I've done just enough non-guest engineer FOH work to appreciate the thankless nature of the gig at this point, that isn't lost on me. I don't think the industry is set up in a way that really lets engineers shine in the role. Too much unnecessary scope is expected of someone who is essentially the surgeon of your sound team. I'd like to discuss some of that unnecessary scope.
There is no mastering engineer for a FOH, so that one person is singlehandedly the mix engineer and mastering engineer (not to mention also usually the alignment tech), which would be unheard of in just about any other discipline of audio. This is ostensibly more impressive in the case of FOH's who mix for bands than for DJs who play mastered music, but only at first glance. We, in fact, deal with a much more nuanced situation with a much more limited toolset provided by the live sound industry. The fact that a DJ's FOH is working with one channel does not change the fact that they may need to also be the mix engineer on tunes in addition to being the mastering engineer at times...very consistent times which keep me quite busy, in my experience.
Our toolset is comprised solely of the dynamic EQ. We use it to push things that are sticking out of the sound stage back into it in a transparent, frequency dependent manner to compensate for the ways that horn loaded speakers distort the image and position of drum elements in the mix, and more importantly, to reveal the feature of the music behind those drums and provide a more detailed experience to the listener. Sometimes we do the inverse and pull snares forward which are buried in mixes, or add a little punch to the kick with frequency dependent upward expansion as well.
So what is happening here is deeply nuanced work that requires an attentive, responsive, and attuned operator who has slept, been fed, hasn't beaten their ears up too badly leading up to the gig, and isn't too fucked up to work quickly and efficiently enough to stay ahead of the audience while making spontaneous live corrections to the program material.
I used to go to the gym quite a bit on mastering days, and I always caught myself missing mistakes when I went back into the mastering room afterwards on later review before sending masters to clients. During the last major revision of the studio I would switch between framing/drywalling the studio and operating it for mastering work, there again I found that after physical labor I would miss issues while mastering upon later inspection. I studied this in depth and found there was a roughly 6 hour window after strenuous exercise/labor wherein the ability to critical listen effectively was worsened.
You probably see where I'm going here, I don't think FOH's should have to move heavy shit on show day, I see way too many soundbois/girls hauling their own gear and it's not in anybody's best interest if you want to do your best critical listening. I know economics come into play here but those have never really been my thing, nor should they be yours if you're chasing perfection.
