Dave Rat on EAW’s Latest Line Array System
It’s no secret that Rat Sound has a long association with Eastern Acoustic Works. Company principals Dave Rat and Jon Monson worked closely with EAW in the creation of the successful MicroWedge stage monitors line and then contributed throughout the research and development process for Anya, EAW’s latest line array product.
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It’s a big, big band, and somebody’s got to mic it. And that someone is James “Jimbo” Neal.
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With a contemporary program featuring a strong music emphasis, Northcrest Baptist Church (Meridian, MS) has a wide range of offerings including children’s, youth and adult choirs, plus a variety of mission opportunities and worship programs. Recognizing the importance of a quality sound reinforcement and its ability to deliver a high level of speech intelligibility and music reproduction characteristics, the church recently upgraded with a new loudspeaker system from WorxAudio Technologies.
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Well-known in studio circles, but perhaps less familiar to sound reinforcement users, Focusrite has a long and distinguished legacy in professional audio. The company was founded 29 years ago by audio legend Rupert Neve (whose circuit designs still grace a number of Focusrite’s products) and four years later, it was acquired by Soundcraft co-founder Phil Dudderidge. After a short bout in the large console market, Focusrite began expanding its world-class signal processing series with a successful line of audio interfaces that were on-time and in-step with the burgeoning studio market.
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Virtually every production company will come to a point in business where they start doing events in rooms colloquially referred to as “soft seaters.” These are the concert halls, civic centers, theaters, churches, converted movie houses, auditoriums, collegiate centers, etc. that host everything from plays to bands to politicians. Soft seaters can be great venues: a fair number were designed with some acoustic intent and/or treatment, and the better ones are well equipped to support a production company’s infrastructure.
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Whether aging a fine wine or tweaking a speaker design, good things often take a while to develop. During the InfoComm show back in 2012, I stopped by the Alto Professional booth and was taken aback by a preview of the company’s just-unveiled Black Series loudspeakers. I had been aware of Alto Professional since 2000, when the company was first launched. That young company had ambition and good ideas, but seemed unfocused and often embarked on products which, I suppose, had great appeal to overseas customers, yet weren’t always quite in sync with the needs of pro users in North America.
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Like so many of you, I’m a self-confessed mic junkie. And when an interesting new mic comes along, I’m hooked. So last year, at summer NAMM, when MXL unveiled its CR-77 live sound vocal mic, I was definitely interested.
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The V75-40V is the latest digital wireless microphone from Line 6. It transmits in the 2.4 GHz band and features an Earthworks WL40V hypercardioid capsule. It’s made to be used with Line 6’s 2.4 GHz receivers, the XD-V75, XD-V55 and XD-V35, running v2.0 firmware or later. The V75-40V equipped with the Earthworks WL40V capsule is sold a la carte and is not packaged with any particular wireless receiver system.
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One-offs are always an adventure. A Mariah Carey one-off in Lagos, Nigeria turned out to be an ongoing series of adventures. The first arena of activity was the establishment of basic technical communication. Our production manager opened the dialog among all of us on the crew and our contacts in Africa about a month and a half before this event was to occur. We communicated our equipment preferences and awaited a reply from the vendors in Lagos. It took a while to hear back from the production company that was overseeing the event and information was delivered in frustratingly small packets, but what I eventually learned about the FOH audio situation was definitely encouraging.
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FRONT of HOUSE runs this business column because the publisher, the editor and I have all long agreed that all the cool gear and all the technical expertise in the world alone won’t make someone’s career successful, unless that person develops some business chops. Increasingly, the rest of the live-sound universe agrees.
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Death, taxes and monitors are three things that will never go away. Unfortunately, we can’t help you with the first two, but we do have some ideas on how you can create better monitor mixes.
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A correct audio mix in a house of worship usually means keeping a tight rein on the overall decibel level, the SPL (sound pressure level), volume or just plain loudness of a service. But have you ever asked yourself how loud is loud?
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