc. Aside from monitors, only mix needed is L/R - no balcony, no lobby, no press room, etc.
Why are so many of these systems set up with channels feeding busses, busses feeding matrices and matrices feeding mains?
I run in to it all the time and several times, it has really tripped me up - particularly when the house guy doesn't even know it's set up that way.
I can almost understand using busses - a pair for drums, a pair (or more) for instruments and a pair for vocals - so you can do bus compression or maybe eq. But live, for events that size, even that has limited benefit in my mind since the audience hears the acoustic sound from the stage as well as the PA.
And they aren't needed for easy control of a group of inputs on fewer faders because of DCAs.
But matrices? I can see no good reason for those in a typical club system.
Thoughts?

Gratuitous complexity?  Cuz they heard some of the big boys do it?  On our installed SQ6 at our 400cap club we do route channels through mix buses and then to LR but only use the matrices for special things: to send a mono copy of LR to the inside system when we’re outdoors for the summer and another to feed a side fill outdoors. Otherwise I see no benefit. Touring systems may have other needs, however.

[Kevin Maxwell]

I setup the way you don’t like it all of the time. I use the Mix Bus sends as variable sub groups. And especially for vocals I do the gain before feedback EQing there. In the systems that I use the main speakers processing is done in a speaker DSP or in the power amps. And they are tuned for linearity, what goes in is what comes out.

I don’t use self-power speakers. I almost always use front fill (FF) speakers and with the Mix Bus sends for the different parts which the vocals are one of them and other thing being mixed in the sound system that then feeds into the matrix. With this setup I am able to leave out of the FF what is carrying acoustically. I feel that doing this this way makes for a flexible system that has satisfied a lot of attendees, and bands. We are always getting compliment as to how good it sounds.

I don’t do clubs and when doing outdoor shows the attendance can vary a lot but they do spread out pretty far. I will guess when you get used to doing things this way you have a tendency to do it all of the time.

[John Roberts {JR}]

when designing mixers/consoles marketing wants all the features you can possibly squeeze in. Modern digital platforms can often support complexity beyond what many customers need but when trying to be all things to all people include a few too many.

It would be nice if consoles could be soft formatted to only present a logical feature set for a given market sector.

JR

[Helge A Bentsen]

I use a matrix on small system for L/R because on most desks the master meter is post master fader.
If gain creep is an issue, there is an easy way to monitor the master bus level if you keep the master fader at unity.

[Brian Jojade]

It would be nice if consoles could be soft formatted to only present a logical feature set for a given market sector.

JR

We're sort of starting to see that with some consoles now hiding certain features behind additional licensing fees.

As far as how to route stuff, it comes down to the engineer's preferences.  If for some reason you need to apply effects to a group of channels, well, using a sub group makes sense.  Not all engineers work that way.

Routing through matrixes may not be necessary for the small show, but if you're used to it being there on the larger shows, no harm done.

When the X32 came out, you HAD to use matrixes if you wanted to use the built in EQ, as the L/R output didn't have the correct filters available.  That's been changed in later versions.

[Tim Verhoeven]

But matrices? I can see no good reason for those in a typical club system.

I also do the smaller thing from time to time, but also the bigger things. I always uses matrices to setup the routing on a system.

Why, because I use the matrix as the separation between the mixing/art part of doing sound versus the system tech/science part. Tuning the PA happens on the matrices (some system EQ, delay between tops and subs, ...), even for smaller systems I usually do a quick Smaart measurement. It takes 5-10 minutes and next to my ears and some reference music it helps in getting the system easier to mix on.

In these small settings I usually don't use groups and VCA's, because like you said, you are most of the time mixing the acoustic sound coming of the stage with things you put in the PA. So you need more fine grained control in those type of situations.

[Erik Jerde]

I’ve used the matrix on a x32 in this sort of situation when there was no system crossover or DSP.  The matrix has crossover filters so I was able to do that on console.

[Jeff M Hague]

when designing mixers/consoles marketing wants all the features you can possibly squeeze in. Modern digital platforms can often support complexity beyond what many customers need but when trying to be all things to all people include a few too many.

It would be nice if consoles could be soft formatted to only present a logical feature set for a given market sector.

JR

I suspect a lot of it comes from integrators selling installs. They tout all the features the console supports so they kinda have to install it that way so the customer (who usually isn't a sound guy) feels like they are getting what they paid for.

[Jeff M Hague]

I setup the way you don’t like it all of the time. I use the Mix Bus sends as variable sub groups. And especially for vocals I do the gain before feedback EQing there. In the systems that I use the main speakers processing is done in a speaker DSP or in the power amps. And they are tuned for linearity, what goes in is what comes out.

I don’t use self-power speakers. I almost always use front fill (FF) speakers and with the Mix Bus sends for the different parts which the vocals are one of them and other thing being mixed in the sound system that then feeds into the matrix. With this setup I am able to leave out of the FF what is carrying acoustically. I feel that doing this this way makes for a flexible system that has satisfied a lot of attendees, and bands. We are always getting compliment as to how good it sounds.

I don’t do clubs and when doing outdoor shows the attendance can vary a lot but they do spread out pretty far. I will guess when you get used to doing things this way you have a tendency to do it all of the time.

I didn't say I don't like it per se, and there are definitely situations where it can and should be used.
What I don't like is the extra complexity when it isn't needed and house staff not even knowing about it.

[ProSoundWeb Community]