Sound Reinforcement Quotes

I play a percussion instrument, not a musical saw; it needs no amplification. Where it's needed, they put a microphone in front of the bass drum. But, I don't think it's necessary to play that way every night.

In the studio, I don't use an amp, I just go direct into the desk. It's virtually acoustic, what I'm doing.

The fact that I'm often pushing my voice as hard as I can is from playing in nightclubs in Albuquerque where you don't have a good sound system.

The first time I went to Abbey Road and put those headphones on, I discovered I had two voices. I no longer had to shout in the studio, but I can't knock the Cavern or the other clubs because they gave me my strong voice.

With bass, especially bottom end, the vibration has to happen on stage otherwise the feel is wrong. This is why you can't scale the equipment down too far.

A lot of bands, they take a lot of planning to do a live record. They have to hire a crew, and they have to have a recording truck and all this equipment, and they record every single show.

I had redesigned my entire amplifier system for this tour because airlines are very strict now.

Well, they put me in a booth and then did some nice things to the speaker to make it come out sounding ok.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

I have made stage adjustments which allow me to hear myself better onstage so that has made playing live much more enjoyable.

A lot of times you'll hear bands and it's a different sound coming out than what's on stage. Because you can clean it up through a PA and make it sound completely different than what they really sound like.

Studios are designed to pull out all of that beautiful ambience you get from singing in a room, and then the engineer puts it back in digitally or through whatever machinery you've got.

Micing it from two different angles in front of the speaker sounds huge, and it's so simple.

If you ever want to play bigger places, you need to have records that sound like you're playing in big places.

For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.

When you stand in a traditional audience, you have a wall of amplified sound coming at you from one direction. Everyone's familiar with that.

A good microphone is an essential thing for a singer.

More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.

When the Grateful Dead needed a quality sound system to deliver our sonic payload, I learned electronics and speaker design.

We tune differently, and we use some tricks. There's just the two of us for much of a concert, so we want a big sound. We do use some guitar effects, distortion and delay. Playing cello with distortion sounds so good.

We were gradually playing larger venues and in the early days PA systems were kind of non-existent. So to play loud, we had to use louder equipment. The PA systems back then didn't mic the instruments - only the vocals.

A lot of modern amps and preamps sound great when you're jamming by yourself, but don't hold up in a band situation. The sound isn't dense enough, and the lows and highs tend to get soaked up by the bass and cymbals.

The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird.

It all begins with the initial tone coming from the cabinet, but EQ at the board is very important.