Musicians setting up with PA speakers behind them

[Mark Oliver]

Not sure if anyone else is seeing this but in my neck of the woods it seems to be happening more and more often. Musicians are setting up with the PA speakers behind them and sometimes not that far from the mic that is just in front of them. I have seen this done with simple box top powered mixers & passive speakers as well as with an occasional BOSE style column. I saw a five piece band do this last weekend and they got away with it using a Behringer powered mixer and some JBL 412s; no feedback. Granted that situation had the speakers spread out to both sides of the musicians but it still surprised me that they had no issues in spite of having enough volume to get over an acoustic drum kit.

[0603Kenny]

This summer, I plan to build a 30'X40' building but for now we set up in a 14'x20" room with 3 amps pushing 8 Black Widow's and 2 RX22 compression driver's behind us at unity gain with no feedback. The FOH speakers (QW 118's and SP4 BX's) are about 9' apart with two sub's (DJS) 2' behind the drum kit. The insturment mic's (sm 57's) are about 2' behind the pa speakers but 3 PVi 100 mic's are out front, about 12' from the FOH. The acoustic guitar with a active pickup run stright to the mixer will feed back if he turn's and faces the speakers. 5 mic's on the drum's (pyle PDKM7) about 3' to 5' from FOH. The gain on the drum mic's are not at unity gain but loud enough to hear. If we used SM58"s instead of the PVi 100's we could not get away with it. You almost have to kiss the PVi's to get your sound.

[dino_j]

So what would be the purpose of such a setup? Saving space on a small stage? Eliminating monitor speakers? Better ability for a band member to hear and tweak the mix while they are playing?

[Mark Oliver]

That is a good question. My thinking was that it might be a strategy for controlling stage volume but the 5 piece I saw went and added 3 floor monitors for their vocals anyway. From my perspective, that only made the entire sound experience worse as they were playing in a concrete wall, square room that had reflected sound everywhere now being augmented by the floor monitors sending their input to the back wall behind the band before it was added to the sonic wash.

[dino_j]

Interesting.

I'm a bit interested in this topic simply because I don't play out a lot, but when I play where a PA is not provided, I'm using a Peavey Escort (primarily just for vocals, maybe an acoustic guitar once in a while) and nothing else is going through the PA. We usually play small places and can control the sound pretty well, BUT the issue is monitoring. If I could get away with putting the speakers behind the band, it might help the others hear the vocals better and we might actually 'blend' better out front and I might could get away with no monitor speakers.

I'm sure you sound guys out there cringe when you read stuff like this, but I truly am on a budget AND don't have a lot of room to tote a lot of gear. My next gig is a rather large building where a PA and sound man will be provided. But then I'm at a party in June using the Escort again...

[Josjor]

It's all about what your needs are. I know a few smaller bands, generally NOT loud rock, that do this and don't use monitors at all. Frankly, I think we've gotten a bit spoiled with monitors. Watch some of the old videos of Woodstock or country performances. Those guys rocked the house and guess what? Not one monitor on the stage and no in-ears.

I play in a bluegrass-ish band. We do some traditional bluegrass and also some acoustic covers of more modern songs. We've never used monitors PLUS we don't set the speakers behind us. The trick is that we don't spread out across the entire stage. I see bands that, if they have a 40' wide stage, will use 38' of it, even if they're just a four piece. Then they wonder why they don't feel "tight."

Back on topic......We've started selling RCF Evox column array systems and not only is the sound really natural, but it's surprising how close you can get to the speaker without feeding back. I think that some of that has to do with the fact that there isn't a compression driver and so there isn't as much polar pattern inconsistencies with frequency response.