Regarding Live Sound Techs Wanting Control

08-09-2006, 09:43 PM

The more control available to FOH (and monitors), the better. It's not about being a control freak per se, but rather about the fact that controlling the sound is my job. When a show sounds like month-old moose muck, the guy who gets blamed is the dude standing behind the FOH console - and it's not always his fault!

Just a few days ago, I heard a metal band dialing in their stage sound at a level that (had the FOH engineer not said anything) would have made it impossible for what looked and sounded like a decently set-up and powered Dynacord something-or-other rig to blast over. (Maybe it might have been able to blast over it, but at an insane volume with the vocal mic feeding back all the time.)

The bottom line is that gain isn't infinite, nor do microphones possess any intelligence of their own. The best tuned system in the world still has a gain before feedback wall, and an upper limit to its output power. No matter what mic you use, if the "wash" is still very loud compared to the "source" (at the mic's vantage point), the mic is going to reproduce a signal with lots of wash.

Control is important.

Addendum: (Since this post was originally submitted, I've decided that I am indeed a control freak, and I'm very proud of it - because that's how I get my job done.)