Live Sound Aux Fed Sub "Trick"

[Dan]

In the interest of promoting discussion and the free-flow of ideas, here's a little thing I figured out recently that some of you have known for years, while the rest of you have no use for whatsoever.

I occasionally do live sound on an installed system with aux fed subs, a pretty decent processor, and a Yamaha MG-series board that's got some of the most useless eq's known to man. The mid band is pretty wide and doesn't go down low enough to clean up the mud in the low-mids, which, as you are aware, can be a problem at times. In this particular situation, I find that the problem often manifests itself on a digital keyboard/piano.

My solution (which is dependent upon the aux fed subs) is to kill the low band completely and then turn up the keyboard feed to the sub. The LPF in the processor channel feeding the sub is steeper and lower than the eq point on the mixer's low band eq. By turning down the lows on the board, I actually get rid of a bunch of the low mids, too. By turning up the aux send to the sub, I get back the low-lows, w/o the unwanted low-mids.

-Dan.

[seaneldon]

Okay, so...when do we start the "Move The Live Guy" forum?

Dan's first post and he's already trying to get banned.

Did you mean "HPF"?

[Mixwell]

You should move the mics on the digital piano.

[Dan]

Did you mean "HPF"?

No, there's a low-pass filter on the sub channel to filter out all the HF energy.

-Dan.

[seaneldon]

No, there's a low-pass filter on the sub channel to filter out all the HF energy.

-Dan.

Understood...I guess all the live guy speak caused my vision to go white.

[the shadow]

How does the Buttkicker get hooked up?

[Mixwell]

How does the Buttkicker get hooked up?

It attaches to your drum throne so you're ass can hear more of itself.

"More ass please?"

[Fletcher]

Dan, you're going to run into all kinds of phase distortion shit that way. I would be a better idea to run the keys full range and then add a bit into the sub while either having the player remove some of the offending lower mid shit from the keyboard patch or removing some of the offending lower mid shit from the system tuning.

You're always going to run into some timing problems with detached subs... which can make a kik drum shine [if you do it right] or can turn your low mids / lows into a time smeared ball of shite if you're not careful.

Peace.

[Dan]

I was concerned with the phase issues at first, but I tried it and it wound up not being a problem (or rather, is masked by other problems). In this particular space, it's physically impossible for the sub to be properly time-aligned with the tops for any but a few of the seats. The system's set up as single L & R top cabs running in dual-mono, with a single sub underneath the stage, downstage-center. The room is about 50x50x20 w/ a balcony and no acoustic treatment. Mix position is on the balcony.

I've tried to get the keyboard players to work on their patches & their arrangements, but with little success. This was the best trade-off I could come up with. :(

-Dan.

[level devil]

I've got this badass trick when it comes to LF mud in digital keyboards. Usually those things has a super effecive HP-filter in them. It's usually marked with "octave" or something like that with two buttons, a + (plus) and a - (minus).

If you hit the + a couple of times, all the LF problems are gone, instantly! Pure magic!

[seaneldon]

I've got this badass trick when it comes to LF mud in digital keyboards. Usually those things has a super effecive HP-filter in them. It's usually marked with "octave" or something like that with two buttons, a + (plus) and a - (minus).

If you hit the + a couple of times, all the LF problems are gone, instantly! Pure magic!

This made my day. Thank you.