Re: LOOPER AS SOUND ENGINEER was distortion,overdrive,fuzz,crunch,special sauce,secret goo (goo especially)

["Travis Hartnett" <travishartnett@gmail.com>]

Sound engineers have problems when they have little to no idea what the music is "supposed" to sound like (as defined by say, the artist) and when they have little to no clue as to where a particular sound is coming from.

A lot of looping folks produce non-standard sounds from their instrument, so figuring out how to make something louder or quieter in the mix is often more difficult that with a more conventional musical performance (for a venue soundman).   Plus, figuring out what's in the loop and what's not---it's a miracle the soundman can ever make sense of what's going on in these situations.

And re: programmable digital EQ's with settings for a given "room": a room is never the same acoustic space twice.  Heck, the difference between soundcheck and the gig is usually pronounced due to people coming and going.

TH

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:

Because we can make entire loops and let them play,  we are some of the few artists in the world
who have the ability to let the loops run and then go out into the room or venue and listen to what
the PA sounds like.

Additionally,  we are mixing ourselves, live in realtime with whatever DSP processing we will be using
on the individual elements so this means that we can send the monitors EXACTLY what the final
mix will be and listen ourselves while onstage.   There may need to be some compensation because
monitors (or in ears) will have a different sound than the house PA with the room factored in, but this
is what Sound Engineers (if they are good) have to do on a continual basis.

Another thing is that we now live in the age of very inexpensive digital parametric EQs that have the ability
to set presets for every room we encounter.

This makes it possible to walk into a room,  do your soundcheck like normal,  then walk out into the room
and make adjustments for all the standing waves that amplify certain annoying frequencies and compensate
for all the timbral masking and phase cancellation that the room adds to the sound.