THE FOUR STEPS OF THE SOUND REINFORCEMENT PROCESS

 

Before reading this document, be sure to have read the four steps of the recording process.
The approach here litteraly translates sound recording techniques to live PA techniques.

 

 

#1 - NO SOUND REINFORCEMENT   step 1 : live performance   This is similar to "recording process, step 1" : there was no recording, there is no sound reinforcement. Once more, this is supposed to be the "normal way" of playing music live, let's say : "how it was before electricity was invented". But once more, this is not true. Sound reinforcement appeared way way before electricity : elliptical shapes carved in stone behind the audience in ancient Greek theaters, catholic priests speaking in front of reflective walls or resonant cavities.... And once more, with the coming of classical and romantic music, everything was carefully forgotten : the composers are geniuses, their scores are as holy as any part of the bible, so why bother with such petty details as acoustics ? Their work is so great, it will sound splendid anywhere.

 

 

#2 - LEVEL AMPLIFICATION   step 2 : live perf + simple reinforcement What we want here, is to be able to hear the musicians more precisely, and / or louder. Like in 'recording step 2', the result has to be as close to the original acoustic situation as possible. And like in "recording step 2", the process is strictly technical. There is a big difference between recording #2 and reinforcement #2 though : reinforcement #2 makes more sense. It makes sense to hear musicians louder because the audience is large. It didnt make sense to expect realism in a living room equipped with (usually) lo fi speakers.

 

 

#3 - PERFORMANCE   step 3 : live perf + enhanced reinforcement   Same issue as recroding #3 : optimization, how to make the best of the situation. Here, sound is processed live, in order to get a more colorful result, more suited to both the music and the room in which it's played. This is very common in pop rock like music - for example it's generally mandatory to EQ, compress, and add reverb to live vocals, otherwise they sound out of style and flat. As in recording #3, everything is done here with fidelity to the actual scene in mind. For a start, it's still sacrilegious to have a lead vocal part coming from the audience's rear when the singer is in the front ! And very often, the processing implied here is used to enhance, not to transform. Though there is an obvious exception to that last point : the electric guitar, which doesnt sound at all when unamplified. The electric guitar case is very interesting : since there was no sound reference for the instrument since the beginning, people got highly creative, and electric guitar sounds got really exciting. This shows something very clearly : without traditions, people sometimes get much more creative and go further. See the recording ethics page for more on this issue.

 

 

#4 : "ROTATED" OR "SHIFTED" PERFORMANCE   step 4 : use of "shifting" recording techniques - but live and without recording     Reinforcement #4 follows the same logic as recording #4. The goal would be to make the stage sound like it doesn't look. This could be addressed as "rotating" or "shifting" the sound scene. Another issue immediately arises : the link between what's seen and what's heard. This one promises to be extremely funny. There is an important technical problem with trying to "rotate" a live sound scene, though : whereas in the studio, it's easy and safe to do whatever one wants with the sound, live it's a bit different : any unreasonable action will generally lead to feedback, and if you make a mistake, you can't start the concert again to make it sound right this time. Those "shifting techniques" are generally not used. That's a pity : let's have a look at what the light guys do in shows : they put projectors everywhere, including offstage, and they work on colors, shadows, directionality, timing, etc. In fact they do nothing else than making the room look different than it would otherwise be : they're indeed "rotating" or "shifting" the space. In comparison to what the light guys do, what most sound engineers do on a show is pitiful : front left, front right, and that's all. It's not much to say that something could be done to make progresses ;-)

 

 

Recording methods have evolved to the point where for every big project, there is now a guy called "artistic producer" whose job is to deal with the transition between the music as it is originally, and the music as it will be on the record. Amongst the processes he has to watch on, the "shift" there is between played music and recording music : the creation of the sound scene which doesn't exist but will be on the record. Live PA could progress a lot by taking example on that : not hesitating to "shift" the sound reality of the room in which the concert is taking place. As far as timbre is concerned, this kind of things is commonly done in big pop/rock concerts. But when it gets to space, it's never really done : if it was, live PA could be a bit less primitive than it is currently, and maybe, at some point, be as sophisticated as stage lightning. Example of attempts to go a bit further : - Pierre-Yves Macé's concert at Octobre en Normandie - The Heroine show in Sicily - Multi speaker spatialization techniques   Back to main index