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Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but here I go anyway...

So, I play in a very loud, fuzzed out psych rock/shoegaze type band. Bass, guitar, drums, and two vocals. The instruments always sound fantastic, but we have a hard time getting our vocals heard. Without drastically decreasing our extreme volume, what would be your solution to getting our vocals up in the mix?

We can hear ourselves in the monitors just fine. Should we shield our amps with baffles to cut back on stage volume? I feel like most pa speakers can't compete with our loudness.

That's the trick about playing live. If you want the vocals to be heard by the audience, you are at the mercy of the PA system. I know we all want to deliver a live sound that is loud, dramatic and impactful. But fuck if the best live band sounds I have heard were simply the ones that were simply well balanced. Being loud for loud sake is fine, good, cool and it rocks. But if you think your live sound is burying the vocals, you gotta either get a louder PA, or adjust your stage volume. The PA becomes your limiter and you need to adjust to it in order to balance everything out. Why do you want your stage volume to be so loud...? Is it so you can hear yourselves or is there a benefit to the audience...? Do your singers sing and project their voice or are they more muted and mumbly...? Soft muted vocals and loud backing music will always be a bitch to mix live, unless your have a balls PA.

Thats the top of the line one, a cheaper one will get the job done. cuts out extra noise, de-essing, generally helps the vocals cut through.

I have the one in the pic, but I bought a used voice correct for $60 for our bassist and instantly he was easier to hear. Not a cure all, but it was a big help.

You have to turn down your guitars, it's not a volume problem but a frequency problem, your guitars occupy a lot of the same frequencies as the human voice and mask the vocals. If your amps are louder than the P.A. then you obviously need to turn your amps down, the P.A. will no longer serve any purpose if it can't be heard. For you to keep your amps at the same levels they are now and have the P.A. be loud enough to push the vocals right over the top would probably be dangerously loud for the audience, more or less yourself as well.

I'm interning at a venue right now and the key to a good sounding show is low stage volume (and a good audio engineer of course). That way the mix is in the hands of the engineer, he can give you as much as you want in your monitors once you turn down enough for them to be heard. It will sound better on stage and in the audience. Just last week some guitarist said he wasn't going to turn down his amp because he had been doing this for 3yrs. and knew what he was doing. There set sounded awful, it was all guitar.

Without repeating what the other folks said before my post, there are a few tricks the engineer can employ to get the vocals more prominent in the mix.
typically, having the guitarists turn down their amps on stage, and then using slap delay on the vocals are two that i use all the time at work.

i just try to run monitors for the band as smoothly as possible, making sure the bands can hear themselves cleanly, and clearly enough, and then i try to get the mix right starting with the vocal, bass and kick drum.

that's why soundcheck is super important, so make sure you show up on time and be nice to the engineer!

The4455 wrote:Just last week some guitarist said he wasn't going to turn down his amp because he had been doing this for 3yrs. and knew what he was doing. There set sounded awful, it was all guitar.

and everyone will tell their friends this band sucked. so that guitarist will go another 3 years in dead end bands that make no money haha! meanwhile you still have a job that pays you to tell him he sucks.