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2020/08/11 at 11:49 am #93994
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2020/08/11 at 11:55 am #93995if you mean you have to adapt the volume in the room to the level meter in the QU
then ok… do it with your brainit’s loud enough at -3dB on the meter of the QU here you go… go with everything to -3dB
and set a master limiter at -3dB and leave the master fader at 0That’s more or less what the Drawmer units I mentioned do.
2020/08/11 at 3:25 pm #93997What if there’s a loud guitar (or whatever) on stage?
You turn that channel down don’t you. Now that signal’s not contributing as much to the sound going through the desk, so the desk’s metering will be lower.
So do you now turn up the levels on the desk to maintain your desired level? No! So this built in meter is useless.
You need to measure SPL with a mic in the room, as what’s going through the desk is never everything that’s contributing to sound levels.
For rough guidance, there are some cheap/free phone apps that are pretty good, and basic sound level meters don’t cost a lot.
(For anybody in UK, and possibly beyond, Lidl have some for £10 at the moment, though I don’t know if they’re any good)
2020/08/11 at 3:40 pm #93998Better to do it with a meter than wing it with our brain.
Every volounteer seems to have a brain that sets the levels differently.
2020/08/11 at 3:45 pm #93999Our metering would be at the LR out to the power amp showing dBFS level.
The power amp is fixed.
The dBSPL would be where the audience is.
The LR dBFS would be a combination of all mikes in use.Some performers can be so loud acoustically that I have no way to lower them effectively.
And usually there is no need to do that. The normal situation for us is usually to raise low level orators/singers.And on some occasions they have their own amp/speakers on stage which we cannot control.
The piano mikes are pretty well set and they perform quite consistently.
The Organ is acoustic with its own sound and is usually the loudest sound when the organist cranks it up.Perfection is not possible. But we would like to do the best we can do ourselves and do it consistently.
2020/08/11 at 3:49 pm #94000@ioTon
We also feed AM/FM and livestream distributors.
LUFS indirectly has to do with the acoustic environment when people complain that things are too loud/ too soft.
Not a perfect solution but narrowing that DR to help placate both groups seems like a reasonable goal.2020/08/11 at 3:52 pm #94001@SteffenR
Awww… Gee…..
That is the nicest thing you said. You actually implied I had a brain.
<< what you mean with “match”
if you mean you have to adapt the volume in the room to the level meter in the QU
then ok… do it with your brain
it’s loud enough at -3dB on the meter of the QU here you go… go with everything to -3dB
and set a master limiter at -3dB and leave the master fader at 0 >>It is not as easy as you make it sound. We have used a handheld meter and it helps.
But it would still be better to automate it.Eventually AI will automate everything making our jobs essentially redundant and unneeded.
2020/08/11 at 4:02 pm #94002@Voluneer
So there are loud things that are not going through the desk, meaning any metering through the desk will not directly relate to how loud it sounds in the room.
When your organist plays a solo piece you’ll have you meters reading nothing!
2020/08/11 at 5:45 pm #94003Acoustic loud things are the exception. And the usual problem is the orator with too much DR.
Normally everything just goes from the mikes through the mixer and later to LR AM/FM and streaming.
AM/FM is on a 30 sec delay from that PC getting our mix. Not sure why the streaming guys did that.*IF* there is an acoustic exception then normally the LR is fine for the audience although we could lower it if not;
and we need to, we could adjust the mix feeding AM/FM and livestream. Normally they are monitoring it and would ask us to make changes to the mix. Perhaps that is what the 30 second delay is for that they built in.Perfection is not possible but we do want to make speech intelligibility better and more consistent.
Except for the organ being a bit too loud at times, and sometimes a singer being too quiet, the music is not a significant issue for us. Can’t do anything to the organ(ist) , and we can raise the faders on singers.And on the side another group is trying to improve hearing assist methods for those with hearing aids or just hearing loss without using an in ear device. But those are not our focus, rather we want to improve understanding of speech for the majority of those with ‘normal’ hearing, which considering the typical age is less now then when they were kids.
2020/08/12 at 10:22 am #94024“Eventually AI will automate everything making our jobs essentially redundant and unneeded.“
Well, that’s a strange thing to want! You know if you don’t like the job, you could just stop doing it!
I don’t believe that AI will be anywhere near as good as a reasonably competent human (for this job) many years, if ever.
For an easy life, replace the humans on stage with pre recorded music, and have a computer read the sermons etc. That technology already exists!
2020/08/12 at 12:29 pm #94036Well, that’s a strange thing to want! You know if you don’t like the job, you could just stop doing it!
I don’t believe that AI will be anywhere near as good as a reasonably competent human (for this job) many years, if ever.
For an easy life, replace the humans on stage with pre recorded music, and have a computer read the sermons etc. That technology already exists!
“He” posted another reference to AI on the SQ forum a while back. I got a laugh at that
as well.2020/08/12 at 2:18 pm #94039I do not want that!
Just telling you what the future holds for our kids.
And is starting to impact us today.It will take a while , and it will not be that good for a longer time, but it is coming.
Recorded music made a big dent in live performances but has not killed them — yet.
Internet and digital ruined business for artists, writers, photograpers, musicians, ….
When it is so cheap and easy then every thinks they can do it and make big money too.
Only when everybody is doing it then nobody makes minimum wage and the little bit of good stuff is hidden in the mass of crud being produced.Anyway AI is coming. Auto feedback suppressors was just the nose of the camel. Smaart and soon LUFs control type automation for DR and loudness will be here. It might take another law to speed it up but it will come and automate things.
2020/08/12 at 4:42 pm #94042AI may come, but don’t hold your breath. Some of the stuff you’ve mentioned recently exists only in your own imagination.
Companies with, I suspect, R&D budgets bigger than the that of entire events industry, have still not got speech recognition working that well, and any form of automatic musical analysis, or whatever you want to call it will be way more complicated. Will they ever perceive that there’s a market for it?
Technology, including AI, will continue to take over jobs that people don’t want to do, or that it can do better/faster/safer. But mixing sound is something 99% of us do because we enjoy it – we don’t want that part of the job taken away.
Personally I think the van will drive itself to the venue, and a robot may unload & stack the speakers for me (hurrah), long before the desk starts making intelligent decisions about the mix.
2020/08/12 at 9:34 pm #94046Not holding my breath. Too old to care.
But it *IS* coming. A LOT of it is already here. You just don’t realize it.
Speech recognition has come a long long way since the 70s when I saw it first.You are correct about will AH et al perceive a need for it.
History says they probably won’t until an upstart company has it cheaper better faster easier plus all the old capability and takes over the marketplace.
The vans should take longer. Too much risk of litigation and people being killed to get that in wide use for a hundred years or so. However there are companies selling mixing and mastering really cheap because they do it with computer programs that automate it all. They don’t own the entire market yet, but look at what has happened to studios. Digital and the internet killed them. Even stars have their own studios in their mansions. Every kid has his studio in his garage with more capability than the big labels had in the 80s. It is coming. Perhaps slow. But is *IS* coming.
As to intelligent decisions about the mix, from what I have experienced, louder is not better and the so called experts doing that mixing are not better than what could be automated today. See graf above where companies are selling mixing/mastering done by computer already. Add to that everybody with a DAW that is DIY with add on aps to help.
2020/08/13 at 12:45 am #94047Because this thread is now, as others, a more generic feature suggestion thread discussing AI, metering and other stuff I will introduce some additional feature requests
– solo/speech finisher
– handheld microphone placement optimizer
– room dereverberator
– motownizer
– frontman remover
– guitar de-amplifier
I think all of them should easy to integrate in such consoles as the QU 😉 -
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