Live Sound Engineering Tutor?

[KeefParticipant]

For tutoring, Howard Williams at Base Sound in Stroud may be able to help and he has QU gear as well.

https://www.basesound.co.uk

[coffee_kingParticipant]

Hi Keef
Thats looks great. I’ll get in touch with them.

[DavidParticipant]

Sorry for the thread resurrection, but just in case anyone looks again, I can thoroughly recommend Howard at Basesound.

I am in the same boat as the OP, in that I play guitar and run the sound for the band I play in. I have been doing this pretty much by trial and error and what I could find on YouTube and other online resources.

I have just been on the 2 day course and it was very informative and I learnt a lot. He initially teaches everything on an old analogue desk as it is easier to understand the routing etc and then moved on to demonstrate the same things on a Qu-24. It was this that made me take the plunge and buy a Qu-16 (which, hopefully, I will pick up tomorrow). I have then also booked myself a 1 to 1 session with him to delve into the Qu-16 in more depth.

[Dr. JParticipant]

I got into mixing because every gig I played (guitar player here) people would say I sure wish I could hear your guitar or why does it sound so harsh…..etc…. I eventually got fed up and purchased my own system and dedicated years of learning how to run it correctly.

I had a few wise guys hook up a graphic EQ on the Main Out and for hours have their head buried in the thing NOT paying attention to the band.

My thoughts were “Was is this piece of gear that deserves so much attention? Why does this sound system DEPEND on the EQ… I very quickly decided I hated graphic EQ’ and they cannot possible be the answer to good sound…. Man was my hunch correct…

My point here is that your system has many components and there could be multiple things going on…. Does every piece of gear do what it is supposed to do? Have you verified that the Polarity on every cable, every speaker is correct? A positive impulse on a Positive terminal causes the speaker to move forward?

When your drummer hits his kick – does the sub woofer actually move forward? Not talking about cardioid or multiple speakers systems here where inverted polarity is the exception….

Is your gain structure correct? So when your mixer approaches the clip point every other piece of gear in the chain approaches the clip point?

Do you know what the frequency response of your system? If you don’t know what the frequency response of your system is – how are you going to know what to do with it?

Are the tops and subs time aligned? Is the crossover set correctly?

When you walk up to your mixer you are going to want music to be coming through the PA to sound decent and intelligence with NO EQ on the music channel engaged. If it doesn’t sound good that way – then you will have to go to your MAIN EQ and make some changes…

If the system is set up correctly – all you have to account for when the system is taken into a room is what the room did to the system… Go to the Main EQ and make the changes. Once that is done – you can then begin to mix on the channels.

I hope this makes sense…. You cannot mix your way out of a poorly set up sound system.

Dave Rat has a great video on how to do this… I recommend you watch and give this a try… I do it all the time with great success… However, I first learned to set up systems correctly through Rational Acoustics….. SMAART program. That way when I did mix – I had a great canvas to work with.

[RoyParticipant]

Here’s another shout out for Howard at Base Sound. Had a 121 session with him on Thursday and found it incredibly useful. It’s great to know that you’re doing at least some things right, and equally important to get pro insight into the things you could be doing a lot better (or even wrong!). Howard is patient, very professional and understands what you’re looking to get out of the session – he listens. Can’t recommend him highly enough.

https://www.basesound.co.uk

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