Big Boomy room, Hollow stage

[Cooleyman]

We played in a huge brick building last night on a wooden stage. The room had a beautiful natural reverb which sounded great while strumming and singing, but after adding the drum kit and bass guitar things got ugly pretty quick. We did our best to cut bass frequencies from the offending channels but I still felt like I was wading waist deep in low mids/lows. Heck, even my guitar amp, with the lows AND mids almost off, sounded muddy.

The bass player had his amp sitting directly on the wooden stage. I'm wondering if we could put it up on something next time to uncouple it from the stage surface.

Also, the subwoofer was placed on the floor directly in front of stage center. We only have one sub so this seemed like the best place for it, but I now suspect it basically turned the wooden stage into a huge bass cabinet for our PA.

Just wondering how you guys approach this kind of setup from a sound reinforcement point of view.

[klasaine]

When I play on a big wooden stage ... in big brick or concrete building ...
I de-couple my amp from the stage - put it on a thick phone book I keep in my truck (you can of course also use stuff designed to do that).
I also try and gently coax the sound guy to minimize the sub woofer action (I'll say something like, "we're not really a modern pop band" or, "mix us appropriately for the kind of music we play"). And of course don't add any verb to the band mix. Maybe keep any reverb and delay on your amps to a minimum too.

[tiktok]

I never couple my amp to the stage, thinking that what I hear will be more consistent from venue to venue without adding in a random amount of bass/mid boost depending on the stage.

[bingy]

volume: cut it.
low eq: cut it.
fx: cut it.
sub: cut it.


In a case like this the drummer and bass player have to sacrifice for the over-all sound.

In the big picture the venue management needs to soften the corners of the space and minimize reflective surfaces.

I would bet that once the band starts cranking the entire frequency spectrum is bouncing everywhere (multiple times).

Sometimes we like that effect...other times...not so much.

[Joe-Bob]

You may need a GRAMMA. I like mine.

[woodman]

I always try to discourage using subs in big boomy buildings, because the whole room turns into a sub.

[JCSouthpawtele]

The product from Auralax called a GRAMMA is great. I have a bass player friend who bought some of those cheap catch all rubber floor mats for the back of an SUV and lays them out under his rig, effective non the less. I have done the same to decouple subs. Frequencies below 125HZ are omnidirectional so sub placement has nothing to do with speaker placement. Dampening the room with rugs and curtains helps.