I just wanna clarify something that is a huge problem with the mentality of most musicians. First of all, there should never NOT be a PA. If the venue is small where some might think “we don’t even need a PA,” you should still have at least a small personal PA system. This is not about needing power or volume...it’s about control and having direct sound. Sound waves are very directional, until it hits a wall, then the ceiling, then the floor, plus the hard finished surface of the drum kit, and a million other surfaces. These reflections create thousands of other waves that all reach the listener’s ears at different times. If you want to sound good, at all, you simply play quieter so that you can deliver single mix, from a direct source, pointed straight at your listeners. If they start hearing stage volume with the PA then it is going to be a good 15-45 ms behind and all the reflections from the stage sound mask the direct sound of the PA and that’s how you get phase/comb filtering/chorus(not in a good way), it’s a muddy and incoherent mess. This is what drives me crazy about musicians...they think that playing loud and pushing air somehow makes them cool or feel like a rock star but to the audience you sound like s%#t. Secondly, there is no such thing as a “stage mix”. There are monitor mixes, sometimes yeah, but only in very large venues where there is room to have that much sound without interfering with a PA. And this is more about control of feedback and helping the front of house than it is providing whatever mix every single band member wants. So unless your playing arenas, there is likely only room for one mix before hitting 120db and that mix should be for your listeners, not you! This is not the studio, it is live sound, and your not using headphones (most likely) so you don’t get to just blast whatever you want and expect that noise to somehow not interfere with the P.A. A 60 hz sound wave is nearly 40 feet long, that’s going to the ceiling and all 4 walls, and back again, at least once in most rooms. Now the kick drum is producing those waves about every second...can you understand how fast this will max out sound pressure in a room fairly quickly? And with each wave bouncing off multiple surfaces, multiple times, every second...all your audience is getting is mush. The louder you are on stage, the mores noise you are introducing and fighting with the clear, direct sound of the P.A. and your amps/wedges/reflections are now muddying everything up. It might sound good to you on stage but that’s because your monitor is 3 feet away pointed straight at your face. You are getting DIRECT sound just like your audience was supposed to be getting, and it might have sounded good to them as well. But get a wireless rig and step out in front of the mains and your loud a$$ amp/monitor is now reaching your years at all different intervals between 10-50 ms after the main PA is and now you essentially just put a ton of chorus and phase on your whole sound. Congrats. I’ve sat and watched guitar players tweak their amp and pedal settings for 20 minutes or more trying to dial in whatever they consider to be a good sound and then completely negate everything by blasting it through a full stack which is complete overkill even in arenas, and now your guitar is as loud as the PA and it turns an entire mix into absolute chaos. It’s funny because on stage they are so sure that they sound awesome and that they are rock stars and nobody can even hear if you are playing a solo because its so loud yet chaotic with no articulation whatsoever. All they hear is noise. Also, the only thing that should really be in your monitors is vocals anyway. The drums are the loudest thing on stage, you set your volume to match the drummer and your done. There’s no reason you need “more guitar” in your monitor because you can’t hear it over the other guitarist...well then tell the other guitarist to turn down genius! Always turn everything else down guys instead of turning yourself up. Play with as little volume on stage as possible, and let your sound guy mix the PA because he knows a lot more than you, and you can make his job 100x easier by not throwing your crappy, muddy, stage volume bouncing all over the room and nearly causing feedback at every turn on top of destroying a perfect mix. How this concept is so hard for musicians to grasp is beyond me...you have a PA, use it! Let it do the work! Rely on it to deliver sound to your audience not your amp. It has panning, EQ’s, onboard compression, and other fx...why would you WANT to take a loud, crappy, mono signal from your monitor and blast it, and all of its reflections, throughout the room after the sound guy just spent the entire soundcheck Fine tuning everything and creating a nice stereo image based on the room? And all this nonsense about the audience near the front at center stage only hear drums? Where are you playing, Wembly? I promise if you if you turn up as loud as the drummer, then your just as loud as the drummer. Period. How is that even a logical question? And besides that, most PA systems like the QSC K series have 120 degree spray. L and R speakers spitting out 120 degrees spray will cover everyone just fine unless your stage is over 100 ft wide which I doubt. And line arrays aren’t for the sake of providing “volume” differences to people in front of the stage. They are designed and setup to provide even frequency response. Low end travels extremely far, high frequencies are very short. Therefor, you need more precise directional control with higher output to throw high frequencies to the back vs low frequencies. These line arrays will typically have different speakers in each cab all the way up the chain to compensate for this. But like I said, this only becomes a factor if your playing arenas and therefor have no reflections. Because there is enough room for the sound wave to die before hitting a reflective surface. In most venues, however, reflections are going to way too excessive, loud, and obnoxious to ever say “center stage needs more volume” much less “more STAGE volume”. That’s absolutely ignorant. If they can hear drums but not guitar it’s likely because of TOO MUCH stage creating a lack of clarity due to phase canceling. Drums are quick transients so they will seem audible even when they are extremely muddy vs string instruments which basically become noise at high decibels with lots of reflections. It’s not that they can’t hear it, they just can’t hear it as a “guitar” because without the proper ear training they just perceive it as noise or simply “not there” because they can’t make out notes or phrases. You never want your audience to hear your stage volume, you want them to hear a direct delivery from the EQ’d and finely tuned mix that your PA is designed to produce. The audience will NEVER benefit from hearing two mixes with a ton of reflections added in, no matter how “premium” your instrument is. That’s absolute ignorance and it’s exactly why musicians need to stop thinking they are sound engineers just because they know how to adjust a fader. And for the record, any large production event you go to will always have passive speakers so why someone would blame a crappy P.A. on that aspect also proves they know nothing. Passive speakers will be more accurate and allow you customize the power settings vs being stuck with whatever internal power supply was built by the lowest bidder. So to re-cap....stop using the term stage mix...there is no such thing as a “stage mix” and it just keeps other musicians thinking that there is and justifying the ignorant way they approach live sound. And the final point, the universal truth to remember, and this applies to every single live sound event throughout the entire world...I promise you, the quieter you are on stage, the more amazing you sound through the PA. No matter what venue, no matter what gear, no matter how good you THINK you sound...it will always sound better with even less stage volume. That’s just the physics of a sound waves.
