Archive for System Configuration
The IEM missing piece
This one goes in the category of why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Last time I wrote about the improvements to our IEM system that have come from implementing a new transmitter/receiver combo and some additional ear piece options. The problem with adding more wireless into an already congested environment is a higher probability of failure. I’ve personally managed to avoid Murphy’s Law when it comes to IEM for a long time but I realize it was only a matter of time before someone’s system failed during a service and we’d be in big trouble.
Enter Sidefills. A friend spent a couple services with me post-Christmas and suggested that what we were missing was a good holistic stereo mix that will fill in the missing pieces when someone pulls an ear out and also provide some added energy to the first couple rows that might be a tad light from the PA over their heads. It seemed like a good idea.
In my past life as a monitor engineer, sidefills were an important part of getting a great onstage sound since I worked with lots of vocal groups who would often times only wear 1 ear anyway. For some reason, I never even considered it at KCC since our old PA already put energy everywhere except where I really wanted it – the prospect of adding an additional full-range sound source was unappealing. However, in the new reality of a controlled PA without a ton of stage spill, it seemed possible this might just work.
Work it does. I have a set of EAW KF300s that have been unused for a while. I put them on top of the subs, about 5 feet off the ground, pointed in towards center stage. Stereo mix gives more clarity & separation than mono, add some EQ to smooth out the rough edges of the boxes themselves, and add a few milliseconds of delay to the PA so the clusters in the air are in relative time alignment with the sidefills and the result is really good. I’m feeding these boxes from FOH subgroups so they essentially get a rebalanced FOH post fader mix. The mix is split up to rhythm, band, and vocals. Using this approach keeps them specifically music-focused – playback and speech mics stay out of them.
We still keep a set of wedges on the front row for lead vocal monitors. The addition of the sidefills allows the vocal to literally be surrounded by themselves – just a touch of vocal in those front wedges pulls the singer’s image forward. Needing less band in those front wedges reduces mud heard at FOH since the sidefills are actually working with and as a part of the PA rather than against it. I find myself putting 100% vocal in them, 80 or 90% band, and 60% rhythm (since the acoustic kit on stage adds its own ambient sound).
If you mix on a primarily IEM stage as I am and haven’t revisited sidefills in a while, this experience enthusiastically suggests they’re worth a try.
IEM Update
We’ve had a few updates & upgrades that have significantly benefited IEMs and figured this would be a good place to start getting back into this post the past few crazy months. So here we go…
First, a few weeks before Christmas we were finally able to upgrade from wired IEMs driven from a headphone amp to Sennheiser EW300G3’s. The difference has been awesome in a few ways. First, the sonic quality of the 300s is nothing short of amazing. The low end is tight, the top end natural. When paired up with a good set of ear pieces, I’ve been blown away by the mixes some of our guys are dialing in. Second, not being tied to the IEM wired cable has made a big difference in the comfort level of our artists. Often times we had to be very careful in how the service was programmed to make sure artists had ample time to get on stage, plug in their ears, put on guitars, tune, etc. If something went wrong plugging in their ears or they accidentally pulled the cable out, we were in trouble. Along with using more wireless instruments (I’ll write about this soon), the result has been a much smoother & more polished presentation.
We purchased 4 transmitters & 6 receiver beltpacks. For the majority of things we do, we will use the 4 transmitters/beltpacks, along with our existing PSM600 and 2 wired mixes for keys & drums. With some extra beltpacks for the 300s and our PSM600, we can easily expand by adding a few more mono mixes the few times a year they are needed. It is so hard to justify extra transmitters in a rack if they aren’t going to be used very often so this seems like a reasonable compromise.
A big surprise is how much some of our female artists enjoy the bundled Sennheiser ear bud – the IE4. The sound quality of the buds is probably on par with a Shure SCL3 or good set of iPod buds. What is appealing about them, though, is how well they seem to fit smaller ears. Our vocal director, who’s been wearing our generic Shure pieces for a year and a half or so, felt like these were the most comfortable thing and for the first time she can actually forget she’s wearing them. Definitely a good problem solver.
Another important piece of the puzzle is the addition of some Westone UM2’s to our inventory. After someone recommended trying them out, I’ve finally found something to make me give up my Future Sonics that I’ve had forever. These are the most comfortable universal fit I’ve ever worn and they are the first universal bud that I’ve heard with really natural midrange, which is really important for vocals & guitars. The Shures, Future Sonics, and Ultimate Ears I’ve heard all can sound really nice in the low and high ranges, but often times feel a little scooped, honky, or just otherwise unnatural in the midrange. The Westones seem to bring a lot of that presence back. Best of all, the Shure foamie’s I can purchase in bulk fit on these as well so its a win on all fronts. Adding Westone’s into the mix have brought 2 of our hold-out musicians into the IEM fold. Finally they feel like the guitar sound they hear in the ears feels like what it should actually sound like.
I’ve been really disappointed with the build quality of the Shure SCL3’s and 4’s so time will tell if the Westone’s can withstand heavy use.
So from a music team standpoint, we now have 100% of our band members transitioned to IEM. Next time I’m going to outline another addition to our monitoring system that feels like its filled in the missing link in the chain.
One last hurrah for the 650s
The last weekend on the KF650s had some extra drama. Only fitting, I guess.
For some reason I didn’t turn on the PA when I first arrived to prep for Saturday afternoon rehearsal. Normally I set up iTunes with some music while we work, but this day silence seemed like a better idea. Once the stage was set, I turned on the PA but we still didn’t put music through. Sitting at FOH programming the console for the day, I heard a strange pop come from the stage. It seemed like it might be from the PA but everything was still muted and I’d never heard a sound like this before. A few minutes later, it happened again but this time I was looking at the signal meters of the desk and didn’t see a blip. This time I became concerned that there might be a problem downstream of the desk and we went into troubleshooting mode.
Some iTunes music through the system revealed that the mid and low channels of the right side our tri-amp’d KF650s were not functioning. A visual inspection of the Macrotech 5002 amps showed that both the mid and low channel signal lights were remaining on, in IOC mode, but obviously not passing signal. After power cycling a time or two, we realized each amp would pass signal for 5 seconds or so and then set into the IOC mode.
At this point, we were less than 45 minutes away from the band arriving and trying to figure out how to salvage the weekend. Thankfully, God provided exactly what we needed. Kensington has an old Turbosound rig that we call our “Yellow Truck” system because it used to be the primary portable rig for off-site ministry events. Thankfully, the amp rack for that rig, which just so happens to include 2 Macrotech 3600 amps, was on site and 30 minutes later was patched in place of the 5002s having trouble. Catastrophe averted.
I’m not sure what lessons there are to learn from this. It is a total fluke that I didn’t run music earlier in the day as I normally would. If I had, we would have had twice as much time to come up with a solution. It seems the biggest reminder is to make sure backup plans are in place for as many components of your system as possible. What would you do if drivers were to blow during rehearsal/service, amplifiers don’t function, wireless microphones fail, etc? Anything can happen and the most important thing is to be prepared to adjust and keep the “show’ going.
I guess our good ol’ KF650s didn’t want to go out without a bang!
d&b DSP and amplifier plan
To wrap up this mini-series on the new d&b rig (if you missed any posts, be sure to go back through the past three for more info on what is going on), today’s post will focus on DSP & amplifiers.
On our old KF650 rig, DSP was extremely important. We used a BSS London BLU-80 to provide an insane amount of processing to the entire rig, essentially trying to polish it to a point of usability.
When we decided on going with d&b, a significant bonus to the system is the awesome amplifiers with built-in DSP for system processing. While some manufacturers lock down almost all system settings making it too difficult to customize the rig to the room, d&b has done a great job of creating a system with what I believe to be just the right amount of control to tune the room. Because of this, my goal was to have as little DSP as necessary to make the rig sound good.
Our signal chain now is a left/right feed from the console that hits the first system amplifier, then simply loops through to each of the other amps. The system is run full range from the console rather than aux fed subs so that the phase and spectral response of the PA as a whole will remain consistent from service to service and engineer to engineer.
Each amplifier channel has a 4 band fully parametric EQ & signal delay. The coolest part of the DSP, though, is a few other settings available that provide subtle ways to sculpt the rig artistically for different responses depending on what’s desired.
- The CPL (Coupling) circuit compensates for coupling effects between the cabinets. These effects increase as the length of the line array is extended. CPL begins gradually at 1 kHz, with the maximum attenuation below 400 Hz, providing a balanced frequency response when T10 cabinets are used in arrays of four or more. The function of the CPL circuit in these amplifiers can be set in dB attenuation values between –9 and 0, or a positive CPL value which creates an adjustable low frequency boost around 65 Hz (0 to +5 dB).
- The HFC (High Frequency Compensation) circuit compensates for loss of high frequency energy due to absorption in air when loudspeakers are used to cover far field listening positions. It’s almost like an “air” control that gives a few options for how open the high end responds.
The D6 and D12 amplifiers have three configurations for T10 cabinets, Line, Arc and PS (point source). The Line or Arc configurations are selected when the T10 loudspeaker is used as a line array. The chosen configuration will depend on the curvature of the array. The Line configuration is selected when groups of four or more T10 cabinets are coupled in a straight long throw array section, where the splay angles to adjacent cabinets are 0° to 2°. The Arc configuration is selected when T10 cabinets are used in curved array sections, where the splay angles to adjacent cabinets are 3° or more. Within a typical array both amplifier configurations are used. The PS configuration is selected when the T10 is used as a single spherical loudspeaker.
Wrapping up this section on DSP and amplifier control, I’m very impressed by the R1 software included with the amplifiers to provide remote control from FOH of the entire rig. Tuning functions such as EQ, delay, HFC, and CPL are all included, but the coolest function to me is a page we set up that shows the input level into the amps, the output level the amps are actually sending so you can visually see your system headroom, actual ohm loads on the amps, actual RMS output wattage, power supply voltage, gain reduction, and temperature warnings. The software is completely customizable so you can set up pages to show exactly what you want, how you would best like the information. Great stuff!
d&b subwoofer placement
Continuing this mini-series on our new PA at Kensington Troy, today we’re going to talk about subwoofers. This post might be a bit premature since we have not settled on the final quantity and location of the B2 subwoofers that provide the bottom end of the rig.
I must say, these subs have always been some of my favorite. They are very very tight and punchy, with what feels like headroom for days. Some subwoofers start to break up when pushed and “feel” like they’re being pushed. These B2s can run right up to the brink and actually sound better as they’re doing it. The result is a rig that feels like it has no limits! Pretty awesome to mix on, I must say! :)
From the ArrayCalc software, here is the predicted pattern of our initial configuration – 2 subs equally spaced on the stage deck approximately 40 feet apart.
This looks a little nastier on paper then it actually feels in context, but there is definitely some slight banding of the low end in this configuration. Another option that I think I want to try is 3 subs in a cardiod configuration flown over the center downstage position where our old center cluster used to live. Here’s its predicted response…
As you can see, there’s a big difference in how these two configurations will perform in the room. The jury is still out on which direction we will go. I’m hoping to try this soon with the boxes on the stage deck before we commit to the air and see how it translates compared to the equally spaced approach.
