Skip to content

Cable Keeping

Cable Keeping

Every soundco has cables, endless numbers of them. From snakes to mic patches to speaker cords to AC power distribution. And like most newbies, you all start with the usual whatever-is-handy approach to transporting them–old roadcases, milk crates, suitcases, steamer trunks, plastic totes, etc. This article describes the art of cable keeping, and how the big soundcos do it.

Sometimes we just don't learn, but typically, plenty of clues are dropped by those witnessing your load-in ritual. Sayings like, "How many trips are you gonna make?" or "Hey, it's getting cold in here. Wanna hurry up?" What those less-than-polite comments should be telling you is that you are not very efficient in getting your gear from the gig rig into the venue.

Read More »

One Man Star Wars Trilogy

One man. One stage. One microphone. One ambitious actor performing an entire trilogy of famous sci-fi films with dozens of characters. Charles Ross deserves props for taking George Lucas' famous first triad of intergalactic adventures and condensing them into an hour-long solo performance that is equally a loving homage and hysterical parody of this beloved film franchise. Ross plays all the parts, uses no props and imitates as many sound effects as he can, even simulating an X-Wing crashing into the Death Star. In other words, he's like a kid imitating his favorite movie, zooming and rolling around his bedroom, except he's in front of a much bigger audience. It's a show that can be punishing on his body, voice and microphone setup.

Read More »

House Concerts Make Live Sound a Lifestyle

When the Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York in 1965, the music P.A. consisted of a half-dozen Shure Vocal Master systems–two columns of 6- and 8-inch speakers fueled by a combination mixer/power amplifier. Thankfully, the miles of Hi-Z cabling running around the stage didn't honk back much telemetry from the then-relatively small number of satellites floating around in orbit.

Looking back, it's almost comical that an event of that historical magnitude had such a puny P.A. system, but that's what you had at the time. The Vocal Master was the apotheosis of what someone could buy off the shelf in terms of a public address system in those days. But there are a couple of trends that make what was the state of the art at that time worth remembering.

Read More »

The Latest and Greatest

Dear Anklebiters,

I operate a sound company that is currently healthy and making money. My concern, however, is that sound reinforcement technology is moving too fast to keep up with. How can I compete in this rapidly changing market?

Thanks,

Pete Hampton, Spokane, WA

Jamie: Pete, the first thing to remember is: You do not need to have every new toy and gizmo in your arsenal to be competitive. You already have a clientele, and the fact that you are making money tells me that you are satisfying your clients. Right? But is it a good idea to keep up on tech and equipment trends, and of course, the latest and greatest innovations out there. Look, dude, you're already reading FOH. Need I say more? Paul, what do you think?

Read More »

What's It All About?

Don't you just hate it when I use this limited amount of space to wax philosophical instead of writing about something cool like gear or new tech? I can hear the groans already. "Oh crap, here he goes again. Can he please just get to the f'ing point? Forget it, maybe I'll just turn to the FOH Interview or the Road Tests."

Sorry, but this is what happens when I actually have a little time to think. A bunch of stuff has gone down in the past couple of months that may seem unrelated, but–at least in my twisted mind–adds up to an important point.

Read More »

The Rats Go to "Mousetown" to Explore Lampyland

Why in the heck would Soundies go to LDI? Hellooooo? "Lighting Dimension International," oh boy! Come on, sound people, let's go listen to the lights! You must be joking. After the fifth person asked me, I began to wonder a bit and decided to do some research. Well, actually, I just walked over and asked Jon Rat what the deal was. Turns out that unlike the "real" audio trade shows, these Lampies came up with the idea of setting up a round robin of full-blown sound systems on actual stages all pointed to a central area. Over the course of three hours, you can hear each of the six stages do a 30-minute presentation showing why they are the magic solution to all that is sound.

Read More »

Star-Studded Parnelli Honors Industry's Best

"Welcome to the 5th Annual Parnelli Awards," said PLSN and FOH publisher and Parnelli Award dinner host Terry Lowe. And thus began LDI/ETS convention's most anticipated event. Held this year at the beautiful Rosen Centre, the industry's legends, stars, up-and-comers and likely a few ne'er-do-wells came to honor this year's top performers in 18 categories. Additionally, highlights included bestowing achievement awards on Patrick Stansfield and Bruce Jackson.

Read More »

Non-Fatal Sound Defense

While riding the train one day in November, I came across an item reported by the News Wire Service and, tucked away in the New York Daily News. The headline over the following article read: "Ship's hi-tech noise turned away pirates."

MIAMI-The crew of a luxury cruise ship used a military-style sonic weapon that blasts beams of ear-splitting noise to ward off a shocking attack over the weekend by a gang of pirates off Africa, the Seabourn Cruise Line revealed yesterday.

The ship, the Seabourn Spirit, had a Long Range Acoustic Device installed to defend itself, said Bruce Good, a company spokesman. The Spirit was 100 miles off Somalia when pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns as they tried to get on board.

Read More »

Dave Skaff–Two Decades on the U2 Team

Dave Skaff won the Parnelli Award for Monitor Mixer of the Year in 2005 for his work on the current U2 tour, which is keeping his hands full. In addition to it being a very high profile gig with a band that expects a lot, monitor world is under the stage, so he has to rely on video feeds and a complex talkback system to communicate with his clients. All that and he is using a new console…

Read More »

On the Bleeding Edge

It may not be obvious, but the directionality of a sound reinforcement loudspeaker is as important a characteristic as its frequency response or power-handling capability. Control of "spill" is critical for sound reinforcement because the environments we deal with are almost always reverberant. If we cannot control the direction of sound, not only does it miss our audience, but it also does nasty things like bounce off walls, create comb filtering and decrease intelligibility.

Read More »

Rick's Cabaret NYC

It's September 21, 2005, and Tim Hannum finds himself among the more than 500 patrons at the opening of one of the most anticipated adult entertainment spots (or "gentlemen's clubs") in Manhattan. Located in the former Paradise Club spot, the building alone cost $7.6 million, plus another $3 million to make it pole-worthy, and it's in the desirable spot between Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. It's the 10th club opened by Rick's, a publicly-traded company.

Read More »