Bands that do speaker placement completely wrong and still sound good

[Grllle]

I've read a lot about some specifics and problems of speaker placements over the time. Here, over at talkBass and elsewhere. Especially Bill's knowledge is very interesting in this regard.
I think i understand the basics quite well now, regarding sub placement, the effects of boundary loading, comb filtering, etc...

Reality is that i witnessed some bands live that seem to do almost everything wrong and still sounded pretty great across the room. And i'm wondering what they do, to compensate their bad placements.

Example 1: Sunn O)))


They have this ridiculous wall of fridges in combination with PA support and their sound is gut shaking deep and loud. Two guitars, moog and voice.
I saw them twice and i moved around the venue during the concert and i didn't recognized big changes in the sound. No real weak or hot spots.
They talk somewhere about a device called the 'phase wizard' that they use to adjust the phase of the amps but i really don't know how they get away with this.

Example 2: Sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klzLb0Bh5x0
They are more of a "traditional" constellation but their setup is comparatively ridiculous and their sound is thunderous, deep and loud, nevertheless. Saw them twice as well and especially at roadburn/netherlands - a festival that known for very good live sound - it was sounding brilliant i would say. I wandered around and again there were no obvious 'bad spots'.

So what are bands like those doing right while doing so much wrong at the same time.
Is the amount of gear compensating those negative effects resulting of the placement?
Is there maybe some crazy crossover setup involved?
Is it impossible that they sounded good and my ears where just untrained?

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Don't be so sure that all those cabs are working. It may be just eye candy for the kiddies. Even if functional chances are everything you heard was PA. One ZZ Top gig I worked they had something like two dozen 1x12 combos on the stage. Billy was only going through two of them, and Dusty was only in the PA.
And then there's this:

[Grllle]

And then there's this:

Of course this could be the case and i can't be sure about those amps and cabs only being eye candy. Especially for those two bands i would guess that they are indeed using all the gear. I saw sound checking both bands, powering on all amps at the beginning, every one noticeable 'popping' and adding to the sound.
Both bands are kind of fetishists about using that much gear and there are for example the rig rundown vid i posted above.
But yeah, it could definitely be mostly PA that was audible.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

The #1 complaint of sound men in the FOH is guitar players with stacks who play so loud that they can't get a good mix out front.

[Grllle]

The #1 complaint of sound men in the FOH is guitar players with stacks who play so loud that they can't get a good mix out front.

I can imagine and as i said i begin to understand why that is.
Thing is, those two bands are well known in the hard rock genre as notorious amp and cabinet accumulators. This maybe silly and definitely is more then counterproductive from a physical standpoint. But they are kind of established bands, playing big festivals and from what i understand at least for those bands, sound men are not fighting them or complaining but (maybe even happily) trying to work with this agglutinated mess of cabinets.

Question is: How are they doing it. Are they using some strategies to compensate those bad placings.
This maybe completely bogus but for example could you split the frequency spectrum across several cabinets like a very complex crossover to reduce comp filtering with horizontally placed speakers.

[Grllle]

In one interview the guitarist of Sleep says

Matt – I like the Dual Darks a lot yeh, I like the two hundred Watt Thunderverbs and I like those little OR50’s or 80’s?

Ade – It’s the OR50.

Matt – Dude! Those things fucking shred if you have a bunch of them and you mic the shit out of them and use them for the PA tone. Then like a Pignose out the back as well.

So maybe it really is mainly PA, as you said. Thanks for engaging btw!

[Grant Bunter]

Some days you can just fluke getting it right.
The more you do sound, the more that's likely to happen I suppose.

It's been most enlightening learning what I've learnt from many people here in this forum.

You can understand all the theory, the physics, the do's and don'ts and still go, "my only option today is to do all the things I know I shouldn't", and somehow it just works!

Then there's the other side, as a musician (or, given that I'm about to say I'm a drummer, maybe I should say fellow band member).
I don't think I'd like to play on the same stage as those guys.
There's no way you could get a nice acoustic feel on stage with that many amps around, without a shit ton of foldback/drum fill that leaves you with bleeding kidneys the next day..

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

A lot depends on the genre too. Metal guitar players use massive distortion effects, which gives a very compressed result and almost no dynamics, and not all that loud, even with stacks. Bluesmen are very conservative with effects, especially distortion, relying on over-driving the amp and speakers for their tone. They don't use stacks, because they can't over-drive them. But they can still get plenty loud through a Twin-Reverb or AC30.

[Rich4349]

I'm not being a hater here, but I listened to several of Sun's songs, and they remind me a lot of Swans: massive dBs and about 3 or 4 notes for 20 minutes. With that kind of content, is high fidelity REALLY that important and or noticeable? Also, what percent of the audience is wearing earplugs? Yes, I get it that bands in this genre are catering to the "body thump" / visceral impact crowd. To each their own!

[Bruce Weldy]

I've mixed with proper placement and with the cabs in the wrong places. I can definitely hear the difference when it's done right. But, in those times where space is just not available to put the subs where I want (and aesthetics at some wedding venues) - I do the best I can and make the best of it.

It's more important to provide a quality mix with a nicely EQed system that's got a few holes in the audience at some frequencies than to have a perfectly balanced system throughout the room, but then proceed to ignore system EQ and present a crappy mix.

It's amazing how many guys just set up their powered boxes and jump right into sound check without ever running some music through the PA and adjust for the room. They have just never learned the correct way to run a PA.

[Grllle]

I'm not being a hater here, but I listened to several of Sun's songs, and they remind me a lot of Swans: massive dBs and about 3 or 4 notes for 20 minutes. With that kind of content, is high fidelity REALLY that important and or noticeable?

Yeah, it's maybe a clique and worn out concept and i can't really enjoy a sunn album (Swans output i enjoy much more on record). But the one pony trick is good enough for a live show in my view. The massiveness of their sound is really impressive and capable to alter your state of mind. And because they don't have real high freq content it's not annoying - and not that loud db-vise.

I just have trouble bringing theory and praxis together in this case. I spoke briefly to a sound engineer that as experience with those bands and he said

but then comes your question are these things really noticeable ?? Well that comes to who and in what state is that person to notice that a overwelming sub sound is coming from the left cab on stage or from the pa , and then combing can be 3 meters wide so do you really notice this when your stuck with your friends some were in the crowd?

He also confirms that it is in fact mainly backline in the mix with some PA.

I thought with this crazy setup you should have places within the venues where the bass is almost completely canceled. But somehow the effect is not as strong or noticable as i would guess.

[Grllle]

A lot depends on the genre too. Metal guitar players use massive distortion effects, which gives a very compressed result and almost no dynamics, and not all that loud, even with stacks.

This is interesting. Maybe this helps a lot for this drone stuff.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

but then comes your question are these things really noticeable ??

I once did a concert circa 2004 where the act was still using a cluster array PA. As I roamed the venue taking RTA measurements the sound changed radically over distances as short as five meters.

[Grllle]

I once did a concert circa 2004 where the act was still using a cluster array PA. As I roamed the venue taking RTA measurements the sound changed radically over distances as short as five meters.

I don't have the slightest doubt. He said the same, that he notices it when he moves through the crowd to the foh and to the stage.
In the quote he most likely refers to the crowd. A bunch of stoned & drunk dudes getting massaged with thunderous waves of noise is probably a rather forgiving audience.

I'm just dazzled how to have "noticable" problems rather then a mess that's impossible to work with, given the amount of stacks and placement.

[Bruce Weldy]

In the quote he most likely refers to the crowd. A bunch of stoned & drunk dudes getting massaged with thunderous waves of noise is probably a rather forgiving audience.

That genre of music at insane levels is probably so full of harmonic distortion, that while noticeable in an RTA graph, it's most likely hard to ascertain which frequencies are missing at any one spot.

Even most sound men don't notice it until you point it out to them in real time.....then it will bug them forever.