Live Sound · Vancouver & the Fraser Valley

Clearer, louder sound in the rooms that fight back.

By Shae Skerry, Owner · Valley Tech Production Group · February 4, 20266 min read
The problem

You can do everything right — good mic choice, careful placement, EQ notches, smart gating, tasteful compression — and still hit a wall where the room wins. That wall is gain-before-feedback.

~4.9 ms
Verified live latency in Alpha Labs’ published De-Feedback hardware combos

That’s Alpha Labs’ own published example configuration — not a number we measured ourselves — but it’s the kind of near-zero latency that lets an AI de-feedback and dereverb tool sit directly inside a live show’s signal chain without smearing timing.

The limits

Great engineers, real ceilings.

What a solid engineer can already do in a difficult room:

  • Ring out problem frequencies with careful EQ.
  • Manage mic technique and stage volume before the show starts.
  • Use gates and expanders to reduce open-mic wash.
  • Apply dynamics to control peaks and keep things intelligible.
  • Tune the system and aim speakers to keep energy off the stage.

But EQ, gating, and dynamics can only go so far — none of them can truly separate wanted voice from unwanted room interaction.

Valley Tech live sound setup at an Abbotsford galaLive Event · Abbotsford
What it does

Where De-Feedback changes the math.

Alpha Labs built De-Feedback V1 to do the part EQ and dynamics can’t: separate the room from the source instead of just carving frequencies out of both.

01

Fighting feedback

More usable gain before a mic rings, without thinning out the vocal.

02

Reverberant rooms

Dereverb processing built for churches, gyms, and glass-and-concrete ballrooms.

03

Noise & bleed

Denoise handling for open mics and stages packed close to the PA.

04

Clarity for reinforcement & broadcast

Cleaner separation feeding both the room and the stream.

Valley Tech front of house engineer running a live mixFront of House

Let’s be crystal clear: De-Feedback is not a replacement for a sound engineer. It doesn’t place microphones, set gain structure, manage stage volume, tune a PA, balance a band, or solve coverage problems. What it does — used properly — is give the engineer more headroom in the places where physics usually says no. Line arrays didn’t replace system techs, wireless didn’t replace RF coordinators, and digital consoles didn’t replace engineers. Tools like this raise the ceiling for what’s possible when professionals are the ones running them.

Now available

In our rental inventory — plus consulting & sales.

We’ve added De-Feedback-capable software and hardware to our rental toolkit, and we can help venues and production teams put it to work properly — not just install a plugin and hope.

  • De-Feedback-capable rental kit for your next event or install.
  • Consulting for venues and houses of worship.
  • System-design guidance — signal flow, insert points, redundancy, latency.
  • Hardware-sales support to adopt it in a stable, professional way.
Valley Tech stage and screen setup at a Vancouver fundraising galaFundraising Gala · Vancouver
One question

Ask your production company one question.

  • 01“Are you using De-Feedback (or an equivalent next-gen AI feedback tool) yet?”
  • 02The teams adopting it now deliver clearer, louder sound in tough rooms with fewer compromises than EQ, gates, and dynamics alone.
  • 03If you don’t have a production company — or want a better result — Valley Tech can help, from rentals to full deployment.

Let’s build your next event.

Audio, visual, and broadcast production for events across Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.