Last night was the performance I feared. All the compromises I'd been forced into depended on certain things being true, and all of those things changed; leaving me in a place where the show sounded like ass and no amount of knob-twisting at FOH could save it.
I'm composing what may be a career-ending email. They think they need a Sound Operator. I think they need a Sound Designer, as well as a Sound Engineer. At the moment, they are blocking me from doing what a Designer does, meaning they are basically getting an Engineer for Operator's wages.
And, well, this gives me a chance to talk a little about roles and functions. Because that may be a little confusing to those new to the industry.
In some very small theaters, it actually does operate like it does in the excellent web comic Q to Q; the designers run their own shows. Well, except for sets -- Set Designers are rarely employed as the running crew for their own show!
For most of the industry, the jobs are broken out. The kinds of skills, experience, and maturity required of a designer is incompatible with the kind of wages, stipend, or volunteer nature required of the person who will be there on every performance.
In that construct, a Sound Designer is the person responsible for creating effects, making mic plots (often the Director and Stage Manager will take a hand in those as well), setting levels. The Sound Operator is the person who sits in the chair in the booth pressing "Go" on QLab, or out in the house at a Front-Of-House (FOH) mixing position mixing the show from night to night.
Both of these titles are show-related positions. Both are hired for the show, by the show; usually contract for the Sound Designer, contract or stipend for the Sound Operator (when they are not a volunteer or a student picking up lab hours). At a well-organized theater, there will often be a Master Electrician as well; this is a salaried employee (or a seasonal hire) who maintains the equipment.
In many cases, the ME is also responsible for lighting, including the schedule and hire of crews for hangs, focus, and strike, and doesn't spend a lot of time cleaning up the sound closet. In almost all cases, the system itself is a Contractor install, and was probably designed by a professional audio contractor. The sad reality to this being, as well, in many smaller theaters and particularly in schools and recreation departments and churches, the sound system is designed by people who do corporate sound, not theater sound. The systems do decently at reproducing rock and roll music at moderate to high levels, and very poorly at supporting musical theater.
In any case!
As you move up to bigger ponds, the food chain becomes longer as well. Whereas for a drawing-room comedy in a box set a mere "Sound Operator" will suffice for playing back effects (and in most budget-conscious theaters these days, the left hand of the Stage Manager is forced to suffice in this role) to actively balance the vocals on 20-40 wireless microphones the Sound Operator needs a bigger title.
Preference among us working stiffs is to use the same one used by the bigger world of live music; FOH (or Front-of-house mixer). And when the number of mics and the budget around them is sufficient, they start getting little fish of their own.
An "A2" is a catch-all audio assistant. (The A1 -- not that you ever hear the term -- is the FOH). The A2 lives backstage and deals with all the things the guy or gal stuck out in the middle of the audience can't. On a big music show the A2 will supervise a whole crew of mic-shifters. But back to the musical; in those, the A2's primary job is their alternate title; Mic Wrangler.
A good Mic Wrangler will hover over every quick-change, making sure the microphone survives the exchange of clothing and wig and the quick dab of fresh make-up. They will get instructions from the FOH or Stage Manager to swap out ailing microphones, tape up dangling wires, and they also have the unhappy task of pulling batteries and wiping the things down after every sweaty show. The really good ones have their ears open all the time, and will prophylactically change out suspect microphones before you even have an issue at the console.
Go a few steps more professional, and the crew increases again. Dialog Mixer (one person mixes the vocals on songs, the other mixes them on spoken material). Band Mixer. Monitor Mixer. Backline techs (people moving among the musicians keeping their equipment in working order. In the live music world, mixing band monitors is so important a task it is not just a different person than the FOH, it is often in a different location altogether -- Monitor Beach, often to the side of the stage for easier access.
But that's not theater. Maybe Broadway, but not the theater most of us see. We're basically lucky to get an A2, and good luck trying to crawl into a typical crowded pit to fix a keyboard issue or plug a mic back in.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
So You Want to Learn Sound
...and it looks like a lot of stuff to pick up, and things like my posts (although neither John Huntington nor Dave "The Rat" are exactly comfortable reading in that regard, either) are scaring you.
Don't be.
Like a lot of things, sound is easier than you think to do (and is harder than you think to do well).
It is an Art, a Science, Engineering, and a Craft. Not all of these have the same weight. At the very top, at the most basic, it is about achieving a desired aesthetic effect. In the words of the immortal Duke Ellington, "If it sounds good, it is good."
And, oh, but this is where the part that resembles Science comes in. Because the final measure is your ears. Because even if you've done reams of engineering analysis, applied tons of highly technical test equipments, and so on, the final tweak is by nothing more than your ears and your own sensitivities.
But...and here's the big "but," before you can apply your ears in this way you need to absorb a little piece of the Scientific Method. To wit, to acknowledge Feyman's Dictum, "You are the easiest person for you to fool."
It is this simple; using tools like the double-blind test is what separates an audio professional from the snake-oil salesmen and credulous consumers of certain "audiophile" magazines. All the measurements in the world won't tell you if the system "sounds good," but the best Golden Ears in the industry won't save you if you are only hearing what you want to (or expect to) hear.
That's why we measure, that's why we test, that's why we calculate. That's why a sound person walks around, moves their head, covers one ear. That's why you turn off the microphones every now and then to figure out what is actually in the sound system and what is actually in the room.
What separates the good sound person from every other person in the room with an opinion -- from the producer down to the guitarist's Significant Other -- is that you know not to trust your own impressions blindly. You've learned to test your assumptions.
This happens at every level, in every part of what you do with sound. Don't assume the power is cut off when you are tying in; apply a chicken stick before you apply bare flesh to a 220 bus. Don't assume the mics are where you placed them last night, or the speakers are still working, or the hiss is the air conditioning.
And don't assume your own particularized aesthetic reaction and baggage of associations hold true for every listener. For some people, the mere sound of a dentist's drill gives them the shakes. For one director I worked with, "Do You Believe in Magic" was the most romantic piece of music they knew. I personally don't listen to a lot of pop, and rarely pay attention to lyrics anyhow, but many people will chose a piece of transition music based on the words. Which of us is right? It depends on the audience, the production, the surrounding material. It has to be a conscious choice, in other words -- not the untested assumption that what you like, others like, and for the same reasons you like it.
And, yes, this is true of all art and true of all theatrical arts in particular. Because a Fine Artist can turn up their nose at the philistines who "don't get their intent" but in theater we have a duty to communicate to the audience. They don't need to hear your aesthetic interpretation of what a train really means -- they need to know the 12:04 is pulling into town with the gunmen on board.
And that's it. That's the most important part.
Listen. Test your assumptions. Test your hearing. Educate yourself. Experience as many different sounds and environments as you can, explore how sound is shaped by the environment, and discover how perception is shaped -- including your own.
Learn both what a gunshot really sounds like, and what an audience expects to hear. Personally move a microphone around and hear the changes this causes in the sound it is picking up. Stick your ears close to a musical instrument and hear the very different sounds from different distances and directions. Listen to a room, then look at what an RTA is showing you about the room. Make changes, rinse, repeat.
Understanding acoustics (and electronics, and power distribution, and rigging...) will come. That's the engineering part. If you are contracting for a $20K sound system install in a new building, you'd better be doing some math. But a lot of the gear you will encounter is designed to be operated by musicians and amateurs. Most of it will be installed, existing systems (small theaters, clubs, etc.) They may not work optimally, but they will work, and the engineering aspect of your job is largely confined to asking someone else how to turn the thing on.
In practical terms, 98% of this job is a craft. And it is a lousy craft, in that an absurd amount of what you find out you need to know can't be easily derived from first principles. So forget the underlying science, and largely ignore the engineering. It comes down to, more often than not, memorizing long lists of "SM57 works well on snare, is harsh on vocals (unless you are doing metal)" or "If it looks like a Speakon connector but is blue, it is probably a Powercon connector" or "Tip in, ring out, except on Panasonic -- like the old Ramsa board -- where ring is in and tip is out."
Which also sounds like a heck of a lot to digest. And it is, except no-one knows everything and everyone continues to learn, constantly. The trick is, learn the gear you have to hand. Make choices of established, well-parameterized gear when you purchase (there's a reason there are so many '57s out there; people know what they do and understand their peccadilloes.) Pretty soon you will collect a little box of frequently-used parts and tools.
They aren't optimized, and they won't always work, but where there's no time to be creative or to engineer you reach into the box. 57 on the snare, check (I have two standard positions I reach for all the time). 100hz roll-off and 1.7:1 compression with a 44 ms attack on the wireless mic (my standard starting position in many theaters). Track_04 wind from my second purchased sound effects CD for, well, pretty much everything. (Track_06 is nice for cold drafts, snowy scenes, and the like).
Lastly, and to recap, think like a scientist (always double-checking your assumptions, doing math if you can and where you can, using test instruments if you have them, and otherwise checking to see if what you think is happening is what really is happening).
But act like a musician. You are a performer, whether you are creating canned sound effects or mixing a show from FOH. Your choices are artistic and aesthetic and individual. Mics can be turned on and off from a script, but mixing a show is a performance -- and a good FOH performance adds as much to a show as a good trumpet solo.
Don't be.
Like a lot of things, sound is easier than you think to do (and is harder than you think to do well).
It is an Art, a Science, Engineering, and a Craft. Not all of these have the same weight. At the very top, at the most basic, it is about achieving a desired aesthetic effect. In the words of the immortal Duke Ellington, "If it sounds good, it is good."
And, oh, but this is where the part that resembles Science comes in. Because the final measure is your ears. Because even if you've done reams of engineering analysis, applied tons of highly technical test equipments, and so on, the final tweak is by nothing more than your ears and your own sensitivities.
But...and here's the big "but," before you can apply your ears in this way you need to absorb a little piece of the Scientific Method. To wit, to acknowledge Feyman's Dictum, "You are the easiest person for you to fool."
It is this simple; using tools like the double-blind test is what separates an audio professional from the snake-oil salesmen and credulous consumers of certain "audiophile" magazines. All the measurements in the world won't tell you if the system "sounds good," but the best Golden Ears in the industry won't save you if you are only hearing what you want to (or expect to) hear.
That's why we measure, that's why we test, that's why we calculate. That's why a sound person walks around, moves their head, covers one ear. That's why you turn off the microphones every now and then to figure out what is actually in the sound system and what is actually in the room.
What separates the good sound person from every other person in the room with an opinion -- from the producer down to the guitarist's Significant Other -- is that you know not to trust your own impressions blindly. You've learned to test your assumptions.
This happens at every level, in every part of what you do with sound. Don't assume the power is cut off when you are tying in; apply a chicken stick before you apply bare flesh to a 220 bus. Don't assume the mics are where you placed them last night, or the speakers are still working, or the hiss is the air conditioning.
And don't assume your own particularized aesthetic reaction and baggage of associations hold true for every listener. For some people, the mere sound of a dentist's drill gives them the shakes. For one director I worked with, "Do You Believe in Magic" was the most romantic piece of music they knew. I personally don't listen to a lot of pop, and rarely pay attention to lyrics anyhow, but many people will chose a piece of transition music based on the words. Which of us is right? It depends on the audience, the production, the surrounding material. It has to be a conscious choice, in other words -- not the untested assumption that what you like, others like, and for the same reasons you like it.
And, yes, this is true of all art and true of all theatrical arts in particular. Because a Fine Artist can turn up their nose at the philistines who "don't get their intent" but in theater we have a duty to communicate to the audience. They don't need to hear your aesthetic interpretation of what a train really means -- they need to know the 12:04 is pulling into town with the gunmen on board.
And that's it. That's the most important part.
Listen. Test your assumptions. Test your hearing. Educate yourself. Experience as many different sounds and environments as you can, explore how sound is shaped by the environment, and discover how perception is shaped -- including your own.
Learn both what a gunshot really sounds like, and what an audience expects to hear. Personally move a microphone around and hear the changes this causes in the sound it is picking up. Stick your ears close to a musical instrument and hear the very different sounds from different distances and directions. Listen to a room, then look at what an RTA is showing you about the room. Make changes, rinse, repeat.
Understanding acoustics (and electronics, and power distribution, and rigging...) will come. That's the engineering part. If you are contracting for a $20K sound system install in a new building, you'd better be doing some math. But a lot of the gear you will encounter is designed to be operated by musicians and amateurs. Most of it will be installed, existing systems (small theaters, clubs, etc.) They may not work optimally, but they will work, and the engineering aspect of your job is largely confined to asking someone else how to turn the thing on.
In practical terms, 98% of this job is a craft. And it is a lousy craft, in that an absurd amount of what you find out you need to know can't be easily derived from first principles. So forget the underlying science, and largely ignore the engineering. It comes down to, more often than not, memorizing long lists of "SM57 works well on snare, is harsh on vocals (unless you are doing metal)" or "If it looks like a Speakon connector but is blue, it is probably a Powercon connector" or "Tip in, ring out, except on Panasonic -- like the old Ramsa board -- where ring is in and tip is out."
Which also sounds like a heck of a lot to digest. And it is, except no-one knows everything and everyone continues to learn, constantly. The trick is, learn the gear you have to hand. Make choices of established, well-parameterized gear when you purchase (there's a reason there are so many '57s out there; people know what they do and understand their peccadilloes.) Pretty soon you will collect a little box of frequently-used parts and tools.
They aren't optimized, and they won't always work, but where there's no time to be creative or to engineer you reach into the box. 57 on the snare, check (I have two standard positions I reach for all the time). 100hz roll-off and 1.7:1 compression with a 44 ms attack on the wireless mic (my standard starting position in many theaters). Track_04 wind from my second purchased sound effects CD for, well, pretty much everything. (Track_06 is nice for cold drafts, snowy scenes, and the like).
Lastly, and to recap, think like a scientist (always double-checking your assumptions, doing math if you can and where you can, using test instruments if you have them, and otherwise checking to see if what you think is happening is what really is happening).
But act like a musician. You are a performer, whether you are creating canned sound effects or mixing a show from FOH. Your choices are artistic and aesthetic and individual. Mics can be turned on and off from a script, but mixing a show is a performance -- and a good FOH performance adds as much to a show as a good trumpet solo.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
The Mysterious Doctor Haas
I know, I've said -- and I believe -- that Directors, Producers, even many Musical Directors are unreachable not because they can't understand the underlying acoustics and psychoacoustics, and not even because they haven't realized that there are such underlying principles with very real (and dramatic) effects on the sound of a show, but because they are unable to make the cognitive leap to accepting that this matters; that acoustic realities don't go away just because you are ignorant about them.
If I believed differently, I think I would start by presenting one simple question:
"Have you heard of the Haas Effect?" (More commonly known these days as the Precedence Effect.) "More importantly, have you had the Haas Effect personally demonstrated to you in a controlled listening environment?"
IF for some reason the paradigm shifted and they were mentally open to noticing the cognitive gap, this question would provide the wedge.
Alas, that moment never happens. Conversations are always in the moment, about a specific issue, and framed and phrased in a top-down form. "The actors are complaining the side fill speakers aren't on. You need to turn them on."
Any attempt to explain that the issue is actually one of perception of sound sources; that if you modify the relative volumes or delays in order to bring those speakers into perceptual range, a different set of speakers will perceptually vanish and thus become potential target for the same complaint (as well as, of course, delivering less of what the actors actually need in an attempt to fix what they think is broken), it can only be seen in the frame of those discussions as a lame attempt to escape responsibility.
No matter what you say, what is heard will be, "I can't or won't fix the speakers because reversing the polarity of the transporter buffers or something...um, actually, because I'm lazy."
(Not an actual example, and the real ones are often less clear-cut. The way bass frequencies approach omnidirectional, meaning the rear of a full-range speaker is not "a place where no sound comes out," but, rather, a dangerous space full of extremely loud, muffled, time-delayed, low-end sound. As a for-instance. So, no, I don't care if your 500-watt keyboard monitor is pointed at the rest of the band. The audience is listening to it as well, and what they hear isn't good.)
If I believed differently, I think I would start by presenting one simple question:
"Have you heard of the Haas Effect?" (More commonly known these days as the Precedence Effect.) "More importantly, have you had the Haas Effect personally demonstrated to you in a controlled listening environment?"
IF for some reason the paradigm shifted and they were mentally open to noticing the cognitive gap, this question would provide the wedge.
Alas, that moment never happens. Conversations are always in the moment, about a specific issue, and framed and phrased in a top-down form. "The actors are complaining the side fill speakers aren't on. You need to turn them on."
Any attempt to explain that the issue is actually one of perception of sound sources; that if you modify the relative volumes or delays in order to bring those speakers into perceptual range, a different set of speakers will perceptually vanish and thus become potential target for the same complaint (as well as, of course, delivering less of what the actors actually need in an attempt to fix what they think is broken), it can only be seen in the frame of those discussions as a lame attempt to escape responsibility.
No matter what you say, what is heard will be, "I can't or won't fix the speakers because reversing the polarity of the transporter buffers or something...um, actually, because I'm lazy."
(Not an actual example, and the real ones are often less clear-cut. The way bass frequencies approach omnidirectional, meaning the rear of a full-range speaker is not "a place where no sound comes out," but, rather, a dangerous space full of extremely loud, muffled, time-delayed, low-end sound. As a for-instance. So, no, I don't care if your 500-watt keyboard monitor is pointed at the rest of the band. The audience is listening to it as well, and what they hear isn't good.)
Musical Paradox
I think I'm one step closer to understanding why there's never enough time to work music, and why I'm broke all the time.
Theater is a strange beast. Even at the regional level, a lot of people aren't making a living at it. They have day jobs. The difference is how it breaks down.
Actors (aside from a few Equity) get paid a stipend, or not at all. The schedule of rehearsals is organized around their need to get from their 9-to-5. What exactly they do during Tech Week, I'm not sure -- other than get no sleep, or use up some sick days.
Designers are in a worse cramp because their time commitment is over a shorter period, but has longer hours. Tech Week for a designer is not 6 pm till midnight, it can be 9 AM till 2 AM. The tendency seems to be for Lighting Designers to have part-time jobs in the business (often they are a part-time Master Electrician at some other theater; another frequent option is working for a rental company.) Flex-time is almost mandatory to make it possible to invest in the morning focus sessions, the daytime production meetings, and the all-night cue-setting sessions.
Set designers need to spend more time in drawing and in consulting with the shop as they build -- set design goes over a longer period. So more often set designers (and costume designers) are theater full-time. But because no show pays a living wage by itself, they are inevitably working more than one show at a time. What saves them is set design operates a lot more like a consultancy than does, say, lighting or Music Direction; the Set Designer doesn't have to be in the room for the entirety of tech.
A similar division exists in the labor; lighting techs (and running crews) work relatively limited evening shifts which are completely compatible with jobs, school, or even other designs. Techs are flexible parts; you don't need the same tech focusing a show that had been there last thursday hanging the show. Carpentry, on the other hand, takes place in the day and takes all day; set building tends to be freelancers who stick with a production over the 3-6 week build then move on to the next show (I did this for about ten years).
Musicians, then, become the odd bird. You would think that their calls (even shorter than actor's calls) would permit day jobs. But few musicians spend their working hours away from music. Most are doing music elsewhere -- often as not, teaching classes. This gives them the flex time they need to accommodate show calls: but it also puts them in a mindset where sub'ing is customary.
Since all the income a musician makes is by "service" (aka a set fee to sit down for a fixed number of hours and play) -- teaching classes, especially one-on-one, works out similarly -- they are very much not disposed towards arbitrarily adding hours. Quite the reverse; their financial viability depends on them being able to run from gig to gig and stuff as many into the available slots as they can.
And where does that leave me? Somehow, I seem to be caught with the worst of both worlds when it comes to hours. That comes from wearing two hats; as designer I need to be free to follow any arbitrary extensions to the schedule during tech, and as a performer I need to be there every evening -- and my call starts earlier and runs later than that of the actors, meaning it overlaps the traditional 9-to-5. The only work options that seem possible are flextime partime -- and it is best (because of the incredible impact on my load-in schedule caused by the arbitrary changes of others) that this part-time work have little in the way of set deadlines or mandatory friday meetings.
And this is still not the best economy to be looking for THAT understanding a job!
Theater is a strange beast. Even at the regional level, a lot of people aren't making a living at it. They have day jobs. The difference is how it breaks down.
Actors (aside from a few Equity) get paid a stipend, or not at all. The schedule of rehearsals is organized around their need to get from their 9-to-5. What exactly they do during Tech Week, I'm not sure -- other than get no sleep, or use up some sick days.
Designers are in a worse cramp because their time commitment is over a shorter period, but has longer hours. Tech Week for a designer is not 6 pm till midnight, it can be 9 AM till 2 AM. The tendency seems to be for Lighting Designers to have part-time jobs in the business (often they are a part-time Master Electrician at some other theater; another frequent option is working for a rental company.) Flex-time is almost mandatory to make it possible to invest in the morning focus sessions, the daytime production meetings, and the all-night cue-setting sessions.
Set designers need to spend more time in drawing and in consulting with the shop as they build -- set design goes over a longer period. So more often set designers (and costume designers) are theater full-time. But because no show pays a living wage by itself, they are inevitably working more than one show at a time. What saves them is set design operates a lot more like a consultancy than does, say, lighting or Music Direction; the Set Designer doesn't have to be in the room for the entirety of tech.
A similar division exists in the labor; lighting techs (and running crews) work relatively limited evening shifts which are completely compatible with jobs, school, or even other designs. Techs are flexible parts; you don't need the same tech focusing a show that had been there last thursday hanging the show. Carpentry, on the other hand, takes place in the day and takes all day; set building tends to be freelancers who stick with a production over the 3-6 week build then move on to the next show (I did this for about ten years).
Musicians, then, become the odd bird. You would think that their calls (even shorter than actor's calls) would permit day jobs. But few musicians spend their working hours away from music. Most are doing music elsewhere -- often as not, teaching classes. This gives them the flex time they need to accommodate show calls: but it also puts them in a mindset where sub'ing is customary.
Since all the income a musician makes is by "service" (aka a set fee to sit down for a fixed number of hours and play) -- teaching classes, especially one-on-one, works out similarly -- they are very much not disposed towards arbitrarily adding hours. Quite the reverse; their financial viability depends on them being able to run from gig to gig and stuff as many into the available slots as they can.
And where does that leave me? Somehow, I seem to be caught with the worst of both worlds when it comes to hours. That comes from wearing two hats; as designer I need to be free to follow any arbitrary extensions to the schedule during tech, and as a performer I need to be there every evening -- and my call starts earlier and runs later than that of the actors, meaning it overlaps the traditional 9-to-5. The only work options that seem possible are flextime partime -- and it is best (because of the incredible impact on my load-in schedule caused by the arbitrary changes of others) that this part-time work have little in the way of set deadlines or mandatory friday meetings.
And this is still not the best economy to be looking for THAT understanding a job!
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
The Flat Field and the Single-Point
In mic'ing a stage musical, one of the most basic choices is between reinforcement and amplification. The former is the more challenging, especially as spaces get larger. "Oklahoma," for instance, is an old-school musical and aesthetically demands the illusion that you are listening to the people on stage as their voice carries out across the open plains.
To achieve this effect requires clever speaker arrangements, careful adjustment of delay lines, and of course gentle amplification.
The opposite case is a show like "The Wiz," or "Grease"; pop songs in vocal techniques characteristic of amplified voices (as well as musical instrumentation with a sound defined by the electronics; keyboards, electric guitars, etc., as opposed to the strictly acoustic strings and woodwinds of the classic Broadway pit).
At my current theater our overall aesthetic (imposed at least in part by the quality of the voices we have available, our budgets, and the number of [noisy!] young people in our audiences) is to go in a direction of amplification for most shows. "Sound of Music" is the only show in my recent memory that really strove to create the illusion of un-amplified voice and band -- an illusion that the very young voices of our von Trapp children could not sustain.
At a previous theater, our, well, terrible equipment meant the amplified voice didn't match the natural voice. This made for a sort of uncanny valley you navigated with great care; below a certain volume, the reinforcement backed up the voice, but above that volume it took over and changed the character in an obvious (and often unpleasant) way.
My systems now are a much closer match, allowing me choice of where to go on that line; from imperceptible amplification to the point at which the natural voice is completely masked.
What makes the difference between reinforcement and amplification? In my mind, two elements dominate; volume, and delay. Following more distantly is acoustic placement (whether the vocals appear to come from a sonic space related to the stage, or whether they appear to come from speakers or another clearly defined point) and processing; the more pop material is usually treated with harder compression and a lot more reverb.
But here's where we get into system design. In both, the dominant concern is managing the wavefront. What hits audience ears is a combination of direct sound from actors and musicians, direct sound reflected off scenery and room, amplified sound from various speakers, amplified sound from foldback monitors (aka backline leakage), and amplified sound reflected by the room.
It is of course impossible (unless you are Meyer) to control all of these sources so they line up in the desired temporal order at all seats in the audience. But it is largely by juggling the temporal order that you attempt to manage at least some aesthetic goal out of what is otherwise sonic chaos.
My "flat field" approach for amplified music is actually quite simple. The speakers are time-aligned so energy from them all reaches the audience at roughly the same moment (obviously this relationship is different for each seat, meaning a lot of variance in seats across more than one zone of coverage). There is the smallest possible overall system delay and the system is run hot; overpowering any direct acoustic contribution.
This means the audience member is basically presented with a mix coming from a speaker. Any direct vocal energy from the stage, or backline leakage, arrives later and at a lower level and is psycho-acoustically folded in to the existing room reflections. In simpler language; the actual voice from the actual stage is perceived as part of the reverb tail of the processed sound.
The obvious drawback is that this requires powering over all other sources. If the drummer is loud (which they often are for pop shows!) I have to power over them; the original sound of the drummer has to reach audience ears as a distant, muffled echo of the heavily processed, close-mic'd sounds of the kit.
This means skirting local noise ordinances, frightening matinee audiences full of little children, and fighting aural fatigue. It also means that the equipment becomes super-critical; lose a wireless mic and you lose that singer. And a musician who is careless with the position of their mic can spoil the entire mix.
To contrast, the reinforcement technique primarily relies on an overall system delay. In this case, you are aiming for the magic corridor of about 10 milliseconds. Acoustic energy that fall within this corridor is perceived as originating spatially from the first source the listener hears. As long as the wavefront from the sound system falls slightly behind the direct acoustic sound of the actor, and the level is moderate (in a perfect world, you can get up to 10 db OVER the original sound without it being perceptible at all!) an illusion is maintained.
The more tricky element is that each source falls off in a different taper; the vocal energy of the singer is semi-directional, the sound of the pit orchestra is nearly omnidirectional and falls off roughly inverse-square, and although each single speaker is even more directional than the voice, the combination of all speakers in the tuned system can "fall off" in any arbitrary manner chosen.
So the tough task is to not just create the correct delay and an appropriate volume, but to maintain this relationship of delay and relative volume across a complex acoustic space. And this is a sensitive balance; if the drummer plays out, or the dancers demand more piano in their monitors, or a singer is tired and marking, the entire relationship can fall apart.
And because even something as basic and simple as The Precedence Effect (this psychoacoustic principle that can cause a reinforcement source to become literally imperceptible to all but trained ears) is impossible to explain to most people, the poor sound designer finds themselves completely helpless as those elements above (drummer, piano, marking singers, etc.) are arbitrarily changed by people who can't accept that they just wrecked the sound of the entire show.
Which brings me around to a new approach. It is an approach of basically brute force and ignorance, driven by bogosity, and will only work for some material. I call it the single-point solution, and it is what I am using on "Poppins."
The system is made possible by the fact that the band is in the pit, roughly along the same proscenium line as the main house speakers and the primary set of foldback speakers. So I've started by not even trying to control the band. Then pushing even more band at the stage with the most insanely loud foldback I've ever used. However, because of the physical alignment, this is more-or-less perceived by audience as just more pit leakage.
The mains are run hot with vocals, with system delay aligned to that same proscenium edge. This means that, roughly, all the various sources congeal in time at the proscenium edge. Since most of the amplification of the band is from foldback, it falls off as the natural pit does; in almost pure inverse-square. And since the vocals are shoved into just the mains (and the down-facing front fill) and are backed by stage energy (and vocal leakage from the insane levels of the band's own monitors; yes; vocals are feeding back from the pit before they feed back from the mains) they also come close to the inverse-square -- particularly when an entire ensemble is singing.
Or, rather, the colder I run the vocals, the closer the match will be to the taper from the band and stage noise. The lightly-amplified ensemble fares best; exposed soloists, less well.
With the delay speakers turned off, the wavefront that hits the majority of the audience is pretty much characterized as a large speaker the width of the proscenium, plus reverberation from the room. And at FOH in the back of the room, the reinforced sound and the direct sound (both desired sound like singing and un-desired sounds like stage noise) are in roughly the same volume relationship as that which the majority of the audience hears.
Where this falls down is obvious; the phase relationships are completely shot, and the musical material is smeared across time. Intelligibility suffers, fast arpeggios become sheer mush. The band suffers most here, as the majority of what is heard by audience has bounced off the set walls and returned to them in a nicely time-smeared multi-path.
The energy content across frequencies is even worse; most of the sources are indirect and highs are of course absorbed more readily, meaning the sound is heavy and muddy. And I can't make it up with the usual trick of putting more highs in the mains, because that would pull them out of the unified front.
The place where it goes most bad is the uncanny valley is back; if I push amplification too hot to try to power over, say, the tap dancing in "Step in Time," the reverberant, time-smeared, highs-attenuated material is pushed aside by direct, dry, full-frequency sound.
From close-mic'd instruments, of course; with the ensemble tap dancing directly over the pit, the only way to get the clarity in the foldback the ensemble requires is to stick the band microphones practically into the bells of the horns. Which means the amplified component of the total mix doesn't match at all what is leaking from the pit, and the band audibly changes sonic character when I have to shove the faders up to cover a scene change or blast my way over the top of tap dancers.
Probably the only thing that saves the mix at this point is the band themselves are varying wildly in their tone from number to number; mezzo from the brass and brushes from the drums, then suddenly a ear-tearingly crisp side-stick and a straining forte passage from the brass. So it isn't quite as obvious that their sound also alters dramatically every time the set moves, or a dance starts....
To achieve this effect requires clever speaker arrangements, careful adjustment of delay lines, and of course gentle amplification.
The opposite case is a show like "The Wiz," or "Grease"; pop songs in vocal techniques characteristic of amplified voices (as well as musical instrumentation with a sound defined by the electronics; keyboards, electric guitars, etc., as opposed to the strictly acoustic strings and woodwinds of the classic Broadway pit).
At my current theater our overall aesthetic (imposed at least in part by the quality of the voices we have available, our budgets, and the number of [noisy!] young people in our audiences) is to go in a direction of amplification for most shows. "Sound of Music" is the only show in my recent memory that really strove to create the illusion of un-amplified voice and band -- an illusion that the very young voices of our von Trapp children could not sustain.
At a previous theater, our, well, terrible equipment meant the amplified voice didn't match the natural voice. This made for a sort of uncanny valley you navigated with great care; below a certain volume, the reinforcement backed up the voice, but above that volume it took over and changed the character in an obvious (and often unpleasant) way.
My systems now are a much closer match, allowing me choice of where to go on that line; from imperceptible amplification to the point at which the natural voice is completely masked.
What makes the difference between reinforcement and amplification? In my mind, two elements dominate; volume, and delay. Following more distantly is acoustic placement (whether the vocals appear to come from a sonic space related to the stage, or whether they appear to come from speakers or another clearly defined point) and processing; the more pop material is usually treated with harder compression and a lot more reverb.
But here's where we get into system design. In both, the dominant concern is managing the wavefront. What hits audience ears is a combination of direct sound from actors and musicians, direct sound reflected off scenery and room, amplified sound from various speakers, amplified sound from foldback monitors (aka backline leakage), and amplified sound reflected by the room.
It is of course impossible (unless you are Meyer) to control all of these sources so they line up in the desired temporal order at all seats in the audience. But it is largely by juggling the temporal order that you attempt to manage at least some aesthetic goal out of what is otherwise sonic chaos.
My "flat field" approach for amplified music is actually quite simple. The speakers are time-aligned so energy from them all reaches the audience at roughly the same moment (obviously this relationship is different for each seat, meaning a lot of variance in seats across more than one zone of coverage). There is the smallest possible overall system delay and the system is run hot; overpowering any direct acoustic contribution.
This means the audience member is basically presented with a mix coming from a speaker. Any direct vocal energy from the stage, or backline leakage, arrives later and at a lower level and is psycho-acoustically folded in to the existing room reflections. In simpler language; the actual voice from the actual stage is perceived as part of the reverb tail of the processed sound.
The obvious drawback is that this requires powering over all other sources. If the drummer is loud (which they often are for pop shows!) I have to power over them; the original sound of the drummer has to reach audience ears as a distant, muffled echo of the heavily processed, close-mic'd sounds of the kit.
This means skirting local noise ordinances, frightening matinee audiences full of little children, and fighting aural fatigue. It also means that the equipment becomes super-critical; lose a wireless mic and you lose that singer. And a musician who is careless with the position of their mic can spoil the entire mix.
To contrast, the reinforcement technique primarily relies on an overall system delay. In this case, you are aiming for the magic corridor of about 10 milliseconds. Acoustic energy that fall within this corridor is perceived as originating spatially from the first source the listener hears. As long as the wavefront from the sound system falls slightly behind the direct acoustic sound of the actor, and the level is moderate (in a perfect world, you can get up to 10 db OVER the original sound without it being perceptible at all!) an illusion is maintained.
The more tricky element is that each source falls off in a different taper; the vocal energy of the singer is semi-directional, the sound of the pit orchestra is nearly omnidirectional and falls off roughly inverse-square, and although each single speaker is even more directional than the voice, the combination of all speakers in the tuned system can "fall off" in any arbitrary manner chosen.
So the tough task is to not just create the correct delay and an appropriate volume, but to maintain this relationship of delay and relative volume across a complex acoustic space. And this is a sensitive balance; if the drummer plays out, or the dancers demand more piano in their monitors, or a singer is tired and marking, the entire relationship can fall apart.
And because even something as basic and simple as The Precedence Effect (this psychoacoustic principle that can cause a reinforcement source to become literally imperceptible to all but trained ears) is impossible to explain to most people, the poor sound designer finds themselves completely helpless as those elements above (drummer, piano, marking singers, etc.) are arbitrarily changed by people who can't accept that they just wrecked the sound of the entire show.
Which brings me around to a new approach. It is an approach of basically brute force and ignorance, driven by bogosity, and will only work for some material. I call it the single-point solution, and it is what I am using on "Poppins."
The system is made possible by the fact that the band is in the pit, roughly along the same proscenium line as the main house speakers and the primary set of foldback speakers. So I've started by not even trying to control the band. Then pushing even more band at the stage with the most insanely loud foldback I've ever used. However, because of the physical alignment, this is more-or-less perceived by audience as just more pit leakage.
The mains are run hot with vocals, with system delay aligned to that same proscenium edge. This means that, roughly, all the various sources congeal in time at the proscenium edge. Since most of the amplification of the band is from foldback, it falls off as the natural pit does; in almost pure inverse-square. And since the vocals are shoved into just the mains (and the down-facing front fill) and are backed by stage energy (and vocal leakage from the insane levels of the band's own monitors; yes; vocals are feeding back from the pit before they feed back from the mains) they also come close to the inverse-square -- particularly when an entire ensemble is singing.
Or, rather, the colder I run the vocals, the closer the match will be to the taper from the band and stage noise. The lightly-amplified ensemble fares best; exposed soloists, less well.
With the delay speakers turned off, the wavefront that hits the majority of the audience is pretty much characterized as a large speaker the width of the proscenium, plus reverberation from the room. And at FOH in the back of the room, the reinforced sound and the direct sound (both desired sound like singing and un-desired sounds like stage noise) are in roughly the same volume relationship as that which the majority of the audience hears.
Where this falls down is obvious; the phase relationships are completely shot, and the musical material is smeared across time. Intelligibility suffers, fast arpeggios become sheer mush. The band suffers most here, as the majority of what is heard by audience has bounced off the set walls and returned to them in a nicely time-smeared multi-path.
The energy content across frequencies is even worse; most of the sources are indirect and highs are of course absorbed more readily, meaning the sound is heavy and muddy. And I can't make it up with the usual trick of putting more highs in the mains, because that would pull them out of the unified front.
The place where it goes most bad is the uncanny valley is back; if I push amplification too hot to try to power over, say, the tap dancing in "Step in Time," the reverberant, time-smeared, highs-attenuated material is pushed aside by direct, dry, full-frequency sound.
From close-mic'd instruments, of course; with the ensemble tap dancing directly over the pit, the only way to get the clarity in the foldback the ensemble requires is to stick the band microphones practically into the bells of the horns. Which means the amplified component of the total mix doesn't match at all what is leaking from the pit, and the band audibly changes sonic character when I have to shove the faders up to cover a scene change or blast my way over the top of tap dancers.
Probably the only thing that saves the mix at this point is the band themselves are varying wildly in their tone from number to number; mezzo from the brass and brushes from the drums, then suddenly a ear-tearingly crisp side-stick and a straining forte passage from the brass. So it isn't quite as obvious that their sound also alters dramatically every time the set moves, or a dance starts....
Monday, November 3, 2014
Poppins_03: Building In-Situ
Turns out this was not the best show to do a detailed account of the sound effects process. "Poppins" is an odd beast. The impression I got from the Broadway Cast recording, and the early orchestra rehearsals, turned out to be correct. The Director came to the same impression independently and strongly agreed with the choices we had to make.
Which is, in essentials, that this is a show about silences. About exposed melodic lines, about pauses, about the air between delicate, Mozart-like arpeggios. And it is practically through-composed; there is very little space that doesn't have music in it, and the music is harmonically and rhythmically complex. I watched our Music Director beating out a problematic section for a struggling singer; 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, fermata, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4 rit and long fermata...
This isn't like "A Little Princess." In "Princess," the material was strong rhythms (often expressed through simple ostinato) and long, legato vocal lines. This left a ton of sonic space where continuous background sounds were not only not distracting, but added (I think!) to the total effect.
In "Poppins," the rhythms are practically implied by light, lilting runs. Filling in the spaces harms the feel of the music. And as far as sound effects go, in addition, most of the magic performed by MARY is accompanied. It is in the score. So, all in all, there really aren't a lot of effects.
In addition to this design issue, there was a process issue. The sound effects we did have fell into two categories; transition effects, and spot "sweeteners" for some of the physical effects. For the former, discovering what worked for transitions required the entire acoustic environment to be in place and in timing; the orchestra, the actual set movement, and any additional cover we added (we added BERT to several of the transitions in order to give the audience something to look at while the set was being moved.)
The orchestra is still (several days after opening) changing their make-up, and the very books they are playing. In addition to altering what selections they are playing during transitions, if and when they will vamp, and their dynamics during transitions. The set crew is still refining; we didn't finalize which pieces are even on stage until First Preview, and the order that pieces move is still as of the close of opening weekend a bit...fluid.
Fortunately, my choice for transition effects was a new sample set. I'm using the venerable, low-profile shareware VSamp for this, driven by a 2-octave Ozone keyboard I can park right under the laptop to the right of the sound board. I re-assigned the modulation wheel on the keyboard to Expression (CC #1) via MidiPipe, and set Expression sensitivity in the envelope section in VSamp so I can use it for real-time fades and crescendos. This does mean I'm basically making a Vulcan Salute with one hand while mixing BERT's vocal and selecting scene presets on the LS9 mixer with the other, but it works.
In many places I'm simply sitting tacet and letting the band play. In others I'm forced to play out a little more with my rain and wind and thunder -- in order to cover the distracting noise of the flying system being reset for MARY's next magical entrance!
In the case of the practical effects, they were of course delivered late in the day (among other things having to wait for set building to finish so they could be installed) and the actors are still developing their timing around them. Fortunately the Director understood perfectly that I would be unable to cut these cues until all of that happened. And I'm making some small timing and volume adjustments still.
(Techie stuff; both of these are screen-shot via the Quicktime player and edited in iMovie. To get the audio stream off Reaper and into Quicktime sound was passed through SoundFlower. For "Poppins" these are my actual build files -- during the show, of course, rendered stereo tracks are played back from QLab. For "Princess," this is a comp of two mono busses recorded off the board during performance, combined with the effects files in Reaper in order to reconstruct a semblance of the performance experience.)
Thus, this was the abbreviated process:
For underscore/transition effects, auditioned wind and rain and birdsong over the speakers, tweaked EQ a bit and created seamless loops that could be loaded into the sampler. Tried that out during dress and set an overall level and sensitivity for the sampler before finishing the gain-staging.
For practical effects sweetening, waited until I saw the actors actually doing the effect, then constructed brief "story-telling" sequences for each using only my own memory for overall timing. They simply aren't going to match that closely. Fortunately the kitchen sequence can be broken into four individual cues (and another four for the magical restorations), meaning there's at least some vague correspondence between stage action and accompanying sound.
Really, though, "Poppins" proved a lot less interesting as an effects show, and a lot more interesting from a reinforcement and system design perspective. Which I may get into...when the dust clears a little.
Which is, in essentials, that this is a show about silences. About exposed melodic lines, about pauses, about the air between delicate, Mozart-like arpeggios. And it is practically through-composed; there is very little space that doesn't have music in it, and the music is harmonically and rhythmically complex. I watched our Music Director beating out a problematic section for a struggling singer; 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, fermata, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4 rit and long fermata...
This isn't like "A Little Princess." In "Princess," the material was strong rhythms (often expressed through simple ostinato) and long, legato vocal lines. This left a ton of sonic space where continuous background sounds were not only not distracting, but added (I think!) to the total effect.
In "Poppins," the rhythms are practically implied by light, lilting runs. Filling in the spaces harms the feel of the music. And as far as sound effects go, in addition, most of the magic performed by MARY is accompanied. It is in the score. So, all in all, there really aren't a lot of effects.
The orchestra is still (several days after opening) changing their make-up, and the very books they are playing. In addition to altering what selections they are playing during transitions, if and when they will vamp, and their dynamics during transitions. The set crew is still refining; we didn't finalize which pieces are even on stage until First Preview, and the order that pieces move is still as of the close of opening weekend a bit...fluid.
Fortunately, my choice for transition effects was a new sample set. I'm using the venerable, low-profile shareware VSamp for this, driven by a 2-octave Ozone keyboard I can park right under the laptop to the right of the sound board. I re-assigned the modulation wheel on the keyboard to Expression (CC #1) via MidiPipe, and set Expression sensitivity in the envelope section in VSamp so I can use it for real-time fades and crescendos. This does mean I'm basically making a Vulcan Salute with one hand while mixing BERT's vocal and selecting scene presets on the LS9 mixer with the other, but it works.
In many places I'm simply sitting tacet and letting the band play. In others I'm forced to play out a little more with my rain and wind and thunder -- in order to cover the distracting noise of the flying system being reset for MARY's next magical entrance!
In the case of the practical effects, they were of course delivered late in the day (among other things having to wait for set building to finish so they could be installed) and the actors are still developing their timing around them. Fortunately the Director understood perfectly that I would be unable to cut these cues until all of that happened. And I'm making some small timing and volume adjustments still.
(Techie stuff; both of these are screen-shot via the Quicktime player and edited in iMovie. To get the audio stream off Reaper and into Quicktime sound was passed through SoundFlower. For "Poppins" these are my actual build files -- during the show, of course, rendered stereo tracks are played back from QLab. For "Princess," this is a comp of two mono busses recorded off the board during performance, combined with the effects files in Reaper in order to reconstruct a semblance of the performance experience.)
Thus, this was the abbreviated process:
For underscore/transition effects, auditioned wind and rain and birdsong over the speakers, tweaked EQ a bit and created seamless loops that could be loaded into the sampler. Tried that out during dress and set an overall level and sensitivity for the sampler before finishing the gain-staging.
For practical effects sweetening, waited until I saw the actors actually doing the effect, then constructed brief "story-telling" sequences for each using only my own memory for overall timing. They simply aren't going to match that closely. Fortunately the kitchen sequence can be broken into four individual cues (and another four for the magical restorations), meaning there's at least some vague correspondence between stage action and accompanying sound.
Really, though, "Poppins" proved a lot less interesting as an effects show, and a lot more interesting from a reinforcement and system design perspective. Which I may get into...when the dust clears a little.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Why is sound so hard to explain?
I think the heart of the problem may be that, like many technical tradesmen, you are talking uphill.
Which is to say; if Seiji Ozawas says he needs the violin section to bow up on the fingerboard during the opening of the Third Movement, everyone accepts that he probably knows what he is doing. But if a roadie says he needs to put a microphone in a particular place on the floor, it is a hell of a lot easier for some middle manager to "Make a decision" and axe that choice.
As a theatrical sound designer, you are more often than not thought of as another part of the running crew. When a Director, Producer, or even Music Director, or even an Equity cast member talks to you, it is always in the back of their mind that they make a hell of a lot more than you do, and stand a hell of a lot closer to the head honchos of the theater when the boozing and glad-handing is going on.
And that can't help leaking into their thinking; that your "opinions" hold less weight than theirs.
This is why there is nothing on this Earth that will cause any of those managers to suspect their own Dunning-Kruger syndrome. And it means there is no possible way to reach across the breach to them. They may intellectually accept that there are technical aspects about sound that they don't understand, but it is far too easy for them to rationalize this into handy compartments; that you as a sound designer understand "what the knobs do" but things like whether it matters where a microphone is placed or how loud the keyboardist turns their amp fall within the domain of things that they are perfectly capable of having a superior understanding to yours.
I just spent three days of bullshit with multiple people yelling at me to "turn the band up" -- and not one of them thought of actually listening for a moment and realizing the problem was that three quarters of the band was tacet for that section and there was nothing to turn up. The Music Director finally had to explain this to them. Fat chance there will ever be an apology to me, though!
I had these same intelligent ears sitting back by FOH trying to micro-manage my mix. This is for a multi-bus mix on multiple speakers, where each major element of the sound environment has a different volume profile over distance (aka stage noise falls off nearly inverse-square, voices are more directional and fall of slower, and the orchestra is in pit but is boosted in the monitors, front fills, and turned down in the delays.)
The only way to stop them from forcing me to ruin the sound for the majority of the audience was to electronically lock out half the Meyer sound system, leaving only the mains still in circuit. That way the front rows are getting blasted, but the difference between the sources is more-or-less smoothed out by the time you get all the way back to the rear of the house.
Oh, yeah. I've tried over the years to come up with a simple example to break through that mistaken paradigm. You wouldn't quibble over the pitch of a note with someone who had perfect pitch. But people seem perfectly comfortable with pointing at one speaker that is part of a finely tuned array and saying "That speaker over there isn't on." (Usually within the context of demanding it be "turned on" because in their untrained opinion it will make the mix sound better.) The idea that sound is a set of skills that includes perceptual skills the untrained person lacks is completely foreign territory.
Why can't they recognize this? Why can they never credit it? Sure, I've wasted time thinking of analogies -- optical illusions, say. Or the way that physics violates common sense all the time. That doesn't make physics wrong, it just makes common sense incomplete. The realms of quantum scale and relativistic velocities are quite outside any common-sense experience.
But I am convinced this is not useful. The problem is not a lack of realization that there are elements in how sound behaves in an environment that go against common expectation, and that sound is everything about psycho-acoustics; about perception being fooled by physics. The problem, I am convinced, starts in a more basic place; with the willingness to admit that there might be domain knowledge.
And worse, that the realities contained within that specialist domain have real-world implications that can not simply be waved away on the basis of "My common sense says it will work, so I'll just order the poor sound guy to do what I think works."
I've had producers ask if putting two mics on the same performer will give better gain before feedback. I've had a keyboard player (a keyboard player!) ask for a cable with USB-B connectors at both ends (so they could plug two slave devices into each other, obviously, which would be perfectly happy without a host involved, right?)
And just this last show, I had -- not a question, I had an order to double-condom a body-pack transmitter because "it is getting wet and that's why it is feeding back."
Not in the physics of this or any other universe. This is the point where you just back away slowly, because there is no point at even attempting to explain.
Welcome to my world.
Which is to say; if Seiji Ozawas says he needs the violin section to bow up on the fingerboard during the opening of the Third Movement, everyone accepts that he probably knows what he is doing. But if a roadie says he needs to put a microphone in a particular place on the floor, it is a hell of a lot easier for some middle manager to "Make a decision" and axe that choice.
As a theatrical sound designer, you are more often than not thought of as another part of the running crew. When a Director, Producer, or even Music Director, or even an Equity cast member talks to you, it is always in the back of their mind that they make a hell of a lot more than you do, and stand a hell of a lot closer to the head honchos of the theater when the boozing and glad-handing is going on.
And that can't help leaking into their thinking; that your "opinions" hold less weight than theirs.
This is why there is nothing on this Earth that will cause any of those managers to suspect their own Dunning-Kruger syndrome. And it means there is no possible way to reach across the breach to them. They may intellectually accept that there are technical aspects about sound that they don't understand, but it is far too easy for them to rationalize this into handy compartments; that you as a sound designer understand "what the knobs do" but things like whether it matters where a microphone is placed or how loud the keyboardist turns their amp fall within the domain of things that they are perfectly capable of having a superior understanding to yours.
I just spent three days of bullshit with multiple people yelling at me to "turn the band up" -- and not one of them thought of actually listening for a moment and realizing the problem was that three quarters of the band was tacet for that section and there was nothing to turn up. The Music Director finally had to explain this to them. Fat chance there will ever be an apology to me, though!
I had these same intelligent ears sitting back by FOH trying to micro-manage my mix. This is for a multi-bus mix on multiple speakers, where each major element of the sound environment has a different volume profile over distance (aka stage noise falls off nearly inverse-square, voices are more directional and fall of slower, and the orchestra is in pit but is boosted in the monitors, front fills, and turned down in the delays.)
The only way to stop them from forcing me to ruin the sound for the majority of the audience was to electronically lock out half the Meyer sound system, leaving only the mains still in circuit. That way the front rows are getting blasted, but the difference between the sources is more-or-less smoothed out by the time you get all the way back to the rear of the house.
Oh, yeah. I've tried over the years to come up with a simple example to break through that mistaken paradigm. You wouldn't quibble over the pitch of a note with someone who had perfect pitch. But people seem perfectly comfortable with pointing at one speaker that is part of a finely tuned array and saying "That speaker over there isn't on." (Usually within the context of demanding it be "turned on" because in their untrained opinion it will make the mix sound better.) The idea that sound is a set of skills that includes perceptual skills the untrained person lacks is completely foreign territory.
Why can't they recognize this? Why can they never credit it? Sure, I've wasted time thinking of analogies -- optical illusions, say. Or the way that physics violates common sense all the time. That doesn't make physics wrong, it just makes common sense incomplete. The realms of quantum scale and relativistic velocities are quite outside any common-sense experience.
But I am convinced this is not useful. The problem is not a lack of realization that there are elements in how sound behaves in an environment that go against common expectation, and that sound is everything about psycho-acoustics; about perception being fooled by physics. The problem, I am convinced, starts in a more basic place; with the willingness to admit that there might be domain knowledge.
And worse, that the realities contained within that specialist domain have real-world implications that can not simply be waved away on the basis of "My common sense says it will work, so I'll just order the poor sound guy to do what I think works."
I've had producers ask if putting two mics on the same performer will give better gain before feedback. I've had a keyboard player (a keyboard player!) ask for a cable with USB-B connectors at both ends (so they could plug two slave devices into each other, obviously, which would be perfectly happy without a host involved, right?)
And just this last show, I had -- not a question, I had an order to double-condom a body-pack transmitter because "it is getting wet and that's why it is feeding back."
Not in the physics of this or any other universe. This is the point where you just back away slowly, because there is no point at even attempting to explain.
Welcome to my world.
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