Tone On Stage vs. Tone In The Audience

Quote from flyingheelhook

I played a private party yesterday with a nice stage set up and let one of my friends take a turn on my rig while I went out in the audience to check it out. I was really blown away on how good the tone was coming out of my Tech 21 Power Engine, and how different the wash on stage was, and how it affected my perception of the tone, vs. what I was hearing out in the audience. Even when I use a floor wedge monitor, (I was not for this gig) I never hear the tone sounding that sweet upon stage . It really was nice!

We have the same thing in our band. The FOH speakers are really good and always sound better than the stage. We use IEM's, and even then, it is just so much bigger out front.

I'd say the huge broadband absorption of sound waves by the physical bodies of the audience has a lot to do with it, 'Hookster. One isn't blessed with fancy-schmancy broadband absorbers on stage; it'd cost many thousands to purchase such things, and they'd quickly get ruined by constant lugging around from gig to gig and all the shenanigans that entails.

It's this broadband absorption that's most-responsible for studios' sounding so good when you set up your gear in their control rooms. Essentially, all frequencies' reflections are dampened in an even-handed manner, meaning that resonant peaks causing muddiness in the low end, boxiness in the mids and harshness / shrillness in the highs, are ameliorated.