How to Operate on Design First Principles in Live Sound

You Can’t Untune a Bad Design: Operating on Design First Principles

They say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. In the same sentiment, many engineers often say, “you can’t untune a bad design”. So what does this really mean? It means that operating from a place of design-first thinking isn’t just philosophical; it’s measurable in coverage, consistency, and audience experience.

If you’re starting from scratch, deploying a well-designed system is going to get you 80% of the way to a great-sounding show right off the bat. This happens when you create a design with the needs of the show and the client in mind. You save time by preventing problems before they start. 

A system designer may often ask questions like, “is the artist sensitive to the energy on stage?” which is really another way to ask, do I need to make the subs cardioid? 

Considering the type of music or content being performed through this system can also give us a lot of clues. A rock and roll show for an artist who wants to feel like he’s in a studio when he’s on stage is a very different deployment than a R&B  band that wants to feel like they’re playing a festival in a stadium, even when they’re in a club. 

An example of this is a rock band with loud stage volume. At times, shows call for additional front fills or a center hang to help get the vocal over the stage volume of guitar cabinets and drums in the front rows. The important thing isn’t to ask the guitarist to turn his cabs down; it’s that we have a plan for how to create a sonically balanced experience for the listeners in the front rows.

So, how do we create a strong system design? 

The first step, once we’ve figured out the needs of the production and the client, is to put the speakers in the right place and then to point the speakers at the people. While this isn’t always challenging at first glance, what we want to consider are things like the size of the largest venues of the tour. Is there anything in the show design that is unusual or that I need to plan for? Can I cover from the first row to the last row without delays? How long of a line can I hang? 

Why do these things even matter? Let’s think of it like this. High frequencies have shorter wavelengths. If we go back to high school physics class, we’ll remember that wavelength is calculated by λ = v / f (where wavelength = speed of sound/frequency). This means that we can think of higher frequencies as having shorter wavelengths and lower frequencies as having longer wavelengths. 

In the context of a line array, we can also think of high frequencies as being aimed by individual boxes, almost like shining a flashlight, whereas we’ll consider the total array when evaluating the directionality (or lack of it) of low and low mid frequencies. 

Then we start looking at different frequencies. Using prediction software, we then begin looking at the coverage of our designs at different frequencies. If I cover the whole arena at 4kHz, so that everyone gets the same show in every seat, that’s great news! But if I forget to look at the coverage of frequencies like 60Hz or 500Hz, and I only cover half of the audience, then some people will have a wonderfully balanced, great-sounding show, while others could think my hearing is going because the mix is bright and has nothing but vocal and cymbal where they’re sitting. This disparity in the audience experience is caused by a system’s uneven distribution of frequencies across the audience area. 

A good design’s goal is to cover all seats as evenly as possible at all frequencies. Sometimes tools like EQ and level can help. But at best, it’s like putting a “Band-Aid” on a wound. There are plenty of times when turning up the high frequencies on the speakers whose sound travels the furthest is helpful. We do want our sound to make it all the way to the back row. But relying on EQ alone can’t save us. We still have to point the speakers in the right places. No amount of level or EQ can make sound go where speakers aren’t pointing.

A good system can’t fix your mix, but it can ensure that your mix stays balanced and well delivered in every seat. 

At times, it’s more important to know what not to do, than where to start. One common mistake is deploying straight arrays where one or more adjacent angles are set to zero degrees. This can concentrate high-frequency energy, causing it to narrow and travel disproportionately far over long distances. Think of being at the back of a festival and hearing some far away high frequencies carrying over everything else like an ice pick.

Next, we want to avoid undersplaying our array. We need to point the speakers at all of the people (even the top row). When we undersplay, we create gaps in coverage and leave people asking for refunds at the end of the show. Additionally, if we oversplay by too much, this can create some additional issues, such as increasing the reverberant energy in a space to the point of which it becomes unhelpful and detracts from the audience experience. Some overshooting of an array is good and helpful. We want to make sure we’re making it all the way to the last row. But too much of a good thing can end up with us working against ourselves.

There’s an old saying about sound systems that most people often forget. But no matter the auto solver, the algorithm, or any AI tool you may use, there’s no amount of EQ that can fix a poor system design. In practice, a design-first mindset isn’t just theoretical; it shows measurably in coverage and consistency, giving you and your show a better audience experience.