My two combined nightmares both deal with my band — supplying a P.A. to my own band and not having them help. As any anklebiter will tell you, it may not be a lot of gear, but it’s sure not a little, either! I need help to set up, and my band sure didn’t want to help out. As soon as I got to the gig the whining started. “That’s too much P.A. gear, Dave. You won’t need it all.”
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Jeffrey Holdip and crew keep Canadian songstress Nelly Furtado sounding great no matter where she is.
I recently caught up with FOH mixer Jeffrey Holdip and the rest of the Towers Clair Showco audio crew for Nelly Furtado. Adamson’s Ben Cabot helped out for the first two shows of the Canadian leg of Nelly’s world tour by tuning the house system. He uses sine-wave sweeps with a multichannel version WinMLS by Lars Morset to equalize the Clair IO processors. He chose WinMLS because it’s the only portable multichannel measurement system quick enough to handle the time pressures of touring. Ben’s kit of six microphones, multichannel sound card and computer can easily fit into a laptop bag and be hand-carried onto an airplane. This was the first time I have seen WinMLS used on a major tour. I have used almost every measurement system on the market; I think that tuning the house before the artist sound check with WinMLS and using Smaart when the band plays is ideal for getting the most useful measurements. Most speaker manufacturers use sine-wave sweeps because they’re accurate even when there are extraneous noises. With a sine-wave sweep you can get usable measurements even if there is hammering and banging going on.
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An intimate room gets the star treatment.
Jeff Thompson has what they call in the business a conversation stopper. He’s used it a couple of times now while working with tour managers who are advancing a show at the Ovation Lounge in the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas, where he serves as the entertainment production manager. “They’ll ask me what kind of boxes we have, and I tell them L-ACOUSTICS KUDOS,” he said. “Then they ask about monitors, and I tell them that we have L-ACOUSTICS 115XT HiQs. Then we get to desks, and when I say Midas XL8s, everybody pauses and asks ‘What do you mean, XL8s?’ And I say, ‘At front of house and monitors I have XL8s.’”
Always throws them for a loop.
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First Bosch buys Midas, and now Harmon International has agreed to be acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Goldman Sachs for $8 billion dollars. Hey, I’m small time and $1 million dollars seems like a lot of money to me. Therefore, an $8 billion dollar purchase sounds like the type of numbers my friends and I would spew out when we were little kids trying to outdo each other on the playground. “When I grow up,” I’d say, “I’m going to have a gazillion million billion dollars.”
Read More »And where do we go from here?
There is a bunch of stuff in this issue about the current obstacles facing the live event audio community regarding wireless communications, and if you are not really well-versed in what is going on and what is likely coming up, it may seem like we are talking out of an orifice that is usually reserved for expelling material other than speech.
Read More »Speak up, or get stepped on.
I don’t think I’ve ever written more than once or twice regarding the same subject, but the pending FCC/White Space issue recently discussed in the pages of FOH is progressing at an alarming rate, and there are new developments on a weekly basis. The latest is reflected in an article published by the New York Times on May 22, 2007. The author of the article, John Markoff, informs us that our friendly search engine folks at Google are calling on the FCC to allow companies to “allocate radio spectrum using the same kind of real-time auction that the search engine company now uses to sell advertisements.” In other words, Google wants the FCC to allow radio spectrum to be sold to the highest bidder. Trés capitalîst.
Read More »It’s time to choose sides in this fight for frequencies.
I’m no Al Gore, but the “white space” controversy could be shaping up to become the global-warming issue of the RF universe. Back in March, we discussed the likely chaos that could ensue with the switchover to digital broadcasting scheduled to take place in early 2009. The move will open key parts of the RF spectrum to a variety of unregulated applications, from cell phones to PDAs, which will compete for access with existing professional wireless users.
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It’s an annual pricing war.
Ken: All right Brian, as we come into the sunburn season, I face the same pricing battles as usual. I try to explain to the bands I non-sexually service, that me doing a gig on the cheap just wins me the chance to do more cheap gigs! Every cheap gig means twice as much work at half the appreciation — in other words, I feel like I get bent over, then these acts still think I’m an asshole because they really wanted 12 monitors instead of the zero their budget allows! I am out of tactful ways to say no. Help!
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MONTERREY & GUADALAJARA, MEXICO — The 2007 Guns N' Roses “Chinese Democracy” world tour started off with two sold-out concerts in Monterrey and Guadalajara, Mexico.
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NEW YORK — According to current postings on forums and newsgroups, Goldman Sachs provided $385 million in financing to back the Jordan Cos.' roughly $600 million purchase of Production Resources Group.
Read More »Manufacturers and retailers of any products that are sold in music instrument stores (or similar online operations) are currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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MONTREUX, SWITZERLAND — The Montreux Jazz Festival, located on the shore of Lake Geneva, is currently presenting its 41st edition through July 21. Since 1986, Meyer Sound has been the official sound provider for the festival, supplying sound systems for its many venues, including Auditorium Stravinski, Miles Davis Hall, Parc Vernex, Miles Davis Hall Club and more.
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