It’s hard to believe, but the 2015 Parnelli Awards season is almost upon us. So far, FRONT of HOUSE readers have already stepped up to select the finalists vying for the top regional sound company honor — the Hometown Hero Award. These include DBS Audio (Coatesville, PA), Mid-Coast Sound (Nashville), Clearwing Productions (Milwaukee), Spider Ranch Productions (South San Francisco), Onstage Systems (Dallas) and Toronto’s Sound Art. Congratulations to all!
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John Mellencamp may hail from beyond the outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana, but he has nothing against a big town. His 80-date Plain Spoken tour, which ran from Jan. 21 to Aug. 4, 2015 in support of his late 2014 album release, included performances at two Big Apple icons: Carnegie Hall (April 20), the epitome of classical musical achievement, and the Apollo Theater (April 23), long synonymous with uptown funk.
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While big subwoofers tend to get the attention of both sound companies and audiences, the compression driver keeps its intricacies hidden from view, as shown in Fig. 1. This month, we’ll tease out some of the components within compression drivers and help explain why these small devices are every bit as complex — and often more expensive — than their booming big brothers. Along the way, we’ll talk a little bit about how the way something is made influences the cost of production.
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A Rare Look Inside This Leading Industry Supplier
Founded in 1999, Sommer Cable is an innovative designer and manufacturer of high-end audio, video and data cables, connectors, assemblies and electronics. Based in Germany’s Black Forest region, the company recently opened its U.S. branch in Santa Rosa, CA, headed by German/American citizen and 35-year industry veteran Martin Ucik.
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Disney’s The Lion King musical has been enchanting audiences on Broadway for nearly 18 years, and its massive success has spun off tours and productions around the globe. Despite it being a well-oiled entertainment machine, transferring the show into other venues and other countries reveals challenges — like dealing with the capabilities of each new location. Some theatres can easily handle the requirements of the production while others are in markets with less of an emphasis on live theatre.
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CAD Audio has a long heritage in microphones. Its parent company, Astatic, began in 1931 as a supplier of crystal mics for radio applications, along with phonograph cartridges and recording heads, and many years later expanded into the commercial audio/installation market. Even today, many of Astatic’s vintage crystal mic models are still in use and prized by harmonica players.
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It’s hard not to like Telefunken Elektroakustik. The U.S.-based company began years ago out of founder Toni Fishman’s love of wonderfully crafted European microphones. He was frustrated by a lack of replacement parts for classic mics, stemming from a vintage Telefunken ELA M 251 he owned, where the plastic ring for the polar pattern switch broke after decades of service, leaving the mic useless for want of a molded plastic part.
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Today, I am enjoying a Sunday off in a hotel room outside of Youngstown, Ohio. As I write this article, the NASCAR race from Pocono Raceway is just getting underway. My laundry is now done. After finding the nearby Starbucks, I then enjoyed a leisurely lunch on the bus in the hotel parking lot. Sounds idyllic enough, doesn’t it? Actually, today is only notable when viewed in contrast to yesterday’s workday at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, NJ. However, before discussing yesterday’s events, I need to skip backward in time one more day.
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The population of Nashville swelled by over 100,000 people one week in June. Hoteliers, restaurateurs and others watched happily as people poured in for the perfect live-event storm of the week-long CMA Music Festival, which sprawled across numerous stages with massive NFL stadium LP Field as its locus; the Bonnaroo festival, which took place in Manchester, about 60 miles to the south but had the Nashville airport as its main funnel; and finally a visit by the Rolling Stones to LP Field days after the CMA shows concluded. But what really shined was how well the city’s storied touring infrastructure handled what would have been a huge load even in New York or Los Angeles.
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Delay — a.k.a. echo — might be the most popular effect used in live sound. Sure, we use reverb, but sometimes the natural reverb of the room negates the need for adding reverb to, say, a snare drum. Delay is much more fun. You can do all kinda fun and crazy stuff with a delay, whether it be hardware or software, out- or in-board. Note to all you super-picky types: we know that, technically speaking, there is a distinction between echo and delay (delay is a postponement of a sound, whereas echo is a repeat of a sound), but most engineers use the terms interchangeably when referring to effects. I’ll have a Coke, please.
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Let’s face it — most of us work in less-than-ideal acoustic environments. The main sanctuary at our church has a primarily wood interior, and while it is aesthetically beautiful, it can be an acoustical challenge. Our main sanctuary is used for traditional worship, so the longer decay time is acceptable for the typical choral and orchestra performances we do in that space. Our “Contemporary Worship Space” is another story — it’s a gymnasium. Sound familiar?
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An audio engineer friend of mine sent me this item from Wundergroundmusic.com: “Sound engineering has officially been declared the grumpiest profession in the world at this week’s International Jobs Summit in Tokyo, Japan. According to the keynote speaker, Steven Jobless, “sound engineers have reached a level of grumpiness only previously seen in roles held by post-Internet librarians and a specific member of the Seven Dwarves.
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