[roylor4]

Hi Kid,

I don't know much about "gain staging" and other things myself and I am anything but lazy. The higher you climb, the further you see. You are obviously very experienced and know how to get the best sound for you. many of us are still figuring it out. It is not always the performers at fault either. Many times bar/club owners and managers are nebulous in what they want from musicians or don't interact with them at all.

The last bar gig we played at I asked the bar manager to give us feedback on a soundcheck 15 minutes before beginning. We had never played there before and had no idea how much or little volume they wanted from us. He acted like I was a nuisance and said "Let's do it right before you play." Start time was 7pm. At 7:03 the piped in bar music was still playing. I tried to get the managers attention several times and he ignored me (did it through the mic, so he definitely did here me). I had to ask an off duty waitress to ask him for a sound check - nada. She turned the music down herself and said to start playing. We were scheduled to return but were told after the fact that we didn't have "the right vibe". I suspect we were too loud but if we were, we were never asked to "turn down". We were on our A game that night. They listened to our sound clips before hiring us.

We did our own sound check and levels were equal. 2 vocals, bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar. We are both multi instrumentalists.

Something that sounds easy to dial in without being obnoxiously loud would be a great benefit to us and it sounds like these array systems might be a good fit for us, even though they are not affordable for us.

We are "hobbyist players" - we get played to pay but it's not our primary living.

It is far easier to balance one voice and a guitar than multiple people and instruments - especially when you are running some out of separate cabs.

My point is, just because you have it down to a science doesn't mean we all do. While the blame does fall squarely on us for being to loud, or unbalanced sometimes the folks that hire you can have a hand in bad sound as well - i.e. "We had the wrong Vibe".

And no, admittedly we are not great sound engineers - in an case like this I believe a good array system would have saved our bacon.