Any sound engineers on Tildes? Help!
I work across the street from a high school football field and track. During practices and games, they play music at volumes that rattle the windows. Recently, I was in charge of running sound for an event on that same field, but I could barely get my music to play loud enough to be heard. For context, this is a sound system locked in a case so there's no possibility of adjusting levels. There's an RCA aux port with a haggard 3.5mm adapter cable and iPhone adapter. My devices are a chromebook and galaxy tablet. I eventually downloaded the sketchest sound booster app for the tablet which helped somewhat, but nowhere near as loud as what those kids get at their sports.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? Why don't my devices output enough? Is there a better remedy?
Not a sound engineer, but am audio enthusiast. What you need is a proper powered amp. Odds are whatever they're using to play music/mic has one.
A product like this might do the trick. Please note, this is not a specific endorsement of this model, just an example of what to look for. TBH at $30, it's a pretty solid gamble I would take in your shoes. Think of it as the dollar store tool you replace with a better one if you've used it more than 3 times.
A good model could start at $150.
Thank you! Do you have a specific recommendation? I'd rather just buy it once
Sadly not. I'm more of a home stereo guy, not portable.
You're probably fine with any brand name you've heard of.
I can get more into it, but to get a real answer you will basically have to talk to someone who regularly does the sound in that space. Sounds designers know their systems intimately, and are usually always willing to help people understand their setup, so if your do anything I would suggest reaching out to them to talk about it.
From my experience though it sounds like 1 of 3 things.
First is that it's might be a different sound system. I have only worked in theater, not sports, but almost all the places I have been in have a terrible cheap system that is enough to run a small event like a conference that just needs a mic to hear a presenter, as well as a completely separate sound system that is only used by the theater company or other professional that can be trusted to not ruin the equipment. It's possible the other events have different speakers that are just more powerful.
Second thought is that something is not powered on. Have you made sure that all the speakers that should be playing sound are doing so? It is standard practice for speakers to be on a separate power switch than the sounds systems, as they need to be turned on it the correct order to not damage the speakers. You could see if there are amps nearby that might need to be switched on after everything else (and then turned off before anything else at the end).
The third thought is it might just be the directions your speakers are facing. Designing for outdoor spaces is very difficult because you have no walls to bounce the walls off of, which makes directionality very significant. If your house is directly in line with the speaks and half a mile away, I would not be surprised if it was louder that 20 feet away and 40°off center. It's possible the Booth is not in line with the speakers, and it's much louder on the bleachers itself also. Make sure you do a walk through while playing consistent music so you can gauge the difference between what you hear at the booth as opposed to the stands.
I hope that helps at all. There could of course be other weird things going on, but with the information you provided those are what makes sense to me.
There are a bunch of possible variables at play here. I don't have a lot of time right now to give a fuller comment, but, off the top of my head:
These are opposing statements. :) My recommendation for a first step would be to ask if you could get some access. It's a bit like asking someone to cook a good meal, but locking them out of the kitchen. Dun work that way.
There are two parts to this: the signal going in to the channel (the RCA port), and what the channel is sending downstream to the master/main outputs. If the input signal is weak, and you try to crank the channel's volume, you would hear some hiss because of low signal to noise ratio. Ideally, you want a strong enough signal coming from your device, then you use the mixer to temper the channel's volume relative to everything else in the overall mix. (If there is nothing else going on in this event except your single input device, then there is no "mix".)
If you can open up your audio files on a computer, you can ensure they have a good level of volume. For modern music (I'll assume you're not playing classical at a sporting event), it should look pretty stuffed. Nearly completely filled from top to bottom at the choruses. A lot of modern music is filled through the entire song. Random Internet example to look at: The blue one is what I mean by "filled", whereas the red is not. If your track looks like the red or purple ones, then you can treat them on your computer ahead of your event. Audacity can do this, or ffmpeg. The tools you'd use would be compression (compressor) and/or normalization.
You mentioned getting an app. Some things like that can dynamically do compression, etc. on a laptop or mobile device. That's fine, as long as the settings are not poorly configured (which would make things sound bad while making them louder).
Assuming you can get the audio files in good shape, and your source device is outputting at a good, strong level, then the next thing to fiddle with is channel fader. Push it up till it's either loud enough, or sounds bad (clipping, distorted, etc.). If it sounds bad, but is not loud enough, then the master output level could be too low.
The mixer could be all good, but downstream amplification could be set too low. That's another thing to check.
It could be that, if everything is locked down, and you're not allowed to touch anything, they set it up so that nobody can do things unsupervised with the system which they wouldn't like, such as pushing the PA too hard (could cause physical damage), or making things "too" loud (subjective), or messing with settings that would make their job harder or more time consuming when they come back to the desk.
Anyway, I hope you get this sorted out. It's tough when you are asked to do a job, but are not given what you need to do it right. Been there.
You hit the nail on the head.
The thing that puzzles me was that my devices were maxed out but the volume output was nowhere near what the kids get. When you say downstream amplification, what do you mean? Is the source downstream or the speaker?
Speakers are downstream. Upstream is where the river originates. Downstream is farther than you are.
Well, the end-to-end signal chain is (probably) something like this:
At the moment, it seems that you can only control the first 3 stages. If you can get full or more access, the things you want to change, in priority order are:
Be cautious when raising amp levels, though, as it is possible to have an amp drive a speaker beyond what it is designed to produce, which can cause physical damage, and you don't want to be liable for that.
Now, as for your questions:
Even if everything is set up well upstream of amplification, having a low amp setting would just stifle the final output level. If the mixer is not a combination mixer-amplifier, then it will only provide a certain (weak-ish) output level, and the sound system relies on an amplifier (separate device) to take the weak signal and boost it so that the physical PA can produce an acceptably high level (i.e. loud enough). On top of that, in some setups, the speakers themselves might have level/volume controls.
So, when I talked about downstream, I meant lower on the (longer) list, above. So, you would check both (a) the amp(s) (first), and (b) the speakers for controls that you can operate to make things louder.
Do you think you can tell us brands and model names of the devices in the signal chain? Particularly the mixer, the amp(s), and the speakers. Though, by the time you get close enough to find this out, you'll also be close enough to see any obvious controls, and you could solve your problem already before even getting back to this Tildes thread.
One more thing: about when I said gain is fixed for an RCA input: another option here is to try to plug the device into a "regular" mixer channel (not the RCA) by using a physical adapter. Could be a single stereo adapter (note the two black rings, not just one), like this or this; or a dual/split one, like this (note the single black ring on each of the 1/4" connectors). The point with this approach is that you'd have a little more control because you could use a pre-amp gain on that regular channel (which could be absent on an RCA channel). This gain would be the first thing to try before my little 3-item list, above.
Getting more advanced now, but: the places above where I mention signal processing are other places that can be lowering your signal. Plugins/effects like compressors, EQ. If you've tried everything else, then the plugin stack is one more thing to investigate.
If you can get to test things out in person before your event (i.e. when the venue is empty, and no event is happening), that would help you a lot. Much better than stressing about fixing this during or just before your event, with lots of people turning to stare at you, or the event manager getting on your case and pressuring you, etc.
Oh, one more thing (sorry, I keep saying that, heh): Take pictures of everything you fiddle with before you fiddle with them! I always do this when dealing with equipment that doesn't belong to me, or to whatever organization I am representing. i.e. when I'm just a visitor to a venue that has a sound system in place already. This way, you can put things back to the way they were before you got there, and it also provides you a reference to reset back to if you want to start over with a given control.
I think as others have mentioned, ask others who have used the system how they have been getting the volume. They could be using a separate sound system. If you are not experienced, I would not recommend adjusting the amps, and only adjusting the mixer. I think the first step should be meeting with whoever runs the sound for the other events and asking them for tips. Especially since they are locking everything up to be adjusted, then it seems like a low trust environment. Building up the trust by meeting with them and asking questions will hopefully give you the opportunity for them to unlock the case, so that you can make the adjustments you need to get the necessary volume (and hopefully by just adjusting the mixer, and not the amps).