Tone Controls - YORKVILLE M8 Manuel De L'utilisateur

Tone Controls

Use tone controls sparingly. Most audio sounds great just as it was created. A little high-end
boost can bring vocals to life. If you have a microphone on the bass drum, you can probably
roll off most of the treble. (It's not useful to have microphones listening for sounds that
aren't there). Experiment, but be conservative with tone controls.
Vocals
Keep the vocals up front. The instrument's sound is there to accompany the vocalist.
Therefore the vocalist should be heard at a louder level than the instruments. But don't keep
turning up the vocal microphone or you will experience feedback. Just turn the Channel
Level controls for the instruments down a little and you will achieve the same result without
the possibility of feedback.
Hearing
Speaking of ears, don't forget yours. You've probably walked into a show late in the evening
and had your ears blistered by screaming horns. "What's wrong with whoever is doing the
mix?" you might have said with fingers in your ears. What was wrong was a technician with a
dose of hearing fatigue and his/her unfortunate reaction to it. After a relatively short exposure
to high sound pressure levels, the human ear shuts down (somewhat), especially in the upper-
midrange and high frequencies where it is most sensitive. This process reduces the immediate
discomfort, but there is debate as to whether it protects the ear in the long term and much
evidence that damage does occur. In any case, the technician notices that the horns sound
muted and reacts by altering the equalizer. Apart from long-term physical danger, this sounds
bad and turns off at least some of the audience - especially the new arrivals. The solution is
to use earplugs or other hearing protection. Afterwards, some quiet time is in order to give
damaged eardrum tissue a chance to heal. Provided severe or repeated damage hasn't created
a buildup of scar tissue causing permanent hearing loss, you can return to hear your mix with
fresh ears. The mix should sound invitingly loud, but not painful. In basic terms, if you find
that you've turned up the high end since the night began and it still sounds the same to you
as it did at the beginning, watch out. That's not "fatigued horns" or "changing room acous-
tics" rolling off the high end, it's your ears. Please do yourself and your audiences a favor -
Use Earplugs! And if you can't bring yourself to do that, be considerate of your audiences and
leave the high-end equalizer or crossover at normal settings.
Finally, remember why the sound system is there and what people did before sound
reinforcement was created. They listened in close proximity to a group of performers. But
times have changed and large groups gather to hear artists perform. The purpose of the
sound system is to amplify the sound created by the performers so that the audience can
COMFORTABLY hear the music with the same tonal quality as if they were standing at the
front of the stage.
The M8 was designed for a quick easy set-up, remaining invisible and reliable during the
performance, and light to carry at 3:00 in the morning.
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