Sound Check

[adude23]

Hey all,
Was wondering wich songs do you use for sound checks any particular favs for bass, treb and mid etc?
~Adude23~

[museav]

http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/s...e-tune-pa.html

[BNBSound]

I usually pick something similar to the program I'll be mixing. Recorded music often doesn't sound nice on a system optimized for theatre, but somehting without obnoxious bass that has interesting highs should help you get it tuned. Pink Floyd and Dave Matthews come to mind. Classical might be a better bet though, start with a string quartet and then move on to a full orchestral piece. When it sounds killer, so will your actors.

[cjthedj]

You can use anything without heavy bass and nice hi-mid range (1-6 KHz) frequencies. E.g. an acoustic guitar. This is the vocal range which should be most the most precisely tuned spectrum in your system.

P.S. don't forget to walk around the house area and listen to how it sounds from different parts of the room.

[museav]

Originally Posted by cjthedj

You can use anything without heavy bass and nice hi-mid range (1-6 KHz) frequencies. E.g. an acoustic guitar. This is the vocal range which should be most the most precisely tuned spectrum in your system.

In my experience vocal range is usually looked at as more like 250-4kHz, with 500-2kHz being the most critical for intelligibility, and you would usually not want to use just one source that represents only a portion of the full spectrum for the system. But I think this entire topic needs to be better defined as there can be a huge difference between what one might use for a soundcheck, which I think of as basically making sure everything works before a performance, and what one might use for tuning a system.

[Mullet1215]

Originally Posted by BNBSound

Pink Floyd and Dave Matthews come to mind. Classical might be a better bet though, start with a string quartet and then move on to a full orchestral piece. When it sounds killer, so will your actors.

I like the classical idea... I try to find something close to what I will actually be mixing (if we cant do a live sound check) and if it is an audio-track from a cd or an Ipod, my rule of thumb is something clean, no crazy effects or distortion.

[loki]

I always use the same song, that way i know what its suposed to sound like and i find that helps.

btw i use "Let me entertain you" by Robbie Williams