Live Sound Myths: Busted!

If you had the chance to sit with a bunch of young aspiring sound engineers, or maybe even volunteer sound people at a local venue or church, and you had the opportunity to set them straight on something they’ve probably heard for years, what would you tell them? We asked a group of seasoned pros, most with decades of live sound experience touring with some of the biggest bands in the world, exactly that question. They were happy to enlighten, and correct, these live sound myths. So let the record stand corrected.
Brad Divens
Enrique Iglesias, Kanye West, Mötley Crüe, Bob Seger, OneRepublic, Linkin Park
MYTH: Louder is always better.
Louder is not always better. It’s just LOUDER!

Steve Wilson
The Kentucky Headhunters
MYTH: SPL = Talent.
MYTH: The kick drum is a lead instrument.
MYTH: High frequencies travel faster than low frequencies.*
MYTH: PFL the gain to Zero on each channel, then turn down the faders.
MYTH: The sound man is always right… Oh wait. Actually, that one is true!

*Note: For typical applications in earth’s atmosphere within the audible range, low frequencies travel at 1125 feet per second and high frequencies travel at 1125 feet per second.

Brian Pomp
Macklemore, Macy Gray, Avenged Sevenfold
MYTH: Live sound engineers all have pony tails and wear fanny packs.
MYTH: Sound engineers aren’t all grumpy. (Because actually we are all grumpy.)
MYTH: Mixing live and in the studio are totally different.
That assumption is just wrong. They obviously have some differences, but you’re trying to accomplish the same thing — giving the listener something palatable and enjoyable to listen to. Creating that experience. Room acoustics are really the biggest difference. Trying to balance a PA system is totally different than sitting in a nicely treated studio with a pair of good nearfields.

Doug Gould
WorshipMD.com
MYTH: More microphones make things sound better!
MYTH: Plexiglas screens mitigate the sound pressure level of maniacal drummers.
MYTH: Sound operators can make a bad band sound great!
MYTH: Pulling one earphone out is a good thing!
MYTH: Spending most of the soundcheck on a kick drum will make the mix sound the best!

Peter Keppler
David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Bonnie Raitt, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj
MYTH: More volume is better…
Ear fatigue and possible hearing damage are not cool. 
MYTH: More sub is okay.
It actually does far more damage to one’s high-frequency hearing response than people realize. 
MYTH: You, as the live sound guy, are irreplaceable.
Always try to do your absolute best, and put your heart into it. That will go a long way toward retaining your gig. Also, working well with others is just as important as your skills, especially if you’re on tour.

Rick Naqvi
PreSonus Electronics
MYTH: You need to use all of the processing on every channel, because more is better.
With today’s modern digital mixers, you have so much power available with tons of EQ, compression, gating, and FX on every channel. The biggest myth is that you need to use all of this processing on everything all of the time. I have seen some really great-sounding bands that have had their mix destroyed by an engineer that is over-compressing and over-EQing. My advice is to mix with your ears and not your eyes; start with just highpass filters and push up the faders and listen. Then as you add EQ, always try to start with subtractive EQ first, then move on to boosting frequencies when you need to.

Eddie Mapp
Paramore, Stone Temple Pilots, Papa Roach, Evanescence
MYTH: “Waiting on lights….”
That’s not a myth — It’s a real thing!
MYTH: “It worked last night when the DJ used it.”
That’s normally a lie.

Kent Morris
Peavey, First Baptist Church Atlanta
MYTH: Adding mics to a choir makes it louder.
Adding mics to a vocal ensemble does not make it louder — it does the reverse.

Jeff Barnett
Director of House of Worship Sales at Sweetwater, FOH Engineer
MYTH: Underpowering a speaker can damage it.
There’s been a pervasive myth for years now that underpowering a speaker, which is connecting it to an amplifier that supplies less than its full wattage rating, can damage the speaker. That’s just plain wrong. If giving a speaker less than its rated wattage could damage it, we’d constantly be blowing up speakers every time we turned down the main fader. There are lots of ways to damage your speakers — driving them too hard, giving them a distorted signal**, pushing too much low end, or just dropping them too hard while unloading the trailer. But giving them too little power isn’t one of them.

**Addendum: The way this myth likely started is that when an underpowered amp is driven beyond its wattage limit it will clip the signal, causing the resulting waveform to resemble a square wave. If you have too little power and push the amp into clipping for an extended period of time, you will burn up the voice coil. But that’s due to clipping the amp, not underpowering the speaker.

Shawn Dealey
Counting Crows, Production Manager/FOH Audio at The Clyde Theatre
MYTH: You can get a great mix by using visual aids as crutches.
Stop using your eyes! The reliance on RTAs and visualizers is sometimes a double-edged sword. Take time to learn frequencies and trust your ears to make decisions. If you’re hearing a problem frequency, learn to identify it and deal with it, without relying on a visual representation.

Lynn Fuston
Sweetwater Manager of Written Content, Twila Paris, Pine Hills City Church
MYTH: If the singer sounds bad, it’s all their fault!
Even the best of singers can be fooled when their monitor mix is bad or wrong. They may think they are in tune if they don’t have enough bass or piano in their ears or sing out of time if they can’t hear the rhythm. If someone, anyone, onstage is not performing to the best of their abilities, I always search for whatever I can do to help them, whether that’s the mix, effects, whatever.

Scott Cameron
Greta Van Fleet, Jason Bonham, The Black Angels, Taking Back Sunday
I don’t know any myths, but something that makes me extremely happy is the number of women who are moving up in the ranks within the live sound industry.
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