Trick on club sound system

[Philbo King]

Pro audio engineers, what is your trick to ensure customers can clearly hear each other (meaning doesn’t need to shout in close distance and can hear words clearly) while maintaining the sound is at club standard level, let’s say at least 110db

Any conversation where average music levels are above 85 dBSPL is going to involve shouting as well as hearing damage. Period.

 

[spiritualgroundbeef]

I used to notch out lower male and female voice fundamental frequencies to achieve the effect OP is looking for. 3-4 db cuts usually wouldn't affect music too much.

 

[ocinn]

Pro audio engineers, what is your trick to ensure customers can clearly hear each other (meaning doesn’t need to shout in close distance and can hear words clearly) while maintaining the sound is at club standard level, let’s say at least 110db

Low distortion from 2-8khz (use multi-band compression/dynamic EQ)

Flawless time alignment. (No 4 point systems, use in-line delay hangs). Timing incoherency creates audible smear and makes speech intelligibility impossible.

Flown speakers for even coverage

Club acoustic integration is actually my specialty/career. Feel free to PM.

Any conversation where average music levels are above 85 dBSPL is going to involve shouting as well as hearing damage. Period.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Come to the YouTube theater in Los Angeles.

The ultra controlled directivity and meticulously planned array coverage as well as every single wall surface being treated means you can effortlessly hold a conversation within ~103db LAeq15 shows. It’s mind blowing.

You can't talk in 93 dB avg.

Totally Incorrect. The only way this would happen is if the gear and the system designer were totally incompetent, or the room was a concrete bunker with horrific reflections.

Using line sources are essential for this effect. The problem is that if you want a certain SPL in the back of the intended dance area, you need to have a much higher SPL at the speaker level because the audio decays at 1/r^2. So maybe it’s OK to carry a conversation at the back of the room but not the front.

No. You hold this opinion because your experience is from point sources being asked to do line array tasks.

You can easily use inline delays. Here is a show I recently did for a ~1600 cap show (50ft x 130ft dancefloor). Flawless SPL and timing gradient across the whole dancefloor. Incompetent engineers give club acoustics design a horrible rep. I’m

 

[GXAlan]

No. You hold this opinion because your experience is from point sources being asked to do line array tasks.

You can easily use inline delays. Here is a show I recently did for a ~1600 cap show (50ft x 130ft dancefloor). Flawless SPL and timing gradient across the whole dancefloor. Incompetent engineers give club acoustics design a horrible rep.

+1000. I meant to say that a single point source against a single line array is the comparison since I figure this club’s budget is low since they are home brewing the whole thing and are asking some first-time setup questions.

With delays doing the timing gradient, you can do a ton and are digitally achieving the goals! At that point through, instead of asking ASR they need to hire a pro to calculate and setup the audio

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Low distortion from 2-8khz (use multi-band compression/dynamic EQ)

Flawless time alignment. (No 4 point systems, use in-line delay hangs). Timing incoherency creates audible smear and makes speech intelligibility impossible.

Flown speakers for even coverage

Club acoustic integration is actually my specialty/career. Feel free to PM.


Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Come to the YouTube theater in Los Angeles.

The ultra controlled directivity and meticulously planned array coverage as well as every single wall surface being treated means you can effortlessly hold a conversation within ~103db LAeq15 shows. It’s mind blowing.


Totally Incorrect. The only way this would happen is if the gear and the system designer were totally incompetent, or the room was a concrete bunker with horrific reflections.


No. You hold this opinion because your experience is from point sources being asked to do line array tasks.

You can easily use inline delays. Here is a show I recently did for a ~1600 cap show (50ft x 130ft dancefloor). Flawless SPL and timing gradient across the whole dancefloor. Incompetent engineers give club acoustics design a horrible rep. I’m

View attachment 333080

Fair enough. You are way more experienced in this than me. I gave it a shot from the hip but I can tell I am not geared to advice IR to pro applications.

 

[ocinn]

The future of medium format live audio exists in two groups.

a) traditional systems based upon a progressive dispersion designs (L’Acoustics L2D, JBL CBT1000, Danley GH60)

b) digital beamforming (Holoplot, still needs a lot to reach full maturity imo)

Traditional point source and line sources have huge technical flaws which the above solve. No need for front fills with a L2D
/cbt1000 as the horizontal dispersion of the bottom portions covers the front row. This allows for wider horizontal spacing, no timing misalignment due to distance deltas from front row arrays etc….

Fair enough. You are way more experienced in this than me. I gave it a shot from the hip but I can tell I am not geared to advice IR to pro applications.

93dbA from desk monitors is subjectively and practically like ~10db (psychoacoustically) louder than 93db(A) in a club setting. Not sure how to rationalize this into objective theory (not my expertise) but it is very much true to everyone I’ve ever spoken to.

I agree that 93db on a desktop monitor system would be very difficult to hold a conversation over. In live settings 93db(A) is so quiet it’s legitimately unusable (noise floor of the crowd would drown it out). ~99-106db (LAeq15) is industry standard and that covers from “sensibly quiet show” to “very loud show”

+1000. I meant to say that a single point source against a single line array is the comparison since I figure this club’s budget is low since they are home brewing the whole thing

4x well designed point sources (e.x. Danley, Meyer x40, D&B V10P) in a flown delay config are more times than not, much cheaper than purchasing a line array system that can achieve the same coverage and throw.

However if you cannot fly the delays inline, the benefits of the setup are thrown out, and a line array starts to make more sense. Products like the ones I mentioned above (L2D etc, are truly ideal)

Granted, all live sound speaker solutions should be flown. Ground stacking never works (even more so for line arrays since the bottom two elements are just shooting at the first few rows’ chests)