Room accoustics blues

[Jezza]

I'd like to know how you guys feel about the need to play with your rig as a reference only onstage or do you tend to play the room?

 

Sometimes it sounds like their so much noise happenning from all the different sounds onstage combined with foldback, the sound from the PA, you have to crank right up to be heard.

 

I find it frustrating that outdoors, where there's like total dissapation, you can play softer and acheive such a good tone, but in rooms with concrete stages and rotten accoustics, bass sounds seem to disappear?

 

Is it just me or can others relate to this?

[462]

If you've good a good PA and a reliable person running it all you can do is try to sound good from where you're standing, and hope the sound guy knows whats he's doing. There's really no was to avoid the bad room blues, but try and bring a friend to check how you sound from the audiance standpoint and let you know if you need a cut/boost anywhere.

[MattC]

You can never determine your room siund from on stage. Have somebody check it for you, as was mentioned.

[abaguer]

I learned early on that getting a nice deep round sound on stage isn't a good way to be heard out in the room. You usually have to have a bit more high end onstage than you would ideally like but out front it will cut better. Duck Dunn said in an interview how he hated recording in the Stax studios because they always wanted him to turn up the treble where it sounded bad to him, but in the playback it sounded great and round because it sat in the band mix really well. I always ask others in the audience (I always ask a fellow bassist if he happens to be there) how it sounds in the band mix.