Should you align front-fills to subs?

[@livemixpriyan]

Hi Nathan, regarding the mic placement to align the FF to Main u said find the point where both FF and Main has equal loudness. For me it makes less sense because; 1. you have to find the point where your Main systems frequency response changes (mostly loosing the HF) and this is the point mostly ending point of horizontal dispersion range (ex. 80° or 120°) 2. We use FF to correct this changing the frequency response change (due to lost of HF cuz this area is out of the dispersion area of the Main PA) 3. Then we decide how loud should the FF be. Not other way around, i.e. first decide the FF - Level and find where the FF and Main are equally loud Isnt it?

[@nathanlively]

Hey Priyan, thanks so much for sharing this. I do share your opinion and have published other videos and articles discussing the complete order of operations. However, I believe that we are in the minority. Most people do not set set on-axis level and then discover the crossover location. And, there are some good reasons for this, the main one being headroom. Most people simply deploy their fills, run them at full volume and then find the crossover location afterwards. Best case scenario with proper system design, the front-fill is the right level out of the box. Long story, short: You can either discover the acoustic crossover or force its location. Either are valid.

[@peterdottin744]

A point that comes to mind, in your prediction software, what is the height of the mains and the width of your stage? In many instances where you have a stage, the minimum would be about 40 feet which would require 2 - 3 FFs or sometimes more depending on the horizontal dispersion. With that being said, when you have a main roughly 25, 30, 35 feet in the air (@ the bottom), many times depending on the position of your mic, you can end up with 15 - 30 ms of delay and sometimes more. Not knocking what you're trying to do, but I do believe these are factors that should also be mentioned to help ensure the folks trying to learn, don't get misled.

[@nathanlively]

Thanks Peter. Great point. This is not an exhaustive training on system design and calibration. I have other videos and courses that go into greater detail on this subject. That being said, this strategy is completely scalable to other similar systems. Any time you have mains that cover all the way to the first row, but not all the way through the center of the first row, then you'll have a specific lateral width that you can fill with fill speakers. The spatial crossover between main and front-fill will exist somewhere between their respective on-axis positions. How you find that position is debatable, but I have found that moving laterally away from on-axis with front-fill toward main until you find it is a solid strategy.

[@EJCAudio]

Thanks Nathan, this is really good information - and it's great to have this refresher as I've found myself in the field much more often recently, trying to put these theories into practice!

[@joelmathys1138]

whats the process if you have more than 1 Speaker? If its for example 4 Speakers, do you align the outer Speakers to Main and then the inner to Main?

[@aaronl7669]

i was just wondering about this topic. thanks!

[@blissmusicproductions4200]

Great video Nathan👍🏻