[sdiy] testing 1, 2, 3

[ChristianH]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:20:02 EDT WeAreAs1 at aol.com wrote:

> Check, one, two.
> 
> Two, two, TWO, TWO, TWO.  TWO.  TWO.    TWO.      TWO.              TWO.
> 
> [...]
> 
> On another note, I don't know about you guys, but it bugs the hell out of me 
> how today's live sound engineers are always saying "two, two, two" during 
> sound checks.  Just "two, two, two" -- nothing else.  They always pronounce it 
> "tee-you", like some badly programmed Simmons drum, over and over -- as if 
> they're somehow trying to get the pronunciation JUST RIGHT.  

You hit the nail on the head. It's not about pronunciation, of course,
but the Simmons sound is exactly what is suitable for finding feedback
frequencies. 
It's not that feedback always howls its way just like that (unless you
happily crank up the volume), in most cases it's just below the critical
threshold and starts when there's some signal at that frequency (without
a sound check this will happen during the performance). 
With the "tjiiuuu" type of sweeps (there's more or less all frequencies
in there) you can tickle those latent feedback frequencies to show up,
and then adjust you eq accordingly.

And then there's a second important reason - they want to annoy you ;-)

> Whatever happened to 
> "Testing, one, two, three"?  It's as if all these guys care about is how the "t" 
> sibilant sounds.  

1, 2, 3 is appropriate for checking if cables are in, mike is on, and
channel fader is up, but not necessarily for finding feedback freqs.

cu
Chris