You Can't Start a Party at 85dB

Another blog to get something off my chest, forgive me.

When you're doing your job, you don't want to feel like you're compromising the product for the sake of someone else. If you worked in an office typing, it would be a pain in the neck if your new company policy was such that you had to wear woollen gloves to save on the company heating bill...

I'm referring to council installed sound limiters of course. Last night, I was performing at a venue for a wedding reception. The venue had a sound limiter, presumably as a result of receiving noise complaints from locals; although the as far as I could tell, the venue wasn't actually that close to any residential homes.

It's important to understand that my issue isn't necessarily with the sound limiter itself, I'm thinking more about a venue's suitability for the service that they are providing. It turned out that the noise complaints were coming from customers staying at the hotel bit of the venue (while we performed in the reception bit).

Although the two bits of the hotel were separate entities, they were by no means separated. This makes me wonder why they offer live entertainment as a service in the first place? I've been in enough live situations to know that our volume level last night was not loud by any means, compared to some bands we were quiet in fact. Regardless, the management of the venue were constantly prodding and poking as we tried to play.

Anyway, back to the limiter. The idea is, if the volume level is too high, the limiter cuts the power to the circuit that your equipment is plugged into. This can be damaging to a lot of modern equipment (the example in my head is a Mesa Boogie valve amp that needs to be switched to standby, then off to ensure longevity of the glass valves inside). As a compromise, the venue offered to bypass the limiter on the proviso that we didn't play too loud; or at least they would come and let us know if there was a problem. This was quite a lot of trust on their part.

However, in the middle of the second set, we were asked to turn the volume down (beyond the PA being too loud, backline to practicing level at this point). Which we did, and remained there. At this point, the venue assumed that we weren't cooperating and decided to engage the limiter without telling us. So the power cut, leaving the audience a little bemused. After this, we continued to reduce the volume, wondering: "What is the point in there being live entertainment at all?"It left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths.

About now, I usually mention how the band carried on and got the job done in a professional manner, this gig was no exception. At the end of the day, you're all working together to create a great night for the party guests. Despite our misgivings, the happy couple were very pleased with our playing; the guests also seemed to enjoy our sets. You can't say fairer than that really.

I think that my overall point here is that if you feel like a live band are going to be loud for the venue, there are other options for wedding entertainment. This isn't necessarily the responsibility of the bride and groom to work out. Maybe it should be up to the venue to let their clients know that live bands will be too loud for their venue; this will save everyone the hassle of trying to tip toe around a machine that governs whether bands are too noisy?

Two final things to consider: 1. I've been at venues where the crowd singing along too loudly has tripped the limiter before. 2. I'm glad that I didn't bring my extension speaker cabinet last night.

Al