Quote:
Originally Posted by lucey  Photo Gallery
This is an old church with a great vibe but bad sound.
Acoustic music is okay, but drums and bass, even for jazz, just get messy in there. The performers are on the long wall, playing toward the cafe kitchen area in the photos. The mains are hanging up in the top corners of the long wall, stage side. They are 15s with horns, junk basically, too large of a woofer for the music in there.
Please have a look and let me know any trapping or general ideas that may help this room. It's too wet and has some low mid resonances. My first suggestion was 2 walls on casters to go next to the stage and an angle. One side would be 705, the other wood. And some 703 on the wall behind the drum riser.
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I think treatment is actually third or fourth down the list of issues. The first problem is the one you brought up...the mains are probably too big for the room. The second problem goes hand in hand with the first: the mains are in entirely the wrong position....you really couldn't put them in a worse place, actually. In order to get anything like coverage of the room you're having to run them way, way too loud. This is undoubtedly causing all kinds of comb filtering problms all over the because the information from one speaker is arriving long before the other. Third, there are too
few speakers. Fourth on the list, after all of that is fixed, would be treatment.
To fix the actual underlying issues, here's what I'd suggest:
1.) Drop the 15's and buy some good 12's with a horn. Run them full-range, no sub.
2.) Move them to the center, above and ahead of the stage. Aim them so that you're getting as little energy as possible up in the ceiling.
3.) Buy two more of the same 12's and place them further out left and right. Buy a decent DSP (like a DriveRack 260), then you can run the left and right outriggers at a lower volume for a balanced room response. You didn't mention how far the mains are firing, but if it's more than about 35', a third set of delay speakers toward the back would be a great idea. I'd even consider installing a zone of small speakers in the cafe', like JBL Control Series stuff. You didn't mention how they're powering the speakers they have, but that's likely part of the problem as well. Typically I see speakers that are *radically* under powered in these kind of rooms. Good amps properly powering the mains would lower the level of distortion, raising the perceived level of clarity.
4.) Treat the wall behind the musicians if you can. If not, your idea for some mobile panels would probably work pretty well, but the room would stay pretty lively.
If they're willing to do the install themselves, then they could probably do all of that for about $6,000 or $7,000.
If they're not willing to do any of that, then some treatment would at least help. Problem is, they've got stuff on all the walls that I can see, and I don't know whether they'd be willing to change that or not. If not, then they're stuck with either mobile panels (kinda like the way you'd position gobos to "shrink" a large live room) and some rugs on the floor, or crappy sound.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but there you have it.
Frank