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Let's Be Careful Out There

When I first heard about the shooting in an Ohio club that took the lives of four people, including the band's guitarist and two crew members, I was horrified–but I must admit I didn't know who DamagePlan was. I figured it was a local club deal where something got terribly out of hand. It's strange how when I found out the next morning that the guitarist was Dimebag Darrell from Pantera, it hit home. I was never a big metal guy or Pantera fan, but I know people who worked for them, and that made it much more personal.

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One Dropped Neutral

When on tour with a major rock 'n' roll band promoting a new record, you are sometimes called upon to pull off extraordinary feats of technical wizardry while keeping your own composure, under physically stressful conditions that might make a weaker being weep like a little girl. This is one of those stories. The names have not been changed as to give the parties involved due credit and kudos.

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Live & Legal Mixing it Up

A little more than a year ago, I wrote about the nascent business of CDs being burned and sold right at the concert venues. It looked as though this would be a new area that would get some early traction–no less than Clear Channel was backing the largest effort.

Last month, I had occasion to write about non-disclosure agreements, which are becoming a fixture in the touring sound business as celebrity outstrips talent and Rolling Stone gets regularly scooped by the Enquirer when it comes to pop star reportage.

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Crossing Over

Frequency crossover networks have been around since the early days of movie theaters. Today we have active crossover networks besides the legacy passive networks for splitting out bands of audio signal to frequency-specific drivers (speakers). This installment of Theory and Practice will go backwards in history by first discussing crossovers, and working through the basics of passive crossover networks for a two-way speaker system.

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Future Sonics

Everyone knows necessity is the mother of invention, so it's not a surprise that Marty Garcia saw an opportunity in 1982 to ease the vocal strain of Todd Rundgren with a change in monitoring techniques. What's not so clear is how he went from setting up monitor wedges one day to putting denture gel and ear buds into Rundgren's ears the next. "That's good," Garcia laughs. "The thing of it is that in my mind, I've always been trying to perfect what I thought was a good audio system."

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Behind the Masque

The minds behind Masque Sound are transforming a bustling business into a booming empire. The veteran audio company, which has a recording studio in New York and a warehouse facility in Orlando, recently moved its headquarters into a 70,000-square-foot warehouse space in East Rutherford, N.J. Already catering to clients locally and nationally–from The Apprentice season finale in Manhattan to the Queen show in Vegas–the multi-faceted operation has brought all its various disciplines under one roof, from theatrical and broadcast to live sound and industrials.

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Carlson and Rat Sound Hit the Road with R.E.M.

How do you do audio justice to a rock legend whose career spans more than 25 years? Well, one of the first and most crucial steps is to surround yourself with people, companies and gear that have proven themselves time and time again. When it came to planning the U.S. leg of R.E.M.'s recently launched 2004/2005 World Tour supporting their latest CD, Around the Sun, this meant handing the ball to FOH engineer Brett Eliason, who in turn joined forces with Seattle-based Carlson Audio Systems to design the

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KA

Debuting in the completely rebuilt 1,951-seat theatre of Las Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel is KÀ, Cirque du Soleil's fifth Las Vegas extravaganza. Created and directed by acclaimed Québécois theatre and film director Robert Lepage, KÀ is one of the largest technical productions ever put together, combining acrobatics, martial arts, puppetry, multimedia, pyrotechnics, an original score and an elaborate sound design by Jonathan Deans. KÀ departs from previous Cirque productions by featuring a strongly defined story with clearly identified characters. Described by Cirque founder and CEO Guy Laliberte as "the most theatrical show we've ever done," KÀ is based on the ancient Egyptian belief in the ka, an invisible spiritual duplicate of the body that accompanies each person through this life and into the next. The tale is told as the saga of separated twins–a boy and a girl–who embark on a journey to fulfill their

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Is Everybody Happy?

Dear Anklebiters,

First, I would like to say that you guys are great. I have learned from and enjoyed your work over the last few months. Anyway, I do not own my own sound company, though I plan to one day soon. I am mainly a Front of House guy, but I can cover any position: stage manger, monitor world, doorman, bouncer, whatever. The only positions I have trouble with are ass kisser and babysitter. This brings me to my question: How do you make everyone happy, when the producer wants one thing, the club owner wants another and the band and their girlfriends want another?

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