SY's live sound
 

There seems to be a recurrent comment in people's reviews of the European live shows that the sound has been poor. My experience has been that in Paris the vocals were (initially) too quiet, and at the third London date the drums were too loud.

Has anyone been to one of the recent shows and thought the sound was really good?

Ferrara. To be REALLY picky, maybe kim's voice was a bit low in the mix, but a really minor problem.

it happened the same to me. lee mic was too low. it ruined hey joni.
but it was not just sonic youth, though. there were problems during the entire festival.

i think paris was ok - the sound was really clear, altho sometimes the vocals were low a bit (and once lees guitar seemed to be low for him so he attacked the soundengineer with a drumstick haha) T's vocals are always loud enough somehow, but Kims seem to be low sometimes..
rome was really crap tho. it sounded reeeeaaal shit were i sat. i was really dissapointed as i was expecting it to be mindblowing but it was just one big mess...

blame the house engineer.

sonic youth has nothing to do with the house P.A. system at these events.

I know that if a venue has bad sound then there's nothing you can do about it (except not play there, obviously), but there's plenty of time to iron out things like vocal levels in the soundcheck. And the sound guy was the same at Paris and London (I think - unless the guy I'm thinking of wasn't actually doing sound but was just a roadie), so he wasn't in-house. I didn't recognise the guy that I'm thinking of as Aaron Mullen though, and I thought he was the sound supremo.

yeah is it not aaron that used to do the soundengineering for sonic youth when theyre on tour?
im sure he was not with them this year.

when they played here earlier this year, most people thought they weren't all that, but i was watching fairly close to the stage and the speakers and thought they were better than last time i saw them (word was that it was the other way around).

the place where it was held used to be a warehouse and i've been to many shows there that have sucked ass (slayer is my other favorite live band i've ever seen and when i saw them in the same place last year they weren't all that, i was a bit disappointed), one of the last shows i went there (i think it was bad religion), i stayed fairly close to the stage mostly and it sounded great, but everytime i would go to the back, the sound was shit.

fuck bad acoustics, you'd think a live venue that's making millions would invest a bit in soundproofing it.

i thought the bottom end was a bit murky at the roundhouse, particularly on rain king when the drums drowned out a lot of the other sounds

i liked the sound at the roundhouse, thought it was quite a good mix and there where no major things wrong that bugged me. i could hear the guitars well enough and when both kim and mark played bass it sounded like two basses as opposed to a total racket. but then again when your getting dry humped by a bunch of kids dancing next to you its hard to concentrate.

i thought the sound was quite good when I saw them in the roundhouse on saturday, but then i was right up front.

He was, I met him pre-show in the roundhouse and he had a few complaints..

Sorry. :(

you so lucky