Buyer’s Guides

I still consider it the day I went from "band guy who owns a PA" to "fledgling anklebiter sound guy." It was an outdoor festival. Two days. Probably a dozen acts total with canned music in between. I had my small collection of typical rock ‘n’ roll mics and — with the addition of a few more lent by friends — I thought I was set. Things went well until the second day when I discovered that my next act was a magician hired to entertain the kids, and he was pretty pissed that I didn’t have a headset or lav for him.

When people ask me what part of the live event audio world has changed the most in the past three to five years, they probably expect an answer like digital consoles or line arrays. Most would probably be surprised that my answer would be — hands down — personal monitors. They have come a long way since Marty Garcia used some Sony earbuds and denture cream for Todd Rundgren.

I was out on a local gig a few weeks ago and things were going south fast. You know the kind of gig — about 1,000 bands with little to zero changeover time and production managers showing up with stage plots and input lists that have no resemblance at all to the one you were sent when the show was advanced a month ago.

We have been trying to do this Buyers Guide for three years. With the growing adoption and acceptance of digital consoles in the live event audio workplace, a real “have-vs.-have-not” environment had developed for quite a while. Digital consoles are a great tool and increasingly demanded on show riders, but their cost puts them simply out of reach of many — if not most — smaller companies. These local and regional soundcos were stuck either not getting gigs they once did or renting the demanded digital desk.

It has become the standard thing, but it was only about a decade ago that the case that held crossovers, EQ, system level compressors and delay and was known as a drive rack got combined into one digital beast and shrunk into a couple of rack spaces.

Stop and think about it — given all of the nightmares that can happen on a typical audio gig, it is astounding that so many revolve around insufficient, inconsistent or just plain crappy power. And as the Digital Revolution marches on, it becomes even more crucial when you remember that an old analog console will handle inconsistent power levels a lot better than that shiny new digital board.

The stampede of artists moving from screaming wedges to “personal” monitors has changed many of the rules. (Before we go any further and in case you missed it the last 100 times we have explained: Yes, most of us refer to this kind of gear as “ears” or “in-ears” when we’re doing a gig or talking about gear. But both of those terms are trademarked and can only be used officially when referring to the products made by the company that holds the trademark. Hence our compromise term “personal monitors.”)

Our goal here is not to list every piece of gear used when mixing personal monitors. Rather, it is to look at some of the peripheral stuff that makes using them easier. So, you will find no info on earpieces — neither universal, custom-fit — or wireless rigs. Honestly, that is a fight I would rather stay out of, but here is a look at some of the other tools we have found valuable on the gig.

Well, we have officially reached the point where everyone THINKS they need a line array, whether it is appropriate to the venue or not. That being said, the ability to control dispersion can make a small array perfect for house of worship applications. The problem comes in when the church wants a line array, and it actually is the right choice, but they want something small and inconspicuous. Which is where “subcompacts” come into the picture.

This class of portable P.A. gear has gone through some weird twists over the past decade. Not so long ago, the kind of portable powered systems that sit on tripod speaker stands were the norm for smaller gigs, but as technology rocketed forward, the humble speaker-on-a-stick became an “an-klebiter only” tool and was widely dismissed by most in the middle-levels-and-up of the pro audio industry.