Just back from doing a wedding at The Tithe Barn near Petersfield in Sussex, which is a nice venue but another place with a dreaded sound limiter. The wedding was for Emily & Paul and they’d decided not to have a first dance at all and considering that I didn’t see Paul on the dancefloor even once the whole night (even though I played the vast majority of tracks on his request list!), it wasn’t difficult to guess why he didn’t want a first dance!
After the meal and speeches finished most of the guests sat outside for a while as it was a nice evening while others watched the less than riveting France v Uruguay game in the world cup. This combination meant a very quiet dancefloor until around 9.30 and considering the music had to stop at 11.30pm there wasn’t gonna be a lot of time for dancing; mind you in a way that wasn’t a bad thing as the sound limiter there was making life pretty difficult for me. I’ve played at this venue before and I don’t remember the limiter causing me any problems previously but tonight it seemed to be going into the red with very little volume at all, to the point where the volume was so low that I could hear conversations on the dancefloor and so made it difficult to really create an atmosphere as no one could “feel the music! It also meant I had to constantly watch the limiter all night long to ensure that the red bars didn’t stay on for more than 3 seconds otherwise all the power would’ve been cut. So rather than watching the crowds reactions to each song I play like I usually do, I had to give as much attention to the limiter as to the crowd which was far from relaxing and I was actually quite relieved when the night ended. The groom asked me to finish on New York, but the cool version! i.e. Jay-Z & Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind, rather than the overplayed Frank Sinatra-Theme from New York that far too many (unimaginative) DJs end with at every event!!
Thankfully Saturday night I’m in Stock Brook Manor near Billericay in Essex and there is no sound limiter there!
