I agree. I think the general motto should be *'If it sounds good to you,
then it sounds good to you.'*
I'd like to share an experience I had over the summer. I work for a
mid-size production company in central Minnesota. We have a small line
array system (8 cells aside/50,000 watts), and for the summer concert
series we do, we had guest sound engineers mixing the bands.
Now, the line array is a bit of a beast. It takes time and a careful
touch to get everything set up and sounding good. Our general method is
simply using the ears - play a CD, set the crossover, walk around, set
the main EQ, walk around, and finally notch problematic spots in the
spectrum. Most of the time, though, the beast is tamed and it sounds
pretty damn good.
The first band of the season had a guy fresh out of music school. Their
engineer played two tracks, one to set the EQ the way he liked, and one
to see where the limits of the system were. He was done in ten minutes,
and the show sounded fantastic.
The second band of the season was a former 'A' list rocker, currently
in the "Where Are They Now" file. Their engineer played a some music,
told me to turn down the horns by half, and took 30 minutes to get
things in shape. After the show, he was screaming and vowing to never
work with us again. "I couldn't get the vocals over the mix!" ("That's
because you turned the horns down by half. Guess where the carrying
power is in a line array?") He hated our system.
The fourth band was a recently popular swing group. (The gig was moved
inside due to weather.) He played two tracks, then *got out his
computer and diagnotic mic.* I was told to turn the subs down by 20db,
and to turn up the high mids by 15db *because that's what the little
graph on his laptop was showing him*. I had serious misgivings, but
hey, I'm just the system tech. After that ONE reading, he played half a
song and walked away. The show sounded great...in one spot in the arena.
It was painful and awful nearly everywhere else.
I'm coming to the point. What did I learn from this?
1. Our hearing varies greatly from person to person. Classic Rock
Soundguy heard our PA much differently than I did. So did several other
acts. What sounds good to one person isn't necessarily goign to sound
exactly the same (or good, or bad) to another person. Our ears are not
precisely the same, nor have they been treated the same.
There are many days I wish I could see frequency response charts of my
hearing, and compare them to people I work with.
2. Diagnostic equipment is a starting place, and nothing more. In my
opinion and experience, it is a foundation to be built upon, not the
endpoint of evaluation. If Swing Group Soundguy was going to rely so
heavily on his pretty bar graph, he should have taken 5 more readings
in the room and averaged them, and THEN gone back and played 3 more
songs and -listened-. Some author wrote -Writing about music is like
dancing about architecture.-He meant it in a different way, but I think
its applicable to this situation: Swing Guy was using his eyes to
listen.
3. Context, context, context. The line array sounds different every
time we're outside. Wind and humidity actually make a huge difference
in how it sounds. Having a crowd in front of it changes how it sounds.
Likewise, think of the differences room treatments make in how your
home systems sound. How do measuring instruments account for the drapes
in your home? The unpainted drywall in your garage? Anywhere else you've
put a sound system?
4. The importance of knowing the sound of a certain album, or two or
three tracks of a mix CD. I have a mix I take with me everywhere I go,
and I listen to it on every possible combination of equipment. It's my
belief that I know exactly how they sound, and that is my diagnostic
tool when I calibrate or evaluate a sound system. Since I know so
specifically how 'Gaslighting Abby' by Steely Dan and 'Cut Chemist
Suite' by Ozomatli and ..., I can take that CD anywhere and say, "This
is how your system is different from my system."
Where we get lost in all this is saying -my system sounds better than
your system-. Wrong. It sounds *different*. Whether that difference is
good or bad is in the ear of the beholder.
--
flattop100
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