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A Critical Time for Unions

A Critical Time for Unions

In the '80s, Bob Dylan–of all people–sang about the decline of unions and noted that a lot of that decline was due to decisions made by union leadership, not corporate America. With the recent shakeup of the AFLCIO and IATSE's decision to stay with the old guard, we can't help but wonder about the future of the union for production pros. Dan Daley addressed this in The Biz column back in September, but when we read it, we realized we were left with questions that only the union brass could answer. –Ed.

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Part of the Problem?

I have written about the blame game before (INMF, It's Not My Fault) and no matter how funny certain situations seem in retrospect, there is usually little humor to be found when confronted with an ugly situation and you are the one who is standing in the line of fire.

I spend a good part of my working day speaking to clients about their upcoming show or audio rental, and quite often, my conversations exceed the limit of what might be called an audio job and cross over into the undefined role of production manager or production consultant. While this progression from audio manager to production manager is not an unusual situation, it does create, by its indeterminate character, a gray area–or a production Bermuda Triangle– where balls will be dropped and signals missed. Whole gigs seem to mysteriously disappear from the radar on show day, leaving some engineer, client or artist scratching their head in disbelief as they point an accusing finger in every direction but their own.

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The Sound of Blue

I first saw a Blue Man Group show nearly three years ago at the Luxor in Las Vegas, and I was completely blown away. If you have never seen–or heard–the show, it is really pointless to try to explain it. There's no dialogue, but there are lots and lots of drums and weird instruments made of PVC pipe. (Yes, those are real and miked. You are not hearing samples, but real air moving through real tubes.)

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AES 2005

As Bill was getting ready and packing his bags to go to NYC for the AES show, he got a phone call from the owner of a regional sound company. Bill thought he remembered the owner saying he was going to AES at least for a day and asked, "Am I on crack or did you say you were going to AES?" The answer came, "No, I said I was going to LDI." Interesting choice. And once we hit the show floor, a few companies–big names in live event audio but with little to zero studio cachet–were conspicuous in their absence. Most notable among these were the Telex family (EV, Midas, KT) and the Peavey/Crest machine. There had also been a notice on the AES Web site some months ago that there would be a live audio pavilion set up on the show floor with hands-on training and demos, but–unless we just failed to notice it on any of the 2,367 times we walked the show floor–it wasn't there. There was a pavilion sponsored by Future Publishing and Line 6 that was a kinda cool "hang out and play guitar" sort of place, but there was no promised live audio area.

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Arts & Smarts

Any performance hall audio installation is certainly challenging, but what happened when Illinois State University, located in the city of Normal, wanted its new performance hall to also function as a major classroom area for its Arts Technology courses?

It turned out to be an awesome combination. But there were challenges to achieve those satisfying ends, including several bone-crunching go-rounds between the school and consultants on what the two performance spaces needed, some lengthy delays with funding that held up the overall project and, of course, all those garden-variety install issues that go with every job.

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On the Bleeding Edge: Shotguns vs. Snipers

If there's one thing that became clear at the AES Convention in New York last month, it's that live sound has rapidly made its way from the "Big Bang," or "Shotgun" theory, to what we at FOH call the "Sniper" approach.

It wasn't so long ago that the goal in delivering audio to large audiences essentially boiled down to "let's make it loud and hope for the best." During the formative days of live sound, that approach may have been acceptable, but these days–in spite of the fact that many people do a majority of music-listening in their cars or via MP3 players with limited fidelity–your average consumer expects more from a live show. People are plunking down top dollar to see concerts, and in addition to the visual aspect, the sound had better be good even at "cheap seats" that often sell in the vicinity of $100. With surround-sound theatre systems and plenty of video games found in homes across the country, we need to give people a reason to come out and play with us, or we'll all be out of work.

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A Spark of Inspiration (Or, Why Sound Guys Trump Squints)

I was on the backline crew for the ELO 1978 Flying Saucer tour that supported the Out of the Blue album. ELO rarely sound checked, so the band crew arrived at the gigs around 2 p.m. This did not endear us with the lighting crew, who had already been at the venue for five hours when we arrived. "Country clubbers!" they would call down from the lighting truss as we took the stage each day. This friction continued until one Sunday close to the Fourth of July, when the British lighting console's power supply failed during the afternoon focus. No hope of getting a replacement on short notice on a Sunday–not in 1978 anyway!

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Digital Audio Networking and System Control

When we do these Product Galleries, we generally try to keep them spec-based in an attempt to do the clichéd–but valuable–"apple to apple" comparison. But when it comes to products for transporting and controlling digital audio, there are apples and oranges and bananas and kiwi and…you get the picture. So this time around, we took a different approach; asking the makers of some of these products a series of what we hope are pertinent questions. The answers taken as a whole give a pretty good snapshot of business and technology in a big state of flux. Anything can, and likely will, happen in the next few years. At least one major player, EtherSound, is conspicuous in its absence. We tried to get the questions answered, but we unable to do so before our press deadline. Some of these systems only transport audio, others control entire systems, and regardless of how you feel about the direction we are going in, the future is in fiber, not copper. Smaller, faster and–as more units get sold and competition heats up– cheaper. We live in interesting times.

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Audix RAD-360 Wireless Mics, Peavey CS 4080 HZ Audio Power Amplifier and Behringer UltraCurve Pro DE

Audix RAD-360 Wireless Mics

By Mark Amundson

Making mics and designing RF transmitters and receivers are very different things. Ask any of the major mic makers who do wireless, many of whom have separate engineering teams for developing the transducer and RF pieces of the wireless puzzle. Which likely explains why Audix stayed out of the wireless game for a long time, introducing their first wireless about a year ago.

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When Things Go Right

There are certainly plenty of times when clients behave badly, when products don't ship on time, technicians have fights with their spouses and disappear for three days, when electrical contractors forget about those last 40 circuits–and we have all been there. But once in a while, the clouds part and the sun shines through and God's grace touches a project. This happens now and then…. even at churches.

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Gain Structure Revisited

I addressed this topic more than two years ago, but took a historical and Q&A approach to justify things like 0dBu levels, gain/level settings and +22dBu brick walls. While nice and informative, a lot of readers said that they needed to delve into the real knobs-and-faders portion of setting up their consoles. This article will revisit gain structure in a straightforward way.

All Those Controls

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Helping Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Take Flight

Production values have come a long way, baby. Just a few years ago, the thought of producing a Broadway show with a flying car sounded ludicrous, but the Tony-nominated New York production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang incorporates Caractacus Potts' titular, gravity-defying vehicle along with lavish sets, pyro and even live dogs. It also has an incredibly high-tech sound system run through a DiGiCo D5T that incorporates seven PCs, four mice, two 24-track Mackie digital recorders and Akai samplers, not to mention a plethora of racks backstage.

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