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Live Mixing Times Three

Live Mixing Times Three

It's 12:35 p.m. when I walk into Engine studios in Chicago. In 25 minutes The M's will be playing live for a small audience here, but their performance is going to reach a lot more ears. KEXP, the radio station from Seattle which is sponsoring this concert (and 10 others over the course of three days), will be broadcasting this performance live over the airwaves in Seattle as well as streaming it live in multiple formats over the internet and cell phones, keeping that stream available on their website for two weeks, possibly podcasting the performance, burning it to CD for later playback on the air and archiving it for possible inclusion on a live CD at a later date. That's a lot to think about for FOH engineer Scott Colburn, but he seems cool as he walks around the 11-piece band in his socks, swapping XLR cables on the lead vocalist's mic and checking the DI boxes on the string section (two violins and a cello — yes, it's a rock band). Of course, this calm might come from the fact that everything that can go wrong, already has. This morning, just after install, the ISDN line that fed the broadcast back to Seattle failed.

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Camco Vortex 6 Power Amplifier, APB Spectra-T Console, CBI Ultimate Starperformer Split-Box and Audi

Camco Vortex 6 Power Amplifier

By Mark Amundson

I have been hearing great things about Camco amps from visiting sound engineers from Europe in recent years. Now that the Camco Vortex series of amplifiers is distributed in the United States by Ashly Audio, it's easier for us all to get a look at these amps.

I was sent a Camco Vortex 6 amplifier, the mainstay of many Euro touring sound companies. The Vortex 6 puts out 2100 watts per channel into four-ohm loads with both channels driven with less than 0.1% distortion at 1kHz. And the Vortex 6 comes in a two-rackspace size with a 12.4 kilogram weight (27 pounds), and draws a polite 16 amperes at the 1/8th power representing normal operation at 120V.

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It's the Laws

Okay, time to get up on the soapbox again. It's probably my three quarters electrical engineering circuit analysis education, but why can't most newbie sound people figure out how much power, voltage and current is going into each of their speakers? I mean Ohm's Law and Watt's Law have been around since before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Edison sockets (for the light bulbs) and Edison receptacles (for plugging things into). So I guess it is time we had a refresher course on the basic electrical formulas, and those of you who know this stuff can guess the famous dead physicist's names that make up the laws.

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Blood, Torture And Audio Take the Stage

Playwright Martin McDonagh crafted a morbid masterpiece with his Tony-winning drama The Pillowman, which was covered in this column last year. If you thought he couldn't match the intensity of a show about an author of dreary children's stories whose grisly endings are replicated by a real-life murderer, think again. The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, which recently completed a four-and-a-half month run on Broadway, focuses on the fear and anxiety that spreads through a small Irish clan following the death of the cat of the one family member who happens to be a nasty local terrorist. The irony of a brutal killer who loses his marbles over the death of his closest furry friend is rich with irony and very black humor. The production features loud gunfights, hacked limbs, a blood splattered stage and an actual live feline.

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Moving Around Just Keeps Getting Harder

Recent stories in the New York Times and on wire services such as Reuters underscore a small but significant collateral problem stemming specifically from the alleged terrorist plot to blow up airline flights originating in the U.K. in August, as well as from the larger issue of security aloft. Several symphony orchestras and other musical performance groups have had to cancel individual dates and even entire tours in the wake of the U.K. plot reports as British airport authorities and security agencies denied passengers any carry-ons, including their instruments or music-related technologies such as laptops.

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Audio Network Meets New People

SAN FRANCISCO — Media Numerics took the opportunity at AES to introduce RockNet, a suite of networking technology designed to provide cost-effective, enhanced audio (and data) distribution for the full spectrum of sound applications.

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VLA Goes To 11

SAN FRANCISCO–With attendance at mega-churches growing to resemble a stadium crowd at a football game, it makes some sense that someone has released a loudspeaker with the intelligibility and volume to handle either gig. That someone would be JBL Pro which introduced the Variable Line Array (VLA) Series at AES, So how loud are the VLAs? JBL is emphasizing throw over sheer SPL but the VLA has been measured at 105dB at 450 feet for the VLA601H in a six-unit array, with three directed towards the measuring position. That'll put some hair on your chest…

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Yamaha Busts Out The Box For AES

SAN FRANCISCO–Yamaha took advantage of the AES spotlight to introduce several new products this past weekend, on the surface the biggest announcement Yamaha made was the launch of the DSP5D, a DSP-expander for the PM5D digital sound reinforcement console. The DSP5D is essentially a PM5D without a control surface, shrunk into a 10RU box. It can be controlled via a PC running Yamaha Studio manager software, or used as an expansion to the PM5D console.

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Meyer Sees Future in the Stars

SAN FRANCISCO–As part of its presence at the 2006 AES show Meyer Sound introduced Constellation electroacoustic architecture, a complete package of equipment and services, and centered around the company's VRAS technology, that gives venues the flexibility to alter their acoustics instantly, and accommodate a variety of events and source material.

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