7 Live Sound Mistakes I Recently Made

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I’m going to tell you the 7 last mistakes I made when mixing shows,
and somehow batteries come up more than once.
I’ve been mixing live stuff for years and I still make mistakes, I’ll continue to make mistakes, and I’ll continue to learn from them.
Warren buffet said: it’s good to learn from your mistakes, but it’s better to learn from other peoples
So with that in mind, here’s the 7 last mistakes that I made, as a live sound engineer
off the top of my head

00:00 - Start
00:42 - Mistake 1
01:30 - Mistake 2
02:37 - Mistake 3
03:31 - Mistake 4
04:31 - Mistake 5
05:58 - Mistake 6
07:29 - Mistake 7

[mixinglane]

Great when someone acknowledge that they make mistakes, stands up and share those with others. Great leadership! Thanks.

[prospekt]

Thanks for sharing these! I could definitely relate to working too long and not paying attention and especially the working too long part is something that can't be said enough. it's way too often that we're expected to mix a full festival day from 2pm to 1am the next day, with little to no breaks planned that day and nobody accounting for the time spent setting up and tearing down.

[mixinglane]

Hahaha, number 4! I once prepared for a show with really short built up time. I prepared everything at the office, connected every single thing and checked. Then double checked everything. Then switched everything off multiple times, started it up again and checked again if every single thing was working as intended. Great. At venue, built up, sat prepared, band comes in, no IEMs.... I forgot to power up the combiner. Still no IEms... I totally forgot to run the antenna cables to the antennas.

[RollingSctone]

Man I love your contain ❤❤. Many many thanks for your effort

[Photo-zlwt]

Great video and I stumbled on many of those mistakes over the years too. 15 hr days - focused till the band plays a slow song ….

[MichaelNatrin]

Great video - thanks for sharing and being transparent

[rakhabaguspratama]

The last one still had me struggle a lot, it just so dull for watching "host" or "presenter" with the mic without knowing when they will open their mouth.

[abollenswe]

Just spotted another mistake at 2:27, not having the battery holder thing installed when using normal AA batteries! Just a little pump away from the batteries getting loose 😊

[dannyhesse]

ALL OF THE ABOVE! Thanks for the reinforcement! It's a good idea to perhaps have a small list on front of you reminding of batteries; switching on RFs; pay attention when it's a speaking engagement (I've done this a few times! Ugh!) And try to stay focused.

[MosegaEntertainment]

Great, informative practical and very relevant

[Dicoboomtime]

Hi, my ameateur engineering is on a much smaller scale to your work but I have done similar things and can relate to the video you made. It is good to hear pros are human too.

For a local band night, i have a condensor mic at the front of stage on a tiny ground level stand. When a song finishes and the audience applaud, I turn the channel on and pull the fader up so the pianist and drummer who are on IEMs can hear the audioence and if there is any interaction, they are involved and can respond/react without having to remove an earpiece.

I don't know if other engineers do something similar, (please tell me if you do and how you do it) but through lack of concentration like you say, occasionally i'd forget to turn it on after the song or forget to turn it off when the next song started . The result is a load of ambient noise being fed into the monitor mixes.

On the desk i use, there are 4 Aux and 1 FB i use for monitoring.
The 4 aux are post fader (which is not ideal at all for IEM mixing, i know) and the FB is pre fader (great for IEMs).

But, one show i was simply using the channel on/off to cut the audience mic and completely forgot that i needed to cut the fader too in order to cut the audience/ambient sound for the pianist pre fader FB. If was only after the show that i realised what i had done, hence now cutting the fader and channel on/off.

The show after this mistake was a lot better and less mistakes but these things are easily done i find. Even when concentrating as much as possible. I guess the more shows you do the less often they happen.

[peterldelong]

The battery has gone empty, stealing that.

[tudorgheorghe]

A sound engineer is a must electronic engineer at least for audio.well any component has a no of hi
Hours to be plugged.so please turn them by procedure off

[jasonlajuene]

I sent this to my partner as he thinks its more important to take pictures of the show and NOT PAY ATTENTION !

[mashzmash]

Granted I don't know the electrical topology of the transmit switch on the PSM 900/1000 but I'm a little skeptical about that tiny amount of transmission when it's switched off. I just tried it with one of my PSM 900s and no matter what I tried with various antennas, positioning, practically mating the tx and rx antennas.. can't get any digital sync or RF levels registering at all.

[nathanharrellyoutube]

We had a Pedal start dying during a show and it started whining for some reason

[joevegna]

Oh the RF mute … When will I ever learn that one 😅

[adamyoung]

Why does the transmission function on those IEM transmitters have a separate on switch?? 😂 I’ve never seen that on the IEM products I’ve worked with and can’t think of a good reason for the second on switch.

[Hipyon]

I'll take batteries Even when it's not my gig often I'm very appreciated

[tudorgheorghe]

When hear oh for n reason the main pa always on better choose something else like career