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Show Report: Live [Audio] from New York – AES 2015

NEW YORK — Let’s be blunt. In past years, the conventions of the Audio Engineering Society have strayed away from the live community. In fact, at the 2012 convention, only one manufacturer of sound reinforcement speakers exhibited product on the show floor — and that was a small, 10 x 10-foot booth featuring ceiling speakers, which hardly reflected the growth and vitality that the live audio community has experienced over the past decade. Cognizant of that fact, this time around the AES put a full court press, reaching out to the sound reinforcement community, repeating the popular Live Audio Expo with seminars available free to all attendees, and encouraging more live sound companies to the exhibit floor.

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Pat Quilter and George Petersen at the Parnelli Awards, and Joe Bull and David Hewitt at AES.

The ‘Other’ Social Networking

Mention “social networking,” and the first thing that comes to mind is staring at your computer or smartphone screen for hours on end, sharing cat pictures or a video of some guy riding a bicycle into a swimming pool. And as cool as this may be to the hipster set, it’s no replacement for an actual (not virtual) experience with actual humans, or as the late, great Marvin Gaye once put it: “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby.”

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AC/DC tour photo by Steve Jennings

AC/DC Takes Their ‘Rock or Bust’ Tour Home to Australia

The AC/DC Rock or Bust tour, now through most of its slated 55 dates, has already played to millions across 21 countries. Following a four-week break after their last Los Angeles show, the boys boarded a plane and headed for where it all started for them: Australia. The band’s makeup is different this outing: Drummer Phil Rudd is currently battling legal problems in New Zealand, so Chris Slade is on the drummer throne; and original guitarist Malcolm Young has been forced into retirement and is currently fighting dementia. But keeping it in the family, his nephew Stevie Young is slinging his guitar parts.

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Straight No Chaser tour

Straight No Chaser’s ‘New Old Fashioned’ Tour: Anything but Old School

In discussions about music, style labels and genres seem to be all-encompassing. However, when someone is asked how to describe a band that is different or somehow breaks out of the mold, a difficulty ensues from those who want every act to fit inside a “box,” whether it’s rock, jazz-pop or whatever. And so it is with Straight No Chaser (SNC). Simply dismissing this act as a “male a capella group” might bring up images of the Yale Whiffenpoofs glee club or perhaps a barbershop quartet, but SNC are far from either of those vocal performance stereotypes.

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A simple capacitor is two conducting plates parallel to each other separated by an empty space in between. Because of how the universe is built, an electric field can pass between the two plates.

Capacitors and Change

Sound is fundamentally about change. Changes in pressure on the eardrum lead to bone movement in the inner ear that triggers changes in neurons that cause the brain to perceive sound. And for pro audio, the initial change in air pressure results from a loudspeaker whose physical movement caused the change in pressure.

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'Holographic' Music Tours are on the Horizon Again

The Walking Dead

Halloween is just behind us, but there may be plenty of goblins ahead. I’ve written before, here and elsewhere, about that moment of frisson when, at the 2012 Coachella festival, the audience was stunned by the reunion of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur with a very alive Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg during a performance on stage.

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