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So What Do YOU Want for Christmas?

Holiday Gift Ideas for Sound People

Hopefully we have all survived the annual gastronomical excess known as Thanksgiving, so it’s time to start working on that holiday gift list. If there’s an audio engineer lurking on your list, maybe it’s time to break away from the clichéd multi-tool that always seems to appear under the tree. How many Leathermans or Gerbers does one really need? Plus, one always runs the risk of losing these tools to a lapse of memory that results in sheepishly handing the tool to that smug TSA person who noticed that you hadn’t removed it from your carry-on.

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Many new clubs — such as Fenix, which opened recently in San Rafael, CA — have invested in acoustical control for the benefit of both patrons and neighbors.

Music Studios: A Quality Benchmark For Music Clubs?

When I first took on this month’s column, the editor of this publication counseled me not to write about recording studios in this space. “Live and recorded music are two different worlds,” I was told. Going back that far, it was a sensible admonition: with the exception of a relative handful of professional remote-recording trucks, recorded and live music were for the most part distinct realms. Many — if not most — FOH mixers started out in recording studios, but apart from the basic physics of audio, the differences in skillsets and environmental factors were substantial.

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Fig. 1: A basic passive direct box using a Jensen JT-DB-E transformer, with color-coded hookup wires. Although this has a ground lift switch, other passive DIs may include pad/attenuator or polarity reverse switches and a second 1/4-inch “thru” jack wired in parallel to the input. Image courtesy of Jensen Transformers.

Passive Aggressive: Direct Box Styles, Explained

A lot of people take DI boxes for granted. After all, what’s the big deal? You plug them in, and they work. If not, you rummage through the utility drawer until you find one that does work, and off you go. Most people never give any thought about whether or not they are using the best DI for a given application. Of course, we’re here to help.

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‘Tis The Season to be Mixing

If you’re a regular reader, you know that every holiday season, I give my personal insight and advice. This year I will be doing the same, but I also want to add my views on portable speakers and how I have used them during this time and beyond. The Christmas season (or Hanukkah season for many of you) starts for me right after Halloween. I always have a gig on Oct. 31 and, right after that, I start to schedule my duties for the holiday season. The last few years I have limited my actual mixing commitments to one house of worship on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas day. That said, there are still a lot of potential gigs (mainly holiday parties) leading up to the big day. That is where having a healthy assortment of speakers on a stick (tripod) in my arsenal comes in very handy.

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Illustration by Andy Au

Audio: The Red-Headed Stepchild

In regard to audio, it’s great to be on a concert tour as a band’s engineer, where the gig is all about the music. Monitors or front of house, small or large venues, opening band or headliner — it is still about the music. In venues catering to a musical performance and a music-loving clientele, these rooms and halls are specifically set up to provide for the best possible audio system. Granted, there are those times when the town crier is standing behind the front of house console with the police chief and an SPL meter telling you that the audio is restricted to be no more than 90 dB at the FOH mix position, and you humbly nod your head in agreement while, at the same time, realize that the SPL coming off the stage is 110 dB before the mains are even turned on. Or a specific piece of gear that is crucial to the show is unavailable in a town so remote that you cannot even imagine that anyone in the vicinity has even heard of the band. I am well aware that even in the best of situations, there are technical problems and audio heartaches, but at least it’s still rock ‘n’ roll — or something like it.

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