Soundcheck Diaries

When Fashion Enters the Signal Chain

JAX Songstage is our singer-songwriter night at Campus JAX, and on this particular evening one of the singer/piano players arrived a little late.

That meant she missed soundcheck.

No big deal. I had already checked her piano and vocal myself. I made sure her monitor was present, clear, well referenced, and—most importantly—stable.

Everything was behaving perfectly.

Then she arrived.

Cute white sweater. Large earrings. Wide-brimmed hat.

Stylish as ever.

She sat down at the piano, started playing and singing, and almost immediately I heard something I definitely had not heard during soundcheck.

Her monitor wanted to take off.

Not full-blown feedback yet, but that unmistakable sound every engineer recognizes: a frequency starting to lean forward and say, “Hey… wanna hear me get really loud?”

I had checked this.

The monitor was stable.

The vocal sounded good.

So what changed?

Then I looked at her.

More specifically, I looked at the hat.

Ohhhhhh.

The hat.

The Most Fashionable Acoustic Reflector on Stage

A wide-brimmed hat may look completely harmless, but acoustically it can become a reflective surface sitting just inches away from the microphone.

Her vocal mic was using an SM58 capsule, and her wedge was close to her because she was seated at the piano.

Sound from the monitor was reaching the area around the microphone, but now there was also a large, solid brim sitting right above and around the vocal path.

Some of that monitor energy could hit the underside of the hat and reflect back toward the microphone.

Now instead of the mic simply hearing her voice and the normal amount of monitor spill, it was also hearing reflected sound bouncing off something that hadn’t been there when I checked the system.

Congratulations, hat!

You are now part of the signal chain.

Why the Hat Changed the Tone

Reflections don’t just increase level. They can change tone.

When the same sound reaches a microphone through two slightly different paths—one directly and another after reflecting off a nearby surface—the two arrivals are slightly offset in time.

At some frequencies they reinforce each other.

At others they cancel.

That can create peaks and dips in the frequency response, sometimes called comb filtering.

To the engineer, the result can sound nasal, hollow, harsh, honky, or simply wrong.

And when one of those peaks happens to land on a frequency that’s already near the feedback threshold, things can get exciting very quickly.

And by exciting, I mean annoying.

Whack-a-Mole: The Monitor Edition

So I did what sound engineers do.

I found the offending frequency and pulled it down in her monitor EQ.

Better.

For a moment.

Then another frequency started creeping up.

Fine.

Find that one.

Cut it.

Stable again.

Until another one showed up.

At some point I realized I was no longer mixing a monitor.

I was playing Whack-a-Mole with frequencies.

Every time I thought I had won, another one popped its head up.

Part of the problem was that this wasn’t a fixed acoustic situation. She was singing, moving her head, changing her mic angle and shifting slightly as she played piano.

Every small movement changed the relationship between the microphone, the hat and the wedge.

So the reflection pattern wasn’t necessarily staying the same.

That helps explain why one EQ cut didn’t magically solve the entire problem.

And Then There Was the Wedge

There was another important variable.

The monitor was positioned off to her side.

That’s not the ideal location when using a cardioid microphone like an SM58.

A cardioid microphone picks up mostly from the front and provides its greatest rejection directly behind the microphone.

That’s why, when possible, placing a wedge roughly behind the microphone can help maximize gain before feedback.

But her wedge wasn’t directly behind the mic.

It was off to the side.

A cardioid pattern still has significant sensitivity at the sides, so the microphone was already more exposed to energy from the monitor than it would have been if the wedge were sitting closer to its area of maximum rejection. To learn more about microphone polar patterns and monitor placement, read The Polar Pattern Express.

Now combine that with:

A wedge close to the performer.

A cardioid mic with the wedge off-axis from its best rejection point.

A large reflective hat sitting inches from the vocal mic.

And a performer moving naturally while she sang and played piano.

Suddenly the perfectly stable monitor I had checked earlier wasn’t so perfectly stable anymore.

But I’ve Mixed Cowboy Hats Before

This wasn’t my first encounter with a hat on stage.

I’ve mixed plenty of country bands and honky-tonk shows with singers wearing cowboy hats big enough to qualify for their own ZIP code.

Usually I can compensate.

You identify what the hat is doing, make some EQ adjustments, pay attention to microphone and monitor placement, and move on.

But this particular setup had several variables working against me at once.

She was seated.

The wedge needed to be fairly close.

It was positioned off to her side.

She missed the soundcheck.

And I didn’t know the hat was going to be part of the equation until the show had already started.

That last part matters.

There is a big difference between solving a problem during soundcheck and solving one while an audience is sitting in front of you.

During soundcheck, you can move things.

Try a different monitor location.

Experiment with mic position.

Ask the performer to sing louder.

Ring things out.

Try an IEM (in-ear-monitor).

During the show?

You troubleshoot without making the troubleshooting part of the show.

Sometimes the Best EQ Move Is the Fader

Eventually I reached the point where chasing frequencies wasn’t the best answer anymore.

Yes, EQ can buy you more gain before feedback.

But every time you notch another frequency, you’re also changing the sound of the monitor.

There comes a point where you’re solving the feedback problem by slowly removing everything the singer actually wants to hear.

So I stopped chasing.

I turned the wedge down.

Just enough to get it safely below the feedback threshold.

Problem solved.

Not glamorous.

No fancy plugin.

No heroic EQ move.

Just less level going into the acoustic loop.

Sometimes the best feedback suppressor is a fader.

What I Would Do Differently Next Time

Had I known ahead of time exactly what I was dealing with, I would have approached the setup differently.

First, I would have paid closer attention to the monitor’s position relative to the SM58’s cardioid pattern.

If possible, I would move the wedge closer to the microphone’s area of greatest rejection.

I’d also ring out the monitor with the singer actually sitting at the piano wearing the hat.

Because apparently that detail matters.

A lot.

And I’ll probably offer her IEMs next time.

That removes the wedge from the acoustic feedback loop altogether.

The hat could still affect the sound of her voice reaching the microphone, but it would no longer have a nearby loudspeaker feeding energy back toward it.

That might be the cleanest solution of all.

Never Trust the Wardrobe

Live sound has a way of reminding you that absolutely everything on stage matters.

The microphone matters.

The monitor matters.

The position of the performer matters.

The room matters.

And apparently the accessories matter too.

I started the night with a perfectly stable monitor mix and ended it in an acoustic argument with a very stylish wide-brimmed hat.

The hat nearly won.

But in the final round, I reached for the one tool it couldn’t outsmart.

The monitor fader.

Sound engineer: 1.

Hat: 0.