First, let me get this out of the way: I absolutely loved seeing AC/DC live.

I’ve been a huge AC/DC fan since I was a kid, but somehow I’d never had the money or opportunity to see them live, so finally seeing them yesterday was pretty damn special.

Watching Brian Johnson at 78 and Angus Young at 71 rock a stadium of what looked like 50K+ people was incredible. Angus was simply phenomenal. No gimmicks — just loud, sweaty, unapologetic rock and roll.. 🤘

BUT...

As much as I enjoyed the show, I have to rant about the sound.

Maybe I'm completely wrong here because I'm definitely not an audio expert, but the acoustics inside NRG Stadium seemed pretty awful to my ears.

There was so much sound bouncing around that at times it felt like I was hearing the same thing coming back at me from different parts of the stadium. It created this weird wash of sound, and after a while my ears were ringing and I was actually struggling to make out Brian's vocals.

I've seen bands in smaller venues around Austin where the sound was absolutely phenomenal, so I'm wondering — is this just the reality of trying to make a giant sports stadium sound good for a rock concert? Do all stadium shows have this problem, or was something particularly off last night?

The mixing also seemed odd. Angus sounded great, but whenever Brian came in, it sometimes sounded like the PA was being pushed beyond its limits. His vocals would get harsh and distorted.

And finally, Brian obviously struggled with some of the high notes. He's 78 — I expected that and honestly didn't care. But for a massive production and $300 tickets, I kept wondering why they didn't use more backing vocals to help fill in those moments. Not to replace him, just to give him a little support and help smooth out the rough edges. I wasn't expecting Brian Johnson to magically become 30 years old again. I was expecting a massive stadium production designed to make a legendary 78-year-old singer sound as good as possible.

Despite all the above, I'd happily go see them again. The energy was incredible, Angus was unreal, and seeing AC/DC live after being a fan for decades was something I'll never forget.

Rant over. AC/DC fucking rocks. 🤘

But seriously — anyone here with audio/production knowledge: was it NRG, the mix, or just the reality of doing rock concerts in a giant stadium?

I want to preface this by saying i am no sound engineer, just heavily interested in this topic.

I attended Nibirii festival in Germany last Sunday, and was interested in how the engineers configured the subs to function with this specific stage setup on the unreal stage. As visible in the picture, there was a big area behind the line arrays (K1 I think?) where people could enter the stage installation. I spent most of my time there, they added some A15s to fill out this area, but what I found interesting and leads to my question:

The KS28 subs were built in a cardioid configuration, always one towards the back and two towards the front as far as I remember. But why would you do this in this situation if you want the bass to also reach behind the subs? Behind the stage there is a big lake, so I cannot see a reason why you would want to limit the bass traveling behind the stage. Bass was considerably less behind the K1 hangs, but it was not quiet enough to ruin the fun. I do not understand why you would build a cardioid setup in this situation, so maybe the DSP was configured differently than with a "normal" cardioid setup?

If any engineers have an explanation for this, I would be greatly interested :)

Is it too late for Soundcraft to get (back?) in the game? What would it take for them to finally be successful in the middle market?

What are your guys’s favorite ways you’ve learned to communicate with a vocalist mid set? For example, let’s say they want their voice in their ears turned up or down a bit. Other than just rehearsing enough to memorize those parts, do you have any techniques that look more subtle than hand signals?

Hello! I have been a professional DJ for many years and have up until this point ran one wireless mic, and one wired mic. Well the other day, my Sennheiser x2 wireless mic took a dive into a puddle during a hectic Microburst Rain situation.... No biggy... I hated that mic anyway.

So today I pulled the trigger on a set of Phenyx pro PTAU-2 Mics. Im hoping this allows me to eliminate my wired mic all together. Seems like they will be more reliable than my crappy Sennheiser.

My question is; Is it possible to combine the 4 antenna into just 2 in a way that doesn't break the bank. I already have 2 BNC bulkheads hard-mounted into my DJ flight case. And there really isn't a good spot to mount two more. I have tried to do some research. And I have seen some youtube videos suggesting that this is possible. But they either done explain what they are using, or they are talking about in ear monitoring systems. Can I use a simple BNC T connector? Or do I need an active combiner?

TYIA

Howdy. I’m hoping to confirm that this would be the correct processor for the r2 version.

The ps10 utd-v3 comes up when searching for an r2 processor, however ChatGPT suggests that this is for the r1? Just trying to get some clarity on the conflicting information.

Any help would be appreciated, cheers! ✌🏼

I have been out of the biz for several years now. Apparently you can take the stagehand off the stage, but you cant remove the stage from the stagehand. I cant be the only one, but the other day I caught myself doing an over-under cable wrap on my hairdryer power cord. What stage move have you found yourself inadvertently doing?

Hi all. I’m at the end of my rope here. We played a gig last night and I kept getting massive intermittent IEM static blasts in my ears. It was FINE for the first set and then we came out to start set 2 and my monitor was basically unusable for the rest of the evening.

We built an IEM rig last winter and according to my research we did everything right. We are running two Sennheiser XSW IEM transmitters each with two belt packs tied to it for a total of 4 receivers. Dropouts were an issue so we added a Phenyx Pro antenna combiner/paddle and that helped but hasn’t eliminated the issues which seem to change depending on the situation.

Had line of sight to the paddle antenna which was about 10 feet away from me. Static bursts seemed to occur anytime there was literally anything in between me and the transmitter. Even a single body. It was completely random and often enough to be a huge problem. I tried switching to another clear channel, rebooted the unit, and even tried boosting the gain on the antenna unit.

What say you all? Help!

Most people here probably know that designing venues for Soundvision got a lot easier after the Vectorworks to Soundvision plugin was released in 2024.

You can import a floor plan into Vectorworks, do the full 3D model there, include things like lighting truss, LED screens, staging, etc., and then bring it directly into Soundvision.

But what if you need to go the other way?

Soundvision has supported DXF export for a while now, but those exports mainly contain the 3D models of the loudspeakers and rigging frames, not the venue geometry itself.

I was recently given a large folder of Soundvision venue models and floor plans for an upcoming tour. Since I really didn’t want to rebuild all those venue models in Vectorworks just to plan the rest of the production, I started looking for a way to reuse the geometry that was already there.

That turned into a small Python converter using ezdxf.

The Soundvision project files contain the venue geometry in a structured XML-based format, so once the file parsing was figured out, converting Surfaces, Balconies and Revolutions into usable DXF geometry was pretty straightforward.

The converter currently supports:

• Soundvision .xmls/.xmlp project files
• Surfaces
• Balconies
• Revolutions
• Vectorworks-friendly DXF classes/layers
• optional merge of the loudspeaker DXF exported by Soundvision
• 3D Faces, 3D Outlines and Points
• browser-based conversion, so there is nothing to install

I think it’s now at a point where it’s useful enough to release publicly and let other people test it.

One important disclaimer: I’m an audio/system engineer, not a software developer. I started vibe-coding this after around v4, and the web implementation is also vibe-coded. I mainly wanted a small tool that solved a real workflow problem.

So definitely test the resulting geometry before relying on it for anything critical, and if you find weird Soundvision files, broken geometry or other edge cases, I’d be interested to hear about them.

Web Converter: https://1machiene.github.io/Soundvision-to-DXF-Converter/

Git-Hub: https://github.com/1machiene/Soundvision-to-DXF-Converter/tree/main

On Thursday I was at a show at a venue, sound felt "distant" unless you were on the sides where P.A could catch you, in fact at one point I was center-right and I could feel the vocals more on the right instead of in the center. It wasn't a small venue, around 800-1000 people capacity, the stage was like 170 cm high and the stage was like 6 or 8 meters horizontal, 4 or 5 meters high and around 4 meters deep.

Of course bass was loud, because they put subwoofers right in the middle and crack them up.

Then on Friday I went to a very small festival open air on a very small village, sound was fantastic everywhere, there where 2 12" speakers on the front aiming at the crowd and subwookers where on the sides under the P.A. Sound was equally good on first row than far from the stage.

Both days they were metal shows.

I've seen this happen on a lot of closed venues, only the P.A on the sides and the sound is bad on the first 10 rows. Why they don't put front fills? The singer will never cross the border of the stage and feedback is easy to controll nowdays.

How are we securing USB Cs to laptops/MacBooks for show critical use?

I currently just tape things down to the table with a strip of gaff with a bit of slack between tape and computer.

Question here. Next week at work we're trying to host a virtual soundcheck for monitor tech training. We have the Avid s6l-24c and I have a PC with protools and some stems.

Has anyone used a PC before and done virtual soundcheck?

It seemed like from the videos I've found online that people are usually using a Mac.

Any advice would be lovely.

I run sound for a small band and use a Qu-SB console. Lately it’s been having a problem where I boot it up all channels will be crackling even the empty ones. The first time this happened I figured I didn’t have time to trouble shoot an hour before the gig so I just switched to an analogue mixer. After about a day of troubleshooting we found swapping out the Ethernet cable made the problem stop, but a week later it’s started again and this cable is brand new. Firmware is up to date and I’ve tried ground droppers, that’s all that I’ve found anyone else to have this problem to say. Any other ideas?

Does anyone have the installer they can link me to? For some reason I can't seem to download anything from Shure, I fill in the form and then get sent a "Cleverbridge manual order processing" message and the follow up email with the link/file never arrives...

Hey there

What are your favorite songs to listen to for a PA Shootout?

I've been running sound for my school for a couple years now, (mostly using analog boards or xr-18, with XSW mics). But I got an offer to help with managing wireless mics for a corporate event.

I would be in charge of 7 headset mics and two handhelds, I'm supposed to put the headsets on people and take them off, and also check and replace the batteries in them if needed, the event is supposed to last a total of 9 hours, and I will be working with Axient mics.

This is my first time actually professionally doing sound.

Im kinda nervous, and looking for some advice from more expirienced engineers.

Thanks in advance!

Maybe a silly question but do any of you get your ears professionally cleaned? Like by a doctor/clinician especially after being sick? I’ve heard (ha) some people swear by it especially working in our industry, and others say it’s pointless.

Yes, yes-
“Just use a Q-Tip”
“NEVER USE A Q-Tip!”
“BUT IT FEELS SOOO GOOD!”
“IT’S BAD FOR YOU!”

So we are getting into Fiber territory needs and everything.

Sommercable recommended us opticalcon quad singlemode. But every production i see usually runs multimode.

Can someone explain why? Is it only because back in the days it was cheaper? Or is there more to it?

Typically an SSL guy so I use stems for this purpose. How do Digico cats approach this when you’ve got large channel counts, lots of playback, and want to be able to manage things in groups?

Not looking to discuss the upsides of mixing mons and using groups.

Only option I see on Digico is to use their groups but mix post fader in some capacity?

Enlighten me.

I’m moving soon from the UK to France to live with ma femme française just outside of Paris. Whilst I am planning to mostly do studio work, I was wondering what the live music scene was like for engineers in Paris.

Is there a lot of competition for work? Do you find work mainly through word-of-mouth (talking to people) or are there Facebook/whatsapp groups? Are there any other areas of audio that are often looking for work?

Happy to talk via DM if that’s easier.

Merci beaucoup mes amis.

We use an X32 Rack for live Marching Band audio reinforcement. This application requires many scene changes during the production. We are trying to use the distortion effect on a horn trio with a condenser mic. It works great, but we get a pop when we change scenes at the end of the section. Any help greatly appreciated!

I have had some shows recently that have given me some weird RF scans through WWB. I wanted to do my due diligence and make sure our wireless racks were wired properly and that there weren't any internal issues. Didn't have any drop outs in the areas I saw these scans, just noticed weird spectrums and would see some small interference on the receivers.

Our company has (2) 8-channel wireless racks. They are put together a little differently:

- Rack 1: (8) Shure QLXD4 Receivers + RF Venue DISTRO9 + RF Venue Diversity Fin + (2) 50ohm antenna cables

- Rack 2: (8) Shure QLXD4 Receivers + (2) RF Venue DISTRO4 + RF Venue Diversity Fin + (2) 50ohm antenna cables

Troubleshooting: I set the racks up in our warehouse and visually/physically inspected all the connections, and all connections were good. I set up the diversity fin and did a spectrum scan in (3) scenerios - (1) both racks bridged together (2) rack 1 alone (3) rack 2 alone)- and then I repeated this with the diversity fin from rack 2. I kept the respective cables with the respective racks.

Every scan from Rack 1 receivers looked comparable, and every scan from rack 2 receivers looked comparable. But rack 2 scans had a maybe +10dBm noise floor difference. The only thing changed in between scans was the cable to the fin and the receiver that was scanning (position of the fin was not altered). I have the pictures of an example of the scans.

Is this significant of a difference to be alarmed? How would I source the issue if there is one? Was my testing method appropriate?

Thanks in advance.

Hi! My workplace recently got the Quantum 112 with the A168D rack, and we’re struggling to get the Quantum to recognize the A168D as a rack.

I’ve found out that the rack has to be updated to V1.5, and will try this tomorrow. My question is: Can I hook the rack up to the local Dante ports and still get preamp control, phantom power etc, or do I need to install a DMI 64/96 for that?