"Digital Goes Midas." No, I didn't coin this phrase (nor did I have anything to do with the Matrixlike magazine ad). The phrase is the promotional tag Midas (Telex, Klark Teknik) hung on their new digital mixing console. I would have said "Midas puts the analog in digital." However, I am not an ad guy; I am simply a writer for FOH who found himself an invited guest of the Midas folks to witness the unveiling of XL8 digital desk.
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Anyone who does one-off or touring gigs has been there. It's late, it's been a long day and you have hundreds of feet of heavy snake to drag and coil into a box, which then weighs a ton, and you have to push it around to get it into the truck. Sometimes, if you are really lucky, the truck has no lift, so you get to muscle it up a ramp. It's one reason why we have been watching the development of digital snakes that transmit over fiber or CAT5 and fit in a case that you can carry onto an airplane without a sideways glance from the flight attendant.
Read More »I love gadgets, buttons, knobs, faders, attenuators, meters and especially anything with blue LEDs on the front panel. What I never did enjoy was looking at a gaggle of wires behind the rack or actually ever having to move a rack full of stuff.
I understand the "need" for the confident and knowledgeable FOH person to have as much outboard gear as possible. All praise the elevated audio budget! But at some point, a 6-foot rack of processing for the fixed part of a fixed house system (or small portable system) just doesn't make sense anymore.
Read More »In Part 1 of the Wireless Microphones piece, I described wireless mic limitations, preferred locations of mic and receiver, RF link budgets and antenna polarization. In Part 2, we'll cover radio frequency names, antenna patterns and compression/expansion circuits.
Superlatives
Us techno-geeks are quick to toss out acronyms like VHF and UHF without a care, hoping that no one will bother to ask why a user might choose VHF or UHF as the frequency band for transmission. Starting with HF (high frequency), we move up to VHF (very high frequency), then on to UHF (ultra high frequency), then to SHF (super high frequency) and, believe it or not, EHF (extremely high frequency). Each of these high-frequency superlatives stand for a range of frequencies, or bandwidth. HF has 3 megahertz to 30 megahertz, VHF has 30 megahertz to 300 megahertz, UHF has 300 megahertz to 3 gigahertz, SHF has 3 gigahertz to 30 gigahertz, and EHF has 30 gigahertz to 300 gigahertz. And these are all waves per second of radiated electromagnetic energy, better known as radio frequencies (RF).
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I was wondering how Alice Walker's deeply poignant and deeply disturbing drama The Color Purple would be interpreted as a Broadway musical, especially at a time when so many literary and filmic adaptations are gratuitously brought to the Great White Way, but I was pleasantly surprised. The wellwritten show has a magnetic lead in LaChanze, a highly talented ensemble cast, and a score that spans African music, R&B and blues. And the multilayered story–on its most basic level, about a woman named Celie who struggles through life with an abusive, controlling husband after having grown up with an abusive, controlling father–is incredibly powerful.
Read More »When you hear that infectious fournote audio signature on television, you know without even consciously realizing it that there's "Intel inside." The makers of components of larger systems, who have tended to labor anonymously in years past, are waking up the need to market their own brands. It's a worldwide phenomenon that transcends market sectors: Siemens informs you that they may not make the television set, but they make the technology that makes it brighter; Boeing takes 30 seconds next to a Budweiser commercial during a football game to extol their aircraft despite the fact that most viewers aren't currently in the market for a $30-million 737.
Read More »Beth Gladen
Owner/engineer
Sweet Spot Audio Productions
Cleveland, OH
www.myspace.com/soundchic
Live sound, both medium and small scale. Sound, stages and lighting.
Clients:
New company! First year of going out and doing this on my own! Clients include The
Grog Shop, The Winchester and several other local bands.
Read More »Dear Anklebiters,
After working with other people's sound systems for a number of years, I decided last spring to invest in some equipment of my own. It's all decent gear, and with it and my existing contacts, I have been able to slowly build up enough clients to keep busy almost every weekend. But now it's tax time, and I'm wondering what I need to do on the business end of things to stay kosher and keep in good favor with our friends at the IRS.
Read More »Driving can be a dangerous thing. Not only for the obvious "the guy in the other car may be drunk, or an idiot, or both" reasons, but because long drives can lead to thinking–in my case, a very dangerous thing.
In this case, I was headed across Highway 166 from the central coast of California (specifically Pismo Beach) where I had done a weekend as a guitar sub for an '80s tribute act, headed for Bakersfield and then Highway 58 to Barstow and up the 15 home to Las Vegas. I was home for 36 hours before heading south again to the Timeless Communications headquarters for production on the issue you are reading now.
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Have you ever heard the sound of more than 10,000 girls screaming at 119dBa at FOH? Daryl Carmen, FOH for Hilary Duff, and the Masque Live crew have been experiencing this night after night since her tour started last summer.
Those who think of theatre sound and wireless microphone management when they hear "Masque Sound" should know that over the past two years, Masque Live, a new division, has been slowly establishing itself as a formidable player in the fast-paced commodity world of concert sound. Masque Sound is renowned in the theatre world because, like with a high-end installation, they take the time to work out every last sonic detail for Broadway-type shows that run for years in the same venue. In contrast, Masque Live is about the time pressures of being in a different arena or stadium every night. Crew chief Paul Fabre said he believes that what separates Masque Live is their philosophy of having the same level of quality control at the shop for both their theatre and concert businesses.
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In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, you never know what to expect; events often take unexpected turns. Case in point: "A Night for New Orleans." It began as a modest fundraising gala, something to help the city's renowned opera company regain a semblance of normalcy. However, by the time the day of the event rolled around, it had mushroomed into what was quite likely the largest operatic performance in Louisiana history. When Placido Domingo stepped on stage at the New Orleans Arena–a relatively new NBA-sized facility largely unscathed in the disaster–an audience of 7,400-plus gave him a rousing welcome. By any measure, it was a result far better than expected only weeks earlier. However, for the audio professionals charged with sound reinforcement, the late surge in ticket sales became a challenging turn of events that required on-thespot changes in system configuration.
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OK, so now I am officially a pimp. Oh, what a long, twisted path I have traveled to get to this place in my career, but I have finally arrived. Much like any other kid with a guitar and a dream, my ambition was to make beautiful music and be heard the world over. Alas, it is not meant to be, and destiny has placed my shining star behind an audio console, relegating me to life of servitude as I feverishly dial, fade, cut and boost my way to glory while utilizing the auditory magic of other shining stars. Always willing to rise to a challenge, I found myself tour managing, road managing, production managing and even promoting these shining stars of stage and screen. Often, by default, I would find myself doing these other jobs in addition to my engineering responsibilities. Be that as it may, it all seemed like a natural progression from one job to the other, and though I may have been a bit of a "gig whore," pimping was never part of my job description.
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