EQ settings

[Greg C.]

Limited setup time.  That's typical for the venue.  Take some time at home and get your base setting flat.  You'll need a very dead room or put the speakers facing out of the garage.  RTA is the best answer, or a DriveRack, but you can get a very good baseline if your hearing isn't too damaged yet.  (I'm 60 and have hearing damage from my teen years.  That's why one of my first purchases was an RTA.)  Use that and save the settings on your mixer.  On a DriveRack the settings get saved on there, but then you have a flat system to run your mixer into and the DL is a pretty flat mixer.  (That helps a lot.)  I've found that if your system is already EQ'd flat, that most of the time, you can get away without any major changes in most rooms.  The closer you run to feedback the farther off the system will sound.  (DriveRacks also have anti-feedback and Electronic crossovers.  Things you might find useful.)

Beware the "auto-EQ" of the DriveRacks and similar processors. They are time-blind single input RTA based analyzers which don't account for room modes. I believe dbx even has a warning in the user guide about this. The bottom line is they can turn your room EQ into chop suey making things far worse than a flat setting. Only dual input FFT based RTAs can give accurate results system tuning and I'm not aware of any speaker processors that incorporate that function. Only external measurement packages like SMAART and Systune do. I've also yet to find a "feedback killer" that didn't cause issues. You're still better off learning how to ring out monitors & mains and then notching out problematic frequencies on the EQ.

[Wynnd]

That's one reason that I do my EQ settings outside my garage. It is great advice for people are unfamiliar with the drive rack units. Got to read the manual at least three or four times

[Greg C.]

That's one reason that I do my EQ settings outside my garage. It is great advice for people are unfamiliar with the drive rack units. Got to read the manual at least three or four times

Even in a garage and aiming the speakers out the door is a problem as a fair amount of energy in the lows/low mids radiates to the side and behind the speakers. The reflections of that energy recombining out of phase or even in phase will give inaccurate readings. Only wide open fields with no trees or boundaries will allow relatively accurate use of an old school RTA type setup. For most folks, dual input FFT analysis is still the only thing that will give usable measurements. But of course, using those types of measurement systems is no trivial matter and takes some learning and practice to understand what you're seeing.

[Wynnd]

I was setting up a functional baseline.  It's proved so useful, that normal volumes don't need anti-feedback to be set.  That said, I'm now playing with people who have no idea how loud we are or how to turn down for a good mix.  My life is now hell!

[stevegarris]

Peter
Are you using the HP filters on the individual channels?

As mentioned here, that will help you quickly eliminate the stage rumble. I use them on every channel except Kick, bass and keys. I typically tune my system bass heavy, but with these filters everything stays clean & punchy.

In many small ambient rooms, I've noticed that the stage sound is very heavy in low-mid and upper bass frequencies. My EQ will often have a little smily-face cut here, but to cut all frequencies on the 31 band by 2 db or more is sucking the life out of your PA.

[PeterKorg]

if your hearing isn't too damaged yet.  (I'm 60 and have hearing damage from my teen years.  That's why one of my first purchases was an RTA.)   

I have a bit of Tinnitus, I think that is from standing next to drum kit for too many years, but no too badly damaged,  I don't have DriveRack or RTA

I have bought the Octave App, so that may help.

[PeterKorg]

I run mine around the 3 o'clock position. I use very little main EQ typically.

I normally set them at 4 or 5 o'clock, so will try try that and generally the HP filters are not used

Many thanks

[sam.spoons]

I run mine around the 3 o'clock position. I use very little main EQ typically.

I normally set them at 4 or 5 o'clock, so will try try that and generally the HP filters are not used

Many thanks

You definitely need to use HPFs on all channels except kick, bass and keys. The low frequency mush that multiple mics pick up literally multiplies the problem. Solo each mic and listen on headphones (or on the main PA with everything else muted) while you increase the HPF frequency until you hear a change in the tone of the vocal/instrument then back it down a little, you'll be surprised how high you can set them before they affect the sound of the source. The next job is to set the gates on the drumkit close mics etc. The improvement in low frequency clarity you get from doing this correctly is huge.

HTH

[Sting]

What frequency do you guys generally set your HPF s,  let's say toms, vocals and guitars?  I generally set between 50-80 Hz.

[sam.spoons]

Last night (Kirsty Almeida & The Troubadours, not me mixing on the youtubes BTW but she's worth a look) I used Karma Silver Bullets on the toms (very live jazz kit) had the HPF at 61Hz (toms carry quite a lot of low frequency energy, the trick last night was to contain the overtones which I did by setting the mics about 4-5" from the heads rather than as close as possible and gating fairly aggressively. The Karma's are omni's which helps to avoid some proximity effect and gating controls the spill), similar on the backing vocals (Beta58s) but 134Hz on Kirsty's lead vocal (with my SE-H1, and sounding very nice indeed). It's surprising how high you can go with HPF on vox, guitars and the likes of drum overheads before it changes the sound of the source and anything you can keep out of the subs is welcome.

[walterw]

...generally the HP filters are not used

aah!

that's the number-one thing you gotta do. high-pass everything except kick and bass, maybe some low toms.

vox especially, run them puppies up to at least 100Hz, maybe higher. flatten out the channel EQ, talk into the mic and just start sliding the filter over until you hear the "woof" go away.

[PeterKorg]

Thanks guys for the advice, this certainly helped me out, had a play with the HPF and set them as recommended,

Set EQ flat,  I was getting a small amount of boom on Kick drum, just had to drop a couple of the frequencies at 100/125 thanks again,  have next gig on Friday, and we are setting up and sound checking the night before, so should a bit more time to mass about.

Cheers
Pete

[sam.spoons]

Yeah, I had a huge room resonance on the kick and double bass when the room filled up which required around a 6dB cut at 100 and 125 on the main graphic. I put that down to "room tuning" though so didn't mention it in answer to previous post.

[Sting]

Same here, 100Hz spike late in the show.  I actually narrowed the frequency down with RTA by Audio Tools running on the same iPad.  It was the first time I ever used it during a show.

[sam.spoons]

I have Faber Acoustical "Signal Scope" on my iPhone which helps confirm which frequencies are troublesome.... no substitute for ears though