Welcome to my site

The home of all things to do with sound systems, live music and events in general.

There are endless books, websites and magazines about music production and recording, but there seems to be little information on live sound, especially from a seasoned pro.

Having vast amount of experience and a gig list way into 4 figures puts me in a position to rectify this.

Some of the content on this site is a taster for a forthcoming book on live sound engineering, quite when it will be published I'm not sure, but active encouragement will probably help to quicken the process! Meanwhile I shall add more here on a regular basis.

I have posted a new article on Miking Up The Band, this is the complement to Miking Up The Drumkit. These are both an introduction and I plan to add some illustrations and mic recommendations before too long.

Please feel free to contact me with suggestions and/or queries. Answers to your queries will be published on the site and may be featured in the book.

I am currently based in London and am happy to travel elsewhere, please use the Contact page for enquires.

From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

Every now and then something happens that blows you away and you've just gotta tell people about it. When it comes to live sound what happened just recently was one of those events.

I was fortunately on a guest list for an event at the famous Roundhouse venue in London's Camden Town. I have a long personal history with this venue, but I've not been there since it underwent major refurbishment a few  years ago. I was very keen to see what it was like now, the event looked interesting and so did the line-up.

It was a busy bank holiday weekend, a gig in Huddersfield on Saturday, another in Sheffield on Sunday and then back to London and the Roundhouse on Monday.

Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous though, the PA system up north I had set up properly and was mainly there to help the band and their engineer to get a good sound, which we did, it sounded great.

The main system at the Roundhouse gig totally appalling. It consisted of a vast array of bass bins in a semi-circle either side of the stage, topped by a couple of mid/high sections from a line array which, due to the way they were used, only put out some harsh phasey treble. Just huge amounts of flabby bass and a spitting high-end with no midrange whatsoever.

Strangely, the front end featured a big gorgeous Midas desk and stacks of high-end outboard FX, all looking really the part. After offering my sympathies to soundman for having to work with such a load of rubbish, he went on the offensive and asked me what was wrong with it!! Turned out it was his rig (at least that's what he said), I was so gobsmacked that I didn't know where to start apart from tell him I could write an essay in answer to his question... 

 If I hadn't been so tired I would have probably offered the guy a brief evaluation and given him my card, but his comment of "haven't you considered whether it's the band? Everyone is is too keen to blame the PA and not the band''  left me so dumbfounded I couldn't be bothered to argue! (Needless to say it sounded just as appalling with every other band).

Shame, because it was a good line up with Mongrel (the Arctic Monkey's offshoot) headlining. There was another room, tiny, sponsered by Dr Marten's where the sound was great and it was packed to heaving all night...

I have recently discovered  that the sound system was actually supplied by a major PA hire company, the sort that does the really large gigs, I suspect they are not used to the 'smaller' venue like the Roundhouse. I have sent an email to their managing director concerning this so I shall not name them. (At least until I receive a reply...)