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JTS Microphones

JTS Microphones

As long as I have been in the sound biz, I have been looking for a better microphone. Not because I have been dissatisfied with the standard models most commonly used, but because I started my career in music as a singer. And, as a singer, I am acutely aware how a mic can color one’s voice. Well, if a microphone can make a voice sound different, then can’t it make an instrument sound different? Of course, the answer is yes and, there-fore, my never-ending quest to find a better (or at least different) microphone.

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Allen & Heath iLive Digital Mixing System

With the rapid move toward digital mixing in the live arena, it may seem to some that Allen & Heath is late to the party. But keep in mind that this company put out its first digital mixer almost a decade ago — a small-powered rig called the ICON — that is still being used for smaller applications today. The iLive is a huge jump forward and moves A&H firmly into the fray, giving them a fighting chance in the digital mixing market.

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Like Father, Like Son

When the father-son team of Jaygarick and Joe Stewart decided to go into business together, there was no doubt who was going to get the title of president, Jay jokes. At the same time, the duo wasn’t hung up on titles back then, and they are not now. After all, Dad is Dad.

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A Thundering Rainbow?

Rainbow Production Services and Thunder Audio Team Up for Dane Cook’s Rough Around the Edges Tour

When I got the call asking me to go out and cover a tour by a
comedian named Dane Cook, I had two reactions. The first was, “Who the hell is Dane Cook.” And the second was, “It’s one guy and a mic. How hard can it be?” I was in for an education on both counts.

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The Golden Trumpet

In 1997, I was employed as chief sound engineer aboard the world-famous RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. I was having a great run, and things were going smoothly. Then, as we came through the Panama Canal and stopped in Acapulco, I contracted conjunctivitis, commonly known as pink eye, in both eyes.

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John Cooper

It seems a fitting way to begin a new year. More than five years ago, as the very first issue of FOH was just starting to take form, I met and spent the day hanging with John Cooper at the Forum in Los Angeles where he was getting ready for his first L.A. show with Bruce Springsteen. The re-sult of that afternoon was the very first FOH Interview ever.

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This One Is Just Right

UMass’s Lipke Auditorium Needed a System That Was Not Too Small, But Not Too Big.

Over the past couple of years, the audio/visual team at the University of Massachusetts in Boston has been captaining updates of the school’s audi-toriums. First came the ballroom in the school’s Campus Center where a brand new $1 million audio system was installed. Then, in 2007,the Lipke Auditorium was finished; next will be Snowden Auditorium.

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How Do You Get to the Garden?

The idiomatic phrase “This is not Madison Square Garden,” when directed at an audio company, sends a universal meaning that is not bound by either state lines or time zones. While I am certain that the names of other major event institutions have been employed in the same allegorical fashion as Madison Square Garden, it appears that evoking the image of this iconic venue epitomizes all that is grand and glamorous in the concert world. Though I am New York-based and have often worked at “The Garden,” I have also done shows in almost every state and have traveled ex-tensively around the globe. Regardless of where I go, the aforementioned axiom keeps popping up.

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A Trickle of Technology

What’s on the Bleeding Edge Today Could Be in Your Rack Next Year

If you’ve ever had the chance to watch the original Star Trek series (by original, I mean the show ca. 1966 with Shatner, Nimoy et al.), it’s aston-ishing to observe how many technological prophecies were written into those scripts. Handheld communicators, miniature cartridges containing computer data, keyboards and touch screens for computer interfaces, talking computers that display photos and even a cloaking device are all Star Trek fantasies that have manifested in our world as common devices like cell phones, floppy disks (later, thumb drives) and everyday computers. Now, if I could only figure out teletransportation…. Keep in mind that these devices were dreamt up during a time when a CPU with around 64 ki-lobytes of memory employed vacuum tubes and took up more space than your living room.

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A Strike Out

In early November, a few days after Local One of the technical and stagehand union IATSE had gone out on strike against Broadway shows, I was standing at the FOH position in the Hilton Theatre on West 43rd Street, a half block from Times Square. The Hilton is home to the musical version of Mel Brook’s film, Young Frankenstein, and was one of the few shows still running, as the Hilton Theatre’s union contract had been established separately from most of the others.

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