Running sound in a pub is a fundamentally different job than mixing in a purpose-built venue or a festival PA system. The rooms are weird shapes, the walls are hard surfaces, the PA is probably underpowered, and you’re competing with poker machines, kitchen noise, and punters who think the band should be background music for their conversation.

I’ve worked with hundreds of sound engineers over the years, and the ones who are great in pubs share certain skills that have nothing to do with frequency response curves. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Start with the room

Before you touch a knob, understand the room you’re in. Walk around it. Clap your hands and listen to the reflections. Stand where the audience will be and note what you hear from the PA versus what you hear bouncing off the walls.

Most Australian pubs were designed as drinking establishments, not music venues. The floors are hard, the ceilings are often low, the parallel walls create standing waves, and there’s usually a bar full of glass and metal reflecting sound everywhere.

You can’t fix the room. But you can work with it. If you know the low end is going to build up in the corner, keep the subs turned down and let the room do some of the work. If the high-frequency reflections are harsh, roll off the top end earlier than you normally would.

Less is more

This is the hardest lesson for aspiring sound engineers and the most important one for pub gigs. The temptation is always to turn it up. The guitar player asks for more monitor. The singer can’t hear themselves. The kick drum sounds weak.

But in a small room with limited PA power, adding volume creates problems faster than it solves them. Feedback becomes an issue. The sound gets mushy as the PA distorts. And the noise complaints start, which means the venue manager tells you to turn down, which means you’re back where you started but with everyone unhappy.

Instead of turning things up, try turning other things down. Can’t hear the vocals? Turn down the guitar amp before reaching for the vocal fader. Kick drum sounds weak? Pull back the bass guitar before boosting the kick.

The best pub sound engineers I know work by subtraction, not addition.

Manage the stage volume

This is the single biggest factor in whether a pub gig sounds good. If the stage volume from amplifiers and drums is louder than the PA can comfortably handle, no amount of mixing skill will save the front-of-house sound.

Have the conversation with the band before soundcheck. Explain that the room is small, the PA is what it is, and you need their help keeping stage volume manageable. Most professional musicians understand this. The ones who don’t are the ones who end up playing to empty rooms because the sound was terrible.

For bands with loud amplifiers, a plexiglass drum screen and amp shields can make a measurable difference. For the guitar player who insists on running their 100-watt stack at full volume in a room that holds 80 people, a polite but firm conversation about microphone physics is in order.

The three-song rule

I always tell engineers new to pub gigs to set their levels during soundcheck and then not touch anything significant during the first three songs of the set. The room changes dramatically when it fills with people. Bodies absorb sound, particularly high frequencies, and the mix that sounded great in an empty room will sound different with 200 people in it.

By song three, the room has settled, your ears have adjusted, and you can make informed decisions about what needs changing. Making big adjustments during the first song based on an empty-room soundcheck is a recipe for chasing your tail all night.

Monitors and feedback

Monitor mixing in pubs is where most of the stress comes from. The stages are small, the monitors are close to the microphones, and every vocalist wants more of themselves in the wedge.

The single most effective thing you can do is ring out the monitors before the band arrives. Play music through them, push the level until they start feeding back, and notch out the offending frequencies. Do this methodically and you’ll gain 3-6dB of headroom that makes the difference between a comfortable mix and a feedback nightmare.

Also, if a band member asks for more monitor and you’re already near the limit, walk up to their monitor and angle it differently before reaching for the fader. Often the issue is positioning, not volume.

The golden rule

The best compliment anyone can give a pub sound engineer isn’t “that sounded amazing.” It’s “I forgot there was a sound person.” If the audience is focused on the band and not thinking about the mix, you’ve done your job perfectly.