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My Day with the SSL Live Console, Part 1

Lsst week, I had the unique privilege of spending the day with Fernando Guzman, Solid State Logic product specialist and point man for the Live console project here in the USA. Jay Easley, SSL’s new vice president of live consoles in the Americas, joined us in our listening tests. The SSL Live (solidstatelogic.com/live) is still in its Beta version, and a few hardware and software functions are still “under construction.” However, the desk has evolved enough from its Alpha stage to allow for an honest listening test.

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Live sound is slated to be part of the mix when Blackbird Academy takes wing in Jan. 2014.

A Recording Studio Tackles Live-Sound Education

It’s a tough economic time for music, but if you have to be in that business, live music is where you want to be. While the overall U.S. music industry can expect to see annual growth of just over 1 percent through 2017, according to a recently released PricewaterhouseCoopers industry analysis, the report projects that the concert business will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3 percent through the same period. In other words, live-performance music revenues are projected to be triple those of the music industry as a whole going forward.

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Joy Brown/Shutterstock.com (FOH composite image)

Tetris, Anyone? The Art and Mystery of Truck Packing

Did you ever play the video game Tetris? Tetris was released in the mid-1980s and is reportedly the first video game ever to be exported from what was then the Soviet Union to the United States. It’s one of the most popular video games of all time (even I’ve played it), and has been ported to game consoles ranging from the Commodore 64 computer to Game Boy to the iPhone.

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This installation at Cross Pointe Ministries in Tupelo, MS, added some punch with WorxAudio TL218SS-P double-18 subwoofers (hidden from view) on both sides of the stage.

Subwoofers: The Down Low of Worship

When I first began working in the world of worship, audio subwoofers were not very common in a typical church sound system. However, that was two decades ago. and a lot has changed in worship music. For that matter, a lot has changed in how we all listen to live music in general. The bottom line is that we have more bass frequencies in our music than ever before. Or, perhaps, we just have speakers that will reproduce bass more efficiently and pleasantly.

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Illustration by Andy Au

Above – and Beyond – The Call

As working technicians who do shows night after night, we often become inured to the varied performances that take place on a given stage and, though we can still distinguish the difference between a good and bad concert presentation, our perception of a quality event relies less upon the actual show itself and more upon the excellence — or lack of — the production technicalities.

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The Human Factor

Last month’s InfoComm Show (see report) was a blast. Actually, anytime I’m surrounded with new technologies, new ideas and new gear is an uplifting experience for me, and this year’s expo did not disappoint. Hey, I’m not so far gone that I start drooling over 8-inch ceiling speakers, but there was a great assortment of cool new offerings for sound reinforcement pros. And at least in the milieu of live audio, gear makes the world go round.

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