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TC Furlong provided a DiGiCo SD7T console for the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, IL.

Theater Installation Showcase

Once considered a dying art, live performance theater today is a thriving and growing industry. And where once a simple sound system would suffice in a theatrical setting, venues have been upgrading, expanding and enhancing their audio capabilities. This stems not only from the high standards set by Broadway-caliber productions — both in established theater centers such as London, and New York, but also from myriad touring casts that bring recent hit shows and original casts to secondary markets.

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Neutrik AG CEO Werner Bachmann and president of Neutrik USA Pete Milbery at the company’s anniversary party during the 2015 NAMM show

Neutrik – 40 Years of Making Connections

Founded in 1975, today Neutrik AG, is recognized globally as the leading supplier of robust, reliable professional connectivity solutions for audio, video, and data, and this year, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Ironically, if you ask most people in the pro audio industry, it’s probably a safe bet that few are familiar with Neutrik’s home country of Liechtenstein — a tiny nation that’s about the land area of Washington, D.C., and bordered by Switzerland and Austria. Far better known is the Neutrik name, as the leading provider of audio, coaxial, power and circular connectors.

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Ultimate Ears Pro Sound Guard

Ultimate Ears Pro Sound Guard

In-ear monitors are becoming more and more ubiquitous every day and wireless hardware systems are coming down in price, opening the market to a wide range of users, some fairly sophisticated about audio and other not so knowledgeable. In the hands of a trained pro monitor mixer who understands the needs and limitations of IEM systems (and users) the need for an in-line brick wall protection limiter may not be so important.

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Blue Mo-Fi Headphones

Blue Mo-Fi Headphones

One of the most essential, yet often overlooked items in the toolkit of any live sound pro is a good set of headphones. And if truth be told, there are a lot of headphones on the market, ranging from less expensive options to some awful-sounding, yet very pricey models that come emblazoned with the name of some famous music celebrity. However, the headphone needs of a sound reinforcement mixer (FOH or monitors) are quite different from those of a typical consumer — or for that matter, a studio engineer.

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Reverberation and RT60

Reverberation and RT60

In this month’s tech column, we unpack the concept of reverberation, and the measurement known as RT60. Commonly bandied about by audio professionals, these terms are frequently misapplied or misunderstood. Often when we say reverberation, we mean discrete echoes. Leading into the discussion of reverberation, we will review some general acoustics concepts, and then apply those concepts to the dictionary definition of reverberation. Then we’ll talk practically about applying equalization, and the effect of volume on our perception of reverberation.

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The earpieces on the CM-i3 provide more comfort than an over-the-ear design and are interchangeable.

Point Source Audio CM-i3 Comm Headset

If you ever needed to use a communications headset in a loud environment, you know that any headset that provides isolation is usually rather bulky. These aviation-inspired headsets do a great job for followspot operators working a loud performance, but they can be heavy and cumbersome. Point Source Audio offers a lightweight alternative with its new CM-i3 intercom headset.

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Operations manager Gary Ferenchak and studio manager Sarah Zeitler outside the Rock Lititz monolith.

Inside Rock Lititz

In close proximity to Lancaster, PA, there is Lititz, a town of about 9,000 that’s home to The Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery and the Wilbur Chocolate Factory. Surrounded by dairy farms and cornfields, Lititz is also located in Pennsylvania Dutch country, an area closely associated with the Amish, known for their simpler way of living, horse and carriages, quilts, suspenders and the shunning of the public power grid and modern appliances.

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New speakers seem to be on everyone’s mind, such as these attendees at 2014 Prolight+Sound/Musikmesse in Frankfurt.

Speakers Dominate the Conversation These Days

If the first decade of this century was about microphones, this next one seems to be about speakers. Neither trend fits exactly into such a neat chronology, of course; the explosive growth of the boutique microphone category was already underway when Prince was singing about the future of “1999.” But it certainly became fully formed in the aughts, when blinged-out handheld wireless mics became the must-have accessory for the fashion-conscious at the edge of the stage.

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Compressors – like this Tube-Tech CL 1B – are not very complicated to use, but knowing what threshold/ratio/attack/release settings work best with different sources can be daunting to the novice.

Manic Compression, Part 2

Last month, we visited the nuts and bolts of compression. This time, let’s take a look at compression settings for a few specific instruments. As with many things audio-related, these suggestions should be treated as a starting point for your own techniques.

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Have soloists keep about four inches back from the vocal mic (such as this DPA d:facto II) for consistently good results.

Teaching Microphone Techniques

Ten years before I got into mixing worship sound and installing church audio systems, I worked as a recording engineer. Now I have been working in the house of worship sound biz for 20 years so, if you do the math that would put me back in 1985 when I was freelancing as an engineer. I learned a lot about audio during that time of my life.

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Illustration by Andy Au

The Saturation Point

I happen to be a firm believer in a low-input/high-output gain structure. I also realize that there is more than one way to arrive at a final live mix, and that it helps if one is not so intractable as to adhere to only one approach. I’m always interested as to how different engineers approach and set up their mix and, because of this curiosity, I found myself in a conversation with an engineer friend of mine who works in many different situations — from concert to corporate, in venues of varying size and structure.

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ML Procise III (photo by Dave Rat)

In Memoriam: ML Procise III, 62

All of us at FRONT of HOUSE were saddened to hear of the sudden (and certainly unexpected) passing of ML Procise III, who died away in his sleep in the early morning hours of March 5, 2015 at his home near Dallas. He was 62.

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