Karaoke Forums

OK, so I picked up a new venue and the acoustics are terrible. It's basically an open area, rectangular in shape with the bar on one of the longest walls and tables and chairs filling the area. It's got very hard surfaces such as tile floor even the tables and chairs have metal legs. As a result, sound is reflected and sounds like your singing in the bathroom.

I tried some EQ which helped a little but I'm also lacking bass. I thought about adding a subwoofer if that might help improve the sound.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to improve the sound under these conditions.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

If you had a lot of money, you can put speakers out of phase at most of the reflectives and with the right time delay, cancel most of the problems. It won't last. As the room changes so will the settings for all the canceling speakers. In a word, good luck with it.

Another thing is to get your mains as high in the air and point down. On a full house night it should sound better.

I did a gig just like you described about 7 years ago and I very quickly (3 shows) dropped the venue because I hated the acoustics. I couldn't get anything to sound right, and even worse was the noise from the customers... it just bounced around the room like a ping pong ball. Good luck because I don't think you can find a fix short of hanging tapestries on every wall.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Short of putting up sound absorbing acoustic tiles on all the walls (which they're not going to do), I guess there is nothing that can be done.

I know that not all venues are perfect and I really want to keep this gig so I guess it is what it is. The consolation is, they have an outdoor patio with tables and chairs, so now that the nicer weather is coming, I plan to do karaoke outside, which could also serve as good advertising since all the traffic going by will see and hear the fun and hopefully bring in some new customers.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

how many speakers are you running?

how/where are they located/setup?

you could do multiple speakers and use time delay so all the speakers are playing
at the same time and help reduce with the natural reflection. basically it makes
all the speaker play at the same time. when you run speaks in parallel and have long
runs of wire you get a delay because of the distance. and that will help cancel the
reverb that the room causes.

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It's all good!

What about putting the speakers on the opposite end of the bar facing the stage and your soundboard? You may have to have a long speaker cable run through the ceiling or something like that, but in theory, you'd be able to decrease the SPLs a decent bit and reduce the reverberations and ghosting you are getting from the room acoustics.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Topher, I too thought that might work at the venue I described above, But the result was people at the far end (the ones trying to get away from the sound) became very annoyed. On top of that I realized very little improvement and definitely more work setting up.

What speakers are you using? I'm using two QSC K12s, and JBL EON 15, as my monitor.

I work in a very similar venue, and am experiencing something of the same. All stone surfaces on the walls and floor, and very high ceilings.

I have my speakers up as high as I can, and standing away from the walls. The BASS was actually overwhelming on BOOST so I turned it off and adjusted from the board.

When it gets crowded, the voices to seem to reverberate a bit. I did have some complaints initially, but after I turned the bass down, and worked with my compressor a bit, I did manage to find a pretty good balance. Its not perfect, but it not bad either and people are enjoying themselves.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

For this venue, I'm using my Yamaha S115V speakers. I'm going to play with dropping the mid-range frequencies and see if that helps. I'm thinking of adding a subwoofer if that might help but with these speakers, I've never had the need since they've always put out great bass. Then again, most of the places I've used them in had pretty good acoustics.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

+1 Qsc products.

What you need to do is use cheap fiberglass. Wrap it it in cloth, and put several panels on the ceiling.

The more speakers, the better the sound. K12s with K8s work VERY well together. Placing them in key areas (also high up +1 on that) and aim them down works. We've done several installations like this.

Some venues listen, others wiggle and squirm and don't want to spend money. Irony, things are cheaper now than they have been.

You DO need a solid bass to fill out the sound. Think of sound as a spectrum. High, low, mid. You don't need to thump like crazy, but having a solid low end is like having a solid bass player in a band. It's the first thing you notice (besides drums) that go out. example; when I do an event, like a wedding or holiday party: I run two k12, on two ksubs. I don't go club style, but the low end is present and fills everything in.

Try to convince your venue to do upgrades. It can double as kj and as vending (other side of the business). We can tap our jukeboxes into qsc rca and it sounds incredible. Better than the Bose packages. Two-fer.

Bouncy sound.. Just listen to any YouTube Karaoke video to see how it is..

That's why studios have special walls and ceilings..

In a club, the owner needs to help with the cure..