Improving small venue sound

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Lotus Kid
  • Start date Start date
There's a thread for that in the newbies section of the forum ...
 
Ok, round two:

-looking at the couch from the stage
https://i.imgur.com/6ZiBqxY.jpg

-looking at the stage from the couch
https://i.imgur.com/4fOOLe9.jpg

-the stage. Plywood (not particle board or osb), no idea how thick. Hollow.
https://i.imgur.com/MCvzJWt.jpg

-the speakers
https://i.imgur.com/cw7onGb.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/m6VYqwp.jpg

-Foam tiles on the ceiling at the back of the stage. The only acoustic treatment in the room right now. Supposedly they help with cymbals.
https://i.imgur.com/UTBudca.jpg


The ceiling seems lower than it is, but there's another few feet of black wall above the moulding
https://i.imgur.com/HPe6ESY.jpg
 
Those speakers aren't suspended properly and probably aren't built to be suspended at all. That's a safety issue you should correct before opening to the public. I hesitate to comment further.
 
Those speakers aren't suspended properly and probably aren't built to be suspended at all. That's a safety issue you should correct before opening to the public. I hesitate to comment further.

By all means, comment further.

Like, what way is proper? What should i tell him on how to correct this?
Other unrelated thoughts?
 
By all means, comment further.

Like, what way is proper? What should i tell him on how to correct this?
Other unrelated thoughts?

Get speakers that are engineered with fly points and have them properly flown. I'm not qualified to say what is proper installation, but I've learned that chains around the handles and user installed eye-bolts on a cabinet not made to be flown is not acceptable. There are plenty of speaker options with fly points.

Aim the speakers to get the most sound on the listeners and the least on the walls. One method is to aim the tweeters at head height for the back row. I like to angle my mains in a fair bit (on stands). You're doing that somewhat, but they look to be a bit too far back relative to the front line of mics. I would bet you're getting feedback in the mains, especially at loud shows. If you look at the pictures the tweeters are visible from the microphones. Move the speakers (the new, flyable, ones) forward a couple of feet so you can't see the grills from stage.

The high ceiling can work in your favor. Possibly more of those panels you've got over the stage, as long as it's all safe material and installation. An array of bass traps could help.
 
What I have learned about setting up live gigs from when I have toured. I often had to set up a band in a room that was designed to be trendy, polished floors, no carpet, etc.

First thing we did was carpet the stage completely, I used to carry 3 rolls of carpet on tour, and hang a thick theatre black at the back and sides of the stage. These 2 things fixed up the sound in a big way, the stage carpet killed any noise from the floor being picked up in the mics and isolated them from the subs to some degree, the theatre black killed off the reflections from the foldback and reduced the slap from the stage that was an annoying number of milliseconds behind the sound that was directly pushing forward improving definition.

As this is an in-house set up, you could construct a broadband absorber/bass trapping behind the theatre black which could be as simple as 100 mm of rockwool and a barrier matt, similar to what is described here, I would also hang some ceiling clouds of rockwool about 100 mm thick above the dance floor. Please note that all suggested theatre blacks and clouds have to be fire rated and hung safely.

It would be nice to be able to do something with the side walls, but as people lean on them all the time it is probably not practical.

As suggested above, the PA needs to be hung correctly, if this falls on someone expect a big payout and a lot of bad karma. I would look at the front of house having a 12" and horn set up with a sub each side as it look like the front of house has a horn and 2x15" which is a bit over kill. Having better control over the bottom end with the subs should make it easier to clean up the sound because in a room this size you will mostly be try to get a good vocal sound from the PA.

Alan.
 
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