#soundguyproblems

I am part of the organisation of the Vondelbunker in Amsterdam. It’s an old nuclear bomb shelter in which we have awesome events. It’s a real underground location. (literally) The thing I mostly do there is the sound, and in the past months I have learned a lot about being an audio engineer. Including the following.

The first thing confronted me is that a concrete bunker has quite a reverb. We often have bands playing and the problem that usually appears is that the drums are too loud. Result, the band puts up their amps so much that they’re louder than our soundsystem so I can’t get the vocals loud enough. Sometimes we have drummers that are actually capable of playing at a lower volume and that solves the whole problem, but most drummers can’t. At this volume it doesn’t even sound good anymore, and while I am busy trying not to blow up the speakers sometimes people dare to sign to me that they can’t here the vocals. I usually respond with a deathlike Clint Eastwood kinda look. I mean, don’t you think I would turn up the volume if I could? I am the fucking soundguy am I not? I’m not deaf y’know, I can clearly hear that there is a problem with the sound but unfortunately I can’t solve it because this band is playing too fucking loud. I don’t usually say that out loud though, that’s just what goes through my head at those moments. Anyway, I decided to put this on the mixer. Now when people ask, I just point to this piece of paper.