😂 It’s exactly as I wanted!

Great drummer and very quick mic 👍

Thanks!

Have to agree!! 👍🏼

Man knows his interface.

Absolutely. I want to start offering my services as a sound guy but I just have no idea where to start learning these boards.

There are tutorials online to help you. If you’re in the area and want to shadow a show, I’ll gladly show you the x32. If you learn the X/M 32 you can work most clubs and shows.

Appreciate it!

Thanks!

Most of the time I don’t add any noise gates. Call if the drummers head the drums lighter than the noise gate threshold I don’t hear it. I miss a lot of those lighter notes and ghost notes. Also, the microphones I use are pretty decent with signal to noise ratio. Hardly any bleeding.

Hence why I posted this soundcheck. This is how it’s supposed to go and I wish every band could be like this as far as taking direction, putting egos aside and working towards a great sound for the audience. Thankfully, most bands are.

@@chrishammillaudio thats cool. I have seen some really shitty attitudes from bands and soundguys. Been watching a few of your vids and you really are very good.

​@@chrishammillaudioAnd if they're not, "alright...if you wanna sound like shit, that's on you." lol

I have a gear breakdown video linked in the description of every video I post to answer that very question. EQ'ing by ear is the only tried and true way to go about it. Play a song you know by heart and how it should sound, tweak the PA to that, and mic up a band. Can't get any simpler than that.

Glad you enjoyed.

Thanks for watching and subbing!

Hell yes!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you enjoyed.

Glad you enjoyed. When you learn a room you know what works and doesn’t. Half the battle is working with the room acoustics.

Glad you enjoyed it

That screen stays on at all times with the RTA view. Very handy.

It certainly helps when a band pays attention!

Thanks!

Thanks. This is exactly how every soundcheck should go.

You don't need a DigiCo to have quality results. If the X32 is good enough for a lot of production companies and traveling bands, it's good enough for me.

@@chrishammillaudio Just curious, what are your thoughts on Mixing Station?

Only used it once. While it worked fine and I didn’t have issues, I prefer real consoles.

You were one of the first people that mentioned 10K and I thought you were out of your mind. Happy to be wrong 🤘

@@chrishammillaudio Haha, it's all about the vision man! Here's to the next 10k 🥂 🤣😂. Good luck with the Mustang btw, definitely want updates on it/the situation

Thanks. When I get the police report and get an estimate on repairs I’ll make a whole video about it. So far I’m still waiting on the police report while the car sits under a canopy with the weather resistant cover on.

Glad you enjoyed!

Thanks!

It's a beast of a console.

I used it at a tv station where we had a live talk show that had a band everyday. I ran the mics for the talent, band monitors and full mix. It was great. @@chrishammillaudio

Was not expecting that awesomeness.

Was not expecting that!

That’s what happens with every singer. Cymbal bleed is the #1 cause of feedback for me on that stage. Very annoying to deal with.

It’s to be expected lol

Beats me!

Give me 20 grand and I can get one of either.

Listen to the sound guy, show up on time, don’t rehearse on stage and don’t turn up/down your amps after the sound guy checks your levels

@@chrishammillaudio Cheers Chris, thanks a lot for your input!

1) If the splitter snake is for your in ears, let the sound guy know as you load in exactly what setup you use and be sure to have your ends that go to FOH labeled correctly and clearly so the sound guy has zero issues putting your snake ends into the stage box. Most bands that use IEMs have them for vocals, bass and guitars while using the house drum kits and mics the way they are for the show, so 5-7 inputs is all you'd need. It's a pretty easy setup and as long as your gear and system work properly there shouldn't be an issue. If the sound guy gives you shit, don't play at that venue. 2) I love to see the backing tracks mixed properly. Too many bands use elementary level backing tracks mixed horribly and it shows. You can easily tell when backing tracks were mixed on headphones or piss poor studio environments. They need to be full, balanced and clear. 3) It depends on the venue you play. Some venues have very basic lighting systems and your stage lights will improve the overall lighting. If you control your own lights, that's great. I don't like it when bands plug their stuff into my console because 9 times out of 10 they never hook it up correctly, don't have an LD with them to program it themselves or there is usually a DMX connection issue. If you're playing on a 4 or 5 band bill, unless you're headlining no venue is gonna let you have extra time to get your lights hooked up. If you have a lighting system that is in sync with backing tracks and MIDI, you better have your shit locked in and working properly. I personally am a stickler for time and if you go above the 10-15 minute window in changeover, I will tell you either cut your set time down or don't use lights to play your full set. My venue has a full lighting system so unless you have an entire pro grade lighting system with you chances are you won't have as good quality as my venue's house lights. Always check with the venue you're playing at before you arrive to see what their lighting system is like and always ask if you can hook up your lights. I can tell you personally from experience that if you just show up and start messing with the house lights and changing things, that venue will not like you and it will be an unpleasant experience all around. Always check beforehand what is cool and what isn't. Always better for you to control your own lights with your own gear than either change house lights or rely on house LD.

Yep. One Cat 5 cable does the trick. There are apps that hunt feedback, but I always prefer my ear over anything else.

Glad you enjoyed.

If a band has their own mics that’s fine with me. Just make sure you can get your stuff on/off the stage on time and don’t disrespect the other bands by going over your set time. Any band that allows me to not use the monitor wedges makes me happy.

Glad you got something out of the video! You're hearing the over compressed signal on my camera, so everything sounds louder than it really is. You hear a more accurate representation of the room in the show clip. Moon gel is your best friend to eliminate those ringing frequencies or tuning the drums differently. If you know how to tune, tune the bottom heads a little tighter to adjust the decay. Vocals and guitar always compete for the same space. You have to determine what you want to hear more of. For me 90% of the time in the studio and 100% of the time live I always want to hear vocals.

@@chrishammillaudio Thanks for the great insights! Appreciated the tips too! Cheers

Totally! I was really not expecting to hear that.

All you’d have to do is put the kick and snare line going into you rack and two extra cables to go from your rack to FOH. That’s an easy setup.

All that would do is lower guitars and I don't want that. Plus it doesn't solve the issue.

I did in fact select the wrong channel and didn’t notice it until I was editing the video.

I’m filming that video next time I’m working.

@@chrishammillaudio Aw man, I'm getting really excited now! Can't wait!

You literally see my entire process including monitors in this video.

No need to. The cymbals carry throughout the club.

It depends how you want to set up your outputs. For this venue we have a very simple set up. Subs are directly connected with main left and right. I don’t have a separate matrix for subs. I also don’t know what kind of set up you’re doing. For smaller clubs and venues like this, you really don’t need anything more complicated than a basic left and right output.

Appreciate it!

@@chrishammillaudio I have 6 person band, learning how to properly sound check, if you ever get a chance to comment what you do during getting bands ready, I would highly appreciate it, understood half of what you did but something is difficult, not used to x32 console

You basically saw everything I do. If a band can’t get their instruments in tune and know how to get themselves ready for soundcheck, that’s half the battle. I set my input gain, then I listen on the faders. I know what my PA needs gain wise in order to work properly and the acoustics of the room, so I know what volumes I need from bands and how loud I need their amps on stage. This is why I always say guitar players who refuse to lower their amps are the bane of my existence. After gain structure and volume, I set EQ then compression, which I use only for drums, bass and a tiny bit on vocals. After all of this is done I set monitor levels for that source. After that I ask the band to play something and adjust my FOH mix from there. It’s a very simple process.

PA

Drums first on stage box. Vocals first on board.

I mean, the venue name is on the banner on the stage, so… 🤷‍♂️

You are 100% correct. I thought I hit the select button and I just didn’t notice until you just pointed it out now. Drums sounded great, so it wasn’t noticed.

Easily done on a digital desk (This is why I like to have the 'select follows fader movement' or whatever it's called on the X32 turned on.. for me it makes this less likely to happen - and in your Tom 2 example above there were half a dozen fader moves where that that setting would have got you back on the right track - .... but it's still all too easily done.) Also funny - fascinating really - how our brains can tell us the sound is changing according to our tweaks , where in fact the tweaks are being made to a drum that is not even being hit! @@chrishammillaudio

Totally. Classic case of "hearing with your eyes"

Present me a situation where I’m mixing on one and I’ll gladly do it.

Two reasons: First, I would rather EQ the source than the monitor and have the monitor be as less “messed with” as possible. Second, the vocal mic was coming in a little harsh anyway in the top end and I didn’t like the tone it was giving me. Eliminating the feedback was two birds one stone.

@@chrishammillaudio Gotcha, that is what I was thinking. I'll switch between the options. If a single moving vocal across stage then I'll notch the Vocal channel. But if multiple people are (2-3 vocals, some wireless say accordions or brass). Then i'll notch the monitor. Thanks for feedback!

Tune the Toms, use moon gel or EQ out the sustain.

@@chrishammillaudioI’m still learning, since we don’t have a sound engineer in my band. So sorry if I ask stupid questions. Anyway, apart from the tuning etc can I also use the gate for that?

No such thing as stupid questions. Noise gate only affects the volume. You’ll still hear overtones. The best bet is to tune the drums differently or use gels. It also depends on the type of drum you have and heads on the shell.

I adjust from there.

90% of the time it’s adjusted the low end. Specifically raising the volume of the bass guitar.

100+ people, ... 100+ bass traps, ie., fluid filled skin bags!

Depends on genre. A lot of metal bands still use real amps.

Yes

@@chrishammillaudio nice

I build my mix around vocals. It opens a line of communication to the stage and if there is anything that causes feedback I’ll know immediately what it is.

That’s the camera mic. My reverb’s are pretty standard. I have a very simple plate reverb for the drums, a stereo delay for the vocals, and a very basic room reverb for everything else.

Now watch the full video to hear what a full house sounds like both board and room!

I never asked him to adjust his EQ, just lower the volume. The EQ adjustments are for FOH not monitors. When it comes to FOH I only care about how the mix sounds to the audience.

​@@chrishammillaudioyea I understood that part but does eqing guitars change the overall tone?

Yes, but as long as it sounds good in FOH I don’t care. The guitar player gets unchanged signal to the monitor, so everybody wins.

​@@chrishammillaudiohuh. So do they ever listen back and get all mad like hey that's not how I wanted that to sound. Just asking questions cuz I'm about to run sound for a small fest in putting together.

The only time I ever got lip from a guitar player is when I asked him to adjust his volume and EQ because it sounded like a cheap, shitty dimebag wannabe tone. He got an attitude and said “my sound”. I then made it know to him and the band that I cannot hear any instrument other than the guitar but “I’ll do what I can”. Rest of the band look pissed at the guitar player. The bane of my existence are guitar players who refuse to take any direction from the sound guy. My job is to help the audience hear them clearly.

I explain why in the video.

@@chrishammillaudio My bad, I must have spaced out at that mention ♥ Thank you :)

You forgot: begging guitar players to not blast their amps.

Also did u tune the FOH before line check? Then fine tune when they started just wondering?

I have my tracks in order of importance during soundcheck L to R. Drums are first on the stage box. I check the PA before every soundcheck but I mostly don’t change my EQ on the PA. I play a few songs I know how they should sound and adjust, rarely, if necessary.

I had that same exact conversation with a black metal “artist” who took his sweet time getting on stage, refused to have me hear anything before he went on, then proceeded to have the absolute worst sound I ever heard in my life. To make it worse, he gave me EQ instructions like that and was nearly 10 minutes late getting his “I do my own sound” rig together. I couldn’t even adjust anything because I was a glorified volume control! Icing on the cake for a 8 band black metal festival.

@@chrishammillaudio dude! That’s the worst.

Well, it isn’t for this system. Digital clipping happens at zero. I am hovering around -8 to -6. Far from clipping, as you can clearly hear in the board audio at the end of the video and the room audio.

Ok I have to step in here having mixed hundreds of shows. In a small venue like this all compression on drums is parallell compression since it's just added to the sound coming directly from the stage. Your job as a soundtech isn't really to create a full mix out of the board, but to add what is needed to make it sound great in the actual room. On smaller stages I tend to compress a whole lot more than on stages where most of the sound will come from the PA. Also he has a pretty long attack time, which affect the transients less. Doing vocal mics first is actually a good practice on this stage size since it will work as overhead mics for the drums. Things other than procesing in the console which are also "changing the whole sound" of the band and that will be part of the mix: - The actual room with its dimensions and materials - Amplifier placement - The PA - Selection of mics - Placement of the mics - How crowded the room is

I do vocals first because they’re the most important channel in a mix. Also it opens a window of communication between me and the band on stage. Once I do vocals and adjust monitors I rarely need anything else in the wedges. Plus, with vocal mics on and as I add more instruments it gives me a chance to handle any feedback. The stage is small, so the vocal mic gets feedback from the other instruments blasting through the wedges as the mic picks it up. I don’t get why people are so hell bent on doing drums first, but this is how I work and it works perfectly fine. I adjusted the EQ of the drums because that preset is for my house kit, which we use most of the time. Since the drums were tuned differently and were made of different materials the EQ settings I had was overkill, so I adjusted. If this were a more low key band that played with a lot of dynamics as you said, I’d adjust the compression as well. Had plenty of bands come through here that didn’t play “smashy” and I had zero compression on the drums. My attack doesn’t squash the transient. I mix drums live how I’d mix them in a studio. Let the transient breath, fatten up the decay. The whole point of a preset is to get you 80% of the way there and adjust to get your mix. You’re also hearing the soundcheck through my camera mic. It over compresses the signal. Watch the samples at the end for a more accurate representation. It doesn’t sound “over processed” at all. The bottom line, I do whatever I need to do in order for the sound coming out of the PA to be good for the audience.

As an old dude, I get pretty set in my ways too, but there's no rules.

I don’t think anyone has ever described polkadot as “just a smashy band”. I might be insulted if you were anything more than a self important, KZfaq know-it-all.

This is what a soundcheck looks like in a small venue in the real world. I’m not fake and have a studio with an already pre-planned segment that is scripted so the soundcheck and sound of the band is absolutely perfect. Nowhere in this video did I ever say that this is for educational purpose.

Do you not understand the difference between stage volume and front of house volume?

Would you ask Tom Morrello if he could turn down his amp, which he hasn't changed in 40 years?

If he was playing the small stage at my venue and he was considerably louder than everyone else on stage and I couldn't hear anything BUT him, then I absolutely would. In the 7-8 years I've been doing live sound, I can count on one hand the number of guitar players who gave me lip for asking them to turn down and they flat out refused, and I've worked with local and national touring acts. @@dominik4614

As much as I'd love to do a huge stadium tour for a huge band, give me Green Day playing medium size venues and I'd be thrilled. Best concert I've ever seen - Paul McCartney Best show I've ever seen (yes, there's a difference) - Rammstein As far as venues, I'm really happy where I'm at now. A realistic goal to achieve if I were to ever get another gig is QXTs in Newark, followed by the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ. Ultimate goal would be the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

@@chrishammillaudio I took my 12 year old brother in 1994 to see Green Day at the Aragon Ballroom which was later shown on MTV in full. Oh man to be 17 again without a care in the world. It was me, my brother who was 12 and our mutual friend who was 15 jumped in my 1992 lumina on a cold snowy November night telling our parents we were sleeping at the others house so they didn't know haha. I think back to that now that was kinda risky driving 72 miles to the show in that weather and only with 8 months of driving experience. But, we were all diehard Green Day fanatics and still are all these decades later. We just reunited to see them play the Harley Davidson anniversary weekend this past August :). And man going from seeing them play the Aragon with 2000 sweaty kids packed in to right on the shores of Lake Michigan in front of 50+ thousand was a sight to behold. You are so right when it comes to show you ever seen and best concert you ever seen. Big time.

What on Earth are you talking about? - Zero compression on backing tracks - Only compressing vocals to contain loud projection, almost zero compression on quieter vocal - Bass is compressed -2 to -6 with a 4:1 ratio to make it consistent the same volume no matter how hard or light he's playing. Pretty standard for mixing hard rock/metal bass in a studio - Zero compression on guitars, only there to act as level control if the guitar player has low end chunks. - Drums are compressed to fatten up decay, not transient, hence the 25-30ms attack. Hardly "squashing the life out of the band".

@@chrishammillaudio again, way too much compression on every input...your ears must be painted on

Are you a brain dead parrot? Read my comment again. Slowly. Then proceed to look up industry standards of compression with hard rock/metal. Stop repeating yourself. It's embarrassing. @@jamesmccabe1702