When Things Go Wrong As A Sound Engineer
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- Опубліковано 15 кві 2024
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Being a sound engineer is more often than not, a pretty fun job. However, there are some days where everything goes wrong, where you spend all your time problem solving, you get nowhere, and all the while the clock is ticking.
I though I'd share one of those days with you, just so you know what to expect. - Фільми й анімація
3:47 “interesting” is Soundman code for “oh fuck”
all time comment right here
Ahahahah this is the biggest truth.
I hate that there are so little videos like this on youtube. You can only watch so many "top mixing tips" or "best compressor settings for xyz" guides. Compressor settings won't break the show, no sound from the PA on the other hand will. That's why experiences like the one you shared here are so incredibly valuable in my opinion. I can really see myself remembering this video in the future when something goes wrong and who knows, maybe turning something off and on again is going to be what fixes the problem.
Also, I love the format of you just telling the story, no editing no nothing. It's like talking to a good friend, where I'm constantly anticipating what happened next and I was truly engaged in your story. Hope to see more videos like this one (not to wish you any more bad days though lol), even though I realize it's not what gets many views. Love your channel man!
I'm very glad it resonated with you and thanks so much for the kind words. I agree with you, like in the grand scheme of things compression is useless when you have a problem like this. I (rather selfishly) hope that making the video will remind me to power stuff off and on next time I'm in a pinch. Glad you liked the format as well. I thought if I don't just edit it and publish it quickly then I'll get scared of being wrong and never publish it.
I think the fact that you felt able to share this openly with your community can only serve to give others the strength to feel like its ok to have bad days and share it, and even the experienced people such as yourself. I can only hope that this demonstrates that people don’t need to keep their professional guard up and pretend everything is fine all the time. We are all human!!
Thanks so much for such a lovely insight Nick. It's so true, and I think sharing it, although scary, is the right thing to do. It's certainly reassuring to have a bunch of comments from people saying similar things have happened to them. Glad it's not just me 😂
Oh man. The stress levels just listening to this story....
I’m a contracted beta tester for a mixer manufacturer for 14 years now. The one most important lesson that I have learned from having beta gear on gigs not work correctly is POWER CYCLE DOWN! LOL…
If I cannot get a piece of gear to work after 5 minutes, it gets shut down. We have to remind ourselves that we are dealing with a computer and not an analog device. Software gets corrupted and locks up and requires a reboot.
Great video! I’ve been there 100’s of times and still have issues.
Thanks! It's so very true. I think I'm going to start treating everything like my old nintento: turn it off, blow in it, turn it on. problem solved.
This has been my experience with any fixed system that has software in it especially if it's left on forever. Sometimes they happen to be permanently fried though.
This happened to me last year, band were ready to play, performers were ready for the dress rehearsal, but hum on every channel and the foldback not working. Tried changing everything else except reboot the stage box. The In house theatre tech came and helped and we rebooted the stage box - everything was clean and quiet after that, we are talking high end Allen and Heath kit and I had your very same melt down experience - it is not nice - but yes lesson learnt - reboot everything including the stage box before doing anything else.
Feel your pain, digital s are a blessing and the bane of FOH - 'Hard Reset' is always the first thing and the time for proper reboot- Good on 'Ya for your perseverance. Sometimes really miss the analog only days, but that quickly dissipates when all is going well and the show files load up in minutes and soundcheck is smooth .... Personally, I have started shows while still working out the details, makes for a rough start and a solid finish ... but it certainly can cause one to question your interest in the trade and your abilities of being a FOH Engineer/Tech- Enjoy your vids and the honesty of your experiences- Cheers!
We've all had days like that. I think it's important we talk about them as it's rare things happen without a gotcha of some kind or another. My latest gig had a DMX gremlin that I couldn't seem to get to the bottom of...
I was only using a handful of lights; 8 fixtures in all. Two behind the band, and another 6 across the front. I was running one DMX universe and one cable run. When I connected the run of lights washing the front of the stage, one of the rear lights started strobing. I checked all the power and DMX cables, made sure the terminator was good and no dice. I decided to change the config in my DMX Node to mirror the universe onto another DMX port, and ran a separate run... Still the same. At this point, nothing made any sense; while the lights were on the same universe, they were electrically isolated.
Then, the guitar player came on stage; he had plugged his wireless units into the power lead that was powering the DMX rack to charge. As soon as he unplugged the charger, the problem went away. It never occurred to me; "what else has been plugged in here?".
It is a brave thing to do 👍🏻, to share a bad day moment. I learned from it.
Last night, whilst preparing for a gig, I was searching why I didn’t get my Talk Back mic in the monitors. After 1 hour 🤭 I realised I didn’t turn up the “Talk Level” knob…..
I’ll follow your example by sharing my bad day moments too. Thanks!
Thx takes such genuine humility to relay such a clearly stressful experience. Im 23 and just got hired to run sound lights and book for a casino here in Mississippi and spend most weekends dealing with this stress and at times it does way on my confidence as an engineer. Much appreciated.
Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve had some bad days, but never the courage to share.
This can be a cut throat industry.
This was valuble for sure. What immediately came to mind from my own Oh shit situations was when I loading a scene into a mixer that is local I/O and forgetting to go into routing and select the local as the source. I was banking on that silly thing that we should all know by now but still sometimes forget as being your problem here and then your story went on to show that it can be the simplest things that can get overlooked.
Another simple one that’s got me good was on an M32C/DL32 combo where I selected AES50A as the source during setup rather than the mixer😅
People! This is the difference between a "Soundguy" and a "Soundtechnicien". The technicien will go on to fix the problem. The soundguy will just say that it doesnt work and blame the equipment. Great video. I've been in this sort of situations and will always go on to find solutions. With or without help. Trying to solve the problem will make you a beter mixer than just touching faders!
Thanks a lot! They do say you have to experience stress and discomfort to grow so lets just call it a very unpleasasnt growth opportunity hah!
Been through many of those days in Trinidad, thank God I can troubleshoot on the fly
This was valuable for me. Thanks for your candor, humility, and troubleshooting tips.
Been running sound for 20+ years and thankfully I haven’t encountered a situation like the one you described in many years. I felt a bit stressed as the story developed!
I'm very glad it was valuable. I felt stressed retelling it!
No matter how experienced you are at anything, you can still find yourself in this situation, it's a really horrible feeling at the time and there's no amount of skill that can stop it, you just have to try and get through it somehow and not be too hard on yourself, because we all have times like this, total respect to you for sharing this with us though....its always good to know we are not alone in our f**k ups! 😆
I've been watching Ur videos every now n then but with this video 😢, I just subscribed. Thank u.
I just had this happen to me... I finally just said get out and reboot...Old PC thing... and boom there it was... I feel ya man I feel ya!
Thank you so much for this video, I've lost count of the times I have doubted myself, and wondered why I'm even doing this. To hear that a brother engineer has also experienced these feelings really helps me. Thank you.
May I say how much I am enjoying your channel and content, even if much of it is out of my league. I think the way you go about it all is fantastic, very educational and extremely useful, especially to me, coming from a bit of an old school, low or no budget way of doing things. I'm really enjoying learning about new things, techniques and things that I have never heard of, let alone come across yet!
Keep up the good work sir. 😊
Thank you so much for this. It's a big help. Personally as a freelance means you can feel like everything is on your shoulders. You worry everyone around is going to start to doubt your abilities. So it can be extremely lonely and stressful. Having a colleague that is both as good as you or better and isn't going to stab you in the back the first chance they get is an absolute god send.
Thankfully you solved the issue and you had a great show.
Thanks so much for that!! My similar thing was doing a gig at a venue I've done sound at MANY times. The last one, I was told from the 12 piece band who played there sometimes, it was the best sound they'd had there. Cool! So the next time they showed up, I had to deliver the same experience for them obvoiusly. Was a A&H Qu-24 desk with a pretty big powered PA. Dual 18' subs and 2 x 15' + horns above them. 2 x 15's + horns flwon and some delayed speakers down the side of the room. After getting them set up, it sounded great on stage, but a a little bit of feedback was just making itself known. When the show started, any mic I pushed up was met with howling! I used the same "scene" on the desk I always used, which was personalised with custom layers for DCAs etc. The show was a struggle all night. Did lots of drastic eq on vocal channels, but just never sounded great. Didn't go near the FoH eq as this had been professionally set some time ago by a specialist with a SMAART. After I had more time to analyse stuff, I found it WAS the FoH eq. Apparently there was an EDM gig a couple of days before and the DJ thought he would just change the whole eq to suit him! It was a mess! I never got it back to how it should have been and actually moved country soon after this (Not because of it, to be clear! ;)) I found out that FoH is not saved on the A&H with scenes. So it's all part of not assuming people won't do stupid stuff on a system you're very familiar with and to check everything if you get unexpected results!!
Wow thank you for sharing what a nightmare !
Had the same thing once with a DL153 years ago, only that one time. I waisted 3h on a festival to finally, go under the stage, turn off the DL Off and On again… sync back up in a few seconds and worked as it should …😅
Those moments can be very demotivating but in the end of the day we all do this because we love it.
Dang that is hectic! I think you did great especially with trying to go through the troubleshooting process and ESPECIALLY with the time crunch. With the time crunch our minds can only process so far and usually go to tunnel vision mode because of the stress. I ran into a similar issue where I was getting signal and no gain controls either. Everything on my Dante stagebox was lighting up green and I even was able to power cycle my system but still could not figure it out. I find out my IP address was set to DHCP based on a dip switch on my Dante stagebox which made it remember the gain settings but wouldn't let me have gain control. I lost many years off my life because of this but now I've master the art of the Dante LOL
Unplug it---plug it back in. That's my IT rule first step for every component when something is wonky. Seems to have saved me several times. I can relate. Thanks for sharing---totally love that you shared this.
Thank you for sharing. Technology always conspires to trip us up at the the worst possible time.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I’ve come a long way and have had many great gigs, but I ran into a similar issue to this recently.
All outputs from the stage box worked but had no signal from inputs. I made so much more work for myself and physically moved the mixer next to the stage to run analog ins and mixed from an iPad for the show… Found out later that the “mute all” button was engaged on the stage box which mutes all ins but not outs. I felt so defeated but the reality is it happens to the best of us.
Oh, the joy of digital mixing...
Not that we haven't done a lot of trouble shooting in analog days, and I definitely do not want those days back.
Thanks for your honesty and your way for letting us in in your trouble shooting process. And, to be honest: I had a laugh at the relevation...
Awesome video, we all have bad days but we keep trying to get better. Having someone to call is truly very important
I can say i am that someone to some people and i also have someone i call.
Thanks for sharing
good info and very helpful. YES we all have bad days and it is true we get so lost we need help.
Thanks sooo much for the honesty.
This is incredibly helpful, thank you
The thing is in the moment when the pressures is on you are human and you miss things I know I do. Like I tell everyone I help with trouble shooting it is so much easier to fix somebody else’s problems, there is no pressure on me at that point and the mind thinks clearly.
Having said that you learned a lesson I almost grantee you will try that first .
Coincidentally I had the exact same issue with a CL5 and a rio 3224. It was showing level but no control and no output. Werid oh well.
I also find it’s helpful to talk through a problem with someone even if they have no idea what you are on about because it slows your brain down enough to think properly.
GREAT VIDEO MY FRIEND !!! THANK YOU TO SHARE TIS DAY WITH US!
I have to say this channel has been a blessing bro and we all human we make mistakes end of the day we come out stronger and wiser
great video! I love this type of content. you showed that the world every so often reminds us that we are human...
I certainly appreciate you sharing this. It’s simply validating we all have these days.
I needed this. Thank you.
You're so very welcome. I glad it helped
we call this video: POWER CYCLE.
I just had a really similar situation. I work in a theatre and there are two musicians playing in our black box space, a fiddle player and a guitarist. As I'm approaching the end of my apprenticeship, I had to choose an event to plan, do and write an essay/report about and this is the one I chose because a PA has to be set up for it and I want to give my knowledge of system design a time to shine.
I planned everything and yesterday, we set it up and ran into some issues with speaker hanging as we had never flown some of the speakers I used and I didn't check for the clearance between the bracket and the casing and the angles it allows.
With that first difficulty taken care of, I wanted to tune the system. I had prepared a showfile containing the matrices with their eq settings beforehand, but the mixer (Soundcraft Si Impact) did not recognize the drive, so I had to build it up from scratch.
There, I made the mistake of clicking "new show" (deletes only cues but retains routing) instead of "reset config" (an actual new, blank show), thinking that any non-default settings would be visible and editable for me.
Anyways, when I patched the stagebox channels, I made the mistake of patching my main out to "MADI USB" instead of "Stage box" and after the network connection did actually work, the madi usb section didn't show up anymore for me to unpatch it (which the version the mixer is running still requires you to do in order to patch it to somewhere else), so it took quite a while to get that sorted out.
Eventually I did and I just had to switch some speaker connections and the tuning was pretty good.
Then I connected the inputs to the stagebox using a cat snake and while some of the local inputs worked perfectly fine, the ones on the stagebox did give signal (after I repaired the cat breakout), but they just did not want to go to the main L/R bus. I took the cat subsnake out of the equation, it still didn't work. I plugged them directly into the mixer and some worked while others didn't. I tested it with CH6, patched to input 6, it worked, so I ran a long network cable from a cat subsnake breakout at the mixer to the one of stage, thinking it would work from then on, but it didn't. If I patched the working input 6 to CH1 which I've painstakingly labeled for that input, it didn't work. Ultimately, I figured out that the software channels 1-5 and 9-12 just did not want to go to mains, but I found no differences in settings to justify that behaviour. Now, the inputs run through channels 6, 7, 8 and 13. It's not pretty but now it works and fixing it at the root by setting up a completeld new file would have taken longer. I also forgot the power cycle option, though.
Having a second pair of eyes on a problem usually helps a lot! It definitely helps me to focus better, having to explain the problem to do energy else.
PS: I recently had to OFF&ON a pair of misbehaving DL231’s… and don’t even get me started on the absolute uphill battle our new HD96’s are providing us with. Headaches!
Great video and great conclusion!
Thanks for the brave and bold video!
My pleasure! Well, not really haha. but it was cathartic to make it, so thanks for watching and commenting :)
Thank you for making this video. It's refreshing to see candid content where you share the good and the bad. Don't get me wrong, videos presenting "ideal situation" tips and tricks, or 100% efficient and educated solutions to problems are useful. But I think it paints and unrealistic picture of the reality technicians face every day. There's ALWAYS something going wrong, and that's actually OK. What's important is that the problem was solved and lessons were learned for next time. Thanks again for sharing, you should definitely make more content like this, I'll watch it 👍
I appreciate the honest video. I ran into the same exact scenario with an M32 and a digital stage box. With dumb luck, I power cycled both the stage box and mixer and that cured the problem. I was not experienced with the venue's system and just happened to get lucky that that fixed it.
Awesome videos mate, discovered your channel recently ! Massive respect for the quality content and massive respect for sharing these kind of dumb ways to fix things we don't do naturally anymore for whatever reason. When I started as a sound tech it would've been the first thing I'd try but some years later, as I've learned a whole lot about digital audio, clocks, audio protocols, somehow I tend to check those first. which is not bad but recently I've had the same situation as you and lost 40 minutes of troubleshooting cause my brain didn't want to turn on and off the stagebox 🤣
Thank you so much! haha yeah, it's nonsense. Like who checks the clock source before turning everything off and on again!? Me and several other people by the looks of it...
9:54 So, the key fact to take away here is:
"Turn it off and on again!"
I'm an IT guy sooooo - this is the thing I always do first. But man I've been in that realm you are telling about in this video.
"I can not think of any other thing, wth is going wrong here *PanicBreathing"
Thank's man
This video has made my day ! I have also experienced that kind of intense situation that I genuinely thought wouldn't not pass at the moment , being able to share your amazing experience has helped and encouraged me to look over the horizon that things would come better at the end of the day . I would really like to point out that at least this video would become very inspirational for many people at least for me , making it very profitable at it finest .
I'm so glad to hear that! In the moment it feels like the world will swallow you up, but I guess at the end of the day no one died.
Thank you for this honest and candid video - been there myself and aye, phone a friend! Keep up the good work (your content is being used in higher education!)
Haha what!? Where? You're very welcome. I'm glad it was useful
It is very much appreciated
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching!
Not a "professional" sound engineer but really just a musician with a PA that occasionally provides sound for other bands, I have more than my fair share of bad days.. with my own equipment. lol
I am glad I'm not alone. Sometimes we just get blindsided by the gear, regarless of how comfortable we are with it.
How about wasting 20 minutes before realizing that the prior night sound guy had pulled the master fader all the way down. Doh!
Thanks for posting this video man I thought stuff like that only happens to me because I'm not professional enough for something
You are very welcome. I also thought stuff like this only happens to me because I'm not professional enough.
Happened to me about a month and a half ago 😂 Allen & Heath stagebox and mixer was throwing me for a loop verbatim what you said. My first “trick” is to FACTORY RESET and then patch.
Ahh I’ve been there before.
I took a night off once and the engineer I had cover for me called as he wasn’t getting any sound. We had a very similar situation of him checking everything in house whilst I logged into the dsp remotely.
After around an hour with no luck, I get ready to go back to the venue and bring a spare pa and desk. But then I got him to power cycle everything again and realised we both forgot the break in box for the dsp. We had only done the dsp its self and the break out box.
Turns out that was it! I had never had that issue before or since!
It turns out that digital audio/ this career in general will always find a new way to mess with us.
The right question to ask yourself would be: why should turning off and on solve the problem? Your procedure was correct and logical when analyzed from a technical point of view, but there are times when we must leave that point of view and focus on what our mother would do, a light knock or turning it off and on again.
How do you deal with stress when you’re not working ? Thanks for sharing!
Honestly, professional audio companies should be able to design products where you don't have to power cycle it to fix a problem.
thanks man, we all have bad days
This glitch happened to me. I now run a redundancy so it can auto switch between AES50 A or B in the case of failure how ever it changes to a Digital Trim but that is ok if you loose an AES line post sound check or during a show you can work with it and move to resolve the issue at an appropriate time. Luckily this glitch happened to me on a day when I was just Re-patching the PA for somebody else for later in the week. After the general list of checks and switching the AES line, I power cycled the DL and it reset. I occasionally get a call from a tech asking hey all the inputs on the DL are Muted, cant get them un muted, I ask them the power cycle question and its amazing the result oh don't worry i have sorted it out now. after telling them to do that. can always hear the embarrassment. Im not sure if it is a feature of the DL to mute the outputs when booting up the desk but i feel like some times it decides get stuck in its hand shake process.
This has happened to me as well multiple times. Midas dl251 that i had no HA control over. Did a bunch of stuff and after lots of problemsolving just turning stuff on and off somehow works.
Also has worked wonders turning on and off when I am using a lake processor 😂
Seems to be a music tribe thing? 🤷♂️
I don´t think people understand how stressful this can be, and why we need more time as sound engineers to "fail check" before a show, time we never get because production, or customers just don´t understand. Don´t get me started on Dante problems.....
I literally had face same issue
Damn it's was one of the horrible experiences 😅😅
I'm very glad I'm not alone haha
I’ve had to turn a Behringer S16 stagebox on and off again to get the digital sync connect back to the X32 again!
I think from now on it'll be the first thing I try.
This is definitely not something to beat your self up about. It’s always the stupid shit which trips you up. Can guarantee, next time - you’ll turn it on and off again first time. I had a stereo pair on a keyboard once, and I accidentally linked the bass and the left side of the keyboard together, and was riding that all night thinking WTFs going on… second last song noticed…. Felt like an absolute novice.. just blind to the problem.
Interesting problem.
I love doing live sound and I hate doing live sound. It's fun and exhilarating but there's never enough time, the band is never on time, there's not enough of a soundcheck for me to feel comfortable, etc...
I do mostly studio engineering. Worst case scenario something doesn't work, I can't fix it, and I send the clients home. It's not ideal, but what are you going to do?
Where in Norway do you live? I live in Ålesund
Hey! I live in Oslo. Never been to Ålesund but it looks very picturesque. I love the west coast.
its called a AMX😁
Sounded like hell 😂
Truly in my top 5 worst days at work
This Mixer is shit. I've had so many problems with this Mixer.