Time Aligning vocals to backine

[Scott Fahy]

I know Dave Stagl has done this but was interested if anyone else is time aligning vocal mics to back line. We do a service on Sunday night with the drums and other assorted goodies directly behind the singers and would like to clean up the comb filtering being caused by the vocal mics.

Scott

[emluper]

Scott,

I'd say that Scovill and Stagl are probably the best at it. I know that Dave has info on it on his blog. http://www.diveproductions.com/goingto11/

He's actually showing a demo for drums this week. The general principle is to time align every thing to the drums. We've done it with our mains and fills, but our vocalists are active and moving around all the time (had three of them leave the stage yesterday morning to run around the sanctuary during "I Am Free"). This makes it very difficult to time align the vocal mics. If you have them spiked so that they are along a line that is parallel to the drum platform then you are a perfect candidate. Check in the previous posts for how Stagl did it because he did a great job of detailing the process.

Erik

[eytan]

Hi Scott,

I have not tried this, but it seems to me that it doesn't work, or maybe I am not understanding this technique. The drums are already delayed when they arrive at the vocal mic, I can see how this creates comb filtering. If we delay the vocal channels then we are also delaying the drums which bleed into these vocal mics. This doesn't solve the comb filtering. You cannot delay it by one full cycle as there is a wide range of frequencies involved. The only way in which you can align the vocals and drums is to delay the drums (and backline too) channels (and not the vocals), is this what you intend to do?

[Scott Fahy]

I thought about the title of my post afterwards and realized I should have changed it to elaying backline to vocal mics but got busy.
The vocal mics will be time zero or reference point, everything else will be delayed to them. I already have a saved file that has the drums and instrumentation aligned using the drum overheads as time zero and it does make a huge improvement in the sound. I guess I just need find the time offset between the drum overheads and the vocals and add that to the existing delays. Wonder if there is an easier way???


Scott

[StrobeAlific]

The nice thing about Venue is that you can actually delay in feet vs. milliseconds. I just take a measurement and do it that way.

[dstagl]

I've played with this a bit and found that I get more bleed from the PA into my vocal mics than the stage bleed. If I had guitar amps on stage and no shield on the drums, it might be a different story, but I haven't found a significant benefit from doing this at my present gig.

Dave

[Scott Fahy]

Most of our bleed into the vocal mics is snare/cymbals and electric guitar. Guitar amps are onstage and they both have a ton of guitar going into wedges. We are also dealing with younger singers with fairly light and airy voices so the gain is higher then I'd like which compounds the problems. Me thinks a lesson in proper mic technique could be good.

Scott

[bmadix]

Originally Posted by Scott Fahy

I know Dave Stagl has done this but was interested if anyone else is time aligning vocal mics to back line. We do a service on Sunday night with the drums and other assorted goodies directly behind the singers and would like to clean up the comb filtering being caused by the vocal mics.

Scott

I'm not sure I follow this. I've tried time-aligning the PA to the backline (read "really loud snare drum) with mixed results, but I'm not clear on how delaying the vocal mics helps with the backline bleed. Aren't you also delaying the bleed? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the proposition.

[dstagl]

Originally Posted by bmadix

I'm not sure I follow this. I've tried time-aligning the PA to the backline (read "really loud snare drum) with mixed results, but I'm not clear on how delaying the vocal mics helps with the backline bleed. Aren't you also delaying the bleed? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the proposition.

I think the best way to really make it work--if it's going to work--is instead of delaying the PA to the backline using just your driverack, you first delay the backline close mics(with channel delay) to the arrival of the backline in your vocal mics. Then you do any further delay in your driverack necessary to get the PA pushed back to the backline. It gets a little complicated, but I think if you go down this road and it works for you, it will be a pretty quick process once you've done it a few times.

I haven't needed to delay anything to backline because my rooms are too big and there are no front fills. The tops are already 20-30' in the air so if anything helps it's actually pushing any backline back on stage as far as it can go because it is generally already ahead of the PA in a lot of seats.

Dave

[bmadix]

Originally Posted by dstagl

I think the best way to really make it work--if it's going to work--is instead of delaying the PA to the backline using just your driverack, you first delay the backline close mics(with channel delay) to the arrival of the backline in your vocal mics. Then you do any further delay in your driverack necessary to get the PA pushed back to the backline. It gets a little complicated, but I think if you go down this road and it works for you, it will be a pretty quick process once you've done it a few times.

I haven't needed to delay anything to backline because my rooms are too big and there are no front fills. The tops are already 20-30' in the air so if anything helps it's actually pushing any backline back on stage as far as it can go because it is generally already ahead of the PA in a lot of seats.

Dave

Dave,

That makes total sense. For some reason I had the idea we were talking about delaying the vocal mics, which would only make matters worse, it seems to me.