GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Professional sound systems

Post Subject: Do not overestimate the competency of the live sound engineersPosted by ferenc on: 9/4/2011

I have a very bad experience with the majority of the engineers of PA systems.
According to my experience, their ideal sound is a kind of typical amplified and loud sound with some punchy upper bass and they have no experience with unamplified opera and live classical music at all. They think (with some exceptions of course) the live events should have to be loud.

We think the most important is to extend the direct sound experience of the first few rows of the direct sound to the whole audience,not make it louder than this everywhere. Of course, there are instruments which are very quiet and needs to be carefully amplified like acoustic guitars for example, and it is very difficult to do, the sound crew should have to deal with stage monitoring and all sorts of special requests from the musicians and generally they could not reach the mentioned extension of the sound close to the stage and usually the acoustics and the overuse of the so popular line arrays are just not enough to reach this quality even in the hand of a very experienced engineer doing quality job. Sometimes even the artists do not have the request of the honest PA system, as they did not have a chance to hear something like this. The engineers and the artists should have to be educated to accept the honest and not the loud sound. I am talking about acoustical instrumental music, not electronically generated, which is a very different deal. I honestly can say a combination of electrically generated sound and acoustical instruments can result extremely satisfying and entertaining experience, if done right.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site