This is another blog that stemmed from a Facebook discussion. I'm lucky to have some very thought provoking friends

Let me tell you about a guy that I went to high school with named Steve Templeton.  Steve was an awkward kid who was unfortunately unaware of how unfunny and moreover annoying he was.

Steve and I were in grade 9 music together; the year when they assign instruments.  He got the trombone. One day, in those first days after being assigned the instrument, he blasted it as loud as possible and it made a crazy distorted sound that immediately reminded me of the sound they would use on The Flintstones when Fred would go code red with anger.  BTW what was up with that?  He had a serious anger problem.  But I digress...

So Steve did his thing and people laughed, really hard, he felt cool, he felt accepted.  So guess who did that pretty much every time he picked up the instrument for the next 5 years?  You betcha. In the interim he never met a note he didn't like to play...loudly.  He was universally loathed by all sections and largely thought to be a liability to both the piece and the band at large.

More about Steve in a while.

All audiences talk.

This is a dirty little secret. Clubs tend to suck because sound guys have no restraint and think its 'rock and roll' to have it ‘killer’ loud. Since people always need to talk, in a loud club,  talking has turned to yelling, yelling is now adding to the sound level in the room and the person next to them has to yell even louder to the person they're with and the cycle continues.

At this point you might be inclined to say, “why don’t they just not talk?” Abandon these thoughts! Yours is an Utopian world, in the real world audiences will talk and done appropriately it’s actually an important part of the experience.  Ours is to live in a world based on reality and the reality is that audiences talk. Right or wrong.

Positive example:

“holy shit, how good is this?”
“i know, they’re unreal”

However, here’s why overly loud clubs actually change the band's experience with an audience and vice versa.  

Loudness is a rolling boulder, it has inertia, loudness causes more loudness and the inverse is also true.

If you don't have experience performing on stage you might not know that the band doesn't hear the PA as loud as the audience but what they do hear is the audience chatter which is now very loud on stage because the audience themselves don’t even know how loud they’re being because again the band doesn’t hear the PA as much as they do.

Said another way, you know how a person tends to yell when they are wearing headphones?  That’s what the audience is doing and the band, are the people wondering why the person with the headphones is speaking so loudly.   That’s an exaggerated but effective analogy.

So now the band is hearing what they think is a VERY rude audience and it’s killing their buzz and even the most pro of performers can’t help but let that affect their performance. 

Now on the other hand, if you turn it down to a level where you feel everything just enough and are in a comfortable range but still have the largess of the live pa experience, well then now suddenly the audience is chatting at a level the band can't hear...

Now the band thinks the audience is way into it...

Now they're feeding off that energy and killing it and now the audience is legitimately into it and so on and so on. Loudness isn't just about comfort or "oldness" or "toughness" it's an important, important part of the show.

I think we'd all agree when a PA is too quiet. It would be something we'd all instinctively know, more or less. There probably isn't a large group of people in favour of shows that are inappropriately quiet. That sounds silly to most immediately but isn't it funny that there are a number of people who for whatever misguided reason, actively work to exceed a similarly logical value on the high side?

"man it's so quiet"
 "I know awesome right!? 
 "totally!"

Replace quiet with loud and suddenly you're 'rock and roll'...ooo..right on...the audience is having a totally shit time, but cool, good for you, you're show the audience how lame they are.  What a great night out for them.

Musicians are commended on their ability to control dynamics.  It’s literally the same for sound guys and if you’re just pushing every song to the limit, show after show...well then you’re just Steve Templeton.