Digital Wireless Microphones
Just as consoles, signal processing and system control have eased into the benefits of digital, it’s little surprise that wireless mics are also making the… Read More »Digital Wireless Microphones
Read More »Digital Wireless Microphones
Loudspeaker Horns – A Crash Course
Horns of various sizes and shapes have been with us since the formative days of professional sound reinforcement. Whether stacked on top of a bass bin in the early days, or carefully integrated into the injection molded housing of a powered loudspeaker today, horns are here to stay.
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High Altitude Audio: Sundance Film Festival Gets a Louder Soundtrack
Live sound is all about moving lots of air, and that was a particular challenge for the music shows at the Sundance Film Festival, which took place in Park City, UT, over 11 days in January. The thin air in Park City — an even 7,000 feet above sea level — challenges crewmembers at load-in as muscles beg for oxygen. Further up the road, a series of private shows held for guests at the Hotel Montage borders on hypoxia at 8,300 feet.
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Audio-Technica BP894 MicroSet Headworn Mic
Over the years, headworn microphones have become significantly more improved, with better performance from smaller, near-invisible packages. So last year, when Audio-Technica debuted its BP894 MicroSet — a design that takes a completely new approach to headworn microphones, I was intrigued about its performance — and sound.
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Alto Professional Stealth Wireless Speaker System
I’m one of those types who likes to avoid wireless if at all possible and I usually shake my head wondering why when a client or artist insists on using an RF mic when they never wander more than about five feet in any direction. So last year when Alto Professional announced its Stealth Wireless speaker system, I initially wasn’t too impressed. In most portable sound systems, adding another component (and level of complexity) just to replace 25 feet of cable feeds from a stagebox or snake to the mains just didn’t seem worth the extra effort.
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Deciding on a New Console System
In last month’s column, I expressed the opinion that the greatest challenge in making a digital console platform change is coming to terms with the data legacy of one’s digital history. Saved within the Avid VENUE platform, I have compiled and stored seven years of complete console data from several tours with James Taylor, Mariah Carey, Joe Walsh, Cher, Bette Midler and Five For Fighting. Among these archives are extensive input/output patches, complete channel libraries, EQ libraries, and individual libraries for an extensive number of Waves, TC Electronic, Trillium Labs and Avid/Digidesign plug-ins. I have repeatedly employed this store of information contained in these libraries to quickly and easily construct shows for varying band formats or random one-offs with entirely different bands. Having this dense repository of information literally at my fingertips is a luxury to which I have grown rather accustomed.
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Is It Live, or is it Memorex? (And Do We Need to Care?)
We never needed the word “analog” until digital came along. In the technologically antediluvian universe of pre-zeroes-and-ones, analog, like God, simply was, with no reason to have to somehow quantify it. Similarly, when Thomas Edison came along with his new-fangled recording machine, we then had to adapt our understanding of the word “live.” Before you could record it, music, of course, was always performed live. Edison’s invention led us to the irony of the “live” album, which had its heyday in the 1970s, as well as endless variations meant to fool not our frontal lobes but rather our limbic cores with phrases like “recorded before a live studio audience!” Is it live or is it Memorex? After a while, we seemed to stop really giving a damn.
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Are You Ready to Rumble? Getting a Killer Bass Sound, Part 2
Last month, we began discussing ideas on how to get a great electric bass sound onstage. If you missed it, you can check it out here: fohonline.me/1laHdMc. We examined how the sound of an electric bass can be seriously influenced by the phase relationship between the DI and the bass amp, and we looked at possible solutions.
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To Rent, or Not to Rent
A few years ago, I installed a really nice sound system in a church located in the South Bay area of Southern California. The church had been damaged by a fire 12 months earlier and they were having Wednesday and Sunday services in a large tent that had been set up in the church parking lot. A local audio company supplied the sound and lighting for the services. You may be wondering where I am going with this story, but read on. Anyway, the audio company was charging the church $2,000 a week to rent and operate the sound and lighting system.
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Being There
It’s been a long winter, but spring is just about here and hopefully it signifies an end to the bad weather and the beginning of a beautiful summer touring season. All the road dogs who recently submitted resumes to me looking for off-season work are now mostly unavailable when I call. The bus has left the dock, and audio is on the move! Once again, the musical caravan is carving a path through the clubs, sheds, theaters and summer festivals on this continent and across the globe. Regional audio companies will be getting calls to fill venues with sound for concerts and corporate events, and local television stations will require assistance with band appearances as they promote the show du jour when the tour comes to town. For a month or so, high schools and colleges will be having their graduation ceremonies and — in association with their formals and proms — there should be a good amount of work for local audio companies and audio technicians.
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TED 2014 Heard via DPA Microphones
VANCOUVER – Catering to both live and online audiences, the annual TED Conference requires gear that matches its prestige. To meet those needs, the McCune Audio team once again turned to DPA Microphones’ classic 4088 Directional Headset Microphones and d:screet 4060 Omnidirectional Microphone.
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Solid State Logic Names Dr. Enrique Perez Gonzalez CTO for Board of Directors
OXFORD, U.K. – Solid State Logic named Dr. Enrique Perez Gonzalez chief technology officer for the company’s board of directors. Dr. Perez, who joined SSL in 2011 and had been serving as head of R&D, became a board member as of April 1.
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