[rzzzzz]

it's the worst. i attended a wedding this weekend, and the sax was mic'd in too hot, like everything else and the distortion made it all pretty damn annoying. (didn't help that the little ballroom was all reflective surface.) my wife pulled out some generic foam plugs from her purse. and folks from the surrounding dinner tables gestured to see if she had any more.

you can amp anything right pleasant if you want. but i can't stand a system that's pushed into distortion. and you run into it all the time. (acoustic jams are just heaven.)

 

[Sacks Of Phones]

Gotta tell 'em. Don't just sit there and take it.

 

[JCBigler]

This is what happens when you bring too little rig for the gig, because the client didn't want to pay for a rig that was properly sized and deployed. Depending on what they brought and how big the room was and what coverage and levels they needed, it might have cost the client 4 times as much to get a proper PA system for their event.

I'm wiling to bet that the bride's family spent several $10,000s on her wedding. And they probably paid the band/DJ/sound provider $250, with the promise of "great exposure".

 

[littlewailer]

Yeah, it's all about headroom on the system.

 

[adamk]

I refuse to turn up to distortion.
I've played many gigs where we couldn't cover the room.
Of course it wasn't my PA.

 

[rzzzzz]

i'll grant you the undersized headroom. but i swear that even with plenty of horsepower (to mix metaphors) there seems to be a tendency, these days, to mix bass towards room shaking and the mids to blare. loud is fine, if it's clean, with a decent dynamic range.

 

[Fader]

This is what happens when you bring too little rig for the gig....

Could be - or just as easily a great rig and a crappy engineer. These days, (at least around here) there are some pretty sorry excuses for FOH engineers working full time.

From what the OP wrote, it might also have been too loud since folks seemed to want ear plugs.

 

[JCBigler]

loud is fine, if it's clean, with a decent dynamic range.

Actually, loud and clean can be VERY dangerous. With the improvements in technology and manufacturing and power efficiency, many PA systems these days can easily get dangerously loud without distorting.

I went to a demo for a new line array system by a very well known Bay area speaker manufacturer last year. This was their new compact system, the SMALLEST line array system that they make. And it was "oh my God" level of loud. So loud that I had to leave because my my head was starting to hurt. And not a hint of distortion in the system.

My point is, that often times, the lower end systems and older systems that are pushed to distortion will distort before they reach dangerous levels. And often times that distortion was used by inexperienced mixers to know when to pull back before they get to ear damage levels of loudness. These new systems don't have that. They are linear from 20Hz to 20,000Hz with unholy SPL levels with no distortion in the signal chain.

On the other hand, that system costs over $150,000 for just 8 tops and two 15" subs per side. So it's not your average bar band club PA system that some guy brought in his pick up truck for $300 a night.