How To NOT Tune A Sound System (Don't Make These Mistakes)

Lol I love your videos man!!! 2nd year as a “sound guy” as they call us. Grew up doing sound for my dads band at bar gigs with some small analog setups. Now I’m 27 working with sq5-6 on weddings, corporate events with a lot more stuff. You’re great. Love hearing the kids in the back lol I have a 3 month old

Thank you so much for this information Michael! Your tips are easy to understand! I have subscribed to your channel. Please keep sharing your experiences with us. Thanks again! :D

I learned a lot from this video and gained a new perspective on system tuning. Thanks so much for the great content!

Great knowledge and wonderfully explained. I didn't learn anything new here but still found it really useful and it reenforced so many things that I've learnt over my career and yet still make some f these mistakes now and again.. Thank you.

Very helpful video. Thank you!

Great reasons for using several reference tracks. I’d never thought of it in terms of ear fatigue/familiarisation but I always use several, mainly because I’d get sick of hearing the same song for 15-20 minutes!

Just subscribed man. Thanks for these videos! You are doing an awesome job with all this info. Thanks again and keep bringing the goods man. Much appreciated!

How do you use the sine sweep on the Open Sound Meter software to tune? Also if you can, can you make a video of time alignment? Thanks

I am working with a nonprofit that recently bought a system from somebody locally as he wasn't using it as much anymore now that he retired and they wanted to do weekly concerts. Through talking with him beforehand it sounded like he didn't like to use presets, built everything up from scratch, would reset the board between shows, etc. that was not the case. The first show went terrible. it was my normal band they couldn't hear anything on stage, they were having trouble maintaining time because the upright bass was delayed ( well actually every input channel was delayed and outputs as well ). The mentality was all of this gets adjusted at the beginning of the show and no that's not what happened. Everything was mixed for a rock band but this was a bluegrass band all acoustic. He wasn't really happy because every instrument should've been plugged in from the acoustic guitar to the mandolin to the hundred year old banjo which surprisingly he did like after the fact. the only thing plugged in was the upright bass. There was no clarity in front of house and was not the sound that they wanted or normally have. Miscommunications ensued as I was supposed to be doing sound according to the band and the venue but instead was trying to help not having my opinion listened to and not having the prior communicated to me. I have since taken over the system and I have reset it because on the 3 or 4 times that I've done the sound for the next few shows at this venue I have lost count how many times I've tried to adjust some thing and had nothing happen, you would think moving a fader up would make some thing louder no not with his settings. Just about every bell, whistle & kitchen sink was turned on and adjusted. Because this was a virtual digital board with 32 channels it was programmed so he could have drums on the first eight of 16 channels in case they were plugged into the mixer or into the digital snake so eating up 8 channels of both the mixer and the snake. there was 4 channels of monitors each on the mixer and stagebox that were separate leaving 4 snake outputs not routable because there's only 16 buses but 4 of them have to be used for the effects and two of them have to be used for the mains leaving 10 buses total. I went in and reset things so now there are six Monitor mixes and left + right and 6 mixes mirrored on both snake box and the mixer and technically with one switch in the routing configuration I could have another four monitor mixes at the mixer now. Some of his EQ settings were pretty good so I've copied those out individually mostly drums and bass. So I went into an open mic night not knowing what performers were going to play with a mixer set up for a rock band… What a long night as I couldn't take my eyes off the mixer as everything needed to be adjusted. Everything including the effects as they were all dialed in manually per channel and performer using the individual channel aux sends during the show, as all of the sends and returns we're set almost to Max and left there. So the way this mixer was set was always based off of the show the previous time nothing ever returned to zero or unity so you better hope that your band sounds relatively the same as the previous band and has no major changes between the lineup.

Thanks for sharing this information! Do you happen to have a video on how to setup that tuning software for two channels measurements! Does that software can do two channels? Thank you for any help!

Awesome tips here!!!

Do you have a video on setting up line arrays? What happens if the opening angles intersect?

can you tune a subwoofer in terms of tonality with a graphic eq ? and is it the best practice to do ?

the roadmap it´s avaliable?

Michael - thanks for all the great content. I've learned a lot watching you but I struggle with some of the more advanced concepts especially when considering the physics / trig portions of explanations which, I believe is vital for truly understanding why/what is happening. Would you reccomend going back to college classes to truly get a grasp on these concepts? I've been mixing for over a decade - its all I do and I've really built a career of it - however, I want to take things further and deploy bigger/better rigs as my clients and their needs grow.

I had done most of those mistakes but EQ. the EQ in my rack is flat just use hi pass or low pas filters and limiters. I got to get me a 2 mic analyzer.👍

Hi, can you please let me know when you measure the sound response to trace against the target trace curve, are you using A-Weighted, C-Weighted or Z-Weighted? Thanks

I am currently binge watching a bunch of system tuning videos and one thing that you, and many others mention, is the need to take measurements from several different locations. I completely get that and am onboard with it, but from a purely practical perspective how is this done? After all you need to have a measurement mic plugged into your interface which is plugged into your laptop and you need to be plugged into the mixer at the same time. How do you manage all these cables practically speaking? Sure in a smaller venue maybe you could just get a longer mic cable and that will cover the room, but with a larger rig you will surely run into issues if your mic cable is too long. As far as I can tell using dante and a long network cable from your laptop to a switch/the mixer might be a good way of handling this issue. How do you deal with it?

Micheal, I'm looking for an interface to take measurements in REW or Open Sound Meter, I'm just a hobbyist and can't really spend much on this project. With that said, is the Steinberg UR12 a good interface to use for this? Where I live it costs nearly half the price of the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3.

good stuff:hand-purple-blue-peace: