When talking about Sound Designing for Music Live Concerts, many newbie sound engineers used to raise eyebrows thinking it is for sound recording and mixing in movie and not for live concerts. It is a fact that a perfect sound design during a live concert based on the size & acoustics of the venue, type of concert is quite inevitable and many sound engineers tend to ignore it.

Why we are talking about sound designing?

Two weeks Back our sister concern SEA Pro had to work on an immediate assignment, the live concert of Mr. Balabhaskar in Central Stadium, Trivandrum. Actually sound system of the event was supposed to be handled by another AV company in Kerala and they reached the venue with  the equipment and installed it. When the initial sound check session has started hours before the actual event the total sound system has shown various discrepancies in the output and the sound engineers of the AV Company was not able to resolve the issue.
SEA Pro, the leading live sound rental company in Trivandrum, got the call for assistance  from the FOH Engineer of Balabhaskar at the time when the artists got frustrated and they were about leave the venue. At the drop of a hat our team reached the venue made the appropriate makeovers and handled the event successfully.  Some additions and substations need to be done in the present set up and need to do the complete system tuning according to the venue.

What we found when we reached there?

As we said earlier the previously installed sound system was not producing quality output. After analyzing the whole venue  and the system used our team identified the  problems. The system tuning was not done for the venue. , the crossover used by the Sound Company was unable to transfer sound signals of all frequencies to respective speakers and subwoofers, lack of adequate numbers of speakers and sub-woofers. They were using the Flying System of Electro voice. And the speakers were not sounding as per company standards. The Mid range frequencies are not responding & the performance of the subwoofers are not up to the mark.

How we solved the issue?

What we have done is, we have replaced the crossover with ours, added more  sub-woofers of the same series from our end and properly tuned the system specifically for the venue . After our installation and calibration the whole sound system has been producing output as per the three way settings made.

How can we avoid these type of Situations?

It is the responsibility of the system engineer to take care of the whole sound system like which speakers, consoles & stage gears to be used for each project. Placement of the FOH system & stage gears & its recommended tuning is very important. Proper cabling & inter connectivity is very important. As a sound system engineer the first thing you have to keep in mind that every venue is different and sound designing is very much important for live concerts as well. Another thing is that we should bring in adequate FOH speakers and Stage Gears / Back Line for handling the event based on the character of the venue & type of prorgamme .

Please note that even if we are using premium branded equipment for live concerts, if the person who is handling the sound system is not property trained and planning / choice of the equipment is incorrect it will adversely affect the audio brand itself.