Basics of Using Fills to Cover Audience Areas

A standard setup for live music is usually placing loudspeakers on the left and right side of the stage. This is ideal for covering the audience out front of the stage. However, there are many instances where a venue may have seating to the side, behind, or even at the foot of the stage where your speakers cannot not cover. This article will review a few tips on placing additional speakers to fill in those areas.

One of the most common fill speaker applications is to place small speakers at the foot of the stage where your fans might want to be close to the band because the main left and right audience speakers are unable to cover that front area. Using a small monitor wedge placed on its side at low volume can help fill in those front audience areas.  If the audience is standing very close to those speakers, there’s no need to have them at high volume. Powered monitors are an ideal way to front fill the stage. Carvin’s SCx12A are ideal as the cabinet can be positioned at different angles.

Carvin’s SCx12A Powered Monitor Wedge

If a venue has a balcony, your front stage speakers may not cover seating this high up. You may want to have additional speakers elevated or pointing up towards the balcony to ensure sound reaches that area. 

With many bands using amp simulators, it is more common to have a very quiet stage. Relying on bleed from stage volume to fill in areas is not always ideal. I recall watching a series of 80s tribute bands performing from my seat at the left side of the stage. The guitars were all directly fed into the sound system and there were no monitors or stage speakers as every band member had wireless in ear monitors. All I could hear from my stage left listening position were the drums. Vocals, guitars, and keyboards were all inaudible because they had no side fills.

Keep this in mind when planning a gig at a venue where there is seating off to the side. Using speakers that are point source or even column arrays that have wide coverage can help, but fill speakers are often needed where there are no speakers covering the area. 

If you are running subwoofers with your main speakers, you can get away with smaller speakers as your front and side fills as they are not required to output a lot of energy in the low frequency spectrum. Low frequencies tend to travel and be felt without relying on directional coverage. So, your choice of front and side fill speakers do not need to have massive low frequency drivers. Just be sure they can function to reproduce sound without distortion.

Even if you were playing a venue that has a sound system, you might benefit from checking out the venue beforehand and augmenting their system with your own gear for a better overall show. 

I have played restaurants that had inadequate coverage from their house system. Had I done my research, I would have brought a couple of extra powered speakers to do some simple front fill. I actually had audience members complaining that they couldn’t hear the vocals because they were seated directly in front of the stage and the house speakers were pointed off to the sides as the seating area was wider than the speakers could cover. I could’ve solved this with even one additional speaker pointed at the audience directly in front of the stage.  

Check out the venues ahead of time and plan your speaker count accordingly. If an audience can’t hear you, they may not stick around for the entire show, but if they can hear comfortably and enjoy the show, you may have gained new fans that will want to attend additional performances.

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