Live Sound

A good sound engineer is absolutely essential for any gigging band. Whether you’re lucky enough to have your own live engineer or you’re working with the venue’s, the person that sits behind all the buttons and faders is essentially the person that’s ultimately responsible for your band’s sound. This means that, as a band member, you’re only partly responsible for the end product, so you’ll want to make sure that everyone on stage and out front is doing their job and getting along.

When using any wireless system, whether it’s for wireless microphones, a wireless in-ear monitoring system or a cable-free instrument system, then you’ll have to work with radio frequencies. These are inherent to the way these wireless systems work, since wireless systems convert audio into code before sending it through the air in the form of a digital packet, so it can be picked up by a receiver where the information is decoded and converted back into audio.

The shorter the distance between the source and the microphone, the more low frequencies are registered at the cost of high frequencies. This is what’s known as the proximity effect, and it applies to a lot of microphones. In practice, this usually means that the closer you close-mike your voice or instrument, the fuller it’ll sound. Read on and learn how to take advantage of it.

While removing cables from the setup gives you freedom to move around the stage, life isn’t made easy for wireless microphone users. With mobile internet and other wireless traffic only getting busier and busier, there’s little room left in the ether for wireless microphones. To solve this issue, Shure has developed an impressive, all-new system: the Shure GLX-D+ Dual Band Series.

If you’ve been flipping through our range of microphones, you’ve probably come across the terms ‘electret’ and ‘true condenser’. But what’s the difference? And are ‘real’ condenser microphones always better than electret microphones, like the name suggests? In this blog, we’ll explain it all.

As soon as you start working with cables, you run the risk of cooking up cable spaghetti. To help you organise your set-up, we’ve listed five cable management tips. Dive in before you tie yourself up in knots.

In the world of live shows, the front-of-house sound engineer controls one of the key ingredients to a successful gig: the PA system. Since keeping an eye on the sound, the band and the crowd at the same time is no easy task, we interviewed one of the Netherlands’ best sound-techs to ask him how it’s done and what it takes.

Great stage sound is essential if you want to put on a great live performance but can be difficult to achieve. Luckily, the tools that can help have already been invented: floor monitors and in-ear monitors. That said, these bits of kit also cause the occasional issue. In practice, balance and discipline are what makes or breaks great live sound – monitoring actually only comes in third place.

If your band is busy laying roots across the country, playing every gig it can, whether in a fully set up venue or grubby backstreet pub, the idea of kitting yourselves out with a good PA system has probably come up already. But as soon as you’ve decided to take the leap, you’re faced with a whole new set of questions. Do you need active or passive speakers? Do you just need a little vocal setup or a complete PA system? What do you need to look for in your perfect mixer, your monitors, your microphones…? And so on. Not to worry, in this blog, we will lend a generous helping hand and set you up with the knowledge you need to make all the right decisions.

Unfortunately, there comes a time when everything breaks, and the same is definitely true of music gear, whether it’s speakers, valve amplifiers, or your electric guitar or bass. In the worst case, you’ll need to get it fixed by a professional, but there are some smaller, more simple repairs that you can actually carry out yourself. With a voltmeter, a soldering iron and a little solder on your side, you can get more done than you might think.

There comes a time in every musician’s life when they are forced to confront a mixer for the first time. To the un-schooled user, these chunks of equipment can seem intimidating and complex, and while mixers range from the super-compact to the desk-sized gigantic, all of them are based on the same set of principles and will offer the same basic set of functions and connection options. In this blog, we offer a step-by-step explanation of the ins and outs of mixers.

Most people never even think about vocal microphone hygiene, which is okay as long as you’re the only one using the mike. If not, it’s important that you clean your vocal microphone after use to prevent one singer from passing their germs on to the next. In this humble blog, I’ll explain how you can easily clean a microphone yourself.