Audio Archives - Page 2 of 2 - AVL Designs, Inc.

Sound In Schools – part 2 – You are part of the band!

In case you missed it=> Sound in Schools: part one

So, you have one mic sounding good. Now let’s start working with multiple microphones, multiple instruments. The nitty gritty of bad audio, if we were to put it in a nutshell, is the notion that if you get each channel sounding good by itself and then turn it all up, it will all sound great together. Based on that premise, if you want somebody to sound more in front of someone else, you just turn them up, right? Not exactly. Why not? Because that is not how the human ear operates.

Discovering why sound in school auditoriums is often so bad, and how to fix it! #sound #AVTweeps #audio #performingarts #Highschool

Your ear can only discriminate a certain number of things at any given time. Try this for an example: play a track of a bass player that sounds good, full and crisp. Now turn on a fan in the room. Bass definition drops off and, oddly enough, it sounds like there is no bottom-end. If, instead of a fan the sound interference was cymbals, it would be even worse. Multiple “anythings” have similar issues. Sounds mask each other. As the engineer, you have to decide how to deal with that and make music out of it.

So, let’s just take a simple task: two vocalists as opposed to just one.

Put two people up there and let’s say they have kind of similar voices and you have a hard time figuring out who’s who. When you listened to each voice individually they sounded pretty good – and then when you put them together it is just kind of two-dimensional.

You can’t really tell who’s who when they are singing at the same time. Now, if they are in a duet or singing parts and they are breaking apart, obviously that changes. But when they are singing together, you’re not really hearing the voices independently.

One of the things people will do, if they are mixing on a sound system that is stereo, is to pan one person to left and the other person to right. And then, if you are sitting in the middle of the room, that really separates them.

In live sound, however, if you are sitting on the right or the left side of the room you won’t hear the other person very well at all. So that approach is not a viable fix unless your sound system is a type that hardly any average school has, where the left and right systems completely overlap the entire room and provide true stereo in all seats. [We can talk about why that is complicated to do in a different segment at some point.]

Most live sound is dual mono by default. Separation in the mix is done by other means.

So, let’s get back to the two microphones. We really need to mix them in mono because we need to be sure everybody in the room hears both singers, but we want them to sound distinct. So what should we do? We will take some frequencies out of one mic that we leave in the other mic to make them stand apart sonically.

Let’s say there is a male voice and a female voice. In this instance, the goal is for the male voice to stand out in the low frequency ranges but the female voice has some low frequency content. To make that work, we will pull some low frequencies out of the female voice which will separate the two.

Now, if we then listen to the female when she is singing just her part, we have to bring those low frequencies back in for a while to make her voice sound the way it should as a soloist. But when they go back to singing in unison, in the duet sections, we will have to pull her voice frequencies out to get the whole thing to work from that perspective.

So, it’s a constant movement, like playing an instrument.

You are not leaving things alone. The keyboard player doesn’t just play an F chord and that’s it. When they’ve got to play a B flat cord, they change to B flat. Channel equalization has to change in various songs and parts of songs. In essence, you are part of the band.

Did you miss part one? Catch up here>>> Sound in Schools part 1 Copyright AVL Designs Inc 2020+

Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium

Adirondack Bank Center Utica Memorial Center ice rink

Utica Memorial Auditorium (Adirondack Bank Center) is a unique venue and a registered historical landmark. The 5700 seat hockey arena is the home of the Utica Comets. In recent years, the venue has had many upgrades to the building, lighting, video and scoreboard systems. An audio upgrade was also done in 2012, but the results were not satisfactory for the owner.

After numerous attempts to improve the system with tuning and other adjustments, AVL Designs Inc. was contracted [June of 2018] to do an assessment of the system.

While none of the specific equipment was inherently substandard in quality, the implementation was another matter. Intelligibly was poor throughout the seating area. In the room environment (7 seconds reverberation) the speakers were just too far from seating for their acoustic capabilities. The system was under-powered and lacked user interfaces that allow tuning microphones to various voices etc…..

After an initial assessment, AVL Designs Inc. was hired at the end of July to design a new system, bid the system and get it installed in time for the first fall game of 2018, [October 5, 2018.] Not a simple task!

The design phase took four weeks. Site visits were made, testing done, and Lead Designer Geoff Nichols started in 3D CAD analysis software. During design, Danley loudspeakers were selected after an analysis of various options. Due to the tight time frame, Danley was contacted to verify their ability to meet this schedule. Danley made the unusual decision to start production of the products prior to the bid being awarded, fully aware that substitutes could occur and they might not ship these to this job. That decision is what ultimately allowed this to be a successful project that met the time line.

The project went out for bid on August 17 2018. A two week period was allowed for bid returns and the results were in – the low bidder was Edward Simon & Co. LLC of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They bid the project entirely to spec – no substitutions.

Utica Memorial ice arena

Project Completed With 3 Days To Spare!

Edward Simon & Co. LLC has a reputation for high quality, on-time delivery with extensive expertise in sound. This project was no exception. A crew of 5 hit the site in late-September and had the entire system operational in 10 days, three days before the first game!

The new system consists of 32 Danley loudspeakers, Danley Amplifiers, QSC Q sys DSP, Midas Console, Shure QLXD Wireless systems, and other support equipment. The system met all expectations and provided high intelligibility speech and impactful music to all 5700 seats.

Genesee Community College >> Richard C. Call Arena

Athletic complex at SUNY Genesee Community College

AVL Designs Inc. has just completed its design project for the New Richard C. Call Arena at Genesee Community College in Batavia, NY.

AVL designed multiple audio systems for this new sports complex. The 4-faceted complex includes a field house, fitness center, exhibit space and an outdoor stadium with press box.

Their field house has many uses and required different audio systems to meet each specific need. The Genesee Community College field house hosts sporting events, conventions, LGI [large group instruction] seminars, fashion shows, concerts, social events such as dances, graduation ceremonies and more.

Each of the four field house audio systems orients the room differently for these functions.