barefoot said:
Lt. Bob
This is very interesting from the perspective of someone like myself who is trying to develop a line speakers geared towards very high fidelity, small venue sound reinforcement.
What would you say is most often the reason for this? The audience distributed far to sides of the stage in a single room? Multiple rooms? Other?
Thanks!
Thomas
Hmmmm.......well, I think all of the above and a few others too.
Disclaimer: Before I even make my observations I want to say that these are simply
my opinions and I'm not one of those who believes with a religious intensity that only
my way is right.
However, I have done the sound for most of my bands for over 30 years so I do have some experience with it and although I acknowledge that there are probably a few "old school" prejudices that we geezers tend to have, I've stayed pretty current as I play with 20 year olds in college clubs so I've had to keep up. Whew!
OK....well, some clubs put the stage in bad spots such as a corner which is often a problem even if the room is shaped ok.
Then there are rooms that are shaped oddly or have, as you said, multiple spaces.
Also, I commonly see clubs where the stage is set so that you are facing only a part of the club which means that the is gonna be a substantial portion of the club that's off to the far side on one of the speakers, these guys will tend to only hear whats coming out of the speaker closest to them.
And even in rectangular rooms, you often end up with people standing outside your speakers which, again, will cause them to really only hear one speaker.
Now, I'd
love to hear your 5.1 set-up as I am an audiophile (vinyl) and I love good sound. I saw ELP in Quad and it was wonderful.
Also, I think the suround thing would work easier in some ways than stereo 'cause it surrounds the audience and that seems easier to implement. I'm just saying that with mono, I don't have to strain my brain trying to get it dialed in right.....to a large degree, I can turn it on and it sounds fine.....easy is good for me.
I don't want to sound lazy but man.....I'm carrying; and hooking up and running, the PA, the lights, my saxaphone and a guitar rig with 10 pedals plus in my duo, all the sequences and the singing.......I just don't want the slightest extra thing to do.
And since I hear lots of bands whose sound is 'challenged' shall we say anyway, they'll have an easier time in mono.
And Music4all...............if your mixer doesn't have a mono sum,.....you can just use the left or right output.....just pick one. I would probably leave my pan centered though. It'll work fine and the pots sometimes get wierd or noisy at their extremes.