Hello and welcome to Tech Tip #13. Sound check is the time to dial things in and get it all sounding good so that when it’s show time, everything is set to go. For most of us, that is the Sunday morning run through before the celebration service. Often, band members will mention that it sounds muddy or boomy or echoey (is that a word?) and ask if there is anything that can be done to make it better. As a professional sound tech I have been dealing with this for the better part of 25 years and the science of this question has not changed in all that time. Here is what is happening. The empty Church or hall has very little absorption
co-efficient, which in acoustic terms is the amount of soft material in a room capable of ….. you guessed …………….. absorption. This is measured as a percentage. A room with all glass and hard surfaces would have a co-efficient of 0% while a room with many drapes and padded chairs and carpeting would have a very high percentage. This fact is so significant that Barbara Streisand once toured with 10,000 sq yards of carpet and drapery and used it in every arena that she performed a concert in. This was documented in a Mix magazine article a number of years ago. So what is the point of mentioning all this? The point is that you should not fret too much over the sound in an empty room when in a few hours it will be full of people.
Use your sound check to get the levels right and make sure all mics and instruments are working and trust that things will sound better with a room full of people. If you think about it, this is exactly what happens just about every time, we just don’t realize it. Of course there is a way to avoid all of this and that is to do what Suzanne and I do in our band 2Suite.
http:/radio3.cbc.ca/bands/2suite
2Suite use an in ear monitor system that gives us perfect sound every time no matter what room we are in. We are essentially creating our own “ personal acoustic space”
For those of you not quite ready to make that investment, the best advice I can give you is once you have sound checked and confirmed that all mics and instruments are working properly, try not to worry too much about the sound because in almost every case, a room full of people will improve the situation even in the worst case scenario. The moral of the story is that a padded room is the sound techs best friend, and sometimes when things get crazy (sound wise) I feel a padded room is definitely in my near future (just kidding) Take care and have a great weekend.
techtips@mts.net