bitflipper
I won't make excuses for the Old Guy. 30 years of live mixing probably has degraded his hearing, but surely he knows about spectrum analyzers.
 
They've had some pretty sophisticated auto-EQ systems for many years, too. Heck, I was using an RTA for PAs back in the 80s because I didn't have the luxury of a sound guy to make corrections on the fly. It wasn't ideal, but at least I could avoid the icepick-to-the-ear syndrome.

I agree if he had a spectrum analyzer available, there IS no excuse.  They definitely help me out.  Just someone who doesn't know what he is doing in that case.  Sad that they can make fair $$$ and not know anything.
 
On the other side of the coin, I went to see Spyro Gyra (sp?) at Wolf Trap (in Virginia).  I had a seat right next to the FOH!  Best seat in the house and the guy did a great job mixing it.  After the show, I told him so!

I always make a point of thanking airline pilots and FOH mixers on my way out the door. My theory is that maybe they'll do their jobs better if they know the customer's paying attention.

bitflipper
I always make a point of thanking airline pilots and FOH mixers on my way out the door. My theory is that maybe they'll do their jobs better if they know the customer's paying attention.

+1 on this definitely thank the pilot!  FOH mixers too!

Oh my! ...... church sound guys and gals.... they chafe my posterior parts. Most are well meaning and think that because they have a nice stereo at home or used to "work sound" with a band 20 years ago, think they can mix sound. Most have no education...and yeah, they do have classes you can attend. At least learn a few basic things beyond where the power switch is, the volume faders, and the external graphic EQ that's not intended to look like a mountain range portrait when you finish.  
 
One particular church had horrible sound. They were planning to bring in a company and were going to pay them $10,000 to analyze the sound in the room and make a suggestion on how to "fix it"..... (I'm in the wrong business apparently)  I was a musician on stage at the time and got wind of this through one of the guys working  the lights. We got the key to the church and went in after hours one evening to "play" with the sound system. We invited the sound guy and his alternate to join us in tweeking the system. Neither showed up.  
It was a basic 24 ch mixer and some amps with speakers and an outboard rack for EQ and compression and FX.   We checked the wiring and re-configured a few things. Then, we loaded a CD of some rock and roll and started to tweek the system using various CD's.  It started out sounding really bad.... no low end, muted highs, peaked mids....like a typical Sunday morning.  By the time we got done it was really sounding good. Floor shaking bass..... we discovered that the sub was unplugged.... smooth mids and crisp highs.  The pastor came in and commented on the music and the fact  that it did sound much better.  We taped a note to the outboard EQ.... "DON"T TOUCH".    Sunday morning came and we told the FOH guy we had the system sounding good and all he needed to do was to set the levels.  Do you think he listened?  Nope.... by the end of the first service P&W music.... 15 minutes into the service.... the note on the EQ was removed and the EQ looked like a mountain range again... the lows were gone, the highs muffled and the mids all shot to heck....  why did we even bother?  And yeah, the MM paid that company to come in and do what we did,,,, paid the $10k and bought the "fix for another $20k... which sounded no better than what they had because the FOH guy still didn't know what to do with it.

At another church, I begged our music minister to send our crew to some kind of training. Mics not on when they were supposed to be on, the guitar totally missing from the music because putting it in the PA "would make it too loud".... I watched a video of a theatrical performance the church did.... well rehearsed, nice theatrical production chops, and a live orchestra playing the music.... The video was taken from the FOH booth position..... no guitar was evident on the places where the guitar had a moderate solo.  Trying to explain to them reinforcement of sound was for quality not volume got blank stares in return.

I have had the opportunity to set in on a class for one of the new digital mixers a short time back. They are essentially like the DAW's we use in a hardware/software hybrid box.   If you know the GUI and with a reasonable amount of time to learn your way around, there's no excuse to have a silent mic on stage.   Our church at that time had not moved to digital, they were still running a normal analog mixer. So it was all right there in front of them. Problem was, no one really understood the fundamentals of sound.   It was a rare church service that I walked out saying it really sounded good.  

I'm no expert, however, I do know a little about sound, mixing and have an idea what I'm listening to in the music. I've only been to a few churches that actually had good sound mixed the way it should be and at a reasonable level. It seems that the contemporary churches I've been to have all started down the "louder is better" route and that's good to a certain point but some of them are becoming a bit too loud. I've attended rock concerts that were quieter than some contemporary church service bands.
 
 
 
 
 

Church sound... oi vey... when I used to set up church systems, the main EQ was always put in a locked cabinet.
 
Church sound people are generally very well-meaning people. They just lack the training and generally never attend rehearsals with the band. They NEED to be considered a member of the worship team and be expected to show up for every practice.
 
I have witnessed the "throw money at the problem" issue too. SOOO much money wasted on "cure-alls" like fancy consultants, state-of-the-art equipment like motorized digital mixers with scene memory, expensive in-ear monitoring systems... all stuff that serves to further confuse a well-meaning, untrained sound tech. I was deeply involved in  a church that had such a crazy "live" room that getting a good mix was VERY difficult. They spent a bunch of money to do some acoustic room treatments and THAT was money well-spent.
 
A wise church board will save their money (or better yet invest it in their community or missions) and send their sound techs to a week of training somewhere BEFORE buying all that fancy gear. More often than not, they'll realize they never needed all that expensive stuff to begin with and can get along just fine with what they have or maybe just augment/upgrade one or two key weak links.
 

Very stressful job.
 
#1 priority is: don't let feedback happen. Sometimes you have a desk with a mid parametric but not always.
So all the "experts" will say, easy! Turn it down! Right. Tell the band that.
 
First reference is the drums. Covers all the frequencies. The drum loudness determines the overall level you have to work with. Telling a drummer to tone down works for about the first 10 minutes. If at all.
 
Next: Guitar amp stacks so loud, the bass doesn't even keep up.
So I tell the guitarist: Turn that down, please!
No way! The tone only comes when the speakers are at their limit.
Hoo, boy. So get a 30W combo - yeah, I know. Not as macho as a solid wall of Marshalls.
I try get guitarists to turn themselves down by putting them very loud in their own monitors.
Sometimes it works, sometimes they revel in their own ego.
 
Then comes the singers. They want to hear a full round bass on their voice, so not only proximity effect, they want you to turn up the bass, too. I usually turn vocal bass down slowly as the evening progresses.
And the guitarists turn themselves up as the evening progresses.
 
What the heck can one do.
 
In the end, when the sound's good, it's a great band.
If the sound's ****e, it's the sound guy's fault.
 
I hate this job. I very rarely volunteer anymore.

jpetersen
I hate this job. I very rarely volunteer anymore.

Been there, a long time ago.  Back when I knew nothing.  Large choir and rock band.  Everything you said brought back memories (including stuffing cigarette pack tin foil into the desk's fuse holder during a show because the fuses kept blowing).  The guitar player hated me.  Every time he turned himself up I'd turn him back down (very slowly).

You'd think that in-ear monitoring would have solved the appease-the-musicians conundrum. Once they stick in their IEMs they have no way of knowing what's coming out the front. Turn the guitarist up in his mix, the bass player in his mix, and make the singer think he's alone on the stage. Everybody's happy.
 
I have never actually tried such a thing in a live venue. But it works in the studio.

jpetersen
Very stressful job.
 
#1 priority is: don't let feedback happen. Sometimes you have a desk with a mid parametric but not always.
So all the "experts" will say, easy! Turn it down! Right. Tell the band that.
 

 
Personally I prefer a 1/3 octave graphic strapped across the mains after any compression for that job, preferably one with an indicator per band that can show me which bands are running wild. More surgical and very quick because there's no need to start trying to track down which mixer channel needs adjusting.
 

jpetersen
Next: Guitar amp stacks so loud, the bass doesn't even keep up.
So I tell the guitarist: Turn that down, please!
No way! The tone only comes when the speakers are at their limit.
Hoo, boy. So get a 30W combo - yeah, I know. Not as macho as a solid wall of Marshalls.
I try get guitarists to turn themselves down by putting them very loud in their own monitors.
Sometimes it works, sometimes they revel in their own ego.

 
I'd just like to give a very special mention to the sound person who told me that my guitar amp was way, way too loud for the 500 capacity room. The FOH PA being a full-range 8 kilowatt system, 4K foldback and the guitar amp a 5 watt Epiphone Valve Junior turned about half way up.
 
Eventually we realised he was actually complaining about the piano, which was at the volume he'd turned it up to. :-/
 

jpetersen
And the guitarists turn themselves up as the evening progresses.

 
Usually the result of an unavoidable hearing shift that takes anything up to 30 minutes to kick in. Assuming the holdback mix is any good to start with and is holding its own against echoes coming back off the FOH rig that's the most common cause of people wanting the foldback turning up all the time. That or my personal hate, musicians/singers who soundcheck quietly and timidly then let rip once in front of an audience, so destroying most of the point of having a soundcheck at all.
 

jpetersen
What the heck can one do.

 
If the band's doing more than one set, try turning the foldback down 3dB between the sets. They'll want it raised again in due course, but you're starting from a lower point than you left off.
 
If the guitar amp is too loud to go in the PA, maybe don't put it in the PA. Unfortunately telling some guitarists that two or three cranked 100W Marshalls or screaming Twins was only done that way back in the 60s/70s because the PAs of the time were really meant for vocals only so the guitar volume was very dependent on the backline amps is wasted on some. The rest of us, when we want a cranked or breaking-up amp sound, use a smaller amp between 15 and 40 watts as you say. Easier to carry, less hearing damage, a consistent tone because it's always run at the same level and so long as it can compete with the cymbals for stage volume plenty powerful enough.
 
One trick that's worth trying with an over-loud guitarist is to turn their amp so it's projecting across the stage diagonally, not straight at the audience. And if you've a 4x12" cab pointing at the mix position, take a walk around before judging the guitar volume in the mix. 4x12s have a very narrow dispersion and can be deafening in front of them and much less audible a few feet to the side (and bass heavy). The closer you are to the cab the more that happens, and sometimes guitarists who can't hear themselves are off to the side of the cabs and out of the dispersion pattern. They can fix that by getting in front of their amp. Which in turn means they'll turn it down if it's blasting their head off. For the same reason, get any guitar speakers off the ground or they'll be blasting the front row of the audience but the band can't really hear them unless they keep their ears where most people have knees.
 

jpetersen
In the end, when the sound's good, it's a great band.
If the sound's ****e, it's the sound guy's fault.

 
As far as the audience is concerned, it's rarely the sound engineer's fault. Because most people have no idea at all what sound engineering is or what engineers do. Other than say "one two, one two.." into microphones.
 
A good system run by a good engineer can make an average band sound huge, a good band with a lousy PA/engineer can sound spectacularly bad. Being on stage with a rubbish foldback mix is horrible, and doesn't inspire the slightest bit of confidence about what's coming out of the FOH system either. For any venue where the main sound is through a PA, not backline, the band are completely depending on the sound people to get it right.
 
It's a two-way thing, each is dependent on the other. And it really helps if the band understand PA and the engineer understands what musicians need to hear on stage. And, going back to my earlier comment, if the engineer can tell the difference between an electric piano and a slide guitar/lap steel.
 

jpetersen
I hate this job. I very rarely volunteer anymore.

For some reason the jobs you volunteer to do to help someone out often turn out to be the worst nightmares that you carry with you to the grave. A phenomenon not limited to music or engineering either, it seems to be one of life's universal truths.

bitflipper
I have never actually tried such a thing in a live venue. But it works in the studio.

In ear monitoring is pretty standard on big stages these days of course. I've used it with a primarily acoustic band many times and for occasional electronica gigs, and it works very well. What I don't like it for much is bluesy electric guitar where expressive tone and dynamics are involved. Maybe it's psychological, but I need to hear the guitar speaker or things just don't sound comfortable. Using only one in-ear works well enough, so long as there's no guitar in it.
 
In-ear's not a universal panacea to feedback and foldback problems, but in a band with a lot of live mics being able to get rid of foldback speakers can make a huge difference to the entire system's headroom before feedback. Though you really, really do not want to set off feedback in in-ear monitoring systems.
 
It can happen, and unless the earbuds are a good fit and seal the ear canal properly it will happen as soon as someone approaches a microphone that's fed to their ear-buds. Apple-style earbuds which project into the ear but don't seal are just as dangerous as earbuds which just rest in the ear.
 
Oh, and send people a mono foldback feed. To hear yourself singing 10 feet away to your left is very much like being very drunk, moving around in that scenario even more so.