Last night's gig for me was in King's Hall in Stoke.
The room quite easily holds 400 people, but (anyone who has played there will know this), it's got very bad accoustics.

There is not much carpeting on the floor, the ceiling is the height of about 3 rooms, and there is a large seating balcony going all around the room. A large stage sits at one end.

No matter what I tried with my Eq settings, I seemed to get a lot of 'echo' in certain areas of the room.
The sound on the dancefloor immediately in front of me was good.
The sound on the stage wasn't.
When you went away from the dancefloor it sounded 'echoie'.

I used 2 x 500W tops, and 2 x 500W subs being powered by a 2400W amp. Plenty of oomph there. I just didn't like the sound of it off the dancefloor.
I know there are some venues that you just can't do anything to help the bad accoustics, but there must be some tips and tricks that can be employed to help.

What do you guys do to help in a venue with very bad accoustics?
(Let's leave marquees out of this thread - they are different again).

I don't think there is much you can do it. I done a hall last year that had a polished floor, low ceiling and no curtains, just blinds. Before I started, the noise from just people talking was deafening and the echo was really bad. I wasn't happy with the sound all night and no matter what I tried with the EQ, I couldn't get it right.

The only thing that did help was the surround processor on the Ultrafex which seemed to make the sound clearer when it was turned up high.

I did apologise about the sound quality at the end but the client said it sounded fine to them so it might be just one of those things you get paranoid about because it doesn't sound how it usually does.

My gig last night was in a local community community centre. In a first floor function? room, ceiling was about 8ft high max, long narrow room with a polished tiled floor, no soft furnishings what so ever. 21st Birthday party, but mixed age crowd. 8pm until 11.45pm.

Everything was going okay until about 11pm and the quests began to thin out, when the steward came up and told me to turn it down, I was quite surprised as 1) it wasn't very loud to start with, and 2) I hadn't increased the volume for over an hour. About 20-25 minutes later, as more people had left (either to go home or to go on to nightclubs) the steward came up again and said, I told you to turn it down, I showed him the mixer and said I havent touched it since the last time you came up. As he had watched me turn it down when he had come up the first time, he had to admit that the settings looked about the same. We then came to the conclusion that the sound was not being absorbed as much by the remaining guests and was echoing off of all the bare walls.

Actually became very noticeable a few minutes later when someone opened a toilet door and the sound from one of the tops was reflected directly back at us.

The steward did come up whilst I was packing up and said that on reflection, it always seemed a lot louder towards the end of the evening as the guests began to thin out, and he had just assumed that the DJs were increasing the volume constantly to try to increase the atmosphere. Hopefully he now knows better.

Hi Ian glad to see you posting again.... In rooms like that there is nothing you can do because as you move away from your speakers (The Direct Source) you start to hear echoes bouncing of the walls (Indirect Source) causing a horibble inteligable sound...

There is not a lot you can do with EQ in this situation.... all you can do is try to make it sound pleasant to the people on the dance floor... or invest in bigger kit with more power and use delay speakers but I guess the budget would not run into that lol...

Nik

You can't EQ echos away the only thing that can be done is move the cause of the echo or soften the echo by adding something the dampen the sound down like curtains carpet etc...

Put your eq back to as close to flat as possible

Interesting how some arhicitects have completely the wrong idea for how to design a music function room and how little the owners/managers know about damping out reverberation.

To reinforce what has already been said:
The most troublesome are the higher frequencies, so in an empty room I think it would be an idea to wind back the treble a bit, at least until enough people come in to damp the room for you when you can set it back to normal again.

I don't know how the venue is laid out, but chances are you set up at the end - the worst place really. If possible maybe set up halfway down one of the longer sides - this will lessen the delay in the reflections and it might not be so objectionable.

The style of my room last night was Victorian. Ceiling height well in excess of 30 feet.
I don't agree that I needed more speakers with more power. That would just amplify the 'echoiness' but at a louder volume if I needed it.

How would Eq'ing as flat as possible help to reduce that Marc?
I had my higher frequensies below 0 to cut the harshness of the treble.

People won't hear the echo on the dance floor its only you because your behind the main sound system..

Forget what your hearing... Eq'ing as Flat as possible will mean the music sounds normal on the dance floor, speakers should be setup to make the sweet spot where people dance.... you cant fix the echo

Now get your self a monitor speaker so you can hear the output without the echo, and turn up the main speakers loud enough so all you hear when dancing is the main sound system...

A friend of mine works project managing fitting PA systems for football stadiums etc they use loads of Test gear, analyzers ,powerful computers etc and Digital Signal processing to try and stop echo.

Its simply not possible to get great sound every time because of the amount of gear you would need and time it would take to set up ,permenant installations with a big budget are a different matter. The Advice from the guys here is spot on as usual.

I have fitted many home cinema systems and have treated rooms for acoustics using bass traps and Auralex Room treatments..these are very expensive and not something you could do at a venue.


catalogue about treatments but an interesting read too

I have done a hall in Fenton and that echoed like made there was nothing i could do about it and i thought that it sounded horrible but no one complained

Using speakes that have tighter dispersion patterns can help reduce reverberations, by limiting how much actual sound escapes into the rest of the room. Have speakers up high,focussed in and down on the dancefloor means that none will have the opportunity to reflect off of the roof, and assuming there are dancers, will mostly be absorbed by people.

Also, don't try to EQ your system with an empty room, the acoustics will change significantly once you get a few people in there, and require resetting anyway.