Sound Check is actually during the start of the song.

[Bigdog]

Since no KJ can afford to take the time needed between singers to do a comprehensive sound check, it must be done during the song. It's not the best way to do it but what else can you do. Many times a singer will, during the song intro "check check" to see if the microphone is on. But usually this doesn't help the KJ much since they are not really singing. And not at volume.

So several things happen that aren't necessarily good things.

When the singing actually starts the singer may not be up to full singing volume. So adjusting the sound isn't going to be where it really needs to be.

I have many singers that require the gain knob to be turned way down to prevent distortion. Then the volume must be turned up to compensate. If the singer is causing distortion I have to turn down the gain. This usually happens in the first few bars of the singing. If the singer hears the volume go down the reaction usually is to take off the microphone windscreen. This increases their volume many times to the point where I have to turn down the gain again because they are causing distortion again.

After the gain is turned down so far it seems that the sound has changed. Since I and every other KJ usually don't have different microphones from different companies that can change the way a singer sounds, we have to improvise. I have noticed when the gain is too far down the singer doesn't sound like they did while they were causing the distortion. Which makes sense but, it's not in a good way. Yea the distortion is gone but so is the volume and the bass and treble seemed to have changed also. So I have to compensate by turning the gain up some so the red light flashes a little to get the complete sound back to normal.

It seems you have to live with some distortion.

Has anyone else noticed this happening with big gain adjustments to prevent microphone distortion? I don't really know what the fix is. Too much gain reduction changes the way the singer really sounds.