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Tweak
By John Mills
System Tweak 101: �If it ain't broke� Don't fix it.� System tweaking is not for the faint of heart. One change to the master system eq will make every setting on your current mix different. That might sound obvious but consider this example. Say we think the whole system sounds a bit dull, so we add a few db at 6k, 8k, and 10k. Now the band sounds great and we can back off that high end we always add to the channel strip on the cd player, but we forget to check the pastors lapel mic. I'm going to bet when he walks out, it will feedback. So just keep in mind that most of the following changes will cause a ripple effect through the system. Be sure to do a full sound check on all your inputs before a service. I also shouldn't need to mention that you should never do a major system tweak on Sunday at 7am either. A professional ear combined with years of experience yields professional results, right? There is a right and a wrong to doing sound, but it is much like painting. A painter knows that you should never use complimentary colors such as blue and orange next to each other. But, as with all art, rules are meant to be broken and sometimes it just works. Do you run sound as an artist or an engineer? Truth be told, it takes a good bit of both to succeed. If you are one of the people more on the engineer side I challenge you to let the art side in as you make decisions about the mix. Don't pull 200Hz out of the vocal mic because that's what you always do, or were taught to do, but because the piece of art you are painting needs it. If you look at your console and realize that you are pulling 2.5k out of almost all of the channels, the problem might be that your master system eq has too much 2.5k in it, or maybe yours was built on the big metal horn speaker idea. When it comes to eq, less is always more. A couple of well-placed parametric filters will always sound better than hacking away with 10 sliders of a 31 band eq. I was once called in to trouble shoot a system. The diagnosis was the system was dull and lifeless; it had no punch, and was very difficult to get a natural sound out of it. Keep in mind that a �professional� install company put this system in, and I was called in out of frustration with said company because I was a friend of the church, and the company couldn't get any better results after 3 visits from the installer. Also note this was a brand new system. After coaxing the install company to give me the passwords to the master eq and system processors I was able to load the software on my computer and access the master eq. To my horror, I saw about 50 parametric filters inserted across the main mix. There were tons of massive cuts all over the spectrum. So I sat back and thought for a while, tested my theories and� ok actually all I did was click bypass on the eq and went to hit play on the CD. Amazingly the system WAS full of life, natural, and pleasant sounding. Long story short I put in a couple filters to help out some of the room's acoustical problems, and started to sound check. When I got to the choir mics, I realized why all those filters were originally there. Because the room was so live, the choir mics were unbelievably prone to feedback. The installer wasn't completely wrong in his approach, there are many times it is ok to use the master eq to cut feedback, but my thought would be, why use a master eq to fix a problem that was clearly caused by the choir mics. The fix: We routed all the choir mics to a bus, inserted a Shure DFR11 (Digital Feedback Reducer) box on the bus, and rang out the choir mics using the DFR. Not the master system eq. We now had a system that sounded great by addressing the specific problem, and using a specific tool to fix it. Why did I tell you that story? Simply, it is because we don't always use a conventional approach to achieve the desired result. Sometimes it requires a little �outside the box� thinking. Don't be afraid to try things, if someone somewhere didn't try dipping his hands in a little blue and orange paint, and applying his fingers directly to the paper, there would be millions of disappointed parents because their kindergartener wouldn't have made them that masterwork of finger painting displayed proudly on the refrigerator.
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