Good Live Sound

[lanterns]

I have a gig tomorrow night. the sound at this club is acoustically great and the soundguy is cooperative.
now...
my band is a two-piece that has great songs. There's only two of us, though, and the sound tends to be all over the place as far as loud/soft goes. Is compression a viable effect in a live monitor situation? What other effects or reasonable requests would help make use of this excellent situation?

[boingoman]

A lot of singers like some reverb in their monitors. Sounds more natural to them.
If I have the wedges available, I like to use two wedges for each performer. I find it helps me keep the overall level down by making the sound "bigger" as opposed to just louder.

Dynamics on stage shouldn't be a problem with a good engineer. Dynamics are way more of a big deal in the house. When you are loud, your monitors will be loud. When you are quiet, there should be enough volume, especially with a two-piece. As far as quality, you just kind of have to accept that backing off the mic or singing really softly is going to affect the sound quality on stage, unless there is a dedicated monitor engineer to make eq adjustments as you change positions.

Compression is fine in live monitor use, in the hands of an experienced monitor person who can monitor the stage full-time. Mostly I use it to curb levels for speaker and hearing protection, not to enhance things for the performer. It's harder to keep down feedback if you squeeze things too much with a compressor. It seems compressors excel at sustaining whatever problem frequencies there are on stage.

[sile2001]

Originally Posted by boingoman

It seems compressors excel at sustaining whatever problem frequencies there are on stage.

That right there is the gospel truth. We run into that problem every week, as, for some unknown reason, the monitors are run through the same stereo compressor as the house system (house is in left channel, monitors in right).

[lanterns]

i guess i'm a little nervous. after a little thought about us only being the opening act, we're gonna be fine.

[boingoman]

How was your gig?

[earworm]

nice, i have expierience with very very small live PA stuff,
but from januari 2005 i'm gonna start working with a bigger setup,
for bigger 'clubs' or places,,,

most of the time i don't use monitors on stage, if there even is a stage,
yeah, i help underground bands with live performances in little youth clubs, means nothing, but its big fun,
now people are asking me for bigger shit, and the only thing i'm concerned about is: THE MONITORING

now,,,feedback problems due to compression in the monitors, interesting,
does that mean that its just better not to put any compression on the monitors at all?