Drifting and Grounding

Getting a grasp on a consistent sonic footprint that you will present to each new audience is one of the most difficult and overlooked aspects of being a sound engineer. How, amongst all these variables do you as an engineer find that grounding point that you can carry with you ever day, from show to show? How can you avoid being oblivious that you are subjecting that thirtieth audience to a mix that sounds like broken glass and razor blades? This article is about using a few fairly simple methods that can help engineers avoid drifting away and getting lost in the sonic landscape of misperception. Having reference points is extremely useful for identifying, locking on and preventing a mix from tonally drifting over the course of a tour or even throughout the show. As sound engineers, our ears are our primary source of info and just one of our five basic senses. Since smell is highly unlikely to be useful in all but the most extreme situations, and we don't have the time to really run around tasting the equipment, we are left with our eyes, hands and the ability to compare to the past to help us out. (Editor’s note: ROTFLOL!)

Land Marks

Some people use their voice, some use a CD and others use pink noise and some sort sophisticated test equipment such as SMAART, SIMM or an RTA. From a sound engineer’s perspective, there are several dilemmas and obstacles in the real world. As I already mentioned, our hearing can be inconsistent over time for numerous reasons, and using your voice or a CD is perception based and therefore typically inconsistent over time. Using an RTA, SMAART or SIM can be a consistent non-perception-based system, but it is quite often impractical due to situations beyond your control and I have yet to use a measurement system that provides consistently usable results without touching up using your ears. Often you don't get the opportunity to play your test CD, let alone subject 30,000 people to you saying "Check one, two" or pink noise for 15 minutes, while you tune. So simply put, all you need is a trustworthy, repeatable reference point that you can easily carry with you and utilize anywhere, anytime with out affecting the show and gives you enough info to get a perfect mix, even without ever putting a single instrument through the system.

Remembering is hard, copying is easy!

Rather than try and remember the sound you are looking for, and hope your ears are honest, there is an easier more dependable way. If you only had a small sound system with an accurate tonal balance already dialed up to compare to, you could A/B the two systems and adjust the big system to sound similar to the little one. All you need is an accurate pair of sealed ear headphones and a CD that sounds similar to the mix you wish to achieve. Though most headphones wont do much for you in the very low frequency region, a decent pair will give you a very usable reference point for from 100 hz or so on up. Using your headphones as a real time comparative reference, play the CD through the system while the CD is cue'd up in the headphones and EQ the sound system to sound like the headphones. If your CD of choice is relatively well balanced and mixed and you have done a reasonable job of copying the sound, you should end up with a surprisingly good system EQ.

What EQ’s What

One way to look at it is, think of the system EQ as the tool you use to compensate and bring the venue/system combination to a "correct" tonal balance. Think of your channel EQ's as the tools you use to bring the instrument/mic combination to your “desired” tonal balance. If done properly, the mix buss of your console should carry signal that is somewhat close in tonal balance to prerecorded music. Therefore CD's should sound good through the system with no channel EQ. An offshoot of this that I use in festivals that I am unable to play my preferred CD is to just use whatever house music is being played as my comparative reference in my headphones and EQ the system on the spot with no disruption to the event. The beauty of this is that if your ears are dull, both the headphones and system will sound dull and you should still be able to match them up and also you become aware that your ears are dull by that overwhelming desire to crank up the HF EQ on the CD.