OK, I know I'm late getting the latest SoS. Ah well.

Anyway, that article about festival broadcasts. I've not really watched any this year (various stuff has kept me busy), but I certainly did last year, and I was struck by the absolutely appallingly bad mixing. And by "appallingly bad" I mean that it would be unacceptable at a pub gig, never mind a major event with thousands of people and the band's own engineer running the mix. One in particular that sticks in my mind is an entire set from KT Tunstall with her guitar completely muted.

That article helped to go some way to explaining it for me - namely that what goes to broadcast is a completely separate mix to what goes over the PA.

The next question though is why? Sure I know that the PA will influence the sound, so there'll be some adjustment for that. And sure I know that the broadcast mix needs extra crowd mics to get that ambience. But it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to provide a stereo FOH mix to the broadcast van, or even group outputs for vocals/instruments/bass/percussion to fine-tune that kind of balance. There's always likely to need to be some fine adjustment for broadcast, but it's got to be better doing fine adjustment on top of a mix from the band's own engineer who knows every song backwards, instead of a completely separate mix being done on the fly by someone on their third 14-hour day who's never heard any of these songs before and never wants to again.

Can anyone shed any light on this? because to me it looks completely mad.

So, the mix for broadcast will be a split from the mic inputs, bypassing the FOH or Monitor desk. On a large festival, the FOH mixer will change from act to act, and some acts will even bring their own desk in. There isn't always time to set up a feed from the desk, given the pressure and problems a festival can produce. Also in the digital age an engineer can bring a show file which wipes all the previous settings, meaning you have to remember to re-set the outputs for the broadcast, which again, with time pressures, may not happen. All of this means that if the TV engineer has a separate split, they have almost guaranteed sound...

I'll agree some TV engineers either need a better system to mix on or need to get their ears checked!

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www.exaviormusic.com
www.manninmusic.com Music Teacher, Isle of Man

I've heard some terrible mixes broadcast, not least on the good old beeb. Strikes me that a lot of the time they seem to focus on making words intelligible and doing a very vocal-up mix — and all that to the detriment of the music. Possibly that's because of the crappy speakers of many TVs not handling bass very well? Maybe they think that people need to hear the lyrics (usually they don't - they already know them). And yes, I'm sure it's a tough job — but I've also heard some decent live broadcast stuff on TV, so it *can* be done. Always surprises me that major acts don't get a grip of this side of things themselves — kinda important to their image/brand/record sales etc, I'd have thought.

I imagine it makes a massive difference where the OB truck is parked... If you can hear rumbling from the stage before you've even started to mix, then you're going to have a pretty skewed idea of what's coming out of the OB monitors.

Cheers!

Chris

PS. Not all TV festival broadcasts sound bad! All the Download ones I've seen/heard in the last year or two have been really rather good.

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I was struck by the absolutely appallingly bad mixing.

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This is one of those areas where it is incredibly easy to be critical, but astonishingly hard to actually do. The challenge is that when listening on the radio we inherently expect to hear CD-quality (ie post-produced and highly polished) material, and yet when we're stood in a muddy field we happily accept all manner of balance issues because of the experience of being at an event. Often the perceived balance issues are actually live stage performance issues which the poor old broadcast engineer is powerless to do anything about.

And as that article points out, there are many complex and competing challenges that contrive to make live mixing those kinds of events very difficult indeed. One of the worst, in my own experience, is that of actually hearing what you're doing, particularly at the bottom end. Expensive OB trucks have remarkably good acoustics, but isolation requires mass and that is inherently difficult in a mobile control room.

Yes, sometimes the mixes aren't great -- and those involved would be amongst the first to admit to that -- but it's usually due to factors well beyond their control rather than incompetence or fatigue. I have often had the pleasure of sitting in OB trucks watching and listening to what these guys do, and been completely in awe of their talents. There aren't many studio or FOH engineers I would say the same about.

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One in particular that sticks in my mind is an entire set from KT Tunstall with her guitar completely muted.

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Such an obvious omission was almost certainly the result of a fault on stage or in the splits/distribution that couldn't easily be rectified, rather than an operational cockup. Such things do happen on live events! The usual problem is that an on-stage fault occurs and the PA guys sort out an alternate signal routing amongst themselves, but fail to tell the broadcast team to which channel they've moved something critical. In a former life I've stood in the back of an OB truck myself desperately plugging headphones around a patchbay trying to find to which channel a critical source has been mysteriously moved! It's hugely frustrating, but understandable. The PA guys focus is in getting the FOH and monitors right. They aren't interested in the broadcast which is often just extra hassle for them. The Beeb always have their own sound assistants on stage to keep an eye on things like this and to liaise with the PA guys -- building and maintaining a good rappor make such a difference!

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But it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to provide a stereo FOH mix to the broadcast van

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In general, the FOH balance is totally different and completely unsuited to broadcast, even with the addition of audience mics and presenters etc. It costs a lot of money to install and run OB trucks at these events, and if there was an easier and cheaper way of doing it -- like just re-broadcasting the FOH mix -- I'm quite certain the Beeb or independent radio production companies would opt to work that way!

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... instead of a completely separate mix being done on the fly by someone on their third 14-hour day who's never heard any of these songs before and never wants to again.

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In fact, the Beeb balancers usually know the bands and their music extremely well. Often the bands request specific beeb engineers they have worked with before at Maida Vale and elsewhere for previous Beeb sessions too. It is also very common for bands to provide CDs of their previous concert performances and detailed set lists in advance to aid the familiarity. Sometimes a representative of the band will also sit with the balance engineer to advise on solos and instrument changes etc.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Sure, I appreciate that it's a tough job! Hell, it's hard enough doing small festival gigs, never mind having millions of people round the country hearing what you're doing.

But yes, that's one thing the article didn't cover - why they feel they need to do that. Of course a PA system isn't just a big hi-fi, and you're going to be mixing for the system and the venue. That's inevitable. Still though, would an EQ/balance-skewed mix with everything present and correct be worse than a clearly-broken mix with technical faults...?

It feels a bit like the "Not Invented Here" syndrome, is all. Not our engineers, so we don't trust them.

I guess it's a fail-safe thing - if the FOH desk goes tits up, then everyone's screwed!

Incidentally, we're printing an article next month about doing the live FOH and broadcast mixes for the Grammy awards ceremony, and one of their backup solutions in case something disastrous happens is to send the stereo broadcast mix to FOH if the venue desk fails. That show is quite a different kettle of fish though.

Cheers!

Chris

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...why they feel they need to do that.

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Partly because onstage backline and foldback will compromise the FOH mix. Partly because the FOH mix is likely to be hugely dynamic in a way that simply won't work on radio or TV -- and simple compression can't deal with that in an acceptable way -- it needs to be rebalanced from scratch.

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Still though, would an EQ/balance-skewed mix with everything present and correct be worse than a clearly-broken mix with technical faults...?

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Being realistic, it's not unknown for the FOH mixes to be less than impressive either. How often do we read here and elsewhere of people complaining about appalling FOH sound? But as far as the broadcast thing is concerned, the solution is surely to avoid the 'technical faults' in the first place -- and I know the Beeb has worked very hard over the years on that front.

The teams work extremely hard to build and maintain excellent communication between the PA and broadcast crews on stage, and to use better, more reliable equipment. Increasingly, monitor and FOH consoles are linked using MADI these days, and the broadcasters take a MADI split which is far less prone to losing the odd channel here and there, which often happened with mic-level splits when channels were repatched in a hurry to work around a stage fault.

Also, it might be worth reminding folk that while the BBC still owns and runs its own fleet of radio OB vehicles and crews, the same is no longer true of the TV side of things. The BBC sold its TV OB fleet -- and all of the associated staff -- several years ago to an independent company (SIS-Live). So while many TV OB sound balancers are ex-beeb, not all are, and certainly not all have the level of live music balancing experience that the radio OB balancers tend to have.

I could easily name more than half a dozen radio OB balancers that are capable of stunningly good live music mixes, but I'd struggle to name more than two or maybe three TV balancers at the same level...

H

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Finally someone else who dares to speak up about this. To be honest, the 'good old bbc' seems to have majorly lost out against some of the commercials in the past few years. Not that they got better, the mixes delivered by the BBC seem to steadily decline.

I have done many main stages as a live sound engineer, both as facilitating FOH or Mons engineer and as a visiting engineer. Wherever I went, there has always been a splits system that the broadcast truck takes their feed off. Whether active or passive but they never took it from one of my desks. So then I do always wonder, if I got that channel fine, and my FOH/ Mons engineer did too, why does it completely fail to appear in the mix that went onto the airwaves?

Also, of course you need to hear the crowd but in my mind, like with in Ears, it'd be better to fade these mics at the right moments instead of having them up all the time? At levels that ruin the rest of the balance? I recently ad the joy of doing a smaller stage with only 1 or 2 visiting engineers a day and only one or two bands during the whole weekend of 12 bands a day that I knew. Still, when I listened to a recording after, I had all the mixes together within the first few bars, leaving me to colour in and add some nice verbs/ ddls etc.
So what is so inherently different in that broadcast truck, where you have none of the noises and people wanting attention like you have live?

Sorry for the rant but I have heard truly awful mixes of bands I know and have done sound for that in no way represent their live performance.

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Control room to be finished summer '12

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To be honest, the 'good old bbc' seems to have majorly lost out against some of the commercials in the past few years. Not that they got better, the mixes delivered by the BBC seem to steadily decline.

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As I pointed out previously, all of the 'good old BBC's' tv coverage uses outsourced facilities and staff. It ain't the been no more!

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if I got that channel fine, and my FOH/ Mons engineer did too, why does it completely fail to appear in the mix that went onto the airwaves?

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As I explained earlier, it's usually because the stage crew are focused on making sure the FOH and Mons desks are getting what they need, where they need it, while they don't always treat the broadcast splits with the same devotion...

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it'd be better to fade these mics at the right moments instead of having them up all the time? At levels that ruin the rest of the balance?

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Some mixes have audience mics coming and going, some have them all the way through -- but it's usually a production decision rather than the balancers choice, and the aim is usually to try to convey the atmosphere of the event, rather than a clean band mix. If they wanted the latter they might as well play the bands video or do a studio show!

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I had all the mixes together within the first few bars

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Any balancer worth their pay would make the same claim.

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So what is so inherently different in that broadcast truck, where you have none of the noises and people wanting attention like you have live?

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Er... Very similar external noise and people demanding attention problems are there, along with a far more critical audience and far greater demands on the technical and artistic quality of the balancing.

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Sorry for the rant but I have heard truly awful mixes of bands I know and have done sound for that in no way represent their live performance.

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Fair comment... And we have all heard such mixes and made similar comments... Just as we have all said the same for some FOH balances too. Mixing is a skill, and skilful engineers can create great mixes when things go their way. But sometimes things don't go as well as they should, and while you might get away with it at a festival, the audience tend to be much less forgiving or understanding when listening from the comfort of their sofa.

Hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound