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Tech Feature: Scene Mixing

Do you remember the 1980s? Riding along in the back lounge of the audio bus, solving the world’s problems and wishing for a console with “total recall.” Those of us old enough remember the massive effort it took to “chart” an analog console so you could “dial it up” on a different desk. Oftentimes, multiple opening acts would share the same console, requiring the “dial up” procedure to happen during set change, which was always nerve-wracking and prone to mistakes. The idea of a console that could recall a complete setup with the push of a button was a “pipe dream” that defined the distant future of audio mixing.

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Feedback and Floor Monitors

Other than dead silence, feedback must be the most hated thing in professional audio. Those little blasts, often at higher frequencies where the ear is very sensitive, disrupt the performance and draw attention to the technology behind it. Feedback has been with us since the speaker first met the microphone, and is something every practitioner of the art has had to face. As long as loudspeakers are returning sound information back to presenters and performers, the potential for feedback will remain. In this article we’ll unpack this pesky beast that forcefully inserts itself into monitor wedges and lapel microphones. We dive into how a monitor loudspeaker’s response can change based on the listening location and how these response changes influence monitor wedge performance.

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Star Plaza Theatre, Merillville IN

Theater Installation Showcase

The FRONT of HOUSE Theater Installation Showcase profiles sound system installations that made a dramatic difference at the following venues: Human Nature Theater, Las Vegas, NV; Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU, NYC; Eisenhower Hall Theatre, West Point, NY; The Rose Theatre, Brampton, Ontario; Palace Theatre and New Victory Theatre, New York, NY; Star Plaza Theatre, Merrillville, IN; Union Theater at LSU, Baton Rouge, LA; McCallum Theater, Palm Desert, CA; Budapest Cultural Centre, Budapest, Hungary.

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JBL CBT Calculator software

JBL Professional CBT 70J-1 & 70JE-1 Line Source Column

A continued resurgence in the popularity of passive loudspeaker columns has encouraged manufacturers to improve the art by providing more than just a straight column of closely spaced mid-range drivers. The ability of columns to project sound with wide horizontal and narrow vertical coverage can outperform traditional point-source enclosures, especially in large, reverberant spaces. At the same time, their tall, slim profile helps them blend into the architecture and virtually disappear.

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Lectrosonics HH Digital Hybrid Handheld Wireless Transmitter

Lectrosonics HH Digital Hybrid Handheld Wireless Transmitter

Lectrosonics offers one capsule for their HH transmitter: the HHC cardioid condenser. It is a warm and crisp, open-sounding element that can be best compared to a C-535 without its HPF engaged. However, OEM wireless capsules with the same thread diameter and pitch can be used, including those from EV, Blue, Earthworks, Heil, Telefunken and many from Shure. Audix, Neumann and Sennheiser capsules can be used with adaptors.

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Radial Firefly Tube DI

Radial Firefly Tube DI: Finding the Bottom

My best Christmas present this year arrived a little late, shortly after New Year’s Day. Radial Engineering president, Peter Janis, contacted me by email and asked if I would be interested in testing a new Radial product. He hoped I could relate my opinions to him before the NAMM Show convened in Anaheim, where he planned to roll out the unit. Upon further reading, the email described a new Radial tube DI box called “Firefly” that was being readied for production. As a devoted user of Radial products including the JDV, J48, and JDI direct boxes plus the Tonebone PZ-Pre, I was definitely intrigued and immediately agreed to take part in the evaluation process.

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MSI Production Services at a warm-weather gig

MSI Production Services

“I’d complain, but it’s a pretty good life,” says Ken Freeman of MSI. “This business has been very good to me and my family, and I am thankful for it.” He smiles and adds: “It sure beats sitting in the office becoming another old fat sound guy.” Freeman is MSI technology sales manager and has been in the audio business since 1986.

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Waves Renaissance Reverb

Waves’ Renaissance Reverb, Part 1

This afternoon, at rehearsal for an upcoming concert showcasing the release of his new CD, Joe Walsh watched me struggling to remember the correct keystroke sequence for taking a screen shot on my Avid VENUE console. Joe asked why I needed the screen shot, and I told him that for the past 10 months I had been writing this column about Waves plugins for FRONT of HOUSE magazine. He then asked which particular plugin would be the subject for this month’s entry. My answer was that I would be discussing the Renaissance Reverb that we are currently using on background vocals.

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Winter NAMM 2012

NAMM Gets More Live Sound

The Winter NAMM Show is all about guitars, drums and Spandex, right? At its core it is a musical instrument trade show — MI, in the parlance of that trade — but over the last few years its pro audio aspect has grown considerably. That component was up 4.4 percent over last year, NAMM’s Scott Robertson estimated, in a conversation in the show’s crowded press room, halfway through the show. And this year, much of that can be attributed to a considerably larger footprint for live sound.

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Triad Music Festival, Greensboro NC

Festival Strategies

Springtime is almost here, and that means festival season is close. Mixing for tens of thousands of people can be as stressful and frustrating as it is exhilarating, given the typically tight time schedule that’s the nature of this beast. A bit of planning can take some of the sting out the process, as can the understanding that (more often than not) such shows are a compromise by nature.

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Easter Extras

There is no doubt that Christmas and Easter are the two biggest and most celebrated holidays in the Christian/Catholic faith. And my church, like many others, always puts on a big production and celebration that reflects the importance of these special holidays. So, here you are with Easter just around the corner, and you suddenly realize that it will take a lot more gear to put on the event that you have planned for your house of worship. So, what are you going to do?

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Illustration by Andy Au

Audio Turn-Ons

An engineer with whom I shared mixing responsibilities had an interesting way of seeing and expressing the technical world in which we audio people exist. To him everything was “sexy” or had “sex appeal” and, depending upon his own personal interpretation, a good mix, or great sounding reverb, was either of the two. While I never quite understood the difference — or if there were one — I would like to believe that he was speaking metaphorically and not literally about objects and things that are sexually neutral. Regrettably, in this ever-expanding world of strange that we call home, I am hard pressed to assume anything about my fellow man despite my unflagging optimism. Regardless, his “sexy” descriptions of sound equipment and their associated sounds confused me at first because as much as I enjoy and like certain audio gear, my lustful urges are oriented elsewhere.

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