Changes.

[Enzo]

I live in the small town of Mason near Lansing, Michigan. This past weekend was the annual Sundried Festival here.

https://sundriedfestival.org/

Downtown is roped off, we set up two stages and alternate between them all day with bands. There are food trucks, kiddee rides, and other vendors. Honest to god small town America.

I retired a while back and am no longer on the scene. But I still know people. So I wandered downtown - Two blocks from the home here. The bands all sounded pretty good. I hung back at the sound station for the main stage a while. My former business partner usually does sound for the festival, but not this year.

I use to be pretty good on a mix desk, but the industry has moved along. MY old partner had a up to date system. it is all digital with soft controls. I'd have to learn anew. One thing I dig is the wifi snake.,, A unit on stage takes all the mics and other sends, then wifi at the desk takes the channels. YAY, why have a 100 foot cable? Or if you do, it can just be a USB cable. The mixer has a channel strip basically, and you assign it to whatever channel you are dealing with. Instead of a couple thousand knobs...

You can look into it, I am not going for a sales pitch.

SO Root Doctor finished their set - blues band been around forever. Guitarist Bill Malone came over to say hello, he assured me the Bassman I had overhauled in the past was still his main amp and running strong. I haven't seen my clients in a couple years. As they were loading off Showdown was loading on, and I know most of them, so I hung out front to say hi when anyone got a moment. I asked Tony the guitarist if all those buttons on the floor were controlling the lights. He said, "NO". Joe the bassist said hello. Steve the drummer was busy and distracted, I got no chance to chat.

I watched set up for a while, but I was tired, they were the closers. I had to wander home. Halfway there I walked into the brewery and bellied up for a pint. I deserved it.

I miss the old scene. Good to see the local guys still at it. I am in my 70s, those guys are 40s to 50s..

But the bands all sounded good, so I leave the scene to the next generation in good hands.

[The Dude]

IMO, digital consoles are a great thing- for many reasons. You no longer have to carry around racks of outboard processing, it's easier to roll up a cat 5 cable than an analog snake, you can save preset mixes (great for multi-band shows), etc., etc. One of the downsides is that if you still have FOH processing and analog mixers to sell, you're gonna lose your tail. Nobody wants the stuff any more.

[Leo_Gnardo]

One of the downsides is that if you still have FOH processing and analog mixers to sell, you're gonna lose your tail. Nobody wants the stuff any more.

True that, for most of the old-school gear. A local studio near me picked up an early-2000's Midas FOH mixer, one of the big ones with a jillion knobs & buttons, for only $1000. Original price somewhere near 100 grand. And the seller threw in another just like it gratis, because he needed room in his warehouse. OTOH some classic outboard items like Pultec EQ's still fetch serious moolah.

[galaxiex]

Great story.

The last gig we did, we hired a Pro sound guy after having "issues" at the previous gig, and the guy that did our sound. (Oh yeah, I can handle it.... NOT... he was a DJ... )

Anyway, on our last gig the Pro sound guy brought in a digital system (don't ask me for details, I don't know)...
... and we never sounded better.

The monitors, the FOH mix, everything was excellent!
We could all hear each other on stage,
and audience feedback on the sound was great. (our playing may have been a different matter tho... )

[Enzo]

Oh, my buddy is a pro, and his sound was great. I looked at it all as what might my learning curve be to get up to speed. I am old school and would be happy on a board with 60 channel strips and each strip has five band EQ with sweeps and a bunch of auxes and a pile of subs and a knob for each end every thing. It may be a thousand knobs, but I know what they all do.

These digital ones have a channel strip, and you pop a button to assign it to a channel. Twiddle it for that channel and punch it out, your settings are stored and you move the strip to some other channel. Eve that is over simplified, there are a lot of other functions, like graphic EQ on each channel, or other processing. All very understandable, just would take getting used to for a guy like me who hasn't run a mix desk in decades.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Oh, my buddy is a pro, and his sound was great. I looked at it all as what might my learning curve be to get up to speed. I am old school and would be happy on a board with 60 channel strips and each strip has five band EQ with sweeps and a bunch of auxes and a pile of subs and a knob for each end every thing. It may be a thousand knobs, but I know what they all do.

These digital ones have a channel strip, and you pop a button to assign it to a channel. Twiddle it for that channel and punch it out, your settings are stored and you move the strip to some other channel. Eve that is over simplified, there are a lot of other functions, like graphic EQ on each channel, or other processing. All very understandable, just would take getting used to for a guy like me who hasn't run a mix desk in decades.

I still favor the old school consoles for the reason you can instantly grab the knob you need if you need say a little more bass in the drummer's monitor or help the vocal ride over the rest of the mix. Digital consoles are very powerful in terms of signal processing ability but it takes a bit of extra time to bring up the appropriate channel when you need to make a change right this instant, say a mic is squeeking and has to be dipped tout suite. Some expensive digital mixers have a control surface with what looks like a standard say 24 channel mixer - but is really just a very fancy mouse. With these you keep the channels most likely to need dynamic adjustment as the show progresses ready to hand. If that's what is needed, better be prepared to spend the shekels, they ain't cheap like the one-channel-at-a-time mixers.

[Enzo]

I think a lot of that is being used to what we are used to. Ther are VU for each channel, and if you need to get on a channel fast, tap-tap quick as a bunny and there you are.

And yes, the console may have 16 or 24 faders, so leave them set for the mics likely to feed back or change. I really shouldn't have to adjust the drum mics or instrument mics much on the fly.


That is a big pro mixer. But I am also interested in digital mixers that are basically mic input and then a iPad or similar runs as the board. Touch screen faders. You can walk around the room with your control panel in your hand. When I was touring running sound, I liked to roam the house to check my mix, make sure it made sense. It would have been great to walk around with mixer in hand.

[The Dude]

Another advantage is that you can, on most digital mixers, save your mix on a USB stick. That makes for much quicker sound checks. Just pop in your stick, load the mix, and you're pretty much ready to go, of course usually with some minor tweaks for the system and/or room. We carry our own mixer, but our sound man has several mixes saved to a USB stick for several popular consoles, in case we have to use what's there. It's much quicker than starting from scratch every time.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Another advantage is that you can, on most digital mixers, save your mix on a USB stick.

Wasn't aware of that feature. Very handy!

Just pop in your stick,

I'll save that part for the groupies. Do they still have groupies? In the digital age they're busy faffing with their smarty phones, gotta check farcebook, do some thumb typing, that's what's important.

[nevetslab]

While I too am old school and at home with full-size consoles, being able to leave the sound booth out in the audience and walk the theatre with an I-pad that has the active mix right there with you, being able to continue fine-tuning the mix is just awsome. Everyone on stage that wants them have in-ear monitors, and if enough are set up that way, the acoustic gain before feedback is a lot higher, and far less resonant. What is available in the digital realm is truly awsome. I guess if digital sampling rates ever get up into the low-to-mid MHz range, I'll be even more convinced.

For those bands and old-school folk who are willing to move the brute-force heavy gear and not have the flexibility of what full-on digital offers, there are just amazing deals out there, as we saw earlier with the Midas boards mentioned earlier in the thread.

[Enzo]

These things are not cheap, so maybe the big boys don't want the analog stuff at any price, there is still a market for it. Small bands that want to move up from the PV XR600 say. A Behringer PMH3000 or 5000 has the dual DFX and several auxes and subs, I'd have killed for a board like that in the days of Vocal Masters. As it was, on 1970 my crappy ARB system made me envy the guys who DID have Vocal Masters. Obviously a bar band from Mason has no need for 60 channels of huge Yamaha or Crest mixer.

That said, the bands I know who were at this local fest are working pros and have indeed invested in good quality current model stuff. For the festival, a pro sound company is hired each year.

[Enzo]

Walking the house is interesting. Audience members would never notice - unless they were in this business - but you can easily hear the phase cancellations as you walk across the sound field.

[Mark Hammer]

True. A few years ago, I picked up a Tascam M216 16-channel board and a Tascam 38 8-channel recorder for $50 from a local guy who had "gone digital".

[Mark Hammer]

In town, we have a festival (Bluesfest) that takes place downtown, with a few very large stages in addition to smaller ones. People who live several blocks away will often complain about the loudness. It strikes me that their complaints likely stem from the long wavelengths of the deep low end, which the guys at the mixing desk, a mere 100yds away, can't hear. Being able to walk the perimeter, or even outside the venue, measure the spectral content of what folks in those areas might hear, and adjust spectral content based on THAT rather than what you might hear as an audience-member, strikes me as a very sensible thing.

[Leo_Gnardo]

People who live several blocks away will often complain about the loudness.

There are some people who complain if they hear any music at all. Spoilsports! One summer day I was doing sound for a firehouse party way out in the boonies. Everybody was there including the mayor, having a fine time. Until - about 4:30 PM the complaint rang in from his least favorite constituent, a woman of "a certain age" - very advanced I take it - over a mile away. She "heard something" and wanted it stopped right now! Apparently the mayor had some run-ins with this one before. Don't even bother to turn down, he said. Here's your pay, pack up and go, party over. Except for some nice quiet beer drinking with the firemen and their guests on into the night.