It's quite simple

1. Measure the distance form FOH to the loudest item on the stage. This could be a drummers monitor, guitar amp, or anything.

2. Measure the distance to your main speakers.

3. Figure out the difference between the two measurements. e.g. The distance to the bass cabinet is 60ft. and the distance to the main speakers is 54 ft. The difference is 6ft.

4. Use the Backline Calculator's "Distance to Time" feature to quickly convert feet into milliseconds. e.g. The difference between 60ft and 54ft is 6ft. So now we can convert 6ft into milliseconds, which is 5 milliseconds.

5. Now apply 5 milliseconds of delay to your mains.

I find these tools really helpful when I'm in a hurry and all I really want to do is time align the system. Enjoy!!

I decided to explore some options, some of which we have written about before in our blog here.

1. You can take the guitar amps and face them backwards or under the stage to avoid them becoming a nuisance in the vocal microphones.

2. Use a microphone with a tighter cardioid pattern and place the guitar amps somewhere where they are less likely to interfere with the vocal microphones.

3. Place the guitar amplifiers pointed straight up so that the guitar amp speakers are pointed to the venues ceiling and not at the vocal microphone or audiences. This will also help tighten up the Front of House mix by not having those guitar amplifiers compete with the main system.

It is common practice for engineers who use SMAART or SpectraFoo to use an audio interface to get our reference and measurement signals into our analysis programs. I have personally been using Sound Devices USBPre for about 6 years now.

As audio engineers we are always looking for ways to streamline the process of setting up, tuning, sound checking, and doing the show. When the digital console came along our world as sound engineers changed! Now our digital consoles are also FireWire interfaces for recording programs. Since Avid is the manufacturer for both ProTools recording software and Venue Live consoles, the symbiotic relationship of console/recording interface has made the process of recording the show extremely convenient.

With the Avid VENUE 3.0 update and the FWx32 capabilities, I decided to see if we could use our Avid VENUE SC48 as an interface for SpectraFoo and SMAART. After playing around for a few minutes, I found that it's quite easy.

On the SC48

1. The first thing you will want to do is make sure that you have the FWx32 drivers installed on both the console and your computer.

2. Set aside two free channels on your SC48 as a Reference channel and a Measurement channel. Sometimes I use the IPod input as a reference channel.

3. Head over to the PATCHBAY PAGE on your SC48 and select DIRECTS.

4. Select a FWx direct output for both the Measurement and Reference channels (e.g. FWx channel 1as the Reference or IPOD channel, and 2 for the Measurement microphone)

5. Make sure to go to the inputs page of both your Reference and Measurement channels and enable the Direct Outs.

6. When I use the Reference channel I insert the signal generator plug-in on the channel.

On your analysis computer

For SpectraFoo:

1. Open SpectraFoo

2. Go to the Audio I/O menu and open Configure Hardware. Set the CA Driver as "Avid VENUE FWx32".

3. When opening any of the SpectrFoo analysis tools, select the FWx channels you had setup on the console as the inputs for the analysis tools.

For SMAART:

1. Go to Applications / Utilities / Audio Midi Setup and select "Pro Tools Aggregate I/O" as your Play Back and Input Device.

2. Set-up a SMAART measurement and select "CoreAudio: Avid VENUE FWx32" as your device.

By using the SC48 as an interface for SpectraFoo and SMAART, I have saved a bit of time used during setup and also have one less piece of equipment to carry around, not to mention that sometimes hard to find USB cable that we keep on forgetting at home……

Many times I have been asked how someone might go about developing these skills and quite often I would refer to my experiences in studios and on stages. But with the arrival of smart phones and apps, have come a number of tools to assist in developing and training our ears..

One of these tools is Quiztones developed by Audiofile Engineering.

From the AudioFile Engineering website:

Quiztones is a frequency identification ear training app for amateur and professional audio engineers and musicians. Quiztones uses frequency-altered tones, noise and musical loops to train your ears and help develop more acute listening and frequency recognition skills.

Quiztones will...

• Sharpen your ears & frequency recognition skills
• Improve your mixing and EQ chops
• Prevent noise buildup in your mixes & recordings
• Eliminate the need to sweep for frequencies

Quiztones cleverly uses quizzes to engage users in training exercises.

Each EQ Quiz offers four trainers:

• Easy frequency boost
• Hard frequency boost
• Hard frequency cut
• Expert frequency boost – 1/3 octave (available via in-app purchase)

Upon downloading the Quiztones app for my IPhone, I went straight to the Tones trainer.

In Easy mode, a sine wave frequency is played and you are given 4 options. You are then scored on your accuracy. One training cycle goes through 10 frequencies.

Expert Mode is much the same, only you are given frequencies based on 1/3 octaves.

After playing around for sometime with the Tone trainer I had moved onto the EQ trainers. The EQ trainers are games that ask you to identify changed frequencies from various source materials. Like the Tone trainer you are given a list of 4 frequencies to choose from.

When entering the EQ trainer you are given a choice of what type of source material you would like to work with. First in the list is the Music Library containing music from Michael McDonald, Bonnie Raitt, Fleetwood Mac, LCD Sound System, and Warrne G.

After Music Library you can choose from Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Drums, Electric Guitar, Orchestra, Piano, Pink Noise, Strings, Stings 2, and Vocals.

In each source material category, you are given 5 options varying in difficulty. Easy +8dB, Hard +5dB, Hard -10dB, Expert +7dB - 1/3 octave, and Expert +4dB - 1/3 Octave.

I personally think this is one of the best EQ and frequency trainers that I have seen yet. I would love to recommend it to all of my staff here at Capsicum Pro Audio but all of the products from AudioFile Engineering are developed for Apple based platforms only. Even though I am personally an Apple guy, I would like to see AufioFile Engineering apps for Android and other smart phones, so more people can use them.

Working on D-Show and Profile systems over the past few years I have enjoyed features like, having the consoles I/O on the stage, strong Pro Tools integration, HW Inserts, more plug-in slots, and more busses. Venue software version 3 promises to bring all of these features to the Venue SC48.

Upon hearing this news I immediately placed an order for the software upgrade. The Avid Venue version 3 software update costs somewhere between $150 - $160..

From the Avid site:

What’s new for all VENUE users

• Record and play back up to 32 Pro Tools channels (up from 18) over FireWire (SC48 and FWx Option Card users)
• Create bigger mixes with expanded input processing channels in SC48 (increased from 48 to 64) and VENUE Mix Rack (increased from 64 to 80) Systems
• Manage multiple Aux busses with ease, now that Aux bus names are displayed on the Inputs page
• Get HPF settings included in all EQ presets, and when copying/pasting EQ settings
• Quickly configure your console layout by simply dragging and dropping channel strips
• Get fast access to the Inputs page by double-pressing the Select button
• Program the Console User button in the Events List to perform common tasks such as tap tempo or recalling a snapshot
• Quickly cancel Multi-Select mode by pressing the Multi-Select button

What’s new for VENUE SC48 users

• Handle larger monitor mixes, now with 24 busses available (up from 16)
• Create better mixes with more plug-ins, now with 40 plug-in slots (up from 20)
• Supports the new Stage 48 remote I/Os box and companion Ethernet Snake Card

Well the day came when the package showed up. The next day I pulled out our Digidesign Venue SC48 and set out to upgrade.

Anyone who has been using Avid products for any amount of time knows that upgrading a system can be pretty time consuming as there are ILok licenses, plug-ins to be re-installed or upgraded for compatibility, and the inevitable head scratching or "ooh yeah, CONFIG MODE!!!!"

Pro Tools Recording

One of the main reasons we're so excited about v3, is the ability to increase our channel count into Pro Tools. Venue version 3 increases the Pro Tools track count from 18 channels to 32. When we had purchased our SC48 it came with Pro Tools LE 8. But in order to take full advantage of Venue version 3, you will need to upgrade to Pro Tools 10.

I installed Pro Tools 10 on my MacBook Pro and noticed that I did not have the 32 channels of record and playback that I had expected. So I hit the web and learned that the Venue FWx 32-channel driver and updater needed to be downloaded and installed to access these features in Pro Tools and on the SC48. Once the FWx 32 updates were installed, all 32 channels came through and were available in Pro Tools.

Once we had Pro Tools up and running we connected an ethernet cable from the SC48 to our computer and enabled Venue Link. Venue Link allowed us to open a Pro Tools session with all the track information from the SC48. Venue Link has saved us time by eliminating track labeling and setting I/O in Pro Tools.

If you are going to be recording quite a bit with Pro Tools and Venue consoles, I highly recommend downloading and reading the "Live Recording Guide for VENUE Systems and Pro Tools".

So the night came when we had a decent amount of channels to be recorded. This show had 27 inputs and two, one and a half hour sets. The recordings went well until the end of the second set when the computer seemed to of had enough. After 2.5 hours of recording the processing on my computer was taxed.

My MacBook Pro has a 2.3 Ghz Intel Core i5 and 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory. But of course this is a problem of my computers processing power and not a fault of Venue version 3 software or Pro Tools 10. 32 channels of simultaneous recording can be pretty taxing on a laptop. With that being said, I would recommend having something with a bit more processing power if you plan on using up a good amount of channels in Pro Tools.

64 Input Processing Channels

Venue 3.0 software allows us to have 16 additional channels of input processing (up to 64 from 48). These extra 16 channels are not actual full microphone inputs. It does not mean that the SC48 can have 64 microphone inputs. What it does mean is that you can send any combination of channels 1-48 to be split and sent to 49-64. This comes in handy for mixing monitors from the FOH position, allowing you to have separate channels for the monitors. But this does not come without taxing the DSP inside the SC48. When I set the console to have 64 input processing channels I was not able to use many of the plug-in slots that I usually do. One cool thing about this feature though is that you can also decrease the channel count down to 16 channels, which could free up quite a bit of DSP for extra plug-ins when we have an artist with fewer inputs. The Venue SC48 can be configured to use 16, 24, 32, 48, and 64 input processing channels.

24 Busses through Variable Groups

From the Avid Site:

"You can configure SC48 to operate in Variable Groups mode. In Variable Groups mode, the eight Group busses are replaced by eight Variable Group busses, which operate in much the same way as Aux busses. When set to Variable Groups mode, the 16 Aux and eight Variable Group busses provide up to 24 busses."

This configuration is useful for situations that require more than 16 Aux busses, such as mixing monitors for groups requiring more than 16 independent mixes."

The 24 Bus through Variable Groups option is much like some of the other features found in Venue 3.0, they come with a trade off. If you want more than 16 aux mixes, you're going to have to trade some group busses for them. This feature makes the SC48 a much more powerful monitor console able to handle up to 24 mixes.

Assigning Events to User Switch

This is an exciting new feature as it allows you to assign any Event to the User switch. The reason we like this so much is that it keeps our hands near the faders during critical mixing. It can be a pain sometimes to have to reach for the top of the console while you're riding a fader and having to change snapshots or tap a tempo. All in all, it keeps you in a more comfortable mix position….

Hardware Inserts

This is a feature that I have wanted to see in the SC48. It has been standard in the D-Show and Profile Systems. What this does is act much like an insert on an analog console providing an I/O to send and return to an external piece of hardware such as a compressor, EQ, or gate and can be inserted on an individual channel or a bus. To utilize this feature on your SC48 you will need to purchase the IO16 card. Why can't we just use our current I/O cards? This is an upgrade I would like to see in Venue 3.1.

Drag and Drop Channels

How often have you nearly finished wiring a stage when the drummer comes up and hands you a trigger pad? I usually place something like this on the channels right after the drum overheads. With Venue 3.0 you can now place that surprise channel into any free input and then drag and drop that channel into place where you need it in your mix or on the control surface. The hardware input is not changed and the channel parameters stay the same. You can also move whole groups of channels by shift clicking the channel strips you want to be moved and then dragging all of them to your desired location.

Other Nifty Features:

HPF Settings Included in EQ Presets and EQ Copy/Paste

High-pass filter (HPF) settings are now included in channel EQ Presets, and are also included when copying and pasting channel EQ settings.

Fast Access to Inputs Page

 Double-press any input channel Select switch to quickly re- turn to the Inputs page on-screen, regardless of which page was previously displayed.

Quick Cancel of Multi-Select Mode

 To exit Multi-Select mode, press the Multi-Select switch.

What we would like to see in future versions:

1. Hardware Inserts I/O without having to purchase IO16 Card. I would love to use my Emperical Lab Distressors with out having to spend $2500.00

2. The ability to have an external unit for plug-ins processing like an SSL Duende or TC Electronics Powercore. Or the option to add another DSP Mix Engine Card...

Don't forget to join us on Twitter for more tips and reviews @ twitter.com/capsicumpro

Another trick to get a vocal to pop out in a mix when using a digital console like the SC48 is to route all of the instruments to a stereo buss. Then add a multi band compressor on that buss that has a side chain input. On the multi band compressor select the mid to low mid frequencies to be compressed. Now set the vocals to trigger the multi band compressor through the side chain.

Now when the vocalist sings, a nice little pocket is created in all the instruments for them to stand out.

If you're ever having trouble getting a vocalists voice to stand out in a mix, find their dominant frequency and pull that frequency down 3 db from all the instrument channels. Sometimes I have all the instruments on a sub group with an EQ inserted to just use one stereo EQ...

Happy Mixing!!!

Happy Mixing!!! And don't forget to share this link with your friends....

THE BEST BASS DRUM MICROPHONE…….

On many pro audio forums I see people asking the question “ What is the best bass drum microphone?” Of course every microphone manufacturer claims that they have the best bass drum microphone, and can back it up by the long lists of celebrity drummers that they have paid to use their drum microphones.

So what is the best kick drum microphone? Well, That depends…. What kind of bass drum sound are you after?

Though I’m not sure that those in search of the best bass drum microphone have considered all the elements that make up a great drum sound E.Q. compression, preamps, speakers, and too many others to mention here.

I’ve used everything from a Neumann U87, Shure SM57, EV RE20, to the Radio Shack special.

In the recording studio, I hold the idea that anything goes and do whatever works. But, over many years of working in the concert touring industry, I have definitely noticed a trend and an industry standard. I can show you hundreds of technical riders, from many genres of music, asking for two bass drum microphones and often both of them at once.

The three microphones I am referring to are the Shure Beta52, and the Shure Beta 91. Although there are a few rising stars such as the Audix D6.

When using a combo of bass drum microphones, one microphone rarely changes, and that is the Shure Beta 91 inside the bass drum.

The Shure Beta 91 has always been a go to microphone for me because of its ease of use. Just throw it inside, on the pillow, and place at your distance of choice from the batter head, for more click or bottom. No stand necessary to set up or tear down, getting you out the door and off to the next gig faster. Because the Beta91 is a boundary microphone it reproduces lower frequencies with impressive clarity. As any microphone ever made, the Beta 91 does need a bit of EQ work. I usually pull out at least 6-10db at 400Hz (the new Beta 91A has a switch for this) and add anywhere from 3kHz-5kHz for click, and a bit at 60Hz so I can feel it in my chest.

The Shure Beta 52 is my next go to bass drum microphone, especially when I have a drummer who doesn’t have a port in his bass drum head. The Beta52 is pretty forgiving of placement like the Beta 91. I usually place the Beta 52 right inside the port, aimed at the batter. The Shure Beta 52 is a supercardioid microphone, which allows for a strong gain before feedback ratio, and solid rejection of unwanted sounds. It’s also built like a tank and can withstand tons of abuse! To EQ the Beta 52 I sometimes have to roll off below 60Hz and like the Beta 91 the Beta 52 needs 300-500Hz taken out.

Other popular bass drum microphones include the AKG D 112, Audix D6, Sennheiser MD421.

Happy Mixing!!! Let me know your thoughts or what has worked for you! And don't forget to share this page with your friends...