dave rat on his chilli peppers FOH setup

Robbo wrote: You may find that he is probably deaf or has hearing problems with his right ear which can be the only possible reason why he mixes FOH sideways with his left ear facing the stage. Over the years, I have mixed FOH in probably every terrible position known to man at times and can honestly say that it is just pure common sense to be facing the stage full on so that the complete stereo mix can be heard by both left and right ears.t

Great viewing on a Sunday morning. Mrs has been on the phone so didnt even get nagged..

I tend to have mixed feelings about Dave Rat.

Edited by kevinmcdonough - 13 December 2016 at 9:11am

I can understand what he is on to but I can see serious problems like kevin just described. Hard stereo panning for large audience is really risky business. With typical stereo system, on stadium maybe 10-20% of audience will get really nice stereo image. Next 10-20% will get some sort of idea of stereo maybe but I'd say over 50% of audience wont have any clue of what the other side of speaker system is.

Regarding to subs, if they are groundstacked, or actually pretty much whatever grounstacked source.
If we assume two sub stacks spaced 20 meters wide and assume SPL drops 6dB per distance doubled, however, this might not be entirely true as I don't quite know how things work in half space

Audience right in front of one of the stacks, 30 meters from that stack will be 36 meters from other stack. This means they will hear the other sub stack 17ms late and at 1,6dB lower amplitude

Audience right in front of one of the stacks, 20 meters from that stack will be 28 meters from other stack. This means they will hear the other sub stack 24ms late and at 3dB lower amplitude

Audience right in front of one of the stacks, 10 meters from that stack will be 22 meters from other stack. This means they will hear the other sub stack 36ms late and at 7dB lower amplitude

Audience 45 degree OUTSIDE one of the stacks at 20 meters distance from that stack will be 37 meters from other stack. This means they will hear the other sub stack 50ms late and at 5dB lower amplitude

Audience 45 degree OUTSIDE one of the stacks at 10 meters distance from that stack will be 28 meters from other stack. This means they will hear the other sub stack 52ms late and at 9dB lower amplitude

I have somewhat been schooled by Bob McCarthy regarding system design and as a rough rule he tends to think that when talking about interference and summation, after 10dB of amplitude difference the other source doesn't need much consideration anymore. However in this case the more important bit is the time difference. Of course relation between time and phase change when discussing only sub frequencies...
http://bobmccarthy.com/the-emperors-new-stereo/

I am always very sceptical when I see things being attempted outside the norm--Yes, sometimes some very talented sound guy will come up with something "different" that does really work but usually it is either bullshit or ego driven and I tend to find that the best FOH soundguys are the ones that tend to keep their little secrets and methods under their hats.
Years ago we were going out on tour with a major act that I had worked with previously on many occasions and the artistes management had stipulated that their own FOH sound guy would be in charge.
Now this did not bother me one bit as after twenty years or so touring I could take a ride along on a 38 date tour and at the same time have a nice break from dailey pressures.
Two days of pre-production rehearsals at Shepperton had shown up a few problems with the sound guys knowledge of live sound in general even though he was well known in the industry supposedly with an excellent track record--there were quite a few mutterings between myself and our regular sound crew about his methods over those two days but we did manage to keep a lid on things and give him the benefit of any doubts we had and also the management company seemed very happy with him so obviously we did not want to rock the boat.
On the first day of the tour proper we turned up at Leicesters De Montfort hall and quickly rigged stage set, lights and PA(two 40ft trailers for sound and one 40ft for lighting) and sat and waited for soundcheck time.During this leisurely break, I had chance to have a good look at the way that the FOH rack and desk had been set up during rehearsals for the tours first gig and I had a little smile to myself but managed to keep my mouth shut.
About half way through soundcheck(which was not going well)I was babysitting the FOH position with all of our crew on talkback systems but what I did not know was that the acts manager had also picked up a TB system and was wearing it and I then got a call from our onstage monitor engineer asking me to go up on stage as there was a potential problem.
Onstage I was asked to look at both the many FOH and monitor ampracks and witnessed that whilst the monitor rack were being driven nicely as per usual with plenty of level, the same could not have been said for the FOH racks with mostly only the bottom LED flickering on and our monitor guy said to me that we could have done this tour with a Luton Transit instead of two 40ft artics.
Now I meandered back to FOH to find it vacant and the acts manager not there either but about ten minutes later the manager returned on his own and when I saw him, the penny dropped that he had obviously overheard the previous TB conversations as he had quite a wry smile on his face--he then asked me to come with him for a private talk in the production office.
The superstar sound engineer was on his way to the train station and they were now in a position of having no one to do the job with doors about two hours away---under the circumstances, would I accept his apology and could I take over for the whole tour.
Now I had known this manager for some ten years or so, always got on well with him so I said OK as I really felt for him at that time.
Needless to say the whole tour went very well with superb sound and lighting and rave reviews in the music press into the bargain.
On the last gig of the tour when our final 25% pay check was due the acts manager called me into the production office to give me the payment and handed me an envelope which obviously contained the paycheck--he then handed me a rather thick jiffy type bag which obviously contained a very large wedge of cash which I immediately tried to refuse and give it back to him but he would not have any of it and apologised once again to me about putting me in a terrible predicament on the first gig of the tour and that the money was in fact a good bonus for me to make up for things.
Now a few years down the line that same manager had taken on another two well known acts to manage and needless to say I was always the first person for him to ring when setting up a tour.
The superstar sound engineer is still working in the industry and having heard him mix a few acts over the years, he has not improved at all.
Oh and the jiffy bag contained a bonus for me of £5K which was equally split between all of my employees a week later.

kevinmcdonough wrote: geoSal wrote: Also very interesting thing on his mix is panning hard L/R the kicks and every other line he can. This way he avoids phase problems on the subs because the sources are identical and not the same. I think he used to be a mono sub configuration fan but now he runs subs on 2 aux sends feeding them the same instruments from different mics or sources.So no more power alleys or ''holes'' due to L/R sub stacks distance.I know the problem is not completely solved but is greatly reduced. And let's face it ,cardio or end fire setups are a much bigger compromise. Mmmm I don't know if i'm convinced with that one, whether it would be worth the compromise. Yes it'll reduce phase problems at the actual speaker and in what the speaker reproduces, but you'll still get those phase problems when the sound waves meet in the air.  And you'll have the added problem that it'll sound different to everyone across the listening plane. Assuming there is at the very least a different sound from each mic, and probably different processing, then you're left with the situation of with, say the kick, that the people on the left tend to only hear the inner mic which usually picks up more of the beater and is a bit more clicky, and the people on the right will only get the outer mic, which gets the rush of air out of the kick hole and tends to be lower, and more "whoofy" and rounded, less attack. People in the middle will get some mix of both depending on where they stand, but will be very variable depending on phase and distances etc. Mixing both together and sending them to the subs mixed at least provides a level of consistency as much as possible. Preferably with a centre cluster, but even with LR stacks, yes you may need to process the mics a bit, or add a little delay to one to try and align them and maybe put up with a touch of phase funnyness, but once you have a sound that you like you can be much more confident that that's what is coming out of all of the subs and the audience is actually hearing, rather than a load of phase funnyness that is out of your control changing things from left to right.  k