In the first two weeks, Frederico Paula and Nuno Jorge interviewd sound professionals and possible Smart Sound Monitoring clients.
Here are the main topics discussed:
- There are significant differences between indoor and outdoor venues: while outdoors there is a lot of dispersion, indoors reflexions predominate. Besides, smaller indoor venues do not behave the same way as bigger ones; it is also important to understand how much the room reverberates.
- Larger venues may require multiple rows of speakers facing the audience (one closer to the stage and another in the middle of the room, for example), in order to guarantee that the sound reaches everyone. Some probems may appear due to these multiple rows. In particular, there could be areas where either phase cancellation or phase superposition can occur. When this happens, sound technicians have to compensate speaker delays.
- Idealy, the audio regie (the place where the equipment that controls the sound is set up) is located at the optimal hearing point of the room. If we visualize an equilateral triangle in such a way that the speakers closer to the stage correspond to two of its vertices (one side - right or left - on vertice), that point is the vertice opposite to the stage. In some venues, however, the regie is in back; when this is the case, some sound technicians tend to mix the sound too loud, in order to hear everything properly from their listening point; besides, greater distances to the sound sources are more prone to frequency blend, which, when “compensated”, may cause other problems in areas closer to the stage.
- In smaller venues, there is a considerable blend betweeen acoustic and PA sound (PA - Public Address; it’s the sound system). In bigger venues the amount of acoustic sound is negligeable.
- Unless sound technicians are not comfortable with the venue and equipment they are working with, it is not common for them to leave the regie, both before and during the show.
- During the show, slight adjustments can be made, in order to compensate for the presence of people (which has an impact on the propagation of sound in the room), but not much more than that.
Considering this, the team decided to focus on indoor venues, since they provide more controlled environments and it is easier for us to conduct tests in similar conditions (we have access to facilities and equipment provided by our partner, XLR).