Dave Rat - How to EQ a Live Sound Reinforcement System - Some Tricks

Dave Rat describes how to EQ a live sound system and describes a simple method of achieving consist sound. What to EQ with the channel strips? What do you eq with the system graph?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Live
• Sound
• System
• EQ
• Equalize
• Headphones
• Denon
• D2000
• Shure
• SRH
• 840
• Mixing
• Board
• Red
• Hot
• Chili
• Peppers
• Blink
• 182
• Dave
• Rat
• Engineer
• Mix
• Microphone
• Console
• Audio
• Smaart
• Tune
• Processor
• Parametric
• Channel

[Bassmann315]

dude you're a god! you engineer rhcp frign one of the biggest bands in the world, u are an audio god to me!!!!!!!

[www73171]

@Bassmann315 Ha! well, I think primarily I am just an audio nerd and the Peppers do rock!

[lesPaullyboy]

Just wondering what songs you use as test music Dave? Different genre's that are closest to the band your mixing?.. or do you have a playlist you use almost every time?

[www73171]

@lesPaullyboy It varies a bit Ween "Baby Bitch" Dub Syndicate "Sychronizer" and other songs from the One Way System album, some Ratatat. I usually do a vocal oriented song, a low frequency Bass/Kick oriented song, a guitar and midrange song and then just something I like to hear that day.

[6sebastiancol]

Dave i got a question about the live setting up, is it from the main outs to the crossover to the amps and speakers and then you as a foh engineer controll the two main line arrays L/R and just use auxes for fx and in your main inserts the venue eq and main compressor?, then the monitor engineer controlls his auxes for the wedges and internal mixes for the band membes?, sorry for bothering you

[www73171]

@6sebastiancol exactly

[StradBandoMan]

LOVE your use of the word "Correct" in regards to the sound. Speakin' my language!

[GuitarOddysey]

I've listened very closely to your videos and tried to apply the concepts to a venue a work at. The sound was not good before but now we are making a series of recordings that will be released. The sound is so much better now, thank you thank you thank you for your excellent perspective!

[ab9957]

Years ago i had a guitarist playing through a Marshall half stack telling me he couldn't hear his guitar thru the monitors. I said "dude, you have a Marshall, that is your monitor!" Also, I don't mix any bands anymore where the drummer owns the PA, haha.

[chrisose]

@readerwriter

Small rooms are not the place to worry about pulling board tapes, unless you pull them from an alternate mix source. In a small room I only use phones to check for channel problems not for the mains mix. You have to 'ride the room' and use the FOH to balance and clarify whatever is hitting you from the stage.

It can also be helpful to get the artists to work with you instead of against you. A 10% reduction in stage volume can make all the different in the world.

[www73171]

@tomstokn Time aligning does help, especially in larger venues though I have no problem either way

[www73171]

@QAeternus Awesome!  Thank you!!

[www73171]

@readerwriter Depends on the headphones, PA volume and your ability to mentally factor out the club sound from the headphone sound. A bit of practice with some headphones that get loud and have good isolation should see positive results

[readerwriter]

Great video thanks Dave, my question would be - how well does this work in a small venue where you're dealing with a lot of direct sound from the stage. I've found headphones very limited in this situation as the headphones give you a little isolation to hear what's going on in a channel but then when you have the direct sound in the room you have like a third element in the eq puzzle - or am I just looking at this wrong.