SOUND AND SOUND EQUIPMENT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32461/2226-0285.2.2015.146940Keywords:
sound, sound equipment, stage, sound director, mass spectacleAbstract
This article is about sound equipment to amplify musical instruments and human voice recordings during mass spectacle.
With spectacular sound amplification system design it is very important to comply with techniques that focus on speech intelligibility and sound uniformity criteria. Sound system setting is another feature of spectacular sound reinforcement. The sound system timbre must be in line with the distance from the stage to the audience.
Modern concert systems, especially those stationary, are provided with multi-channel sound systems.
The number and complexity of sound amplifying equipment have reached such a scale that difficulties are being faced in managing this equipment and its placement. On the one hand, we can build up a huge equipment room and get it packed with hardware, but with such stuffed equipment room, proper auditorium atmosphere may fail. Sound producers always strive to make it as close as possible to the audience, and modern compact digital consoles will carry out this task with the help of a personal computer. Virtually, all modern digital devices have the control interface, and the scarcity of the device interface is perfectly offset by the convenience of computer control. Currently, technological solutions are developing rapidly to put together various digital devices through standard computer connections. It leads to audio revolution, quite similar to that occurred in computer technology with the advent of computer networks.
A digital audio system consists of analog peripheral devices that are equipped with digital interfaces, digital processing and routing gadgets and digital connection lines. The architecture and functionality of such systems have great versatility and can be controlled both from special consoles (digital mixer consoles) and from a PC.
Sooner or later, any sound producer is dawned on by an idea to find a 'magic' transfer curve in the electro-acoustic path that would allow to instrumentally adjust the sound amplifying system and deliver equally good sound performance across all concert halls.
The utopian nature of this idea is related to the fact that concert halls have different reverberation capacities, different absorption rates at ranging frequencies and different sizes. In this regard, the lower the quality of the resulting sound is, the less sound volume one can allow to keep the sound performance comfortable enough. Higher sound pressure is achieved by increasing low-frequency components in the concert sound spectrum.
The indoor sound fine-tuning takes most time and effort, as when reflected from any surface the sound has a very different spectral composition unlike when coming directly from speakers. In addition, low frequencies trigger highly noticeable standing vibrations. For objective reasons, various spots of the room have to be sound-checked with amplitude-response systems to catch the general trend among the most siloed performance indicators. Unfortunately, no sound fine-tuning template has ever been made. Room reverberation, speaker distortion, sound volume and other parameters influence subjective perception of musical instrument sounding and change their timbre and relative balance. Engineering techniques for estimating the sound field do not consider these features and are used for approximation with the follow-up fine-tuning adjustments at a particular venue.
References
Вейценфельд А. Звуковые рабочие станции /Вейценфельд А. // Звукорежиссер. – 1998. – № 7.
Шкритен П. Справочное руководство по звуковой схемотехнике; перев.с нем. / Шкритен П. – М.:
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Veycenfeld A. (1998). Audio Workstations. Zvukorezhisser,7 [in Russian]
Shkriten, P. (1991). Informational instruction of the sound schema-technique. Moscow: Mir [in Russian].
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