How To NOT Tune A Sound System (Don't Make These Mistakes)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2024
- ►► Get my audio math survival spreadsheet found in my audio toolkit:
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00:24 - Go Into A Show Without A Plan
04:53 - Relying Too Heavily On A Plan
07:40 - Blast Your Favorite And Hack Away With A Graphic EQ
10:05 - Using a SINGLE Channel RTA
13:30 - Over-indexing On Measurements From FOH
15:15 - Using Your Target Curve As Gospel
19:30 - Expecting EQ To Solve Your Problems
Everyone’s got their own secret sauce to optimizing and tuning a sound system. Reference tracks that reveal everything about a rig, super fancy measurement microphones, foolproof target curves.
The truth is none of these tactics work without understanding the underlying principles that make them work. Most engineers have ZERO plan when tuning a rig. Zero. They may have some of the right tools and software, but no proven system to make it work.
That was me several years ago - unknowingly making mistake after mistake on high level shows. Today I’m going to share with you 7 ways to NOT tune a sound system, key mistakes to avoid when you’re both planning a show and in the field setting it up and tuning.
We'll answer:
- Why EQ is your LEAST powerful tool in system optimization
- How to use your reference tracks the right way
- Why FOH isn’t the holy grail for analyzer measurements
- What target curve you should use (and when to ignore it) - เพลง
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Lol I love your videos man!!! 2nd year as a “sound guy” as they call us. Grew up doing sound for my dads band at bar gigs with some small analog setups. Now I’m 27 working with sq5-6 on weddings, corporate events with a lot more stuff. You’re great. Love hearing the kids in the back lol I have a 3 month old
Great reasons for using several reference tracks. I’d never thought of it in terms of ear fatigue/familiarisation but I always use several, mainly because I’d get sick of hearing the same song for 15-20 minutes!
I now get regular eyerolls from common local crews when I put on my playlist. Even though it's a few different tunes, they're still the same ones :D
Thank you so much for this information Michael! Your tips are easy to understand! I have subscribed to your channel. Please keep sharing your experiences with us. Thanks again! :D
You're very welcome! I'm glad this was helpful to you. Definitely more videos to come.
I learned a lot from this video and gained a new perspective on system tuning. Thanks so much for the great content!
You're welcome!
Great knowledge and wonderfully explained. I didn't learn anything new here but still found it really useful and it reenforced so many things that I've learnt over my career and yet still make some f these mistakes now and again.. Thank you.
Thank you so much!
Just subscribed man. Thanks for these videos! You are doing an awesome job with all this info. Thanks again and keep bringing the goods man. Much appreciated!
Thanks a ton, man! That really means a lot.
Anything that was particularly helpful in this video? Or something I can expand on in another video?
Your production quality is just really good man, You are providing spreadsheets for us to use, you are providing us with real world examples and sharing with us your real world experience with gigs. You just seem to really have your shit together, it’s clear you are busting ass on these videos man. Just wanted to let you know that it is much appreciated. Thanks again.
Really, really appreciate the feedback, Tim. Much more to come!
Very helpful video. Thank you!
Awesome tips here!!!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for sharing this information! Do you happen to have a video on how to setup that tuning software for two channels measurements! Does that software can do two channels? Thank you for any help!
You're very welcome! And yes I do, check out the following link:
th-cam.com/video/8iwFjAmo8TM/w-d-xo.html
How do you use the sine sweep on the Open Sound Meter software to tune? Also if you can, can you make a video of time alignment?
Thanks
I am working with a nonprofit that recently bought a system from somebody locally as he wasn't using it as much anymore now that he retired and they wanted to do weekly concerts. Through talking with him beforehand it sounded like he didn't like to use presets, built everything up from scratch, would reset the board between shows, etc. that was not the case. The first show went terrible. it was my normal band they couldn't hear anything on stage, they were having trouble maintaining time because the upright bass was delayed ( well actually every input channel was delayed and outputs as well ). The mentality was all of this gets adjusted at the beginning of the show and no that's not what happened. Everything was mixed for a rock band but this was a bluegrass band all acoustic. He wasn't really happy because every instrument should've been plugged in from the acoustic guitar to the mandolin to the hundred year old banjo which surprisingly he did like after the fact. the only thing plugged in was the upright bass. There was no clarity in front of house and was not the sound that they wanted or normally have. Miscommunications ensued as I was supposed to be doing sound according to the band and the venue but instead was trying to help not having my opinion listened to and not having the prior communicated to me. I have since taken over the system and I have reset it because on the 3 or 4 times that I've done the sound for the next few shows at this venue I have lost count how many times I've tried to adjust some thing and had nothing happen, you would think moving a fader up would make some thing louder no not with his settings. Just about every bell, whistle & kitchen sink was turned on and adjusted. Because this was a virtual digital board with 32 channels it was programmed so he could have drums on the first eight of 16 channels in case they were plugged into the mixer or into the digital snake so eating up 8 channels of both the mixer and the snake. there was 4 channels of monitors each on the mixer and stagebox that were separate leaving 4 snake outputs not routable because there's only 16 buses but 4 of them have to be used for the effects and two of them have to be used for the mains leaving 10 buses total.
I went in and reset things so now there are six Monitor mixes and left + right and 6 mixes mirrored on both snake box and the mixer and technically with one switch in the routing configuration I could have another four monitor mixes at the mixer now.
Some of his EQ settings were pretty good so I've copied those out individually mostly drums and bass.
So I went into an open mic night not knowing what performers were going to play with a mixer set up for a rock band… What a long night as I couldn't take my eyes off the mixer as everything needed to be adjusted. Everything including the effects as they were all dialed in manually per channel and performer using the individual channel aux sends during the show, as all of the sends and returns we're set almost to Max and left there. So the way this mixer was set was always based off of the show the previous time nothing ever returned to zero or unity so you better hope that your band sounds relatively the same as the previous band and has no major changes between the lineup.
can you tune a subwoofer in terms of tonality with a graphic eq ? and is it the best practice to do ?
Michael - thanks for all the great content. I've learned a lot watching you but I struggle with some of the more advanced concepts especially when considering the physics / trig portions of explanations which, I believe is vital for truly understanding why/what is happening. Would you reccomend going back to college classes to truly get a grasp on these concepts? I've been mixing for over a decade - its all I do and I've really built a career of it - however, I want to take things further and deploy bigger/better rigs as my clients and their needs grow.
Hey, Nick. Great question. Like you mentioned there's a lot of physics / trig that underpins it all, but although on the surface it feels overwhelming I think you can start to slowly wade in without having to back to school.
At the risk of sounding salesy, my course, Making Sense of Sound, covers all the physics you need to know for this craft in a straightforward and linear way. Over 350 of my students have taken the course and have had great results. Spoiler alert, I may be running a sale tomorrow on it as well ; ) - www.producedbymkc.com/makingsenseofsound
Thanks for the great reply@@MichaelCurtisAudio
I've been eying your course ;)
If I can squeeze it tomorrow I will certainly snag it. I've learned a lot over the months watching. Thanks for everything Michael!
Hi, can you please let me know when you measure the sound response to trace against the target trace curve, are you using A-Weighted, C-Weighted or Z-Weighted? Thanks
I'm not using any weighting for my transfer function measurements.
good stuff
Thank you very much.
I had done most of those mistakes but EQ. the EQ in my rack is flat just use hi pass or low pas filters and limiters. I got to get me a 2 mic analyzer.👍
Getting comfortable and fluid with an analyzer is definitely a worthwhile investment.
I am currently binge watching a bunch of system tuning videos and one thing that you, and many others mention, is the need to take measurements from several different locations. I completely get that and am onboard with it, but from a purely practical perspective how is this done? After all you need to have a measurement mic plugged into your interface which is plugged into your laptop and you need to be plugged into the mixer at the same time.
How do you manage all these cables practically speaking? Sure in a smaller venue maybe you could just get a longer mic cable and that will cover the room, but with a larger rig you will surely run into issues if your mic cable is too long. As far as I can tell using dante and a long network cable from your laptop to a switch/the mixer might be a good way of handling this issue. How do you deal with it?
the roadmap it´s avaliable?
Hello michael, my name robin from india am a regular viewer is ur channel, all videos r very informative...I have small suggestion, If you slow down your speech speed little bit, will understand more..🥰
Thank you for that feedback! I do end up talking too fast when I'm explaining things. I'll make sure and keep that in mind.
@@MichaelCurtisAudio thank u🥰
Can u make a video of audio tool google sheet explanation of all calculation..
@@robint6234 It's in the works!
You can change the playback speed of the video in "settings" in the bottom right corner of the video player.
Micheal, I'm looking for an interface to take measurements in REW or Open Sound Meter, I'm just a hobbyist and can't really spend much on this project.
With that said, is the Steinberg UR12 a good interface to use for this? Where I live it costs nearly half the price of the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3.
I'm not crazy about the unbalanced outputs, but I think it'll work! Just make sure you've got a handle on the direct monitoring feature so you don't accidentally send your measurement mic to the PA : )
@@MichaelCurtisAudio Thank you for your response!
I'm only planing to use this to take measurements of my sound system at home.
I often see sound engineers use a dbx venue 360 or pa-2 with rta mic and the wizard button. It does seem to work well for tuning a system. What are your thoughts on using those?
In a very limited speaker setup they may have their place, but I've seen some pretty crazy processing applied by some in order to get the system response "flat".
My biggest hangup is that the algorithm only runs a single channel measurement, not a transfer function, so it doesn't know what's signal and what's noise. Is it the A/C in the background generating the 60Hz? Or the PA? What about floor bounces?
Secondly, it doesn't know which speaker zone the mic is in front of. If you have a left/right setup, then some delays, where do you put the mic? Does it know how to time align the mains?
I'm not trying to hate on folks who use this tool, but I just want audio engineers to understand the tool's validity and that I can only get you useful results in limited circumstances (the system having one or two speakers, small room).
@@MichaelCurtisAudio Yes I agree with you on that. They're okay for small venues but don't account for phaze or give you a true understanding of what's going on.
I own a pair of VENU360s. They're powerful and flexible system processors at the price point. You can change processing blocks to pretty much however you want them and the iPad and computer apps make this very easy and intuitive.
When I first got them, I ran a bunch of tests with the built in PA tuning wizard and I have to say, I didn't enjoy the results. I was using a Beyer MM1 at the time and the cal files show it's basically ruler flat where it matters, so I set the dbx input to "flat" rather than their mic setting.
Because of this initial finding, I've always used a separate rig to measure systems and my pair of VENU360s just to dial in any processing I deem necessary, and keep all of that separate from the mixing console. In this regard they work really well.
Whilst it's primarily for relatively small set ups as Michael alludes to, with two of them I have six analog inputs and 12 outputs - not too shabby and you can get quite creative with speaker systems with that number of in/outs.
how do you open your doors?
I love that it looks like you have blocked the doors - presumably so your daughter cannot come in :D
I would "never" do that ; )
my first mistake was, i am too slow to tune it all for my bossman :( but i won t give up fighting for us audio engineers to let them tune our rigs. I wanne become faster.
people sell highclass PAs with multiple components and don t tune them is like selling ferrari in kindergarten…
Keep practicing and getting faster!