Last night my wife and I attended a concert of The Persuasions at the
Beckman Auditorium at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The sound was horrid.

Basically, the sound reinforcement level was set so high that whenever
the vocalists hit a crescendo, it sounded like the system was
clipping. The sound was pretty good at moderate levels, but on the
peaks it was really bad. Also, although we were seated front-center of
the balcony, most of the sound appeared to be coming from the right
side speaker.

In speaking to the sound tech, he assured me that the system was not
clipping. I asked why it sounded so bad. He first babbled about a
"comb filter" that could make the sound appear to come from different
directions in different places in the room. (What is he talking
about?)I told him I know that reverse phasing on one of the speakers
could cause the sound to wander, and he acknowledged that was
possible.

At this point another member of the audience seated nearby commented
to me, "I don't understand what you are saying, but I agree with you
(the sound is terrible).

The tech then said that well the Beckman is really a lecture hall, not
a musical performance hall. That makes some sense, but it still
sounded good at moderate levels so I think the system was just turned
up too darn high and unbalanced to the right.

I gave up taking with the tech shortly thereafter and returned to my
seat. The sound appeared to improve a little after my discussion with
the tech, but still seemed to clip occasionally. He did get it
centered better also. There were probably 600 in the audience and four
on the stage (one of the normal five out sick), and I felt that the
tech did a gross disservice to all of those persons.

Any comments or advice? I intent to write a letter to the manager of
the Beckman, but want to consult the "Pros" and be sure to get my
technical facts straight first.

Thanks for any advice,

-Harry

Harry wrote:

Basically, the sound reinforcement level was set so high that whenever
the vocalists hit a crescendo, it sounded like the system was
clipping. The sound was pretty good at moderate levels, but on the
peaks it was really bad. Also, although we were seated front-center of
the balcony, most of the sound appeared to be coming from the right
side speaker.

Clipping is bad, but you should know that a lot of techs basically judge
how loud a system is by how it's distorting, and they will bring levels
up until it clips on peaks and leave it there. This may be subconscious,
but I have seen it lots of time.

All the sound coming from the right side speaker is probably typical. In
most of these halls, you can't get stereo imaging and the only real solution
is to run the house mono. You may also have been hearing some fills.

In speaking to the sound tech, he assured me that the system was not
clipping. I asked why it sounded so bad. He first babbled about a
"comb filter" that could make the sound appear to come from different
directions in different places in the room. (What is he talking
about?)I told him I know that reverse phasing on one of the speakers
could cause the sound to wander, and he acknowledged that was
possible.

He's talking about the fact that you're hearing a lot of reflections from
different places, and that a lot of the sound you're hearing is not direct
sound from the speakers. Comb filtering is a side-effect of this, caused
by frequencies that are emphasized and de-emphasized when signals coming
from different directions sum together, and it's the reason that the frequency
response in the room changes radically when you move from one seat to
another.

None of this is in any way related to clipping.

At this point another member of the audience seated nearby commented
to me, "I don't understand what you are saying, but I agree with you
(the sound is terrible).

That's also typical for concerts these days, yes.

The tech then said that well the Beckman is really a lecture hall, not
a musical performance hall. That makes some sense, but it still
sounded good at moderate levels so I think the system was just turned
up too darn high and unbalanced to the right.

Everything is turned up too high, often because the audience demands it
today.

If the room is intended as a lecture hall, it will tend to have too long
a reverb time for amplified music. Rooms that are a bit live, especially
in the 1KC-3KC region, help speech to carry without amplification. This
can make amplified music a little smeary. To some extent this can be
helped with delayed fill speakers, which allow listeners to get more direct
sound from the PA and less sound from the room into their ears.

I gave up taking with the tech shortly thereafter and returned to my
seat. The sound appeared to improve a little after my discussion with
the tech, but still seemed to clip occasionally. He did get it
centered better also. There were probably 600 in the audience and four
on the stage (one of the normal five out sick), and I felt that the
tech did a gross disservice to all of those persons.

Yes, but remember he is probably being paid less than the bus driver is.
Concert sound is not exactly a lucrative position these days, and it is
difficult to get people who actually know and care about sound to work
these gigs. Hell, the _band_ gets paid less on some of thes things than
I'd charge to work them, and I am by no means a first-league PA guy.

Any comments or advice? I intent to write a letter to the manager of
the Beckman, but want to consult the "Pros" and be sure to get my
technical facts straight first.

Don't worry about the technical facts. Just say that it sounded bad
and that it was too loud. You don't mention it, but I bet you a nickel
that the kick drum was louder than the vocals, right? That's very
fashionable today.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Harry" wrote:
Last night my wife and I attended a concert of The Persuasions at the
Beckman Auditorium at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The sound was horrid.
snip
Basically, the sound reinforcement level was set so high that whenever
the vocalists hit a crescendo, it sounded like the system was
clipping.
snip
At this point another member of the audience seated nearby commented
to me, "I don't understand what you are saying, but I agree with you
(the sound is terrible).
snip
sounded good at moderate levels so I think the system was just turned
up too darn high and unbalanced to the right.
snip
Any comments or advice? I intent to write a letter to the manager of
the Beckman, but want to consult the "Pros" and be sure to get my
technical facts straight first.

You need to complain. We need audience members to complain in writing about
excessive sound levels and bad overall sound when they occur.

Bias alert: this is one of my pet peeves.

In my opinion: The room doesn't need SR to 110dB SPL. Drums don't need SR in
small venues. Never. Many older audience members are actually driven out of
the room or turn their hearing aids off to avoid unpleasantness.

Anecdote: one night we (the student sound crew & I) actually had audience
members stop by and comment on the high quality of sound for the choral
groups that evening. The young fellow running the board (I ran the
recordings) admitted to me he forgot to bring up the choral mic faders
during the show. They only had the reinforcement of the choral shell. I told
him he made the right SR choice for that evening. It's supposed to be sound
REINFORCEMENT not sound BLAST 'EM OUT OF THE ROOM!

bobs

Bob Smith
BS Studios
we organize chaos
http://www.bsstudios.com

I agree with Scott, it's hard to find competent people to run a complex system.
I did a few years of SR after I got out of recording college and worked with
some real hum dingers.
But, I bit my lip and did what I was told so as to get my paycheck. The worst
one (shall remain nameless) was when the co-owner of the company set the
monitors the way he liked them and when someone (of great importance) came on
stage to the tune of feedback and ringing stage monitors. I felt really bad for
all the people who had to take that stage that day.

Don't worry about the technical facts. Just say that it sounded bad
and that it was too loud. You don't mention it, but I bet you a nickel
that the kick drum was louder than the vocals, right? That's very
fashionable today.


I Though the Persuasions were a legendary A Cappella group?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Dorsey"
Newsgroups: rec.audio.pro
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 12:49 PM
Subject: Sound Reinforcement Problem at Cal Tech's Beckman Auditorium

In article writes:

Last night my wife and I attended a concert of The Persuasions at the
Beckman Auditorium at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The sound was horrid.

Any comments or advice? I intent to write a letter to the manager of
the Beckman, but want to consult the "Pros" and be sure to get my
technical facts straight first.

Writing a letter might be the most appropriate thing to do. I wouldn't
try to get too technical. Tell him where you were seated, that the
sound was uncomfortably loud, and that it was distorted on loud peaks.

Probably even better would have been to leave the theater during the
first half of the show, ask to see the manager, tell him the sound is
unbearable, and ask for a refund (and of course leave). But I haven't
seen the Persuasions recently. Now that they've become sort of pop
music icons to the masses, it's possible that they, their management,
or their roadie wants rock-and-roll concert sound levels for their
performance. If the sound system was the lecture hall system as the
tech explained and not something brought in for the show, it's quite
possible that it was clipping and the group's road manager said "Ah,
now it's loud enough. Thanks for turning it up."

I had a problem like that with an Irish group I was on tour with many
years ago. Without it being loud enough so I was getting complaints
from the audience, they didn't think it had enough "poonch."

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

You need to complain. We need audience members to complain in writing about
excessive sound levels and bad overall sound when they occur.


I agree completely.


..In my opinion: The room doesn't need SR to 110dB SPL. Drums don't need SR in
small venues. Never. Many older audience members are actually driven out of
the room or turn their hearing aids off to avoid unpleasantness.


IMO..if the bass player has an amp..the drums should be in the system. Often I
hear mixes that are very loud and blaring yet you can't hear half the
instruments.
This is due to an unbalanced system ..IMO. Solid low frequency reinforcement is
not unpleasant and will not sound that way to even hearing impaired listeners.
The problem is that most mixers don't realize that a balanced mix..what we are
used to hearing on normal home stereos, car stereos, home theater..is very
heavy in sub and low frequencies and not so much in mid/high frequences. Also,
ALL the sound is coming from the speakers and not all over the room at
diffeernt arrival times so to sound
"familiar" this must be done as much as possible in a live mix. I do a lot of
smaller club mixing and all the instruments being in the system is necessary to
approach hifi sound for all listeners. Don't get me wrong..I am easily offended
by blaring, peircing mixes..not what I am talking about. I will be writing a
series of columns on my ideas on redefining club sound in the enar future and a
lot of it is dealing with system/room balance and mix techniques that I have
found to work VERY well in small rooms.


John A. Chiara
SOS Recording Studio
Live Sound Inc.
Albany, NY
www.sosrecording.net
518-449-1637

Just curios, what would be the result if the OSHA inspectors were informed
of the excessive levels, and staff failing to wear ear plugs?

Rgds:
Eric

All the sound coming from the right side speaker is probably typical. In
most of these halls, you can't get stereo imaging and the only real solution
is to run the house mono.

There's no reason most live music shouldn't be mixed in mono, but it IS
possible to achieve discernable left/right separation anywhere within the
direct field, even to the right of the house right stack or left of the house
left stack.

In speaking to the sound tech, he assured me that the system was not
clipping. I asked why it sounded so bad. He first babbled about a
"comb filter" that could make the sound appear to come from different
directions in different places in the room. (What is he talking
about?)

He's trying to come up with any explanation other than the correct one, which
is that he did a lame mix job.

He's talking about the fact that you're hearing a lot of reflections from
different places, and that a lot of the sound you're hearing is not direct
sound from the speakers. Comb filtering is a side-effect of this, caused
by frequencies that are emphasized and de-emphasized when signals coming
from different directions sum together, and it's the reason that the frequency
response in the room changes radically when you move from one seat to
another.

Beckman, IIRC, is a circular structure, so obviously there isn't a snowball's
chance in hell of getting good acoustical response in there, amplified or not.

Scott Fraser

"Eric K. Weber" wrote in message
...
Just curios, what would be the result if the OSHA inspectors were informed
of the excessive levels, and staff failing to wear ear plugs?

I imagine the result would be nothing whatsoever, without credible
documentation of the levels. "It was loud" does not constitute credible
documentation. "My SPL meter said 102dBA average for at least 85% of the
two-hour show" might be enough to get someone to go take a look - at least,
if there were regular complaints about the venue.

The OSHA limits are aimed at situations like factory floors with shrieking
metal lathes and huge stamping presses, pounding away 8 hours a day. Not
saying that's how it should be, but I think that's how it is.

Eric K. Weber wrote:
Just curios, what would be the result if the OSHA inspectors were informed
of the excessive levels, and staff failing to wear ear plugs?

I have never had any luck going this route, but I think the more people
that do, the more OSHA is apt to actually start looking into it.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Walter Harley wrote:
"Eric K. Weber" wrote in message
...
Just curios, what would be the result if the OSHA inspectors were informed
of the excessive levels, and staff failing to wear ear plugs?

I imagine the result would be nothing whatsoever, without credible
documentation of the levels. "It was loud" does not constitute credible
documentation. "My SPL meter said 102dBA average for at least 85% of the
two-hour show" might be enough to get someone to go take a look - at least,
if there were regular complaints about the venue.

How about "there is structural damage being done to the building frame by
the sound reinforcement system, and patrons are being hospitalized with
pneumothorax?"

The OSHA limits are aimed at situations like factory floors with shrieking
metal lathes and huge stamping presses, pounding away 8 hours a day. Not
saying that's how it should be, but I think that's how it is.

The OSHA limits are flexible and based on exposure time. You can listen to
one level for a few minutes a day, and another level for an hour a day, and
another level all day long.

With the nifty modern noise dosimeters, they could be made far more flexible,
though.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Sounds like excuses to me on why he's done a crappy mix job. The Beckman is
a disaster of a room for many reasons... Even in bad rooms, though, it
should be possible to get decent sound. It will never be fantastic, but
decent should be attainable. The first thing in a bad room, though-
especially with the reflections that the Beckman has- is to turn the system
down.

--Ben

--
Benjamin Maas
Fifth Circle Audio
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.fifthcircle.com

Please remove "Nospam" from address for replies

"Harry" wrote in message ...
Last night my wife and I attended a concert of The Persuasions at the
Beckman Auditorium at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The sound was horrid.

Basically, the sound reinforcement level was set so high that whenever
the vocalists hit a crescendo, it sounded like the system was
clipping. The sound was pretty good at moderate levels, but on the
peaks it was really bad. Also, although we were seated front-center of
the balcony, most of the sound appeared to be coming from the right
side speaker.

In speaking to the sound tech, he assured me that the system was not
clipping. I asked why it sounded so bad. He first babbled about a
"comb filter" that could make the sound appear to come from different
directions in different places in the room. (What is he talking
about?)I told him I know that reverse phasing on one of the speakers
could cause the sound to wander, and he acknowledged that was
possible.

At this point another member of the audience seated nearby commented
to me, "I don't understand what you are saying, but I agree with you
(the sound is terrible).

The tech then said that well the Beckman is really a lecture hall, not
a musical performance hall. That makes some sense, but it still
sounded good at moderate levels so I think the system was just turned
up too darn high and unbalanced to the right.

I gave up taking with the tech shortly thereafter and returned to my
seat. The sound appeared to improve a little after my discussion with
the tech, but still seemed to clip occasionally. He did get it
centered better also. There were probably 600 in the audience and four
on the stage (one of the normal five out sick), and I felt that the
tech did a gross disservice to all of those persons.

Any comments or advice? I intent to write a letter to the manager of
the Beckman, but want to consult the "Pros" and be sure to get my
technical facts straight first.

Thanks for any advice,

-Harry

In article writes:

The OSHA limits are flexible and based on exposure time. You can listen to
one level for a few minutes a day, and another level for an hour a day, and
another level all day long.

The "O" in OSHA stands for "Occupational" and unless they've changed
the rules (or communities with noise ordinances have adopted OSHA
standards) OSHA can't do anything for the person who attends a
concert, only the people who work at the venue.

Kind of silly actually, considering how many laws we have that protect
us from doing things that would harm ourselves.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article znr1102355436k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:

The OSHA limits are flexible and based on exposure time. You can listen to
one level for a few minutes a day, and another level for an hour a day, and
another level all day long.

The "O" in OSHA stands for "Occupational" and unless they've changed
the rules (or communities with noise ordinances have adopted OSHA
standards) OSHA can't do anything for the person who attends a
concert, only the people who work at the venue.

Right, but it's an in. Certainly the stage levels at just about every rock
concert out there exceed the OSHA standards for noise exposure. The performers
therefore are breaking the rules.

Kind of silly actually, considering how many laws we have that protect
us from doing things that would harm ourselves.

A lot of those are violated at rock concerts too.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:


The OSHA limits are flexible and based on exposure time. You can listen to
one level for a few minutes a day, and another level for an hour a day, and
another level all day long.


The "O" in OSHA stands for "Occupational" and unless they've changed
the rules (or communities with noise ordinances have adopted OSHA
standards) OSHA can't do anything for the person who attends a
concert, only the people who work at the venue.

College campuses have evironmental health & safety departments. They are definitely concerned with the patrons' noise exposure.

With touring rock shows they usually deploy a compliance officer.

Thanks, everyone, for all the responses that really helped me
understand what was going on and also encouraging me to write and
complain. I'm doing that shortly, and as suggested will keep it
non-technical, focusing on the high level.

It surprised me that one response was from a fellow who is actually
familiar with the Beckman. What are the chances...?

But that made me think that I should have included this information in
my original post about the Beckman from
http://fob.caltech.edu/tech-info/beckman.shtml
so folks would have better understood the situation. On the left of the
page there is a link for the technically inclined that give details of
the sound equipment in the auditorium:

Building Shape: Circular with conical shaped roof
Seating Capacity: 1150 (850 main floor, 300 balcony)
Dimensions: 60 feet high, 120 feet in diameter

So I'm sure that the Beckman is indeed an acoustic nightmare, but the
fact remains that the sound was just fine to my old ears when it was
moderate, but pretty horrid when it was breaking up every few seconds
because the tech had the level too high.

And, yes, the Persuasions is a classic acapello vocal group, so no
drums. I suppose that seriously dates me.

But I should tell you about the time my then-19 daughter took me to a
Steve Vai concert in Boston in the club district. I had this mental
image going in of a lone acoustical guitarist sitting on a stool in
sort of a coffee house environment wry grin....

Thanks again for everyones' kind assistance here, and I'll let you know
if anything ever comes of the complaint.

-Harry

wrote:

It surprised me that one response was from a fellow who is actually
familiar with the Beckman. What are the chances...?

For those who read here a while, the chances seem much better than you
might expect from a casual drop-in. g

--
ha

Thanks to all for your great replies.

I'm working on my written complaint now, and as suggested will keep it
simple and just comment on the terrible sound quality and that I just
feel that the level was too darn high to the point that the sound was
breaking up every few seconds. I'll mention that the sound was fine
during the quieter passages to defuse any suspicion that I am just
being overcritical of a tough sound reinforcement situation (a round
hall).

And yes, the Persuasions are indeed a legacy acapella group.

They were great -- oops, does that date me?
Thanks again, all-

-Harry

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On 2004-12-05 (ScottDorsey) said:
too loud. You don't mention it, but I bet you a nickel that the
kick drum was louder than the vocals, right? That's very
fashionable today.

Hey now we're supposed to get with the program. US old farts gotta
learn that kick drum is the featured instrument!!!

Just walked away from a weekender band a few weeks ago that have an
amateur sound guy that gets an even cut of hte money. Can understand
that, he's got some nice gear but he doesn't know excrement from
shinola about how to use it. WHen he's got the subs pumping like
those you hear in some of these inner city rapmobiles he thinks he's
got it happening. THen he can't figure out why the low frequency
rumble all night long.
I think another poster said it best. COmplain in writing to the
venue's management.


Richard Webb,
Electric SPider Productions, New Orleans, La.
REplace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real email

--



Great audio is never heard by the average person,
But bad audio is heard by everyone.