Audio FAQ

My monitors buzz, why?

The common cause of monitor buzz is a ground hum that snuck into the system.  Most often this question comes up when using older speakers and amplifiers to run monitors.  In some systems the electrical can cause noise on the audio signal, which comes out as a buzz.  There are a number of ways to fix this, but lets start with a way not to fix it.

  • Don’t lift the ground on the amplifier!  This may fix the audio problem, but if a short happens you will toast your equipment.  Its not worth it to get good audio for five minutes and end up with broken gear.  Don’t even think about it.

Now lets look at some ways to fix the problem:

  • Try and use balanced audio cables throughout your monitor system.  Properly shielded balanced cables will reduce noise and clean up the ground buzz you are probably hearing.
  • Lift the ground on the audio cable.  If using balanced audio in the system isn’t an option, try finding a ground lift and adding it later in the chain.  By lifting the ground you can prevent ground buzzes.
  • Add a power conditioner to the amplifiers to clean up the electrical.

How many monitor mixes do I have, can I have more?

A mix is made up of one output from the board, one cable, one amplifier channel, and one speaker.  The number of mixes you have depends on the number of speakers, amplifier channels, snake channels, and outputs from your board.  It is always a lowest number game.  If your board has two extra outputs, it doesn’t matter how many amps or speakers you have.  If you only have one speaker, all the outputs in the world won’t help.

We want to start recording, how close am I to that and how would I go about doing that?

On a small system there are a few options for getting a basic and free recording.  You can take a 1/4″ -> 1/8″ adapter and use the line-in on your computer to record through Garage Band or Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).  I prefer Audacity and its free.  If you are using an AUX to get into the computer there will be a master out on the board.  You want to make sure that’s pretty low because you are going from Professional level gear to Consumer level gear.  (Which, to get technical, means a difference between +4DBu or -10DBu) There should also be a level control in the computer to keep from peaking.  You would have to mix live from the console because you are only getting one input into the computer.  It works just like setting up a monitor mix, but it goes to your computer instead of speaker.  The next step up from this is purchasing something like ProTools, which is not a small step up.

The mic set up is rather willy nilly, so how could it be improved? Are we even using the right kinds of mics?

There are basically three kinds of mics when looking at a small sound system – junk, SM58, and too much microphone.  For a small system it works like this:

  • Junk mics are the kind that have been laying around for centuries and if you ask around no one has ever heard of them.  Most of the time these mics are laying around because they’ve been broken and haven’t been thrown away yet.  They sound broken.  If they are all you have you can make do, but I would recommend finding something else soon.  The Shure PG series or anything from Radio Shack™ fits in this category.
  • The Shure SM58 or SM57 is a workhorse and standard for small systems.  It sounds moderately good in any situation, can be used on almost anything, and will take a beating and keep on working.  The Sennheiser 835 is another mic in this category that does a similar job.  These are nice dynamic mics that should run about $75-100 new and can always be found used and in decent condition.
  • The last step is the expensive microphone that should be used elsewhere.  Many people want to correct the small sound system quality by adding expensive mics while still using small system speakers.  While small system speakers sound great in small systems, adding a mic that should be used in a recording studio will only cause more feedback issues than quality improvement.  The sound system can only sound as good as its weakest link.

How is my stage volume, what should it be at? There will never be in-ears, so what should I be shooting for?

Your stage volume is too loud.  It will always be too loud. That’s part of playing in a tiny room with amplification.  The challenge is to find some balance between stage volume and house volume.  In a perfect world there would be have very controlled stage volume so the engineer could mix the levels where they need to be to sound good.  In reality the engineer will be competing with stage noise and may only be able to bring vocals above that noise a little bit.  DI-ing gear gets the stage volume of the gear under the control of the mixer which helps everybody.  The problem again comes to when the band wants to hear that gear back in the mix, which can get muddled and confusing.  When you DI the gear, you will probably want the same level in your floor wedge, so it becomes an even trade.

I need audio lessons. Any good books you could lend/ recommend?

I learned a whole bunch from www.prosoundweb.com and still do learn from it.  The forums are very lively and the articles will teach you the critical things you need to know.  Also take some time to read through the pages on this site and see what you can learn about the systems.

Otherwise its just practice and experience.