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I read the room acoustics article this week. I was interested in the title of this article because room acoustics is a good part of live sound and it is also something that I have not really gained a whole lot of knowledge with so far.

The article explains more of creating your own venue acoustics than how to help out the sounds at a venue that you may be touring to. Regardless, it was still interesting reading about how panels in a room can change sounds. It does state that at first clapping and observing the natural reverb of the room is a good way to start. I know I have been taught this and gone over a bit in many classes, but I have yet to really apply it. If the echo is longer than one second, then the intelligibility of the system is going to be affected. This is easy to understand, but what makes it hard for me to comprehend is what has to be done for each different type of venue whether it is indoor or outdoor or a large area or more of an architectural space. A tip that I accumulated from this article is the start by plotting out your system on paper for a venue.  By mapping out the speakers’ horns dispersion, it is easier to find out the reverberant angels. Usually stuff like this is difficult for me to tackle because I can not figure out where to start, but now I have an idea of where.  Obviously cone filtering and phase cancelation will occur, but luckily with everything plotted out on paper it is must easier to figure out what is happening with the speakers’ sounds. I have noticed in almost every sound room at this school that the walls have some sort of silly panels hanging off walls and/or ceilings. The article explains further that panels can be placed in a room to help reduce comb filtering so they absorb more sound than bounce it off. Like I mentioned in a previous blog, it would really help get my mind wrap around this topic if different venues were available for us to listen to and do some room acoustics ear training. In the mean time, I can just focus on the different panels in rooms and get an idea from the positioning and distances from the loudspeakers.

While reading, I thought back to the venue back home I always go to. It is an outdoor pavilion but the covered area has three silly tee-pee like cones popping out of the top and one of each side (picture below if my description is terrible). I assume a dome cover would make a strange sound that bounces all over, but these cones must provide tunnels for sound keeping it more in control so it is more pleasing to the audience underneath (correct me if I am wrong).  Also our football stadium in downtown Houston has a retractable roof that gets opened when the sun disappears. I never really thought about it, but I am sure the announcer’s voice through the speakers all over the arena change.

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I read the FOH Online article about digitally steerable arrays (DSA). This particular article caught my eye because we have not messed with arrays much yet and they are quite interesting. These arrays are specifically designed more for aesthetics like in a church rather than at a rock show. It is interesting that some loudspeakers are designed greatly for look when sound and lifetime for the speakers are very important. The article says in order to increase intimacy between person on stage and audience is when audience hears more sound directly from speakers than reflections. I highly agree with this. I tend to like being as close to the front of the stage as possible at shows because I feel like I get the best sound, regardless of it being incredibly loud. Considering that it is very difficult and almost impossible to cut out all reflections from the loudspeakers, its important that the arrays have a very good acoustic output. I have noticed back at my last school when I had a class in a large auditorium that my professor reflected so much off the walls, and speakers were terribly surround sound, that it was hard to understand what he was saying. I feel as if the room had beautiful line arrays rigged low from the ceiling that the sound would be more direct and his voice would be very intelligible. But that is not going to happen.

As the article mentions a couple times, the DSAs are used mostly outside of loud music venues but more at houses of worship or theaters and theme parks. This makes sense considering the talent is most likely someone speaking and the audience needs to be able to understand them. These DSAs are said to be best at reducing room reflections and as well are designed to be nice to look at. The “S” in DSA stands for “steerable” because the arrays can be digitally programmed to have adjusted coverage angles and the acoustic output can be positioned at a certain section of a room without physically moving the cabinets. These would be neat to play with because it is an interesting concept. The key to reducing reflections is the angle of the cabinet. There are many types of loudspeakers that it gets confusing in my head at times. They mention that there are many DSAs where you can change the delay times and frequency responses on software rather than manually.

 Loudspeakers happen to be one of the rocky areas for me because of the many different types and things that go with a speaker, so this article was a fun one for me to read. At an Amway call I assisted/watched the rigging of the line arrays and it was very tedious and exciting. I think if the show production program had a class where we visited different venues with different architectural interiors and experimented with sounds from speakers, I would understand this topic a little more. But I am excited to lift the arrays in Live 1 soon and mess with the FOH board and getting the different sounds.

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I read Live Sound’s article on Adele’s tour and was very interested in what the mix engineers had to say about their own take on audio. FOH Engineer, McDonald, describes in detail how he mixes Adele’s voice and how he chose a special microphone that he believes suits her perfectly. He says “it’s smoky-smoky rich and R&B straight from the ‘60s… it pushes, really projects” about Adele’s voice, which is why he chose a SKM 500-965 G3 microphone for her. One of my weak points would have to be judging someone’s voice and pairing it with a microphone or plug in, it is reassuring that a lot of people are able to do that so maybe with practice I will be there someday. I found it strange that the crew rent their gear at every stop (so the article stated at first but I guess they kept a few things the same), rather than traveling with all the gear at once. I do not believe I would consider that (at the moment, at least), but it definitely is true that they are being kept on their feet and that makes it more exciting. I think for internal safety reasons, I would like to be working with the same equipment while I’m mixing for a new live audience each night. I love how the front of house mix engineer has his favorite board that he mixes on most of the time. He claims it to be small and portable, I kind of want it already. It is interesting to me that people have preferences to certain audio boards while at the end of the day; each board is technically doing the same thing just differently. He quotes “when you’re done, you just fold it up, carry it away under your arm, and everyone loves you” about his iLive-T112 console. I giggled while reading that and it makes me want to try out the T112, because it’s nice when “everyone loves you”.

An interesting phrase the monitor and front of house engineers said was “cruise controlling”. From what I believe, McDonald in house can control his and the monitor engineer, Campbell, gain structures from his T112. Campbell runs monitors on the exact same board, so I assume it is nice to work on the same boards and be able to patch the gains together. It would be cool to “cruise control” two boards in one of our labs at school.

Although I am not a huge fan of Adele’s music, I can still respect her to the sense that she is a very talented new woman singer, who is not your average star, physically. I always read or watch segments about her and how she is not a your typical female artist like Katy Perry or Alicia Keys, according to appearance. It is always nice having a raw and earthy female making their way to the top quickly without looking entirely perfect. Also I noticed that each touring crewmember listed is a male. It used to bother me that females, according to articles, do not tour often. Now it just makes me grin reading it, because hopefully in the future I can be one of those few female names on a touring crew.