Front of house (FOH)

Front of house means two related things. It is the main audio system the audience hears, as distinct from the monitors the performers hear. It is also the physical position where that mix is made: a desk, a rack and an engineer, placed in the room.

The placement is the part worth arguing about, because it is the part that gets traded away. The mix position has to sit where the system is actually heard — broadly in line with the loudspeakers, back from the stage, and not under a balcony, in a corner, against a rear wall, or shut in a booth behind glass. An engineer in any of those places is mixing a version of the show nobody else is listening to.

Venues resist this, and reasonably so: a mix position occupies seats and sightlines. The negotiation is a real one and it belongs at the site survey, not on the day, because moving it later means re-cabling the room.

The same logic puts a monitor position on the deck rather than out front. The monitor engineer is mixing what the people on stage hear, and needs to be close enough to read a hand signal from a performer who cannot stop to explain.

Event audio production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Monitor wedge The angled loudspeaker on the deck pointed back at a performer — the oldest way to let somebody hear themselves, and the one that sets the ceiling on how loud a microphone can go.
• Line array A column of loudspeakers hung in a curve so the sound reaches the back row without flattening the front — the standard answer for any room or field deeper than it is wide.
• Gain structure Setting the level at each stage of the signal chain so the system runs well above its noise and well below its ceiling — the thing that is wrong when a mix sounds thin, noisy or brittle.