Monitoring

Guilty Party

Guilty Party

Member
Brand new FM9, woohoo!! Looking for some input and guidance on monitoring my sound at volume.

I've played around through the presets and so forth at home in the studio and I picked a Dirty Shirley to use at a rehearsal last night. It sounds pretty good through Focal CMS 50 monitors at home, untreated room. I did not do much to the preset to prepare it for monitoring at rock band volume through a wedge monitor. I followed the advice of several YouTube guys, low cut and hi cut using CAB block. 80hz and 7.5 kHz, give or take.

I didn't really know what to expect upon setting up last night. I had 2 different monitor options available, both pretty much PA monitors as opposed to Headrush FRFRs or better.

1. Yorkville YX10P - this monitor is 200 watts I think? Seems not underpowered. Has a bass and treble knob for broad strokes. Appears to be "flat" with both knobs at noon as the markings are -6 at hard left and +6 at hard right. I found, right away, that I had to remove all the bass by rolling bass knob hard left to -6 and bump the treble knob to +2.

2. Mackie SRM 350 V1 - this monitor is 200 watts? Didn't seem to dwarf the Yorkville in available power? Has a mic/line selector, pretty certain we had it set correctly to Line. Also has a contour switch, which should make a difference in mids, but we didn't notice a massive amount of difference between on and off. There is no tone control unlike the Yorkville. The sound was unusable, to state it simply.

So... I am assuming the behavior I experienced with monitors is to be expected, presets need to be EQed to be usable in the described situation. I surely do not want to bring in to play the tone controls of the Yorkville, it should be set flat. I am using the Copy Output 1 setting on Output 2, so I would want Output 1 (Monitor) to sound great at gig volume so that when it is copied to Output 2 (FOH) it is at least close.

I am looking for advice/ experienced opinions on how to carve up the presets with EQ as there are multiple ways to do so with an FM9. The AMP tonestack, AMP output EQ, Global Output 1 EQ, EQ blocks, etc. I notice that on the Perform tab of FM9 Edit that one is able to set Per-Preset Performance and Global Performance controls. Maybe this is where the magic lies.

Thanks to any replies I receive on this. I am just looking to get a sense of how others achieve the quality results I am looking for. FM9 is a pretty deep dive with an array of external variables. I wanna tame this beast...
 
When you made the preset did you do it at ~90dB? If you weren't at gig volume the FM curve will really mess with your tone.
 
Thanks for your reply. I am aware that I need to be at gig volume to make/ adjust presets. I will be undertaking that task. I guess my real question from my post is what are preferred options to adjust? Where to begin, in other words. It would seem that I would not want to make sweeping changes to global settings, EQ-wise. When you say FM curve, I assume you are referring to frequency modulation? In other words, it sounds noticeably different when the output is louder? Again, looking for go-to starting point(s). I'm not yet convinced that I should be adding an EQ block to any given preset to account for this.
 
Guilty Party said:
Thanks for your reply. I am aware that I need to be at gig volume to make/ adjust presets. I will be undertaking that task. I guess my real question from my post is what are preferred options to adjust? Where to begin, in other words. It would seem that I would not want to make sweeping changes to global settings, EQ-wise. When you say FM curve, I assume you are referring to frequency modulation? In other words, it sounds noticeably different when the output is louder? Again, looking for go-to starting point(s). I'm not yet convinced that I should be adding an EQ block to any given preset to account for this.
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I don't try to adjust EQ inside the preset very much, instead, I check a couple of presets once I'm set up, then use the system's global OUT EQ to adjust everything.

Rooms and stages can vary drastically, and you really can't tell how your sound will be affected until you're at stage volume. Partially that's because of the Fletcher-Munson curve ("FM" is "hep cat" talk), but it's also because of room acoustics and the construction of the stage.

Build a simple preset consisting of the Synth block --> Out 1 (or Out 2 if that's what you're using), and set the synth waveform to Sine. Turn up the volume and sweep from 200 Hz on down and listen for resonances. If something jumps out switch to the Global EQ for Out 1 (or 2) and reduce that frequency, then switch back and continue. Sometimes I use the Graphic EQ, and sometimes it's the Parametric EQ, but whichever I use helps a lot. One place I played had a cheaply made stage that'd flex when we walked on it, and the FRFR cabs boomed at 80 Hz, but the sweep pointed it out right away.
 
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Thanks Greg. This is sound advice and I will be practicing dialing in at volume over the weekend. As far as you know, is there a way to save Global EQ settings? That would be a bonus, I don't see any way to do this at a glance...
 
Hehe that brings back memories. I used to tune rooms like that in the ‘old days’.

Thanks
Pauly

Greg Ferguson said:
I don't try to adjust EQ inside the preset very much, instead, I check a couple of presets once I'm set up, then use the system's global OUT EQ to adjust everything.

Rooms and stages can vary drastically, and you really can't tell how your sound will be affected until you're at stage volume. Partially that's because of the Fletcher-Munson curve ("FM" is "hep cat" talk), but it's also because of room acoustics and the construction of the stage.

Build a simple preset consisting of the Synth block --> Out 1 (or Out 2 if that's what you're using), and set the synth waveform to Sine. Turn up the volume and sweep from 200 Hz on down and listen for resonances. If something jumps out switch to the Global EQ for Out 1 (or 2) and reduce that frequency, then switch back and continue. Sometimes I use the Graphic EQ, and sometimes it's the Parametric EQ, but whichever I use helps a lot. One place I played had a cheaply made stage that'd flex when we walked on it, and the FRFR cabs boomed at 80 Hz, but the sweep pointed it out right away.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Guity,

I'm no longer running PAs but if I was to do it now, there's a plethora of automated tools to take care of it for you. Alternatively, most mixing desks now have a frequency response graph overlaid on EQ strips, so you could even just throw some pink noise through the PA, view the frequency response graph overlaid on a reference channel (with a nice flat measurement mic routed to it), and adjust until the bad modes are minimised. Happy days!

Here's an example of what I mean

Thanks
Pauly

Guilty Party said:
Nice. How do you tune them now?
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IME most PA monitors are low-cost designs for the DJ market, so they are set up with MASSIVE low-frequency resonances. "Flat" on the tone controls is meaningless, and the monitors generally don't have a spec for variance across frequency. Add to that the resonance of the stage and the standing waves in the room, and FM, and you'll get that issue a lot. Be prepared to cut lows up to 250Hz.

ps - "FM" always reminds me of a comedian/magician form the '80s who used that to refer to ".-ing magic."
 
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