Stepping into the octagon-shaped First Nazareth Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C. may not have been as intimidating as stepping into a similarly-shaped cage for mixed martial arts. But the church's layout still posed an interesting challenge for Frank Ward, owner of Acoustical Design: to install an AV system that would optimize the experience of worshippers listening to sermons, the choir and to video presentations.
Read More »To download a PDF of the the August 2010 FOH Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE .
Okay, this is called opening a can o' squiggly worms. The Buyers' Guide is on "volunteer friendly" (as in House of Worship volunteers) consoles. As a designation like that is highly subjective, we asked console makers to give us specs on consoles they think fit the bill and then to make the case for volunteer friendliness.
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A long time ago and in a nice Texas town called Austin the production company I managed was doing about six stages at SXSW. These were spread out over several miles, and we maxed out every piece of gear and every audio engineer we could find.
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"Onstage Systems began in 1978 as Dallas Backup, Inc. Our parents, Charles and Vickie Belcher, started the company as a backline company," comments Hyacinth Belcher of Dallas-based Onstage Systems, a company she has run with her brother Chris for the last several years. "They tried everything they could think of to get us to see the light and not do it," she laughs, "but we love it; I can't imagine doing anything else."
Read More »One of the problems with digital audio is latency. Analog audio happens in real time, traveling down a wire from point A to point B at a speed of roughly 186,000 miles per second. That's pretty friggin fast, even if you're in a Lamborghini Countach.
Read More »Gear failure is almost inevitable in this business. There are hundreds, if not thousands of components that make the production of a show happen. If something in that chain breaks, the whole show can go downhill. That is what makes a good troubleshooter priceless in this industry. Even more priceless is a person who can not only find the problem, but also figure it out before it is a problem on stage.
Read More »This is the final installment of FOH's summer business focus on Nashville as a touring hub, and we're starting where we began, at Soundcheck, because the story of that business is a worthwhile lesson in economics, strategy and humanity.
Read More »If you are a regular reader of this column, then you have already read some of my writings on Equalization, or, as I like to refer to it, "Frequency Manipulation." I never grow tired of this subject. Mainly because all the sound we hear is made up of a combination of frequencies, and the more control you have over those frequencies, the better you can make things sound. It is as simple as that.
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Years ago, when I was getting out into the world, I belonged to a community of idealistic people that was sure to change the world. Armed with an inherent knowledge of our righteousness; driven by the words of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and other well-known mystics and fueled by psychotropic substances, we set out on a "Magical Mystery tour" of self discovery and change. We courted and joined with mystics from the East, we marched for civil rights, and we were elevated by Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech; we challenged fashion and were thus, fashionably challenged.
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