For context, I've been a sound guy for 10 years, have been all over the place, and have worked with some amazing people, but all my work has been in small theaters, county fairs, etc working with mostly tribute bands playing to older folks who don't like volume. It's consistent, and it's great. I get to do what I love and make some money doing it.

Naturally, I've gotten really good at mixing quietly and getting the most out of little volume.

Thing is, I crave more. I crave kick drums that knock the wind out of you. I crave bass that rattles you to your core. I crave the adrenaline of a show so loud and powerful you have to spend the next day recovering.

What would you guys suggest? I've got the skills, I'm good at what I do, I just don't know what the next step is to break out of the circle I'm in.

Hey gang, thanks in advance for taking the time to read this.

I'm in a band that's about to do some shows this fall, and we have backing tracks. The band leader would like to have one mix for the audience and a separate mix for monitors, including a click track. He is using his Mac for this.

What's the most cost effective (yet reliable) way to send two mixes from his Mac- one for the mains and one for the monitors. He hasn't purchased his PA yet, and I'd imagine we will play a few shows that already have a PA.

Sorry for the ignorance, I've never done a setup like this before.

Thank you!

I’ve been a house engineer for a few years, I tend to know my stuff and do well working with others in that capacity. I’m used to hearing about how well my venue is run and how good my staff was. I just recently moved to Seattle from South Carolina and I can’t seem to understand how this town works. I’ve sent my resumes out to a few places, but often feel like I’m scabbing because I can never tell what venues are union houses and what are not, I’m in the process of joining the Local IATSE, but that’s a lengthy process and is very based on seniority. I still feel like I should be able to find some more consistent freelance work in and around the area. A lot of the production companies I’ve reached out to aren’t looking for people right now, and just emailing venues “hi I would like to work here pretty please” isn’t going very far. I know I can go hit up the local scene and pickup clients on my own, but that’s also a lengthy process and not really a reliable source of income. Doing sound and production has been my full time job for over 3 years so I’m not really looking for a huge career shift. Obviously I know that I can go on tour, and I have plenty of outlets there, but I prefer being a comfortable house guy, I like being a house guy that tours can feel happy about when they leave my space. I have connections and references that I should be utilizing, but I don’t want to feel crazy for trying to find a job using my own skills and resume. I guess what I’m asking is, does it ever feel like you’re a huge burden and like you’re assumed to be some really really dumb guy before you ever even work with people? I’m even willing to pickup stagehand work, and I really thought people were always at least looking for stagehands?!

I've run sound at a small mobile church for about 8 years now. The church meets at an older school. I've never had interference issues until the last 3 months, when the school changed the overhead tube lights to a bright white leds (like walking on the sun bright). Maybe coincidentally, maybe not, I've started getting tons of interference issues. Sometimes with IEM's, or wireless mics, or wireless guitar rigs. I've even turned every wireless unit off except one, and still get interference. I've rescanned and rescanned. I cannot figure out what is going on.

Except maybe the LEDs.

For the record, the church hasn't particularly grown recently. So no new signals there. Preacher doesn't get there till about 15 minutes before the service, so no real time to test. I only have access to the gear on Sunday morning before the service, so we're essentially throw and go. Can't really turn the lights off, as it's verrry dark without them. Using Shure PSM units and one Sennheiser EW300 G3 unit. All are in legal USA frequencies.

Am I crazy, or could the LEDs be the culprit.

New to live audio here,

Is owning my own mixing board and PA system the only real way to get a start as a wannabe live sound engineer? Do I just get the gear and start offering to do sound for friends and stuff? I’ve tried getting there thru working with stagehands in IATSE and etc. but it’s hard to break into the sound realm. And to even get any experience if you don’t know someone PERSONALLY seems difficult.

Finally got a Wing Compact after lots of backorder delays. Prepped it at the shop, worked great, and was really impressed by the features. First gig, and had a dead screen at load-in.

Luckily I had an m32r a few blocks away to save the gig, but pretty shocked at the QC/reliability. Back to Sweetwater it is.

Two questions First- can I use just any old bnc cable for the cable from the rack to the antenna on the Shure PA411 and Shure ULXD4Q?

Second- can I run two consoles using the same outs on the same Dante network but at different times. Use case would be having a user friendly TF for outside groups then having a DM7 for our staff.

Hey everyone,

I have a mac M4 and want to connect an RME MADIface USB. I have installed the drivekitdriver from the RME site, completed the process, activated RME under "allow in the background" and rebooted my mac.

In the fireface USB settings I can see the device. But i can't see the device in my mac sound settings, or in my DAW.

I have also repeated the driver installation process several times, on several days.

Does anyone have a solution?

Around here every venue has either Yamaha cl/ql or Allen Heath dlive so it would make a lot of sense to just travel with a usb and mics and still be able to start from the same showfile every day. Now the problem becomes console firmware and showfile compability. Would you carry the latest firmware on your usb and do the venue a favour and update their console upon arrival, or would you make a showfile for a really old firmware?

Had to push out in a few inches of slushy snow. I didn’t notice things wet when we loaded but sat in cold van for a week. This is what I got when turning it on next.

It turns on, and immediately reports a short, wondering if it worth attempting to fix. I don't know much about electronics, but pick things up rather fast and am fairly handy. Is it worth the effort or should I sell it for parts? I don't have a budget to buy anything as good as what I have (can't remember the exact model rn it's nothing crazy, just got it on a steal and it gave up on me) so if it could get to working it would be much more helpful.

A backyard show is too small to have an "office", so I guess this would have to be my "clipboard" from last Friday. Sometimes the old school is the right school. 250 cap (don't tell the FD). Dusty as heck. Great fun show.

Hey Reddit, My new band is jumping into the IEM world, and the singer and I are using a PSM300 transmitter with a pair of P3RA Receivers. My drummer uses a wired IEM, and my guitarist was using a XVive IEM, where the transmitter was hanging right off his mic stand.

The PSM300 was in our stage rack which has our snake and the X32 mixer. This was on stage right next to the drummer, I was stage left, just in front and to the left of the drummer. The singer was pretty much right in front of the rack box. The only other wireless we were running was 2 Sennheiser XS1 microphones, and the receiver was sitting on top of the rack.

I personally noticed some dropouts in my mix, which made it difficult to keep in time with the song. It wasn't long drop outs, but it was a stuttering, and during the 2nd set it got pretty bad. At one point I took the ears out and tried to listen using the PA, but since it was all in front of me, that was difficult. What would help prevent this? One thought is that in the future I should be on the same side of the stage as the mixer, but interested in any other suggestions. I am new to Wireless IEM. As far as I know, I was the only one affected by the drop outs.

Hi guys, quick question. I show up to a gig, smaller room, like 200 cap. I have an on stage IEM rack mounted system that accepts a 1/4” jack…

Does the sound tech hand me a 1/4” cable and I plug that in as if it were a stage wedge monitor and then we work on my monitor mix?

Just trying to figure out if I should mix my own monitors or how easy/hard it is for the tech to give me a mono signal and then run that mix as well as FOH.

Sorry if that’s dumb just trying to save money on a split snake and additional monitor mixer.

OR

would you recommend me buying the splitter and a mixer and doing it myself?

Hi yall,

I am working on a deployment where I’ve got three VLANs with Dante and/or AES67 traffic existing.

The first VLAN, is the general building Audio VLAN is and where all Q-Sys devices, and the main building’s Dante devices exist.

The second VLAN is the AVoIP devices - encoders, decoders, etc. This is where most of the AES67 traffic is.

The third VLAN is where the performance space’s Dante devices exist, as well as some Dante streams from decoders in this space in VLAN mode exist.

Currently, we have an AHM-16 that we’re using as a grandmaster clock. The way I have it set up currently is that it’s configured in redundancy mode, and its primary Dante card port is in the first VLAN, and the second Dante card port is in the second VLAN.

Both have separate IP spaces but have a /23 subnet (one is .184 and the other is .180)

I need this clock to be able to clock all of the VLANs. The idea was to have one port clock one VLAN and the other nic clock the other VLAN. The Q-Sys core that serves the performance space would then act as the boundary clock for the third VLAN.

Are you able to have the secondary port clock a VLAN like this as described?

It’s worked but every week or two, the network will go down for 10 minutes and return.

Very puzzled.

defeedback.ai https://www.defeedback.ai De-Feedback V1 - AlphaLabs

I'm curious, does anyone know how this antifeedback plug-in works? Does it work as well as they claim? Has anyone tried this?

Does anyone know of any (fairly reputable) companies/ studios/hire houses that do degree apprenticeships in sound engineering? My main goal is to do theatre, technical theatre, and in specific, lighting, but I'm going to keep my formal education broader to keep my future options open! UK based, but possibly willing to study abroad.

So I have a question about the compressor mode on the channel. I was curious if anyone else feels that the mode are as follows Hard=VCA Adaptive=FET Creative=OPT Vintage=Tube Thoughts anyone?? Or I am overthinking it? I can not find any literature that defines the modes. The manual is a bit vague IMO. Thx.

Please forgive me in advance for any mistakes, English is not my mother tongue :)

For a current project, I need to accommodate both in-ear monitoring and wireless receivers for microphones and instruments within a 19-inch rack. The wireless receivers run via a splitter, the in-ears via a combiner. There is also a WiFi router in the rack (with detachable antennas if necessary)

What is the best way to position my antennas? I would use two paddles for the receivers, pointing towards the stage (the rack is at the side of the stage). How should I proceed with in-ear and WiFi? I know that it's not ideal to have everything close together, but unfortunately there's no other way and I'm now looking for the best possible option.

My idea would have been to also use a paddle for the in-ears and to position this so that it is mounted in front of the paddles for the receivers so that they are at the zero point of the in-ear paddle. Would that work?

There is still the question of how best to proceed with the WiFi...

Oh yes, the following frequency ranges:

in-ear: 470-500 MHz

Wireless receiver: between 520 and 620 MHz

WLAN: 2.4 and 5 GHz

I am grateful for any advice :)

Hi, someone mentioned that I powered down the rack differently to how he was told by the house tech Is there a difference between power down tops mids subs over subs mids tops? Cheers

Hi, how could I go about placing amps to avoid reduce non purposeful feedback resulting from high gain guitars? In situations where cabs are already low in level and mic'd

Ive previously been placing them for the musician to hear themselves but I am running into this problem more than I'd like

Before COVID killed all live music I was working DJ and theater gigs. It was a blast. I was trying to go full time at a couple of places and then it all disappeared. Well, coming out of it I ended up in broadcast. I ended up becoming a broadcast engineer. But the industry is in shambles and I never cared for the news. All the IT stuff is boring and my recent job had me waiting for help desk tickets to change batteries on soap dispensers. Anyway, I'm done. I've considered full on career changes as well as going the AV route, but damn do I miss the fun of mixing live. At this point I'm a bit rusty, but I had plenty of experience with midas and Yamaha back in the day. Playing around with the stations audio board was the most fun I had as an engineer at the TV stations. I was thinking of taking a few cruise contacts to build up a resume again and see the world for a bit, but I wanted to know how reasonable a thing it is to even consider. Would I be better off going for a degree in acoustics or going for av design or install work? I'd love to travel, but tours may be a long way off for me. I appreciate any advice.

I've got 46 mic'd cast for a musical, sharing 4 Shure SLXD, 4 Shure BLX, 2 ULX and 12 Sound Town Neso-U4, all with a bunch of $18 lavs. Show budgets are amazing!

No more marketplace for me! Bought a pair of these subs 10 years old from a "church." Returned one as it was faulty and kept the other one but in the middle of rehearsal it turned off an the red light came on. I'm hoping I just stressed it out by the configuration (mixer/input/through) and by running the stand alone top straight from the main it would be ok. When people say save your money and buy something decent they're not lying. Even the Tops I bought off marketplace and one of them was faulty. Both times apparently "That's never happened before." Stupid people like me seem to need repeated lessons. Next time I have money I'm going straight for an DXS18 brand new with 7 year warranty.

I have been pondering ways to really test latency from air moving at the source to air moving at the driver.

I will be working on new gear to plan an upgrade path to AVB Milan and wanted to track my progress as I go, and am looking for a true measurement solution.

I have an NTi XL2, and figure the Minirator Pro is the next logical step, but does anyone know of any other products out there to do it?