Pro audio engineers, what is your trick to ensure customers can clearly hear each other (meaning doesn’t need to shout in close distance and can hear words clearly) while maintaining the sound is at club standard level, let’s say at least 110db
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Trick on club sound system
- Thread starter Mingtao1
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My experience has always been the crossover point first. Then eq. But I never really found anything on internet explaining why the crossover point make such a big difference. I was hoping someone here have the same experience and knows why
How big a room is it?
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Never really found this relevant to the trick I use. It can be as small as a 10 square meter vip room to a 5000 square meter main floor.
DVDdoug
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I'd say at 110dB "normal conversation" impossible. But bass doesn't mask voice frequencies as much as mid and high frequencies.
A lot of reverberation can make conversation difficult even without music so sound absorption may help.
If I was a club owner, I'd have separate rooms or room dividers so the customers have a choice if they want to be blasted or not, or if they want to be blasted only while on the dance floor.
During the year or so I ran a PA in some small clubs, I was always curious about the people who would drag a table directly in front of the speaker stack.
D
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Isn't it a case of smiley curve EQ? -Asking unknowingly.
Andysu
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most of those rubbish rooms are slap echo , i wouldn't even go near one to no day now with barge pole , why would i when i have pa cinema system
blaring top end its simple , look at the freq of voice conversation and then put mid or tweeters at rubbish playback eq so voice can be easily heard , no one really cares about these disco pa live , everyone is moving dancing around so not really listening now are they , they all yelling and drinking they don't care
blaring top end its simple , look at the freq of voice conversation and then put mid or tweeters at rubbish playback eq so voice can be easily heard , no one really cares about these disco pa live , everyone is moving dancing around so not really listening now are they , they all yelling and drinking they don't care
dasdoing
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just avoid direct sound in the talking areas. on the dancefloor this shouldn't be a consideration at all; makes no sense
ThatSoundsGood
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110db is not normal. It's incredibly loud. Most real shows average around 98-105 A weighted (which is still a pretty extreme difference). I think the key to everything in a club venue is keeping the volume down everywhere. Then only put instruments into the PA that need to be turned up. In smaller places, the guitar and bass amps are often loud enough and don't need to be in the PA. Same thing goes for most of the drums. The kick drum and maybe some toms would be the only thing from the drums that goes into the PA. Then, of course, you put some vocals, keys and other DI instruments in there. When mixing, if you can't hear something, maybe it's because something else is too loud. Work on turning down the loud things as much as turning up the quiet things. If you want people to be able to talk then you should be around 93-98db.
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93 dBA avg? You can't talk in 93 dB avg.
fpitas
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At least, your throat will get sore from screaming.
ThatSoundsGood
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I didn't say average and I am certainly aiming high here. I think there's a difference between having a restaurant/dinner level conversation and having a fairly loud club conversation with a rock band playing. None of it happens over 100db, but you can have a conversation in an arena when the band is at 93-95db, but that's a different venue and a different conversation level and a differently distributed sound system. It also depends on the act we're dealing with. When I started out, I mixed a lot of bands and acoustic acts in a little club. The acoustic acts could easily be 80-85db average. But if we have a full drum kit then you're at the mercy of the drummer because there's only so much you can do when people play loud. The PA can also be an issue. Many clubs are point source boxes and you don't have the advantage of distributing the sound evenly around it so there will inevitably be louder and quieter spots. So there are many factors.
Using line sources are essential for this effect. The problem is that if you want a certain SPL in the back of the intended dance area, you need to have a much higher SPL at the speaker level because the audio decays at 1/r^2. So maybe it’s OK to carry a conversation at the back of the room but not the front.
With line sources, your audio decays at 1/r and that means that the SPL closer to the speakers is less intense.
Look at the Bose F1 if this is a hobbyist level project or Meyer Sound if this is a commercial operation willing to invest large sums of money.
dasdoing
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wow, never heard of this one. would like to see it on the Kipple
They reviewed it with some nice measurements, but for whatever reason, I cannot access the article anymore. It's one of those fancy "digital magazine" presentations so I'm not sure if it's a problem with my browser or if it's no longer available for free. It wasn't that neutral, but I imagine you could EQ it.
dasdoing
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They reviewed it with some nice measurements, but for whatever reason, I cannot access the article anymore. It's one of those fancy "digital magazine" presentations so I'm not sure if it's a problem with my browser or if it's no longer available for free. It wasn't that neutral, but I imagine you could EQ it.
doesn't load for me either.
this guy made an RTA scan https://harvestofsound.com/2022-speaker-shootout-results/
it seems he should have left the 812 in full range mode
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