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Jose Rafael Corona & Ernelle Bellamy

The Shadows on the Pyramid

I recently returned from a trip to Cancun, Mexico, and other than the tequila and the beautiful beach, my most memorable day was one spent at Chichen-Itza, site of one of the well-known Mayan pyramids in the Yucatan Peninsula. The Pyramid of King Kuku lkán, the serpent god, is the centerpiece of the area and dates back to about A.D. 1100. This spectacular pyramid showcases the astronomical, architectural and political brilliance of its creators. During the autumn and spring equinox, due to the position of the sun, one can still witness a shadowy snake moving impressively down the north stair. The story is told that the priests, because of their precise knowledge of the seasons, would come out and address the masses assembled below the pyramid and tell them when to expect rain. The arrival of the rain on the predicted date would cement the priest’s claim that he had a direct line to god who, in the form of the bird-serpent Quetzalcoatl, lived in the temple built on top of the pyramid. The proof of Quetzalcoatl’s alliance with the priests was that if someone clapped their hands at the bottom of the pyramid, the returning echo is a sound similar to the quack of a duck.  

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The Problem with Cat5

I was talking with a local sound guy the other day who told me they were “one 150-foot Ethernet cable away” from implementing complete system control from a laptop at front of house. It was not so long ago that if those of us in the sound tribe even knew what Ethernet cables were, we thought of them as something we used to hook our computers into a network and not something we would use on site at a gig.

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Voltstar Powers Up

Brad Higbee and Company prove there’s more to Idaho than potatoes.

So many successful business stories start with the line, “I was asked to…” that it should almost be considered a cliché. So when Voltstar Productions president Brad Higbee reports that he got his start when someone asked for sound and lighting help, it’s not a shocker.

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Dive in the Desert, Find a Pearl

The High-Stakes Game of Vegas Entertainment Takes on Another Player in the Palms.

Las Vegas suffers from no shortage of performance venues. Throughout its history as a resort destination, performers have made their way to Vegas to play any one of the many hotels and casinos that call Sin City home, but the Palms hotel and casino has upped the ante with the addition of their new venue, The Pearl.

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APB-DynaSonics

A Console Company Glows and Grows

Who: APB-DynaSonics, Inc.

What: Manufacturer of analog audio consoles and mixers and related products (MixSwitch)

Where: Totowa, New Jersey (about 20 minutesfrom Manhattan)

When: Founded in December 2004

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Road Tests

      
QSC HPR-Powered Loudspeakers 
By Jamie Rio 

When my fearless leader and editor Bill Evans called me to review the new QSC HPR powered series loud speakers, I was pretty excited. When he told me I had to test the hell out of them and have the piece done in a little more than a week, my excitement began to wane. However, the first real amplifier I ever bought was a QSC, and to this day I have a great deal of respect for the company. I honestly don’t know how long they have been building amps, but I think Noah had a rack of them on the ark. In other words, this company is an icon in this biz and I expected to field test some high-quality gear. 

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Best Tour with a Bullet

Seger’s Crew Details How They Handle Working with an Old-School Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend.

Last November, Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band launched their first concert tour in 10 years at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich. They kept on trucking right on through spring, when FOH caught up with crewmembers Brad Divens (FOH), Peter Thompson (monitors) and Paul Jump (systems engineer/crew chief). The three talked to us about their equipment, their experiences, and what it takes to produce a tour of this magnitude.

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation

How does a groundbreaking artist with more money than God spend his leisure time? How about a short run of shows in unexpected venues just for the fun of it?

There are a few people in the production community who I like enough to take their calls no matter what else is going on. So, even though we were deep into Production Hell on an issue of FOH and PLSN, I picked up when my phone said that Dave Tennent was on the line. Dave is the TD at The Cannery in North Las Vegas, an unexpectedly cool venue given the location — An “A” level room in a “C” part of town. (We wrote up the venue in the June 2006 issue of FOH. You can find it online if you missed it.)

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Snaring the Perfect Sound

Bartha Audio/Visual Helps a Skin-Care Firm Pull Out All the Stops for Its Annual Celebration.

Corporate gigs don’t have the glamour of a rock show, but they also don’t have the same requirements — a lot of times they have more. Corporate events aren’t only about pumping lung-crushing SPLs — trying to maintain intelligibility and fidelity with a larger dynamic range than a rock show, while battling video, and lighting, is where the skill portion comes in. Bartha Audio/Visual recently used all its skills to turn the MGM Garden Arena into a convention hall for skin-care firm Arbonne’s annual National Training Celebration, and then reinforced a marching band to rock out the attendees.

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The Main Show and the Sideshow

Trade shows, like everything else in the industry, are facing their next evolution.  

The “L” in trade show LDI’s name once stood for “lighting” (more recently it was changed to “live”). In the future, it might also stand for “Lots of other stuff, too, including audio.” At a time when much of the commercial landscape in the media technology world is moving toward a niche-based paradigm, some of the trade shows that have acted as hubs have sought to become more comprehensive. This is, in part, to address the effects of convergence — as more media technologies become digitally based, their operation and functions increasingly overlap, such as having both Final Cut Pro and Garageband on a single laptop, for example. Additionally, it is an attempt to stem losses from exhibitors that are increasingly taking their products out on “road shows” — demonstrating wares across the country unilaterally or in conjunction with complementary partners.

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