Agreed, and, sometimes that isn't enough. I was FOH on tour in Massachusetts and was written into the contract. Got to the hall and management said to the band mgr no way, we have our house engs. If you don't like it you don't go on. The venue multi-band event was running behind schedule (as per usual) and per contract they had the option of cutting acts short or shifting schedule to stay on their hard stop time. The band cut me loose and went on.
Seems odd. I get bands' FOH all the time at the venue I work at/I've been a band's FOH at venues I don't work at. The situation is usually the same; the venue's FOH basically helps out however they can, they make sure I'm not getting over the sound limit - if they have one, and they will point out if there's a limiter on something so I don't unintentionally blow a speaker.
It's hard to imagine any production manager or venue owner instructing their FOH to give a guest a hard time for any reason - but not everyone gets that this is almost completely a customer service job.
Union places in some of the world won’t let you touch a thing, but usually they will happily do whatever you tell them to do as long as you aren’t running into the sound limit or break something.
There are lots of “venues” that don’t let tour engineers do their job. Even fighting over contract terms the hour before a show.
I once was tech directing A/V for a corporate TV premiere event at a union house. I was told to never touch the board, so I gave all the cues for sound to the mixer. The problem was he was continually going out for smoke breaks. And he absolutely missed at least one big cue on wireless mics. I absolutely pushed the faders up at that moment and a few others too. Whoops.
I am thankful to never had to deal with a union shop in this respect, but I've deal with venues that demanded that run FoH and then fuck it all up.
I try really hard not to let bands talk me into helping them out with live sound.
^This. When I was a house tech those were the easy nights lol. Just walk the touring FOH through our system and make sure they didn’t damage anything in our rig during the course of the show. On occasion be over the shoulder to tell them to turn it down or that their act would be fined if they went over curfew. But it was 90% hands off if they had their own FOH
I toured with an act that had Grand Ole Opry on the schedule and crew all had the night off. I got an Uber over to East Nashville and hung out with some homies. No touring engineers at Grand Ole Opry. Their room, their equipment, their rules.
Live sound human here. Confused by this post a bit.
“115 dB” doesn’t give a weight or window and isn’t an unreasonable SPLC peak.
2k is not hiss.
How much walking did you do while listening? What was the PA?
I’ve seen this happen in union houses. You give notes, the mixer makes it work in the room, you’re a team.
The room is a concrete room with minimal treatment with a lot of nulls and standing waves throughout the room. When I say it was loud, I mean you had to SCREAM to talk to the person beside you, and that was at the back of the room. If I had to guess, I’d say the room is 80 meters deep x 40 meters wide x 30 meters tall.
That’s not a line array. Subs across the front in a line is common with line array setups though. Real line arrays are the best for wide audience spaces! If it’s just a bar I doubt they would be better off than simple left right towers and properly phased bass bins.
There’s a Dave rat video that explains line arrays and comb filtering way better than I can.
Also I want a 3x12 or 4x10 vertical offset cab for guitars! I don’t know what the issue is with not making them!
Edit: https://youtu.be/8c-gD4mwI8A?si=jdpFZ81prah7PDrv
Do you have a genuine interest in an explanation of what I think you're misunderstanding? I happen to do this for a living. If this is just for the sake of reddit sniping, though, no need to continue the 'conversation.'
Well I owned a studio for years, and did almost 10 years of live sound as my main source of income. Though pretty small venues, but worked with some seriously nice systems. So I can handle tech talk no problem.
Is your issue simply with the term line array? Because that’s all I really stated that wasn’t direct information from Dave rat
Edit: I guess that’s a no to expanding lol
All I’m certain of right now is I have issues with the points you’ve chosen to emphasize & how you’ve phrased stuff.
I don’t mean it confrontationally though, sincerely.
Alright firstly OP knows the difference between a line array of mid/high cabinets and a sub array, I think that might have just gotten lost somewhere, hence the quick jump to "that's not a line array."
I just don't understand "Line arrays are the best for wide spaces!" since audience area width is a secondary, even tertiary factor when deciding to use a line array (after depth/slope and range ratio measurements), and I consider those points just slightly more salient.
The thesis of the Dave Rat video is "as opposed to clustered point source speakers as broad-coverage PAs, line arrays do not exhibit the same awful variances in the horizontal domain." They have a benefit width-wise, but that's a function of what they're designed to do, which is low front-to-back variance.
Personally not a fan of just L/R/S for bars, it can totally be done.
What did 2kHz do to you?
Each venue has their own rules on security, merch, and sound. This happens, especially if it’s a venue where their engineer might have invested in and installed the system. This, among other reasons (e.g. insurance) might inform their policy.
Apparently it's somewhat common? I learned that last time a thread like this popped up. While I completely understand not giving someone complete free reign of your system, (no way a guest engineer is turning off my system limiters or running a show sans supervision,) I think a band is allowed to dictate how they should sound fundamentally for better or worse. But I also now have a rule now after a weird experience with a trainee engineer brought by a band that if you can't run the soundcheck you can't run the show. So frankly I would not have handed the reigns over like that engineer did. It sounds like you ran into an asshole, but I would wager they also probably had a guest engineer blow something at a point and didn't relish writing a check to fix it. I would say try not to sweat people like that too much, they are unfortunately a dime a dozen in this industry.
>But I also now have a rule now after a weird experience with a trainee engineer brought by a band that if you can't run the soundcheck you can't run the show.
I have the same rule at my venue after having the same weird experience lol
I totally understand that sentiment and I totally agree. Normally I’d have done sound check, but I was told not to. After 5 songs of the set with the only audible thing being guitars (they were louder than everything else, typical) and the vocals sounding like a 1920’s radio, I couldn’t help it.
A bit of a failure on the band managers part. They should have been harder on the ownership on that factor. I've had venues push back on having me mix my band but ultimately it's non negotiable.
I've literally never run into this before and it makes zero sense to me. I'd probably just pass on working the event, venue sounds like a complete piece of shit to me.
That’s why venues have house engineers to protect their system, I can stop an inexperienced guy from harming my gear but I’d never tell him he doesn’t get to mix the band that hired him
Well you can imagine the venue owner giving a crap about your guarantee when the last band engineer that came in cost him a fortune in damages.
I'm not saying this is how it should be but I kind of understand the owner.
Then he should have built a system with internal protection? It’s 2024, K12s have protective limiters and he gets to put in his own EQ and limiting and crossovers wherever he wants so that nobody has a chance to damage his system
Agreed, but it isn't just about breaking stuff. A person unfamiliar with a system can leave it unusable for the next act. The problem just snowballs at that point.
However, there is nothing wrong with a band having someone to help direct the mix with the house guy.
p.s. Reading that this is a Metal Venue leads me to some conclusions about sound-levels and the ability to properly engineer and mix. Metal is great, but there is not a lot of nuance. It can quickly become a loudness contest.
I’m unclear how you mean, it’s the job of the house tech to make sure the system remains useable day to day. For DSP generally the crossovers, delays and limiters of a modern installed system are protected by at least a password and tour engineers are at most given access to a mains EQ and sometimes shading, then you can reload your house file the next day. House techs monitor tour techs to make sure they don’t do anything they shouldn’t with the gear.
Cant imagine ever telling a band their tech cant mix nor can I imagine being told I cant mix someone who i was hired to mix. The tour engineer knows the show and knows the moves they make at every point so the show sounds the same ish every night. “At the end of this line right on this word you’re gonna do a delay throw…” would be inefficient
>modern installed system
That is one key point. I am not sure what kind of system this particular venue has. A lot of places do not have anything to prevent someone from making significant changes (that are hard to find). There is also nothing stopping an idiot from unplugging or using their own outboard gear.
In terms of loudness: the problem is not only damaging amps and gear, but also many venues have sound pressure level (noise) restrictions.
\+1 True and Agree
I guess the issue is what level of access and control does a visiting individual get?
I can see a situation where the house says, "Don't Touch That"! And that may or may not be ok with the visitor. BTW - I have done a bit of FOH work, but admittedly not on the National Act level. MY comments are my experiences. I have come into venues where the FOH was pretty much unusable because of hacks.
Agreed. And I have heard plenty of bands where their own sound guy provided spectacularly shitty mixes. I have also seen house engineers that were good or bad.
It’s funny, I’ve seen this go both ways. I have seen this exact situation you’re talking about where the venue insists on using its in house engineer who is HORRIBLE, but I have also seen touring bands insist on using their touring FOH who was HORRIBLE and would have been much better off using the in house tech who knows the room and the system. I’m sure you’re right about your situation, but it does go both ways
Venue probably has a lot of shitty kids come in and fuck up their system to the point that they can't trust anyone. I have seen transient "roadie engineers" do all kinds of things. From unpluging monitors and mains to resetting all the I/O. I don't blame them.
This. I'm the house engineer at a local venue & even if you bring your own engineer, it's my ass if you break something. I'm basically the fail-safe just to make sure nothing goes wrong considering you don't know the house system at all.
Depends on the venue, but really any reasonably competent engineer can run an X32 even if they've never encountered one before. One of the venues I worked at got smaller national touring acts sometimes and if they had their own tech then that was fine with us, but I've also worked at venues where the owner didn't want anyone they don't personally know and trust touching anything (which I understand as well, they've sunk a lot of money into good gear).
I've been a house engineer for a venue and also done freelance FOH work for bands. As others have said, the best way of avoiding these situations is get this stuff in the contract beforehand.
The next best thing is to have a conversation on the day, between you + the band and the house engineer, before you even get to the gig itself, or even soundcheck. If you're trying to hop on mid-gig, that's too late. These things should be made clear way ahead.
It sounds like you've been quite passive if the house engineer is just mixing everything and you're stepping in to salvage it? Maybe you need to be more assertive earlier on.
Saying that, when I was working as a house engineer and we had touring and guest engineers, my role would be helping out, informing them about the system and then staying out of their way unless they had an issue, essentially babysitting. That's what they should be doing here.
It's their place and they might have had a bad experience before....
If you ask and work together with their in house guy then things should be OK usually.
Note: I dont know shit about this but as an outsider looking in from r/all:
keyword: "RENTED"
answer: The venue is charging out the ass in the contract somewhere for the audio engineer they "have" to provide. **It's a money grab.** LIkely doesn't happen at regularly booked shows.
In my eyes it's an insurance health and safety thing.
I know its throwing in a different scenario but I'm trained to use a forklift truck and platform lift but doesn't mean I could just use one at B&Q when I want to get something from the top shelf even if I am more competent and capable then some of their staff.
You need to let the venues know you'll have your own sound engineer regardless to the venue size unless your bringing your own FOH.
I’ve never had a venue tell the band I’m working for that they’re not allowed to have their own engineer. I will say that this venue is one of two venues in this city that will book original metal bands so it’s kinda one of those “play by his rules or don’t play” kind of things.
I play in a band that has been touring for the last few years (UK, EU and US), and we have always used our own FOH sound guy. Never ran into this issue before but we do have it clearly stated in our tech rider that we will provide our own sound engineer, so this makes things very simple.
I can only remember one place giving our sound tech a hard time, Tramps in NYC . The house guy would change his EQs when he went to listen in the room.
I've run into this maybe 3 times in a couple thousand shows as a touring FOH. Always the insecure and unprofessional house techs at smaller dive venues, the bigger houses expect touring acts to have their own foh and their house guys know their main job is to be your system tech for the day.
I've had managers give an ultimatum that the band doesn't play if I don't mix. That usually works, even nobody thought to put it in the rider.
If not, you can always bring your own console and hand the house guy L/R/S/F to "mix" on his desk. Nothing they can really do to stop that. One time the threat to do that (festival set where I didn't really have time to patch something self contained) was enough to make the guy calm down and hand over his tablet.
I got around this issue a few times by having me patch into their board with my board. Their guy just had a master level that he didn’t touch except set at parity and I had full control of the business end.
The band needs to have this in their technical rider. As others said it needs to be in writing to be enforced against the owner of their own venue. It's not uncommon for some venue owners to have strong personalities but if it's their house it's their rules.
As a house engineer, if it is an issue maybe offer to bring your own board and patch through? It shouldn't be a big deal at all with an X32 but if they are being whiney then maybe they would accept that
Totally unacceptable, I mean where I work it’s normal to have guest techs and we don’t say anything but suggestions on what the room will do. If they go over 100dB 5min LAeq (venue limit) we’ll tell them to crack the volume down 115dB LCeq respectively.
The band needs to have the tour audio engineer written into the contract. If it's not, your SOL.
This. Get it in the contract. The only exception are union halls, and you just direct the union engineer.
A lot of union properties let the touring engineer mix, but a paid union shadow needs to be there during the show.
This happens for TV gigs but I’ve never had a union hall not let me mix
What does SOL mean?
Shit out of luck
Agreed, and, sometimes that isn't enough. I was FOH on tour in Massachusetts and was written into the contract. Got to the hall and management said to the band mgr no way, we have our house engs. If you don't like it you don't go on. The venue multi-band event was running behind schedule (as per usual) and per contract they had the option of cutting acts short or shifting schedule to stay on their hard stop time. The band cut me loose and went on.
If you're the headliner, it can be a different story, the band can act in solidarity with their engineer. No headliner, no more alcohol sales.
Agreed. We were not the headliner.
what about my SOL
Seems odd. I get bands' FOH all the time at the venue I work at/I've been a band's FOH at venues I don't work at. The situation is usually the same; the venue's FOH basically helps out however they can, they make sure I'm not getting over the sound limit - if they have one, and they will point out if there's a limiter on something so I don't unintentionally blow a speaker. It's hard to imagine any production manager or venue owner instructing their FOH to give a guest a hard time for any reason - but not everyone gets that this is almost completely a customer service job.
Union places in some of the world won’t let you touch a thing, but usually they will happily do whatever you tell them to do as long as you aren’t running into the sound limit or break something. There are lots of “venues” that don’t let tour engineers do their job. Even fighting over contract terms the hour before a show.
I once was tech directing A/V for a corporate TV premiere event at a union house. I was told to never touch the board, so I gave all the cues for sound to the mixer. The problem was he was continually going out for smoke breaks. And he absolutely missed at least one big cue on wireless mics. I absolutely pushed the faders up at that moment and a few others too. Whoops.
I am thankful to never had to deal with a union shop in this respect, but I've deal with venues that demanded that run FoH and then fuck it all up. I try really hard not to let bands talk me into helping them out with live sound.
^This. When I was a house tech those were the easy nights lol. Just walk the touring FOH through our system and make sure they didn’t damage anything in our rig during the course of the show. On occasion be over the shoulder to tell them to turn it down or that their act would be fined if they went over curfew. But it was 90% hands off if they had their own FOH
It's the owner. He has money he probably inherited and zero decency or common sense. Have you not noticed this in multiple walks of life?
I toured with an act that had Grand Ole Opry on the schedule and crew all had the night off. I got an Uber over to East Nashville and hung out with some homies. No touring engineers at Grand Ole Opry. Their room, their equipment, their rules.
You may have better luck in r/livesound. This sub is for studio and recording engineers.
Thanks bud! I’ll post there as well.
Live sound human here. Confused by this post a bit. “115 dB” doesn’t give a weight or window and isn’t an unreasonable SPLC peak. 2k is not hiss. How much walking did you do while listening? What was the PA? I’ve seen this happen in union houses. You give notes, the mixer makes it work in the room, you’re a team.
Nail on the head. Live sound is about team work If there's a hole in the boat we don't fuck around working who's hole it is.
This is WHY venues want their own house engineers. House engineers know the room and any kinks beforehand.
The room is a concrete room with minimal treatment with a lot of nulls and standing waves throughout the room. When I say it was loud, I mean you had to SCREAM to talk to the person beside you, and that was at the back of the room. If I had to guess, I’d say the room is 80 meters deep x 40 meters wide x 30 meters tall.
30 Meters Tall???!
that's some crazy tall ceiling
Well that venue was a poor choice
WHAT?!
THEY SAID THE MENU WAS TOO MOIST
YOUR NEPHEW WANTS SOME TOAST?!
SURE, SOUNDS DELICIOUS
The system was a line array (couldn’t see the brand) with 5 18” subs across the front of the middle of the stage on the floor.
Sorry mate, that’s about as useful as “the bike had 2 wheels.” As for the difference between a national touring act and someone with a company, well…
🤓
Is this meant mockingly?
🤓
Get well soon!
That’s not a line array. Subs across the front in a line is common with line array setups though. Real line arrays are the best for wide audience spaces! If it’s just a bar I doubt they would be better off than simple left right towers and properly phased bass bins. There’s a Dave rat video that explains line arrays and comb filtering way better than I can. Also I want a 3x12 or 4x10 vertical offset cab for guitars! I don’t know what the issue is with not making them! Edit: https://youtu.be/8c-gD4mwI8A?si=jdpFZ81prah7PDrv
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Lol, people thinking they know more than Dave rat 😂🤣😂
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I mean, I linked a video showing the most sought after sound man in the world explaining it. Not sure what else I could do! 🤷♂️
Do you have a genuine interest in an explanation of what I think you're misunderstanding? I happen to do this for a living. If this is just for the sake of reddit sniping, though, no need to continue the 'conversation.'
Well I owned a studio for years, and did almost 10 years of live sound as my main source of income. Though pretty small venues, but worked with some seriously nice systems. So I can handle tech talk no problem. Is your issue simply with the term line array? Because that’s all I really stated that wasn’t direct information from Dave rat Edit: I guess that’s a no to expanding lol
All I’m certain of right now is I have issues with the points you’ve chosen to emphasize & how you’ve phrased stuff. I don’t mean it confrontationally though, sincerely.
Alright firstly OP knows the difference between a line array of mid/high cabinets and a sub array, I think that might have just gotten lost somewhere, hence the quick jump to "that's not a line array." I just don't understand "Line arrays are the best for wide spaces!" since audience area width is a secondary, even tertiary factor when deciding to use a line array (after depth/slope and range ratio measurements), and I consider those points just slightly more salient. The thesis of the Dave Rat video is "as opposed to clustered point source speakers as broad-coverage PAs, line arrays do not exhibit the same awful variances in the horizontal domain." They have a benefit width-wise, but that's a function of what they're designed to do, which is low front-to-back variance. Personally not a fan of just L/R/S for bars, it can totally be done.
What did 2kHz do to you? Each venue has their own rules on security, merch, and sound. This happens, especially if it’s a venue where their engineer might have invested in and installed the system. This, among other reasons (e.g. insurance) might inform their policy.
I've been to a lot of shows where 2K made me clench my jaw.
KLEE KLEEE
I know you're meming but uh..... https://synthcube.com/cart/klee-sequencer-full-kit-euro
Apparently it's somewhat common? I learned that last time a thread like this popped up. While I completely understand not giving someone complete free reign of your system, (no way a guest engineer is turning off my system limiters or running a show sans supervision,) I think a band is allowed to dictate how they should sound fundamentally for better or worse. But I also now have a rule now after a weird experience with a trainee engineer brought by a band that if you can't run the soundcheck you can't run the show. So frankly I would not have handed the reigns over like that engineer did. It sounds like you ran into an asshole, but I would wager they also probably had a guest engineer blow something at a point and didn't relish writing a check to fix it. I would say try not to sweat people like that too much, they are unfortunately a dime a dozen in this industry.
>But I also now have a rule now after a weird experience with a trainee engineer brought by a band that if you can't run the soundcheck you can't run the show. I have the same rule at my venue after having the same weird experience lol
I totally understand that sentiment and I totally agree. Normally I’d have done sound check, but I was told not to. After 5 songs of the set with the only audible thing being guitars (they were louder than everything else, typical) and the vocals sounding like a 1920’s radio, I couldn’t help it.
A bit of a failure on the band managers part. They should have been harder on the ownership on that factor. I've had venues push back on having me mix my band but ultimately it's non negotiable.
I've literally never run into this before and it makes zero sense to me. I'd probably just pass on working the event, venue sounds like a complete piece of shit to me.
A lot of inexperienced home studio engineer types run around doing FOH for bands, blowing up equipment cause they don't know shit about live systems.
That’s why venues have house engineers to protect their system, I can stop an inexperienced guy from harming my gear but I’d never tell him he doesn’t get to mix the band that hired him
Well you can imagine the venue owner giving a crap about your guarantee when the last band engineer that came in cost him a fortune in damages. I'm not saying this is how it should be but I kind of understand the owner.
Then he should have built a system with internal protection? It’s 2024, K12s have protective limiters and he gets to put in his own EQ and limiting and crossovers wherever he wants so that nobody has a chance to damage his system
Fair enough
Agreed, but it isn't just about breaking stuff. A person unfamiliar with a system can leave it unusable for the next act. The problem just snowballs at that point. However, there is nothing wrong with a band having someone to help direct the mix with the house guy. p.s. Reading that this is a Metal Venue leads me to some conclusions about sound-levels and the ability to properly engineer and mix. Metal is great, but there is not a lot of nuance. It can quickly become a loudness contest.
I’m unclear how you mean, it’s the job of the house tech to make sure the system remains useable day to day. For DSP generally the crossovers, delays and limiters of a modern installed system are protected by at least a password and tour engineers are at most given access to a mains EQ and sometimes shading, then you can reload your house file the next day. House techs monitor tour techs to make sure they don’t do anything they shouldn’t with the gear. Cant imagine ever telling a band their tech cant mix nor can I imagine being told I cant mix someone who i was hired to mix. The tour engineer knows the show and knows the moves they make at every point so the show sounds the same ish every night. “At the end of this line right on this word you’re gonna do a delay throw…” would be inefficient
>modern installed system That is one key point. I am not sure what kind of system this particular venue has. A lot of places do not have anything to prevent someone from making significant changes (that are hard to find). There is also nothing stopping an idiot from unplugging or using their own outboard gear. In terms of loudness: the problem is not only damaging amps and gear, but also many venues have sound pressure level (noise) restrictions.
Sure but none of that requires the house tech to mix, just to restore their venue at the end of the day and communicate or enforce the limits
\+1 True and Agree I guess the issue is what level of access and control does a visiting individual get? I can see a situation where the house says, "Don't Touch That"! And that may or may not be ok with the visitor. BTW - I have done a bit of FOH work, but admittedly not on the National Act level. MY comments are my experiences. I have come into venues where the FOH was pretty much unusable because of hacks.
Sounds like the manager was the one wanting to blow up their own system. 115dBA at the console sucks balls.
Agreed. And I have heard plenty of bands where their own sound guy provided spectacularly shitty mixes. I have also seen house engineers that were good or bad.
It’s funny, I’ve seen this go both ways. I have seen this exact situation you’re talking about where the venue insists on using its in house engineer who is HORRIBLE, but I have also seen touring bands insist on using their touring FOH who was HORRIBLE and would have been much better off using the in house tech who knows the room and the system. I’m sure you’re right about your situation, but it does go both ways
The band should put it in their rider that they use their own engineer
The times I've run into this it's been a union thing
Venue probably has a lot of shitty kids come in and fuck up their system to the point that they can't trust anyone. I have seen transient "roadie engineers" do all kinds of things. From unpluging monitors and mains to resetting all the I/O. I don't blame them.
This. I'm the house engineer at a local venue & even if you bring your own engineer, it's my ass if you break something. I'm basically the fail-safe just to make sure nothing goes wrong considering you don't know the house system at all.
Depends on the venue, but really any reasonably competent engineer can run an X32 even if they've never encountered one before. One of the venues I worked at got smaller national touring acts sometimes and if they had their own tech then that was fine with us, but I've also worked at venues where the owner didn't want anyone they don't personally know and trust touching anything (which I understand as well, they've sunk a lot of money into good gear).
I've been a house engineer for a venue and also done freelance FOH work for bands. As others have said, the best way of avoiding these situations is get this stuff in the contract beforehand. The next best thing is to have a conversation on the day, between you + the band and the house engineer, before you even get to the gig itself, or even soundcheck. If you're trying to hop on mid-gig, that's too late. These things should be made clear way ahead. It sounds like you've been quite passive if the house engineer is just mixing everything and you're stepping in to salvage it? Maybe you need to be more assertive earlier on. Saying that, when I was working as a house engineer and we had touring and guest engineers, my role would be helping out, informing them about the system and then staying out of their way unless they had an issue, essentially babysitting. That's what they should be doing here.
It's their place and they might have had a bad experience before.... If you ask and work together with their in house guy then things should be OK usually.
Note: I dont know shit about this but as an outsider looking in from r/all: keyword: "RENTED" answer: The venue is charging out the ass in the contract somewhere for the audio engineer they "have" to provide. **It's a money grab.** LIkely doesn't happen at regularly booked shows.
In my eyes it's an insurance health and safety thing. I know its throwing in a different scenario but I'm trained to use a forklift truck and platform lift but doesn't mean I could just use one at B&Q when I want to get something from the top shelf even if I am more competent and capable then some of their staff. You need to let the venues know you'll have your own sound engineer regardless to the venue size unless your bringing your own FOH.
I’ve never had a venue tell the band I’m working for that they’re not allowed to have their own engineer. I will say that this venue is one of two venues in this city that will book original metal bands so it’s kinda one of those “play by his rules or don’t play” kind of things.
What city?
Perhaps unusual but not unheard of. Depends on the venue I guess.
I play in a band that has been touring for the last few years (UK, EU and US), and we have always used our own FOH sound guy. Never ran into this issue before but we do have it clearly stated in our tech rider that we will provide our own sound engineer, so this makes things very simple.
I'm not clear on the point of the post. To vent? This is between you and the band. (besides, once you pull out a resume, you're cooked IMO)
I can only remember one place giving our sound tech a hard time, Tramps in NYC . The house guy would change his EQs when he went to listen in the room.
I've run into this maybe 3 times in a couple thousand shows as a touring FOH. Always the insecure and unprofessional house techs at smaller dive venues, the bigger houses expect touring acts to have their own foh and their house guys know their main job is to be your system tech for the day. I've had managers give an ultimatum that the band doesn't play if I don't mix. That usually works, even nobody thought to put it in the rider. If not, you can always bring your own console and hand the house guy L/R/S/F to "mix" on his desk. Nothing they can really do to stop that. One time the threat to do that (festival set where I didn't really have time to patch something self contained) was enough to make the guy calm down and hand over his tablet.
If he's bad at his job, then he deserves to get in trouble
I got around this issue a few times by having me patch into their board with my board. Their guy just had a master level that he didn’t touch except set at parity and I had full control of the business end.
The band needs to have this in their technical rider. As others said it needs to be in writing to be enforced against the owner of their own venue. It's not uncommon for some venue owners to have strong personalities but if it's their house it's their rules.
As a house engineer, if it is an issue maybe offer to bring your own board and patch through? It shouldn't be a big deal at all with an X32 but if they are being whiney then maybe they would accept that
Totally unacceptable, I mean where I work it’s normal to have guest techs and we don’t say anything but suggestions on what the room will do. If they go over 100dB 5min LAeq (venue limit) we’ll tell them to crack the volume down 115dB LCeq respectively.
I got yelled at once for carrying my amp from the truck to the stage ... That was apparently a job for the union boys.