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A Paramount Concern

A Paramount Concern

Oakland's Paramount Theatre is a cultural hub for the city, with all sorts of musical and comedy tours hitting the stage as well as local civic events, graduations and the Oakland Speakers' Series. Every so often theatre management shows a vintage film, which returns the venue to its original movie house glory.

The theatre, which seats around 3,000, opened in 1931 with the express goal of showing the major motion pictures of the day. The art deco style that was hip 76 years ago is still eye-catching, and the venue boasts a handful of unique charms.

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On the Bleeding Edge

For the past few weeks, I have been playing with an incredibly sophisticated wireless system, the RF performance of which has been impeccable. Unlike most of the wireless units I have dealt with in the past, this system packs four receivers into a single rack space and has the capacity for another two receivers, allowing a total of six in one rack space. Each receiver has its own audio output on a rear-panel connector for routing to individual mixer channels. The front panel doesn't look all that sexy, so initial impressions say "installation market," but a closer look reveals that intelligent design for the install market easily trickles into the touring sound market (and vice versa).

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It’s All About the Benjamins

It amazes me how many accountants and personal secretaries are placed in a position to oversee the success of extremely high profile events. I also find it stupefying that some executive, somewhere, makes plans to have an obscenely extravagant event to tout some fabulous product or charity, hires some incredibly famous star as a host and then tops it off by employing an even more extraordinary celestial body as the evening's entertainment. This same executive then goes out and books a venue based upon it's trendy status without giving a second thought in regard to how the event will be staged or managed and then, because the event is so important to the success of his company, he makes sure that guest list reads like a Who's Who of the New York City society page.

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Rock the Boat

There is something to be said for the idea of family. When the band Sister Hazel and their management, Sixthman decided to have a convention for the band and do it on a cruise ship, they called on the services of a company and crew they had used before, Atlanta Sound and Lights and head crew dude Sean Henry. Now, six years later, that little convention idea has grown into the Rock Boat — more than 20 bands, 2000+ fans and one big boat. Oh, and 11 sound guys. You read that right. Eleven guys to cover six stages and shows that start by noon and go until very late every night, with acts ranging from unknown songwriters (Honor by August won a BMI competition for their slot) to budding rock stars (Atlanta's Five Star Iris and Austin's Wideawake stood out) to established acts including Collective Soul, Better Than Ezra, Cowboy Mouth and "hosts" Sister Hazel.

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Pepping Up Petrillo

An outdoor amphitheatre whose origins date back to 1935. A big-city government that, appropriately, isn't keen on wasting the taxpayers' money. A venue that needs to suit the definition of diversity: from an international blues festival to the symphony; from Aretha Franklin to the Dalai Lama.

Oh yeah — it's also real windy.

It's Chicago's famed Petrillo, located in Grant Park, and home to the Chicago Blues Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Taste of Chicago, Viva Chicago, Celtic Festival and World Music Festival — all of which were attended by a combined total of more than one million people last year. Located right off the harshness that can be Lake Michigan, it is within a proverbial stone's throw from homes, making noise pollution a real issue as well. Yet a new install by Chicago Sound using SLS line arrays left everyone happy.

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Do You Know Who I Am?!?!

I recently helped out a friend of mine doing FOH and tour manager duties for two weeks on a U.S. promotional tour. This was a van and trailer tour, which I found refreshing and intimate for a change. We were scheduled at a state fair, and I was saddled with only one crew guy. We pulled up to a 60-foot by 40-foot stage with a decent roof that seemed to have some "water puddle" issues. I climbed up on the deck and was overseen by a gentlemen sitting in monitor world; let's call him Chester. I introduced myself as Tommy with the band Hedley, and asked if there were stagehands. Chester said something akin to, "Don't know, don't care and unless I have heard of you, I really can't be bothered."

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Been-There-Done-That Does Not Apply

Most of ATK AudioTek's 46-person crew are veterans of the Super Bowl extravaganza. But they still take nothing for granted. Arriving three weeks before the Feb. 4 showdown between the Colts and the Bears at Miami's Pro Player Stadium, Scott Harmala, ATK's CTO and vice president of engineering, saw that this year's version was going to have a few unique challenges of its own.

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Crown Audio Xti4000, Presonus Digimax FS and AKG Perception 200 Condenser Mic

Crown Audio Xti4000

By Mark Amundson

Put yourself into Crown Audio's product managers' shoes: You have the renowned touring audio power amplifier line called the I-Tech, and you have the task to create a smaller mass music market version that sells for a competitive price but still has the features and power ratings this market wants. In this pursuit, I believe Crown has succeeded very well with the XTi line of amplifiers.

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Improving the Worship Space

For the last few months or so, I have been writing to you about installing worship sound systems, dealing with the various personalities and hierarchy of church politics and government and getting paid for your efforts. However, in the last month I have been asked to improve the acoustics of two very different worship spaces. The first one is at a Christian camp in the San Bernardino Mountains of California known as Camp Cedar Crest. This camp has a large central auditorium that is used for a variety of worship music and speaking events. The second is located in the basement of a small church in Newport Beach, Calif. that is currently being used for storage. The church would like to turn the space into a youth area where programmed and live music could be played. The fact of the matter is I very rarely get a call to treat the acoustics of a room, and to have two calls in one month is really a phenomenon. I have no difficulty walking into a room and hearing that the acoustics suck. Or entering a sanctuary that has just heavenly acoustics. The challenge is to get from suck to heaven. Obviously I am willing to have a go at it.

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Gear Security

Every so often, you hear of acquaintances getting swindled on a rental, or outright burglarized at the shop, or (more often) from the truck or trailer carrying sound reinforcement gear. Before you are the next one suffering such an incident, take reasonable steps to thwart attempts of thievery.

The Pro Thief

No matter what you may do, a real professional group of thieves will not be deterred by just about anything you do to protect your gear. And when I say professional, I am thinking of persons that plan the theft in detail, know what they are after, and have a ready buyer of the goods that will not care if all the gear serial numbers are broadcast amongst the soundcos. In this scenario, the gear will likely be headed out of the country on very fast transportation.

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When [RF] Worlds Collide

Imagine a typical Thursday night on the Las Vegas Strip. Forty hotels, each with one or two multimillion- dollar theatrical productions running during prime time. More than 250 channels of wireless in operation. And at a key moment in any of the shows a "toxic burst" creates a deafening noise glob throughout the P.A. system, or perhaps worse, produces the deafening silence of a drop-out.

This is the nightmare scenario that a number of interested parties in the RF wireless game have put to the FCC and certain members of Congress, in an effort to stave off the almost-certain chaos of conflicting wireless devices operating in the what the FCC calls the "white space" opened up by the legislated switch to digital television in 2009 that will open vast parts of that spectrum to a variety of unregulated applications.

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Ricci Dustin, Ty Kelly

Ricci Dustin

Head Audio Engineer

Harrah's Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV

[email protected]

FOH audio engineer

Clients:

Wayne Newton, Rita Rudner, Clint Homes, Forever Plaid

Quote:

I'm just here for the irony and the dancing!

Personal Info:

30 years of live FOH engineering 6-7 nights a week with very little time off ever. More than 20,000 hours of live FOH mixing.

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