In This Issue · honors, the Parnelli Innovator Award. He was -stock and Newport festivals, and such acts as the Beatles, Beach Boys, Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane and many

LOS ANGELES, CA—We have all had to mix house and monitors from the same desk, and it generally sucks. But Bryan Cross, who is handling both mixing and production management duties for the Pusssycat Dolls, has taken a different approach, mixing both from the monitor position. How does he hear the house? Stationed at Front of House, where headliners Black Eyed Peas are mixed, Cross has placed a Neumann KU 100 dummy head—a.k.a. Fritz—feeding a pair of JBL 4328 studio monitors. “I have the dummy head sitting out at Front of House and it’s returning two lines back to monitor world. I’m sending all my monitor mixes pre-fader from the console, using the internal effects, and mixing left/right on the faders and sending it to the house.” For more details, see next month's issue of FOH.

ThE NEws MagaziNE For LivE souNd

May 2006 Vol. 4 No. 8

Don't Cha Wish You Had A Gig Like This?Bryan Cross Takes Pussycat Dolls and Fritz on the Road

Nashville Center Replaces Sound SystemNASHVILLE, TN—The sound reinforce-

ment system at Nashville’s Gaylord Enter-tainment Center was recently replaced with 48 Aero 38A self-powered speakers from DAS Audio’s Aero Line Array family of products. Additional DAS Audio products were also included.

Located in the world’s country music capital of Nashville, Tenn., the stadium’s audio system was upgraded by Durrell Sports, a local and national company headed by John Horrell that specializes in the design and installation of sound rein-forcement systems for large-scale sports arenas and stadiums including the Ten-nessee Titans, Kansas City Chiefs, Indiana Pacers, Vanderbilt University, Bristol Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kansas City Roy-als, Churchill Downs, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Nashville Predators.

For the Gaylord Entertainment Center’s house system, Durrell installed 48 Aero 38As flown in eight clusters in key positions through out the arena. Flown beneath each

Aero 38A cluster, via an AX-COMO flybar, are the DAS Audio’s BiDriver units providing ex-treme directional pattern control in the mid-high frequencies allowing Durrell to reach critical but difficult seating areas. Additional BiDrivers are scheduled to replace existing product under the central score board as soon as the arena’s schedule permits. In ad-dition to the Aero 38A system, eight ST-110 speakers were used to cover acoustically-dark areas and eight Compact 218 Subs provided low-end frequency reproduction.

The Gaylord Entertainment Center was built in 1997 and is home ice for the NHL’s Nashville Predators as well as home field for the Nashville Kats of the Arena Football League.Big Movement in

Freight ForwardingIRVINGTON, NJ—Jon Nevins, former

president of Speed of Sound, a produc-tion and touring cargo freight forwarder, has launched a new freight company, Shockwave Cargo. Speed of Sound owner Michael Fuchs, former chairman of War-ner Music and HBO, has hired Seth Block from the private sector as president to replace Nevins.

Speed of Sound, in addition to hiring Block, promoted Frank Stedtler to vice president and Justin Carbone to VP of sales. Keith Mitchell has been promoted to VP of West Coast operations and Daryl Jones has been appointed to VP of East Coast operations.

“The new management team is fo-cused and we expect a rapid increase in the business with the new personnel and new attitude,” Fuchs said.

Shockwave Cargo is a separate divi-sion of Landstar and will benefit from the client base Nevins brings with him as they launch into an increasingly competitive field.

Commenting on his departure, Nevins said, “It was clear that our at-titudes on the future of Speed of Sound were not [going] in the same direction. I have often heard people say that if they could do things differently, they would change what they had done. I opted to do just that.”

In This Issue:

On the Bleeding EdgeWith the new crop of vocal processors, is live audio mov-ing toward a "fix it in the mix" philosophy?

Product GalleryBig boxes and big amps to move big air. A look at the wonderful world of powered subs.

Theory & PracticeGet your mind out of the gutter. It's just a mic pattern plot.

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LAS VEGAS, NV—The Parnelli Awards Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Bill Hanley, one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most prolific and influential sound pioneers, will re-ceive one of the live event industry’s highest honors, the Parnelli Innovator Award. He was the ears behind such shows as the Wood-stock and Newport festivals, and such acts as the Beatles, Beach Boys, Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane and many more. Hanley even coined the term “sound reinforcement.”

This year’s Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Jeremiah “Jere” Harris, who has been active in Broad-way theatre produc-tion since 1970 and is founder of PRG.

“I’m honored to receive this award,” continued on page 8

Bill Hanley to Receive Parnelli Innovator AwardJere Harris to Receive Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award

Bill Hanley

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What’s HotWhat’s Hot Features

14. FOH InterviewMixer, manager, allergy victim: Jay Phebus shares his tips for how to do it all.

16. InstallationsResurrection Life Church upgraded its audio, and everyone’s singing their praises.

26. Product GalleryFind the powered subwoofer that’s sure to knock your fillings out.

28. Product ProfileThe 411 on the Midas XL8.

30. Producers on the RoadWhat you learn on the road can help you make the most of your transition off of it.

35. Road TestsWhen having a smaller snake is a good thing. FOH reviews the new RSS S-4000 Digital Snake System, then talks about making it thicker with the TC-Helicon VoiceDoubler.

Columns

22. The AnklebitersWhy and when you might not want to go “to 11.”

22. Sound SanctuaryThere is a difference between knowing and walking the digital path.

25. The BizWhy you’re finding out about more and more speaker OEMs in the unlikeliest of places.

32. On the Bleeding EdgeFind ways to make your tools teach even the most tone-deaf Idol wannabes how to stay in tune.

33. Regional SlantsYou’re small, but you want to get bigger.

34. Theory & PracticeGetting ultra-high with wireless mics.

40. FOH-at-LargeInvoking a higher power.

Departments

2. Feedback4. Editor’s Note5. News9. International News9. On the Move10. New Gear12. Showtime37. In the Trenches37. Welcome to My Nightmare

Do It Yourself?

Just read your Editor’s Note in the current issue (“Trust Me,” April 2006). I can relate to exactly what you are saying, and in my experience, have decided to feed the sound guy as little as I can when in these situations. I have been playing, selling, representing, installing and engineering sound systems for more than 35 years. I started the first real, full-time sequence-controlled band in 1985 where we sounded like 14 pieces with only three of us (guitarist, keyboardist and singer electronic percussionist) doing the riverboat house gig in Pittsburgh, Penn. I, as you suggested in your article, ran things from all my modules and instru-ments as though it were a live band and tried my best

to trust about three different sound persons to run our system for more than five years in this way. It worked fairly well, but I had the advantage of playing in the same venue every night, so once I worked out the bugs with him, it always stayed the same.

Now I am back with another sequence-based act doing 60s, 70s and 80s stuff, and our drummer (electronic drums) runs sound from the stage. He has done this for more than 10 years and most of the gear comes in as stereo, and it sounds pretty darn good.

But we occasionally play a venue that has its own sys-tem and sound guy, so we feed him our sequence in stereo (as it does going into our mixer) and I, being the keyboard-ist and some guitars, have decided to rack up my own

gear totally into an 18-space rack case mix system and also send out a stereo feed to the house sound guy. I have found that my blend and mix at my stereo monitor allow me to develop an even blend of gains and tones, sending a equally set post-fader stereo aux send to the FOH, then all I have to be concerned about is whether the sound guy doesn’t overly mess with the his channel EQ. This has worked very well in all but a few situations.

Keep up the good work. I love your magazine and articles.

Ken CoeyEMCO Music & Sound ServicesPittsburgh, PA

Table of ConTenTs

18 Coloring With Sound Carin Ford mics and mixes Broadway’s latest adaptation,

the powerful story of The Color Purple.

24 Queen’s Gambit After a couple decades off, Queen takes to the road with a

new frontman.

May 2006, Vol. 4 No. 8

What’s HotWhat’s Hot

Feedback

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Editor’s Note

By BillEvans

� May 2006 www.fohonline.com

So there I was, sitting in the living room, laptop fired up, reading copy for the issue you hold now. It was about 9 p.m.,

and sadly, in an all-too-common situation, my wife and I were both working on maga-zine projects. Like I said, I was reading, and she was doing design and production on a freelance project that required her to oper-ate in a program she was unfamiliar with.

It was hard to concentrate because it meant ignoring the screaming and swearing coming from the general direction of the area where my wife was sitting. Note that I did not say the screaming and swearing were coming from her, just that they were emanating from that general direction. (Hey, I’ve been married for 18 years; I have learned something along the way.)

What she was trying to do was pretty simple. She was just trying to make some text wrap around a photo—a simple process that she has done thousands of times before. Except she was using another tool, a different layout program, to do it. She tried all the tricks she could think of. We asked people familiar with the program. At one point, we were both looking in a stack of books for the answer.

Things got quiet as she gave up on it for a while and moved on to something else. Sometime later, while doing something else, she got a formatting dialog box on screen and there, at the bottom of the box, were three little words and a check box that changed everything. The words were “Ignore Text Wrap,” and the fateful box was checked.

Turns out she was doing everything right all along, but as long as that box was checked, it just didn’t matter. She had to find that little piece of crucial info before anything else would work.

If you have been reading my stuff for any length of time, you know that my mind does not work in a normal matter, so, of course, this set me to thinking about the importance

of good information. For example, I was road-testing a piece of gear for this issue, a vocal processor that I really liked. One of the inputs on the back was labeled “Voice,” so I assumed that meant there was a mic-pre built in and that I could jack a mic straight into it. But then, I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t do anything until I read the manual and discovered that the “Voice” label referred to the type of processing on that input, not the presence of a mic-pre.

And anyone out there who claims to have never done something similar is—how do I put this nicely?—lying their ass off.

It is one thing to have this happen with a piece of gear. It’s embarrassing, but rarely does lasting damage (unless we’re talking about power distro, in which case all bets are off ). It is quite another thing to be running your business based on incomplete or faulty info.

I know plenty of local and even regional soundcos who operate totally by the seat of their pants. No business plan, no growth forecasts, just a truck and some gear and a “let’s get ‘er done” work ethic.

That work ethic is a good—no, an essen-tial—part of success in this business. But the difference between the guys who work and sweat and really try and end up just scraping by, and the guy who looks like he isn’t really trying all that hard but gets the good gigs and makes the real money is often those business basics.

Recently, a company owner I was talking to bemoaned the fact that he was having a hard time finding a lighting contractor/ven-dor he could count on for the growing num-ber of full-production gigs he was getting. I asked what was wrong with the guy he was using, and the answer was, “He’s too cheap to hire anyone who is any good. He has a bunch of big-hearted guys who are all pretty useless.” Ask the lighting guy, and I am sure he will tell you that he is paying a fair wage.

But his idea of fair and what is being paid in the rest of the local market can’t match up, or he would not have such a problem get-ting good people. That may be cheap or he may just be working with bad, outdated or incomplete information.

Like that Ignore Text Wrap checkbox, not being able to identify where your company has been over the past several years, how it has grown, how that compares to overall population and economic growth on your home turf and what you expect to see hap-pen in terms of number and types of gigs may have you working very hard and not accom-plishing a whole lot. You may even get away with it for a period of time, enjoying great gigs and real growth. But if your information about the market is bad or incomplete, how do you even know what gear to buy and in what or-der? What do you do when you have tapped the credit line for $100K worth of line array, only to discover that what you really needed to stay competitive was a digital console?

It comes down to making sure the busi-ness of your business is taken care of. If you are not the kind of person who is good at, or can stand doing, the biz basics, then hire someone who can. If you don’t, you may find yourself out on fewer gigs and stuck in an office doing work you can’t stand because, well, someone has to do it. If that’s gonna be the case, you might as well be an accountant. And isn’t not having to be stuck in an office doing boring, soul-killing work the reason we all got into this in the first place?

PublisherTerry Lowe

[email protected]

EditorBill Evans

[email protected]

Technical EditorMark Amundson

[email protected]

Associate EditorsAllison Rost

[email protected]

Jacob [email protected]

Contributing WritersJerry Cobb, Dan Daley,

Steve La Cerra, David John Farinella,

Nort Johnson, Ted Leamy, Baker Lee, Tony Mah,

Bryan Reesman, Jamie Rio, Richard Rutherford,

PhotographersSteve Jennings, Bree Kristel

Production ManagerShawnee [email protected]

Graphic DesignersEzra Padua

[email protected]

Josh [email protected]

Bree Kristelwww.breekristel.com

National Sales ManagerPeggy Blaze

[email protected]

National Advertising DirectorGregory [email protected]

General ManagerWilliam Hamilton Vanyo

[email protected]

Executive Administrative AssistantNancy Lopez

[email protected]

Business and Advertising Office6000 South Eastern Ave.

Suite 14JLas Vegas, NV 89119

Ph: 702.932.5585 Fax: 702.932.5584

Toll Free: 800.252.2716

CirculationStark Services

P.O. Box 16147North Hollywood, CA 91615

Front Of House (ISSN 1549-831X) Volume 4 Number 8 is published monthly by Timeless Communications Corp., 6000 South Eastern Ave., Suite 14J, Las Vegas, NV, 89119. Periodicals Postage Paid at Las Vegas, NV and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Front Of House, PO Box 16147, North Hollywood, CA 91615-6147. Front Of House is dis-tributed free to qualified individuals in the live sound industry in the United States and Canada. Mailed in Canada under Publications Mail Agreement Number 40033037, 1415 Janette Ave., Windsor, ON N8X 1Z1 Overseas subscriptions are available and can be ob-tained by calling 702.932.5585. Editorial submissions are encouraged but will not be returned. All Rights Reserved. Duplication, transmission by any method of this publication is strictly prohibited without the permission of Front Of House.

ESTA

ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES &TECHNOLOGY ASSOC IATION

Publishers of...

Ignore Text Wrap…

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News

�May 2006www.fohonline.com

PALM SPRINGS, CA—Typically, when an artist goes out on tour, they contract with a sound company to supply a touring rig. The manufacturer of that rig then promotes the use of their equipment by sending out the usual press releases and hoping for coverage.

Greg McVeigh’s Guesthouse Projects offers a significant spin on the artist/sound company relationship by involving an audio manufac-turer looking for product exposure. Guesthouse Projects, working directly with a manufacturer and a sound company, establishes and nurtures a relationship between those companies and the artist/artist management group.

“In my 25-plus years in the pro audio in-dustry,” says McVeigh, “I’ve had the pleasure of working for top-notch manufacturers and with world-class artists. The right match between the two can produce dramatic results. The manufac-turer gets great exposure for their product, po-tential customers can attend the show to learn more about the gear, and the experience can

provide invaluable input for their engineering and new product development efforts. The art-ist is fronted by top-flight gear, and at the same time, the sound company or management firm has someone to act as a liaison between them-selves and the manufacturer.”

For the past 10 years, McVeigh worked for Meyer Sound, since late 2003 as vice presi-dent of touring sound. While at Meyer, he helped negotiate touring agreements with Norah Jones, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, the White Stripes and Avril Lavigne, among oth-ers. McVeigh’s experience in the pro audio industry also includes work with Soundcraft, QSC, Sound Image and Crest.

Greg McVeigh Matches Gear Manufacturers with Artists CORNWALL, ENGLAND—UK mixer manu-

facturer, Allen & Heath Ltd., has signed a £9m secondary management buyout (MBO) with Close Brothers Growth Capital Ltd. (CBGC), a provider of combined equity and debt fund-ing. The move marks the successful exit of 3i, who backed the original MBO in 2001, and an increase in the management’s stake in the company, giving them majority control.

The MBO team is led by Allen & Heath’s managing director, Glenn Rogers, who has fronted the company since the early 1990’s, along with board members Dave Jones, fi-nance director; Bob Goleniowski, sales direc-tor; and Tony Williams, operations director. Peter Adams continues as non-executive chairman, while James Blake, who led the

transaction for CBGC, will also join the board.The deal is funded by way of a unique

form of single source financing from CBGC, comprising equity and debt, along with eq-uity provided by the management team, who were advised by a team at the Exeter branch of Ernst & Young, with legal advice from Bond Pearce.

James Blake at CBGC commented, “Allen & Heath has a well-established management team with a proven track record of techni-cal innovation. In Xone, they have a market-leading product range chosen by the world’s most discerning DJs. However, it is in mid range live digital mixing consoles under the iLive brand where we anticipate the greatest potential for growth.”

Allen & Heath Signs Buyout

IN BRIEFMcCauley Offers Loudspeakers

ORLANDO, FL—Launching into a new era, McCauley Sound, Inc. is releas-ing the iDESIGN series of powered, mod-ular installation loudspeakers at the In-foComm 2006 show in Orlando, Fla. This launch represents McCauley Sound’s first-ever entry into the powered loud-speaker market.

iDESIGN modules are offered across a wide range of coverage patterns, with driv-er complements scaling from 8- to 15-inch cone drivers. By means of five different, interchangeable, rotatable waveguides, in-stallers can orient systems to the horizon-tal or the vertical, and combine patterns.

Gand Beefs Up Gear List GLENVIEW, IL—Gand Concert Sound

has taken delivery of new Yamaha PM5D RH and M7CL digital mixing consoles and 16 NEXO GEO S loudspeakers, as well as additional GEO T Tangent Array loudspeakers, NEXO CD18 subwoofers and NEXO PS15 stage monitor wedges to join its existing inventory.

Already one of the earliest U.S. sound companies to invest in NEXO GEO T tech-nology, Gand Concert Sound deployed the first arena-scale GEO T-based sound reinforcement system at the Georgia Dome (in Atlanta) in 2003 for a Christian group event/conference.

“This recent expansion of our NEXO inventory comes as a direct result of de-mand from our top clients,” notes Tim Swam, vice president of Gand Concert Sound. Indeed, based upon the success of that initial debut, earlier this year Gand Concert Sound was invited to provide an even larger GEO T system at the Geor-gia Dome for an international corporate show featuring Elton John. The system, designed by Chris Beale, now of CBA U.K., was headlined by a left-center-right con-figuration, including a center array made up of 27 loudspeakers, the largest GEO T column flown to date in the U.S.

“We put that center column up with only two motors, and the whole rig weighed less than 3,000 pounds.” Gand says. “Coverage from the front rows to the top ‘nose-bleed’ seats shared equal clarity.”

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News

� May 2006 www.fohonline.com

GAINESVILLE, FL—Built in 1930, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, affectionately referred to as “the Swamp” by local fans, is the home of the championship University of Florida Gators foot-ball team. Over the years, the stadium has ben-efited from a number of expansion projects, most recently a 2003 renovation that increased capacity to over 88,000 seats, making it the largest—and loudest—stadium in the state.

Griffin Stadium now features a new high-resolution video screen at the south end zone, which is complemented by a state-of-the-art audio system from Meyer Sound. “The most effective solution for the stadium was a single-source end zone cluster,” explains sys-tem designer Kelly Prince of Orlando-based

Pro Sound, who also supplied and installed the system. Prince specified six MSL-6 horn-loaded high-Q main loudspeakers in a split configuration for the main system, with three cabinets covering the east seating section and the other three covering the west section. Two CQ-1 wide coverage main loudspeakers and two CQ-2 narrow coverage main loudspeak-ers handle the areas under the scoreboard.

A key challenge for single-source systems is attaining intelligibility at the far end of the ven-ue, which, in the case of Griffin Stadium, is the south end of the stadium, some 500 feet from the sound system. However, Prince knew that Meyer Sound made a device designed expressly for this purpose: the SB-1 parabolic long-throw

sound beam. Six SB-1 cabinets now assure that every game call and announcement is clearly heard in the south seating area.

“The sound beams are really remarkable,” Prince says. “If you’re sitting out there at the far end with the SB-1s turned off and then we turn them on, it’s like night and day. The sound is right there in your face, and the clarity is amaz-ing.” Six 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers provide ample low-frequency reproduction.

Lacking complete documentation for the stadium, Prince used Meyer Sound’s MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction software in designing the system. “We only had CAD drawings for a portion of the building,” Prince recounts, “so we had to take our own mea-

surements with a laser tape. We plugged the data into MAPP, and it was impressive how accurate the outcome was. It really helped to remove the guesswork.”

“The Swamp” Renovated for Sound

E-P-D’oh!The following companies were ei-

ther inadvertently left out of the Sound or Supplier section in the Event Produc-tion Directory, or their listings contained errors. Our apologies.

A-Line AcousticsBud Mayer510 E. Washington St.Corry, PA 16407P: 814.663.0600F: 814.664.7429E: [email protected]: www.A-LineAcoustics.com

GroupBuilt Concert Production4699 61st St., Ste. HHolland, MI 49423P: 616.335.2733F: 616.335.2521E: [email protected]: www.groupbuilt.com

Production Solutions, Inc.Brett PuwalskiP.O. Box 8146Reading, PA 19611P: 610.374.6998F: 610.374.7284E: [email protected]: www.prod-sol.com

Rolling ThunderRommel Montes-DeOca73 Carolina Ave.Providence, RI 02905P: 401.331.5427E: [email protected]

Sight & Sound ProductionsJon Davis3745 St. Johns Industrial Pkwy.Jacksonville, FL 32246P: 904.645.7880E: [email protected]: www.ssav.net

Stanco Audio SystemJC Girardier5324 Aero Dr.St Louis, MO 63110P: 314.644.5557F: 314.644.5559E: [email protected]: www.stancoaudio.com

Technical ProductionsSteven Vaughn10866 Midwest Industrial Blvd.St. Louis, MO 63132P: 314.644.4000F: 314.644.5600E: [email protected]: www.technicalproductions.com

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News

� May 2006 www.fohonline.com

NEW ORLEANS, LA—Church Interiors Au-dio and Video Inc. of High Point, N.C., recently helped bring back a New Orleans-area church from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina as part of ABC-TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. According to Dan Wood, president of Church Interiors Audio and Video Inc., the recently-minted division of the 25-year-old church furnishings and renovations company was selected from a pool of applicants as subcontractors, donating time and materials for the church’s audio systems, with gear sup-plied by Yamaha, Shure, H.S.A. and Rapco.

Thanks to the show and the efforts of contractors, subcontractors and more than 300 volunteers, the 120-year-old First Eman-uel Baptist Church now has new flooring, a

new church bell, new sanctuary sound system and other repairs.

Although First Emanuel’s brick exterior and stained glass windows survived the hurricane, high winds severely damaged roofs, causing water to seep into the chapel, gym and sanctuary, ruining ceilings, floors and fur-nishings. DonahueFavret Con-tractors Inc. of Mandeville, La., joined with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to renovate First Emanuel as general contractor, while subcontractors were chosen from requests and by referrals.

Wood traveled to New Orleans on Feb. 18 with fellow Church Interiors employee

Todd Lineberry for what became a “four-day installation marathon.” Upon arrival, he and Lineberry met with local Church Interiors Audio & Video representative Rick Freeman and toured the site, made necessary adjustments and

continued on page 39

New Orleans Church Restored on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

DALY CITY, CA—With extended snapshot automation capabilities, improved workflows developed in response to user requests and expanded signal routing and control possibil-ities, D-Show 2.0 gives VENUE users enhanced functionality while maintaining the system’s ease of use. The software upgrade also intro-duces support for two new digital I/O hard-ware options: the Digital Stage Input (DSI) and Digital Stage Output (DSO) cards.

The D-Show 2.0 upgrade includes:Snapshot Preview Mode enables op-

erators to take the D-Show console offline from the audio mix and create, modify, manage, store and view snapshots in their entirety without affecting the currently active mix—useful for building cues during

a rehearsal or performance and for config-uring the console for an upcoming act in a multi-band festival.

Recall Safe allows operators to filter the re-call of any parameter on any channel or output on a per-scene basis using “scope sets,” allowing for real-time adjustments without losing chang-es with a subsequent snapshot recall.

Absolute and Relative Edit Mode enables engineers to make changes to individual con-trols on the console quickly and apply those changes in an absolute or relative fashion across multiple snapshots without affecting other snapshot data.

Enhanced Propagate Mode makes it even easier than before to capture parameter changes after the fact and apply them to one or more snapshots.

Split Fader Banking and Encoder Control

enable faders and encoders between the Main Unit and Sidecar(s) to operate independently which allows users to leave key channels avail-able on one unit while banking channels on another. This has the added benefit of allowing multiple users to operate encoders on different banks of the same console simultaneously.

Channel Strip Copy/Paste enables operators to copy an entire channel or output and paste it to any desired location, accelerating setup.

New signal routing options increase the VENUE system’s flexibility. Operators can now drive plug-ins from Direct Outputs (these ap-pear as input assignments in the Plug-in menu), which can dramatically free up the need for auxiliary effects buses by allowing the user to build numerous variable level parallel process-ing paths from a single direct output.

Stereo Linking/Unlinking of adjacent

inputs to the Matrix/PQ enables users to discretely control the left and right side of any source—including Mains LR—feeding a mono Matrix or stereo Personal Q mix.

Monitor outputs in the D-Show patchbay allows operators to patch audio digitally from the monitor (solo) bus to physical outputs, as well as to plug-ins.

Finally, D-Show 2.0 software introduces support for Digidesign’s new Digital Stage Input (DSI) and Digital Stage Output (DSO) cards, respectively offering eight channels of digital input or output (either AES/EBU or ADAT digital optical interface standard) for the VENUE Stage Rack. These new hardware op-tions enable a direct digital connection from the VENUE live sound environment to digital speaker processors, format converters, effects processors, etc.

Digidesign Announces VENUE D-Show 2.0 Software

continued from front cover

said a sincerely humbled Hanley. “I’m sur-prised—and very happy about it.” Hanley and Harris will receive the awards and acknowledgement of their illustrious work from their peers at the Parnelli Awards Din-ner being held the evening of Oct. 20 in Las Vegas during LDI. Past recipients of the Par-nelli Innovator Award include Bruce Jackson and John Meyer. Past Lifetime Achievement honorees include Patrick Stansfield, Bob See, Chip Monck, Mike Brown and Brian Croft.

“A true eccentric,” said lighting designer Monck, who crossed paths often with Han-ley, including at Woodstock. “Bill is a great concept person, a visionary. He never had a negative word to say, only wanting a stable power supply and a bit more time.”

Hanley was born in Medford, Mass., the eldest of five children. “I was interested in elec-tronics at a very young age, and my father gave me my first crystal set when I was 6.” His love of electronics grew and he began attaching himself to local sound professionals, such as they were at the time—one drove around in a 1937 Pontiac with a platform on it from front to back doing gigs around the Boston area.

In the 1950s, he was building amplifiers and experimenting with speaker design, de-termined to improve the sound he was hear-ing at big shows. He would work for such companies as the Laboratory for Electronics and later Cole Corporation, but “sound was my home project,” he said with a laugh.

During those days, promoters didn’t care about the quality of the sound, and Hanley had an uphill battle convincing them of its importance. Finally, musicians did notice the difference and Hanley was being contracted

by many to provide sound. Brian Wilson was one of the first, and the Beatles used Hanley on their East Coast tour. When Woodstock’s initial site was cancelled, it was Hanley who picked the final location of that momentous event. Also, as a sign of the times, he was be-hind the sound at many of the anti-Vietnam War peace rallies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was arrested for his efforts on one occasion.

Today he’s still involved in the business, though more on the staging side.

Harris comes from a distinguished family of theatre professionals, but has made his own name in more than 500 major produc-tions, including Beauty and the Beast, Starlight Express, Madame Butterfly, EFX and many large-scale corporate events, special events, and trade shows.

“I’m a little taken aback,” Harris said upon hearing the news. “It’s lovely to be recog-nized and honored, but my success is not based on me, but is the result of the team of people I’ve been able to surround myself with. My ‘lifetime achievement’ is that I’ve always hired the best people.”

“Jere Harris has had his feet firmly planted in the dual galaxies of Broadway and touring production since he first burst upon the scene in the 1970s,” Stansfield said. “He’s had the savvy, vision and knowledge to build PRG re-sources large enough to be able to respond to vast seasonal shifts of demand in the showbiz industry while still remaining responsive to the daily needs of individual productions.”

Harris family roots in theatre go back four generations. His great-grandfather was a the-atre manager in England, and his grandfather was a company manager for producer/direc-

tor George Abbot. His father, Joseph P. Harris, is a four-time Tony Award-winning producer of more than 200 Broad-way shows including Chicago. Harris’ mother was an actress seen in such musicals as Guys and Dolls and Silk Stockings.

Harris began his career at 16 in a Broad-way scenic shop. From there, he was named production manager for Theater Now, and in 1982, he founded Harris Production Services. In 1984, he founded Scenic Technologies and developed new scenic fabrication and auto-mation techniques. His Stage Command™ was used in The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, and Universal Studios’ theme park attraction Terminator 2 in 3D, among others.

In 1996, he founded the Production Resource Group (PRG), and in addition to his other companies he brought in additional audio and lighting companies. Today, he has 16 offices in the U.S., Canada and the UK.

“We look forward to honoring Bill and Jere as they should be honored,” said Terry Lowe, executive director of the Parnelli Awards. “We all look forward to praising and thanking them for all they have accom-plished thus far.”

Bill Hanley to Receive Parnelli Innovator AwardJere Harris to Receive Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award

Jere Harris

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200.0605.News.EP.indd 8 4/28/06 3:26:05 PM

International News

�May 2006www.fohonline.com

db Sound Image has added industry veteran Debi D. to their team. Her position with db as tour account manager is backed by more than 15 years in the concert and touring industry. Debi will be based out of the Chicago office of db Sound Image.

Digigram has hired Remi Oudinot, who will be responsible for all marketing communica-tions within Digigram. He has worked previously for a software vendor in business process manage-ment and most recently for a company provid-ing the technology to produce audio guides for museums and cultural centers all over the world, including such prestigious locations as the Empire State Building in New York.

QSC Audio Products, Inc. has appointed Danny Pickett to the position of key accounts manager for cinema. A veteran of the cinema industry, Pickett comes to QSC after several years as manager of DVD audio at 20th Century Fox.

On The Move

LONDON, ENGLAND—Entec Sound be-came the first UK rental company to use d&b audiotechnik’s new J8 (80º) and J12 (120º) line array cabinets along with the new J-SUBs on a major gig—six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the high-profile Teenage Cancer Trust shows.

A dynamic range of international bands and artists included Goldfrapp, Anthony & The Johnsons, Bloc Party, Razorlight, Judas Priest, The Scorpions, The Cure and comedian Ricky Gervais, who opened the week-long event.

Entec Sound has serviced the event for the last six years and seen it grow from a sin-gle night to the six-gig event it is today. Over the years, they have sussed out the nuances of the venue and fine-tuned the art of creating a successful sound design. However, the major sonic challenge still remains—ensuring the system sounds equally as good for the mega-mix of different performance genres—from the spoken word to heavy metal, and every-thing in between.

Entec’s TCT 2006 system was designed by their own Stefano Serpagli in conjunction with Ralf Zuleeg and Jonas Wagner from d&b.

The main left and right arrays comprising 12 J8s and two J12s a side complete with six flown J-SUBs and eight Q1 elements for the outfill hangs. The J-SUBS are a 3 x 18-inch true cardioid sub, two drivers facing the front and one to the rear, with either cardioid or hypercardioid set-tings available on the D12 amp. For this applica-tion, they were used in hypercardioid.

Under the forestage were four d&b B2 subs, running in ‘infra’ mode, adding low end atmospherics into the equation. Serpagli comments, “Running the two different types of subs together is a perfect combination.”

They also flew a single Q7 each side high up on the P.A. pickup truss to take care of the far upstage corners of the balcony and gal-lery. The choir stalls were covered with two Q7s and one Q10 per side.

For ground fills they used a single Q1 (front-fill) & Q7 (outfill) each side, sitting on top of a Q sub—with Q7 repeated at the top of the side-stage stairs position each side. There were also four E3s across the front of the stage.

The whole system was powered and pro-cessed by d&b D12 amplifiers using the lat-est version of d&b’s ROPE C software. It also allows elements like additional HF to be add-ed with the click of a mouse, and individual engineers’ settings to be saved and recalled as and when needed. ROPE C was run from a laptop with a tablet on radio link, which allows system adjustment anywhere in the room.

The new d&b offer a unique rigging op-tion—the correct angles can even be preset whilst they’re still on the floor on their wheels via a locking arm on the back.

Entec supplied a Midas XL4 & H3000 console at FOH, each with a standard rack of outboard effects and inserts containing all the hits and more—Drawmer DS201 gates dbx 160 & 1066 compressors, Lexicon PCM91, Yamaha SPX 990s and KT DN370 as a ‘grab-

ber’ EQ for visiting engineers. The two desks shared a ‘posh’ rack of valve equipment, in-cluding Avalon 737s, DP2044 and Summit TLA100s, plus an Eventide H3000 harmo-nizer and a TC D2 delay. Front of House was babysat by the unflappable Rob Coles for the week, and the majority of bands performing brought their own engineers.

Monitor world was overseen by Simon Higgs, with Midas Heritage 3000 & XL3 con-soles onstage, used in conjunction with Entec’s APW wedges, driven by the new Lab.gruppen 1,200 and 2,400 amps with KT DN9848 processors. System EQ was program-mable KT DN3600s with SPX990 reverbs, dbx 166XL comps & Drawmer DS201 gates for ‘engineer’s toys.

Entec supplied a wide selection of top brand microphones including a Shure radio

system and a Countryman E6 headset, which was used by Ricky Gervais.

Crew boss this year was Steve Phillips, a long-standing ‘Entecian,’ who was assisted onstage by Entec’s Owen McAuley of Entec & Neil Osborne from The Warehouse in Scot-land—who supplied some of the J-Series and valuable back-up to Entec.

The project was managed for Entec by head of sound Dick Hayes, who comments, “Last year, we used the Q-Series system, which went very well—having used C4 for all the pre-vious years. With the advent of the J-Series, I knew that this would be the ideal opportunity to show off the new system.

“From the comments received, it was a wise choice. There’s been a completely posi-tive response from sound engineers, musi-cians, managers, promoters.”

Remi Oudinot

Danny Pickett

New Line Array Cabinets Used at British Cancer Benefit

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200.0605.IntNews/OTM.EP.indd 9 4/27/06 5:11:13 PM

New Gear

10 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

ISP Technologies TriReference Monitor 210

The ISP Technologies TriReference Monitor 210 speakers are high output three-way active speakers whose shape and light weight allows them to be pole-mounted, used as floor wedges and ground-stacked. Their three-way design affords a higher cross-over point (3KHz) and allows use of a 1.75-inch diaphragm driver, which reduces HF rolloff. The dual midrange compression drivers allow for greater resolution in mids, while the use of dual 10-inch woofers results in equal or greater output than a single 15-inch woofer. Standard with the system is a three-channel, 900-watt rms amplifier/electronic crossover that is specifically designed for use with the speaker. This amplifier features ISP’s patent-pending DCAT high-current amplification technology.

ISP Technologies • 248.673.7790 • www.isptechnologies.com

Westone and Gennum In-Ear Sound Design

Developed in consultation with artists, monitor en-gineers and industry professionals, In-Ear Sound Design draws on Gennum’s 33-year history in developing audio solutions and Westone’s nearly 50 years of knowledge and experience in producing custom fit products for the human ear. In-Ear Sound Design enhances the capabili-ties available to the personal monitor user by allowing ambient sound to be mixed with the monitor signal and providing tools to fully customize the response charac-teristics of both sources independently. It incorporates a six-band parametric EQ, multi-band compressor and brick-wall limiter. The patent-pending ear-level micro-phone design provides a spatially-correct stereo image of the environment and allows the wearer to communicate without having to remove the monitors from their ears.

Westone/Gennum DSP • 800.525.5071 • www.in-earmonitor.com

QSC Wideline Installation Line Array

Representing the latest addition to QSC’s Wide-Line family of sound reinforcement components, the new Installation Line Array (ILA) is now shipping. The product group is designed for nightclubs, ball-rooms, performing arts facilities, houses of worship or any other venue seeking professional quality in a lightweight, unobtrusive package. Central to each ILA loudspeaker is a unique 2 ½-way design employ-ing a pair of 8-inch drivers with 2-inch voice coils and neodymium magnets. Both of these woofers provide low frequencies, but only one operates in the midrange, thereby providing far better directiv-ity control in the crossover region. At the high-end, a pair of titanium-dome, neodymium compression drivers with 1.75-inch voice coils and 1-inch exits are mounted upon a multiple aperture diffraction waveguide. In combination, these elements deliver extremely wide coverage (140°) that preserves solid stereo imaging throughout the listening area.

QSC Audio Products, Inc. • 800.854.4079 • www.qscaudio.com

Sound Made Simple iCD

Sound Made Simple iCD is an inter-active computer-based application that uses animation paired with an easy-to-understand presentation that teaches the basic fundamentals of audio and acoustics. Topics covered include Sound & Hearing, Signal Path & Gain Structure, Mixing Consoles, Equalization, Acoustics, Microphones, Signal Processors, Power Amplifiers, Loudspeakers and Cables, Connectors & Impedance. Several of the units include interactive objects that al-low the user to have hands on experience without requiring a full size audio system. The interactive mixing console accurately simulates the look, feel, and function of a real console and incorporates full functionality of the channel and master faders, pan control, and mute buttons while allowing the user to mix real instrument tracks in real time. The price is $149.

Walthall & Associates • 850.478.9002 • www.soundmadesimple.com

JBL Professional VRX915M Stage Monitor

With a 375mm (14.75-inch) stage height and the use of the latest neo-dymium JBL transducers, the VRX915M is compact and lightweight. Its compact size and low profile provides minimal obstruction of audience sightlines, while a 2265H-patented Differential Drive woofer handles 800 watts (continuous) and the 2452H, 4-inch voice coil com-pression driver, coupled to a 50° by 90° aluminum horn, provides highs. Bi-amp or full-range passive operation can be selected via a recessed, high-current switch mounted alongside the NL4 input connector in one of the handle cups. An additional NL4 connector is mounted in the other handle cup for a loop-thru connec-tion, minimizing cable runs on stage. The enclosure of the VRX915M is constructed of Baltic birch plywood and coated in JBL’s DuraFlex finish. It is a symmetrical 30° wedge design, with four non-slip rubber feet per side enabling convenient left and right applications of adjacent monitors.

JBL • 818.894.8850 • www.jbl.com

Professional Wireless Systems Helical Antenna

PWS, the Professional Wireless Systems Division of Masque Sound, has introduced its next generation Helical Antenna. The HA-8089 is designed to provide drop-out free performance for personal moni-tors, wireless microphones and in-tercom installations. The HA-8089 will transfer maximum RF energy regardless of the polarization of the transmitted wave. As the RF energy radiates out of the Helical, it is continuously spun through 360º of polarization, millions of time per foot and actually bores through space as it propagates. This ensures uniform coverage yielding crystal clear audio and eliminating drop-outs. The compact 13-inch high unit features a sturdy 13-inch base, weighs less than 4 pounds, is molded from polycarbonate and includes a protective trim ring. PWS also supplies an alumi-num mounting block threaded for both 5/8-27 and 3/8-16 (Euro) mic stands. A custom model for frequencies lower than 490 MHz is available by special order. The price is $499.

Professional Wireless Systems • 407.240.2880 • www.professionalwireless.com

Martin Audio LE Monitor Series

This high-performance monitor is designed for large-stage applications where maximum SPL is required. It features twin, high-specifica-tion 12-inch (300mm) low- frequency drivers, a 6.5-inch (165mm) midrange device and a 1-inch (25mm) exit com-pression driver mounted on a differential dispersion horn. Differential dispersion tech-nology increases the area over which a constant SPL and con-sistent frequency response is maintained at ear height, enabling the artist to move around more freely. The LE1500 is a compact stage monitor that combines high output and controlled dispersion with a discreet, contemporary design. It features a high–specification 15-inch (380mm) low-frequency drive unit and a 1.4-inch (35mm) exit compression driver mounted on a differential dispersion horn. Finally, the Martin Audio LE1200 is an ultra-compact, high-performance stage moni-tor combining maximum enclosure volume with an optimum presentation angle in a low profile, contemporary design. It features a high-specification 12-inch (300mm) low frequency drive unit and a 1.4-inch (35mm) exit compression driver mounted on a differential disper-sion horn. As with all the monitors, the rear curves of the cabinet are a single, extremely stiff, pressed and precisely machined beech laminate panel, and the hardwood front rail ensures the cabinet is extremely rigid, tough and acoustically neutral. Left- and right-handed ver-sions are available to facilitate use in pairs. The new monitors are optimized for use with the Martin Audio DX1 controller to provide crossover, limiting and EQ functions. When operated in passive mode, they may be used without a controller, but benefit from the EQ and limit-ing functions of the DX1—this also ensures that both active and passive configurations will exhibit the same tonal balance when used together.

Martin Audio • 519.747.5853 • www.martin-audio.com

200.0605.NewGear.JH.indd 10 4/27/06 5:12:04 PM

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200.0605.Ads.ss copy.indt 11 4/27/06 4:53:36 PM

Showtime

VenueFontejau Arena, Girona, Spain

CrewSoundco/Provider: Ready So & Llums S.L.FOH Engineer: Xavier CorbelliniMonitor Engineer: Carlos MartosSystems Engineer: Tomas PazProduction Manager: Enrique Girona

GearFOHConsole: Midas Heritage-3000, Midas Heritage-2000

Speakers: 16 x EV XLC 127+Amps: Crown VZProcessing: EV Dx38Mics: Shure, AKG, SennheiserPower Distro: LinkRigging: Verlinde

MONConsole: Midas H-3000, Allen & Heath ML-5000Speakers: EV Xw12Amps: CrownProcessing: BSS

VenueAragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL

CrewSoundco/Provider: Gand Concert Sound, Glenview, ILFOH Engineer: Rob Laseau, K Paz, FOH=Roberto SalasMonitor Engineer: Garrett LaneSystems Engineer: Joe PeronaProduction Manager: Tim SwanTour Manager: Oscar NaranjosSystem Techs: Adam Rosenthal

GearFOHConsole: Yamaha PM4000

Speakers: 22 x NEXO Geo T 4805 + 2 2815 and 12x NEXO CD18 SubwoofersAmps: 16 x Camco Vortex 6, 6 x Camco 200VProcessing: NEXO NS242Mics: Shure, EV, AKG, Sennheiser, Radial DIsPower Distro: Motion LabsRigging: NEXO,CM Hoists

MONConsole: Midas Heritage 3000Speakers: 16 x GCS Superwedges 4 x NEXO PS15s, 6 x GCS GX3 Hipacks, 3 x GCS GSL subsAmps: Crest Pro8001Processing: Klark Teknik DN360s, NEXO NS242sMics: Shure, EV, AKG, Sennheiser, Radial DIsPower Distro: Motion Labs #2

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VenueFelix Event Center, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA

CrewSoundco/Provider: Audio SpecialtiesFOH Engineer: Ario Pena, BE:Ryan RettlerMonitor Engineer: AJ Williams BE:MarcusSystems Engineer: Steve OsterbergProduction Manager: Jared WellsSystem Techs: Ellie Ash, Jon Dingman, Andrew Pratt

GearFOHConsole: Yamaha PM5D

Speakers: 8 x EAW KF750, 8x EAW KF755, 6 x EAW SB750Amps: QSC Powerlight & Powerlight Series 2Processing: BSS OmnidriveMics: Sennheiser KM184, E604, AKG C1000, MD421, Shure Beta52, SM57, SM58, A-T ATM25, Radial JDI DIsPower Distro: Motion LabsRigging: ATM

MONConsole: Yamaha PM5DSpeakers: KF650 sidefills, EAW SM200, Sennheiser IEMsAmps: QSC PowerlightProcessing: EAW MX8750

Audio Adrenaline with Tyrone Wells & This Holiday Life

Carlinhos Brown

K Paz, Montez, Los Yonics, Los Elegido, Los Diferentes De La Sierra

200.0605.Showtime.BK.indd 12 4/27/06 5:24:12 PM

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VenueLincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

CrewSoundco/Provider: SineWave Audio Inc.FOH Engineer: Rob Ranahan, Bill SmothersSystems Engineer: Matthew EwingSystem Techs: Jakob Adam, Stephan Seals

GearFOHConsole: Yamaha PM3500

Speakers: 8 x JBL VerTec VT4888, 4 x EAW SB1000, 3 x JBL VRX932 as frontfillsAmps: 4 x Lab.gruppen for line arrays, Crown MA-5000 for subsProcessing: 2 x XTA DP226Mics: Shure, AKG, Audio-TechnicaPower Distro: Motion Labs

MONSpeakers: 8 x EAW SM500Amps: 8 x Crown

Missionsfest 2006

VenueShaw Conference Centre, Edmonton, AB

CrewSoundco/Provider: Axe Productions, Inc.FOH Engineer: Chase TowerMonitor Engineer: Brad WarchukSystems Engineer: Chase TowerProduction Manager: Kelly KimoSystem Techs: Brian Metcalf

GearFOHConsole: Yamaha PM4000-48C, Midas Verona 480

Speakers: EV XLC 127+, EAW KF853, BH853, SB850Amps: EV P3000, QSC PL1.8, 2.0HV, 4.0Processing: EV Dx38, BSS FCS-960, Roland SDE-3000, Yamaha D1500, SPX-1000, REV-500, REV7, dbx 166XL, 903, Aphex 612, 105, Drawmer DS404 Mics: Shure, AKG, Sennheiser, Audio- TechnicaPower Distro: Motion LabsRigging: 10 x CM Lodestar 1-Ton Motors

MONConsole: Crest Century 32x12, Mackie SR24-4Speakers: Proprietary (15”, 2”)Amps: Yamaha H5000Processing: dbx DriveRack, dbx 2231Power Distro: Motion Labs

UB40 Hawaii Tour

VenueWaikiki Shell, Swingzone, MACC, Maui, HI

CrewSoundco/Provider: Hawaii Pro Sound & Video RentalsFOH Engineer: Adam ScottMonitor Engineer: Gonzo Smith, Martin HuttSystems Engineer: Billy Kam, John KendrickProduction Manager: Rick SmootTour Manager: Jimmy InnesSystem Techs: Chris Waidzunas, Joe Arias, Bully Soares

GearFOHConsole: DiGiCo D5Speakers: NEXO Geo T, CD18 SubsAmps: Camco Vortec 6.0Processing: NEXO 241, Summit, TC EQ StationMics: Shure KSM32, SM58, Beta98, Beta56Power Distro: Motion LabsRigging: Lodestar Motors

MONConsole: DiGiCo D5Speakers: Clair 12AM, Shure PSM700Amps: Clair, Carver

Easter Sunrise Service, Capital Church, McLean, VA

Chris Tomlin Indescribable TourVenueThe Classic Center, Athens, GA

CrewSoundco/Provider: Spectrum SoundFOH Engineer: Mark V. ThomasMonitor Engineer: Tommy KinnairdSystems Engineer: Adam DuncanProduction Manager: Brian York

GearFOHConsole: Digidesign VENUE

Speakers: d&b Q-Series, B2, C7, E3 Amps: d&b D12Processing: d&b ROPE CMics: 3 x Shure UHR w/ KSM9 capsulesPower Distro: Spectrum SoundRigging: 4 x CM Loadstar 1-ton

MONConsole: Yamaha PM5DSpeakers: Shure PSM 700, Sensaphonics

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200.0605.Showtime.BK.indd 13 4/27/06 5:25:36 PM

FOH Interview

14 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

Live engineer Jay Phebus is a lucky man. He has been mixing a band he loves, King’s X, for more than two decades.

Since 1984, when King’s X was still a Mid-western circuit band, he has been their soundman, and by the early ‘90s he had also taken over as their tour manager follow-ing a string of short-lived TMs, which has made his job challenging, to say the least. While attending the University of Mississippi Phebus originally intended to enter the Air Force, but allergies prevented his admission into the flight program, so he answered the call when King’s X—bassist/vocalist Doug Pinnick, guitarist Ty Tabor and drummer Jerry Gaskill—needed help and left school. Since then, he has toured the world with them, from headlining club gigs to opening slots for AC/DC. During downtime, he has mixed other artists, including Stevie Wonder, Verti-cal Horizon, Eric Gales, Galactic Cowboys and George Thorogood.

What makes Phebus’ story all the more inspiring is that he has no formal training as a soundman. Everything he has learned has been through hands-on experience. He says he has an affinity for computers and would have jumped into that world after college had the timing been right. But after being on the road with King’s X for a decade, the band decided to start delving into computers with 1994’s Dogman album. Ironically, rock ‘n’ roll brought Phebus to where he would have gone anyway.

Phebus spoke to FOH just prior to the start of the recent King’s X tour, and he went in-depth about the art of juggling jobs and the joy of mixing, along with great product endorsements.

FOH: So how do you balance your schedule with King’s X and other bands?

Jay Phebus: As soon as our touring schedule dropped to the point where it did

after we were signed, every year, I’ve done something else. Last spring, I did 10 weeks with Steve Vai, then also continued over to Japan immediately following the U.S. com-pletion. There are times when it works where I’ll hop off a plane on Sunday, on Monday go to a festival, then hop right up with King’s X. Two years ago, I finished King’s X, stayed in Houston a day, then hopped a plane to Europe for Anthrax. It dovetails together like that. There are so many big gaps in the King’s X schedule that I’ll do assorted other touring. I’ve been doing that for years.

So you do two jobs at once?

Yeah, and I’ve done that with a lot of other bands. I talked about that with Steve Vai and his manager last year. He realized that I’m do-ing two jobs, and there are going to be sacri-fices, and there’s no way that it cannot be that way. The jobs overlap. One of the main things is, typically, when you’re mixing the show, the tour manager is doing business with the pro-moter and settling the show. I can’t do that. That’s one of the main conflicts.

The other thing is all during the afternoon, when the tour manager’s taking care of all the problems, the sound engineer is doing sound check and getting things working with sound, so that causes problems as well. There will be times when the crew’s waiting around for you to do sound check. “Where’s the sound guy?” “Well, the tour manager’s got him detained at the moment.” Those are the kinds of things that are hectic and frustrating.

What advice would you give to somebody who’s attempting to take on both roles?

You’ve got to have an understanding of the band and crew, and you yourself have to have a lot of patience. I remember one time

last year when I was out with Steve, I had two bus drivers in the front lounge, which I take over and make a mobile office with my lap-top and printer. I intentionally went on that tour with a full digital console so I could get away with going in there 15 minutes ahead of time, so as soon I was plugged in, I was 90% of the way there. I didn’t have any ef-fects to patch up, no inserts. Everything was built into the console. I had to economize my time. You have to be creative to make those types of things work.

Anyway, Steve comes up and wants to go the gym, and I’m going, “I’m right in the middle of taking care of our receipts with our bus drivers. I haven’t even set foot in the venue to get sound check on the way.” He just looked at me and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get Dave [the production man-ager] to take care of it.” He realized it was one of those conflicting times where if you’re the man and want me to take care of it, I’ll drop everything, but I’ll let you make an educated decision as to where you want me to be spending my time and energy right now.

There are times when it gets even more complicated than that. There are more things that you’re involved with at one time. There is no telling how many times throughout King’s X’s tour career that I’ve been at Front of House—and I know it gets frustrating for the guys because I’m taking care of assorted different business with the tour manage-ment—and I’ll have phone calls that stop sound check. A lot of times I just want to get a voicemail, but during certain times when certain critical things are coming up and there is time-sensitive business that I have to take care of, sound check will come to a grinding halt. We’ve all been doing this for so long that it’s old hat for us now. Starting out or working with new clients doing that sort of thing can be trying and testing at times. I have to admit that there were times out on the Vai tour where it was quite difficult. The longer you do it and the more patience

everyone involved has when you’re doing something that of nature, the better it is.

So on this current King’s X tour, what console are you taking out?

I’m taking the Allen & Heath GL3800, the newest generation of the 32-channel mainframe. I’ve used Allen & Heaths before, so I was very familiar with it, and this was the newest line that they had out. I am hoping to get a chance to take out their new digital console out as well. It’s just now hitting the road, although it would be way more than I need for what we’re doing.

At this point, I have other endorsements with outboard gear. Paul Snyder at Four Star Wire and Cable does all our cabling. That’s one of the main things that’s helped us have consistency and quality night in and night out. It makes such a huge difference. When you go into a gig, and you’re relying on them for mic cabling, drum looms, a snake or what-not…Paul and his products are fantastic. He’s trying to do an article with Jerry about the new drum loom. He came out to our show last year. We’ve been using his drum loom for the past couple of years.

As a matter of fact, I called Paul up and took out an entire stage-wiring kit with Vai. He has really nice cable bags that really haven’t even hit the market. I don’t think anybody’s really tapped into that. They’re like round canvas bags that you can roll up and put all your assorted cabling and looms and whatnot from the stage. It’s an incredibly good way to keep track of all your cabling, store it, transport it, everything. That’s made a huge difference. When I get to a gig now, I don’t have to worry about whether their outboard gear works. The last piece of the puzzle was having my own console, so when that came into play, I’ve got my own rack and my own cabling to integrate into things.

XBy BryanReesman Jay PhebusThe view from FOH

Jay Phebus: The Art of Juggling with

King’s

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There was one time I had a rash of bad consoles. It was one of those boiling points, and I had had more than I could take. I was tired of these piece of crap consoles day in and day out. It was very, very frustrating, so when we got together with Rob Joseph—a close friend and colleague of mine who’s an independent rep in the Midwest for Alesis, V-DOSC, Lake Audio and dbx—he got me hooked up with Gabe at American Music & Sound [exclusive U.S. distributor of Allen & Heath]. On the last tour, he knew my situa-tion. We had had a previous endorsement for a monitor rig with some processing and a console that we ran PMs through. It only lasted about one or two legs of a tour and started developing a whole lot of problems.

Basically, a couple of days before we took off on the last tour, he gave me Gabe’s number and thought he got us a Front of House console. To be honest with you, I hadn’t had a long-run experience with Allen & Heath, but that console is as clean as anything that’s out there right now, and I’ve gone head-to-head with many consoles. The odd thing is that a lot of these venues we’ve played year in and year out got new consoles. Great, I get my own console, and they get a new console, but I still would run all the house consoles straight through my console. It only took a couple of brand-new Soundcrafts or brand-new Midases, and my console was every bit as clean or cleaner than theirs. I realized that I’m already pre-dialed in, so we ran through my console. That’s how we ran the whole tour. It’s just a well-oiled machine at this point.

All I ask for from the venue is that the stuff works. At this point, all I’m asking for is the drive line. Racks and stacks, because I’m bring-ing everything else. Your board doesn’t even have to work. I just need the snake to get to the stage, and the amps, cabling and speak-ers to work. I’ve eliminated it all to that. I don’t care if any of your microphones work. I don’t care if you don’t have any mic cables. You don’t need even to have mic stands. We bring our own. Usually, when King’s X is leaving, the crews are going, “Dang, I wish every band was like this!” We’re packing so much gear, we’re virtually self-contained. We’ve done it in the way it should be attacked sonically. Then again, King’s X is a musician’s band. You want to hear what they’re doing. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got flash pots or if their makeup is right tonight or they’ve got that leather jacket on. The show is them and their talent, which is cool. I dig that about them. And I love my job mixing. It’s my passion.

So how much changes every year with King’s X?

It doesn’t really, per se. We start up next week. My console’s been packed up in a case in a trailer. We’ll have a reference point where we started from last time. The guys are constantly evolving their rigs. We have beyerdynamic, another huge piece of the sonic puzzle. Beyer has been there for us year in and year out, and Paul Froula, our rep that’s there now. They even had us for an appear-ance and signing at their booth at NAMM this past January.

Beyer is crucial. We have every mi-crophone we ever need and then some. Sonically, it’s an excellent product, and the consistency night in and night out is just a night and day difference from 10 years ago when we didn’t have all these pieces of the puzzle in place. It was the same thing with Vai. I got my cabling endorsement from Four Star and brought all my beyer mics as well, so I had a big consistency night in and night out, which is a wonderful thing to have.

Each of my guys has endorsements that have been supporting us for several years. All of them are an important ingredi-ent for our consistent and superb sound. Steve “Doc” Dachroeden at AMPEG is Doug’s

longest-standing endorser. Tony Pinheiro at DR Strings has supported Ty and Doug for years. They won’t play anything else. Rich Mangicaro at Piaste Cymbals is one of our longest supporters. Jerry loves their cym-bals, and I don’t know what we would have done without them. Ken Dapron at Yamaha Guitar Development, and John Gedusi, our builder, have also supported Ty and Doug for years with guitars and basses. They’re

second to none! As you might have already no-ticed, we only endorse products that we actu-ally use and love. King’s X has always stood for integrity and quality, from the music they write to the products we endorse.

“All I ask for from the venue is that the stuff works. At this point, all I’m asking for is the drive

line. Racks and stacks, because I’m bringing everything else. Your board doesn’t even have

to work. I just need the snake to get to the stage, and the amps, cabling and speakers to work.”

-Jay Phebus

Monitor console

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Installations

16 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

At a time when churchgoing world-wide is on the decline, the strato-spheric rise in attendance at Resurrec-

tion Life Church in Grandville, Mich., makes for a real study in contrasts.

Under the leadership of senior pastor Duane Vander Clok since 1984, this nonde-nominational Christian church has gone from 400 or so parishioners to serving thousands each weekend in every demographic—adults, children, teens, college-age, the elderly, as well as Spanish-speaking members from one main church campus and two satellite campuses. At present, weekend attendance hovers around 8,000 people, which puts them into the top 100 churches in the nation for attendance.

In response to this kind of growth, the church walls had to expand as well. After mulling over growth plans for years, and really getting down the nitty-gritty for three—this newly-finished church expansion added 212,000 square feet of new space, features a 4,200-seat Worship Center with broadcast capabilities, a new 40,000-square-foot, two-story structure that will serve as a nursery for babies and children up to 5 years old, as well as a bookstore and café. The Resurrection Life Church facilities now total 332,000 square feet of space.

This congregation views music as a very important part of their worship service. With a greater attention toward quality of sound, the church debuted their new Worship Center replete with a new million-dollar sound system on March 25 and 26 during what was termed a “soft opening” weekend.

Over the course of event, more than 14,000 people came to attend services. The church dedication weekend is scheduled for April 29 and 30.

“Our pastor here has a vision and gave us the go-ahead to get in and get it done and make the sound the best we could make it,” said Ken Reynolds, director of the Worship and Creative Arts Department. “Our music is pretty aggressive—probably more than most churches—and we needed a sound system that could handle that,” Reynolds said. By “aggressive,” he basically means that the church performs contemporary reli-gious music in a church setting rather than traditional hymns accompanied by piano and organ. “We have full keyboards, a full brass section, guitar—the whole spectrum, we needed to be able to reproduce that,” he said. They also have a 250-member choir.

Reynolds remarked that when the debut weekend was over, people commented on how “crystal clear” everything sounded. “It’s like they could hear everything, every little detail,” he said.

And if you’ve got the idea that it’s only about music, you’re not thinking big enough. “We have pretty diverse services,” Reynolds said, telling a story about one service where

By LindaHutchinson

The Sound of SacredMichigan’s Resurrection Life Church gets an audio upgrade and much more

House Speakers: 15 x L-ACOUSTICS KUDO,11 x L-ACOUSTICS SB218 Subwoofers, 19 x EAW UB82e, 12 x EAW AX396, 1 x EAW MQH1346e, 8 x EAW AX396, 8 x EAW MK5394

Amplifiers: 19 x Crown CTS-2000,10 x Crown CTS-1200, 2 x Crown CTS-600, 9 x Crown CTS-4200, 5 x Crown I-Tech 6000, 1 x Crown I-Tech 4000

Speakers: 4 x EAW SM200, 4 x Community M12-RB, 4 EAW MK2300 Choir monitors (flown overhead)

Personal Monitors: 12 x Sennheiser ew300IEM G2 (Shure E2 & E3 earbuds), 10 x Shure PSM700 (Ultimate Ears cus-tom ear molds)

Stacks & Racks

MicsMics: 14 x Shure UR systems (1 bodypack, 6 Beta 87C, 4 Beta 58), 5 x Shure U4-D receivers (6 U2/Beta 58 and 4 U2/Beta 87C), 2 x Sennheiser SKM5200-BK w/Neumann KK105 capsule and EM3032-U receiver

Mic Locker: 4 x beyerdynamic M 88 TG (brass section), 4 x Sennheiser MD441 (brass section), 8 x Neumann KM184 MT (choir mics), 1 x SCX25A-PS stereo piano mic kit, 1 x Sennheiser e901 (kick drum), 8 x Shure KSM32/CG condensers (drum/percussion overheads, misc.), 1 x Yama-ha subkick (for kick drum LF extension), 2 x DPA 4066-F, 1 Audio-Technica ATM-23HE (snare drum), 2 x Audio-Technica 897 shotgun microphones (crowd mic for broadcast audio), 1 x AKG C 451 (high-hat), 4 x Shure Beta 98 D/S (toms), 1 x Sennheiser MD421 (Leslie speaker top), 1 x Shure SM7 (Leslie speaker bottom), 2 x Shure Beta 56 (congas, misc. percussion), dozens of mics were brought from existing facility—Shure Beta 57s, 58s, 4 x AKG 414s, as well as many SM58s and SM57s

(L to R) Cliff Rosenberg and second audio man Ed Ensink at FOH

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17May 2006www.fohonline.com

an artist was positioned onstage with easel and brush, painting a picture. “We expanded the scope of this department, to include mu-sic, dance, even art,” he said. “Our reasoning for that is that some people are touched by music, others are touched by movement and dance while others are moved artistically—so why couldn’t that also be an expression of worship?”

“This church has grown so much in the last few years, it’s just amazing,” said Cliff Rosenberg, technical director. He, along with assistant Israel Ruiz and about 20 key volun-teers, is what ensures sound as well as quality at the church and two satellite campuses where church services are held. “I’m basi-cally the audio leader, but there are many volunteers working every weekend,” he said, quick to emphasize that it takes many to get the entire job done. “I don’t do all the nuts

and bolts myself. I’m more of the ‘vision’ guy; there are many people other than myself who are clearly dedicated to making the church a better place.”

Rosenberg, himself a musician, was one of several key people to help this church form its audio identity. After he and his wife, Lori, moved to the area from Texas, Rosenberg did a careful job of shopping around for a church that suited them, finding Resurrection Life Church. He started as a part-time drummer in the church band, and slowly got involved in other duties in 2001. At that point, just a couple of guys helped with audio at the church. Rosenberg volunteered on projects here and there until finally, in 2003, he was asked to take a paid position. Lori now works at the church as an assistant to Ken Reynolds.

Rosenberg served as the main audio coordinator for the expansion project and, with help from Acoustic Dimensions, Texas,

was given the very daunting task of select-ing all the audio equipment for the church expansion project.

“Acoustic Dimensions is one of the best consultants in the business for churches, it’s a big part of what they do.” Rosenberg said. “We really felt that when CEO Craig Janssen came to give a presentation, he really took time to really listen to our people on the leadership team. It’s very difficult to make people feel like you’re their only customer, but that’s the way they made us feel. They caught a vision of the way we wanted to do things, and they ran with it.”

When it came to making choices, “I wanted to stay in line with the vision of the church, but when it came to the equipment selection, I really wanted to look at things with the future in mind, along with the amount of finances that we had,” to get the best possible system, he said.

Acoustic Dimensions’ Robert Rose served as project manager on the job. “People who work in audio have opinions—and many of them have strong opinions—but we saw very eye-to-eye with Cliff, which made things work out really well,” Rose said. “He was looking for a very straightforward, reli-able but very robust system. He’s extremely

technically competent, but at the same time, he didn’t want—or doesn’t get lost in—the need to have the latest and greatest ‘gee-whiz’ gadget. He knows he’s going to spend as much time on system upkeep and setup and just mundane things. So the system was designed with a bit more of a ‘road’ mentality than some of the permanent installations that we’ve done.”

Road Mentality?The main sanctuary originally

had an analog console and basic speaker system, and that was about it. “They have some ex-tremely talented musicians at the church. And those kind of people are the type who push systems to the very edge, and they demand a certain level of quality. They simply outgrew the system,” Rose said. Add to it that this church does sev-eral services with music a week.

One of several customized designs crafted by Acoustic Di-mensions’ Ryan Knox, who did all the audio design and detail work

on the project, the setup onstage—from a connectivity standpoint—is more like a touring setup. The platform has a lot of multi-conductor snakes, stage boxes, things that road shows

use. “Permanent installs don’t use these kinds of things as often,” Rose said. So Rosenberg now is able to set up multiple bands without unpatching or disconnecting anything. “He can set up his midweek service and a com-

pletely separate set of inputs and not disrupt what he’s got set up for a Sunday service,” he said.

Rosenberg was very keen on acquiring DiGiCo consoles, one for Front of House, another for monitors and another in the production room. And any one console can run the entire system. “DiGiCo has a very interesting product, and it’s the only one I thought really had the capability to do what we wanted it to—serve us in every room—and feel like I wasn’t making a big compro-mise in one part,” Rosenberg said.

Each console is a different size and makeup, geared to its individual space, but, said Rose, “From a user standpoint, they operate in a very similar manner, so training on them is pretty straightfor-ward.” Because these machines run on a MADI system, an AES standard digital format with 56 chan-nels of audio on a single coax cable, at Front of House and in the studio, Cliff is able to take MADI and go into a single record-ing device. “So, from an infrastructure and termination stand-point, that made things really simple,” Rose said. And, they can use DiGiCo stuff with other third-par-ty, MADI-compatible equipment.

The consoles are capable of 160 chan-nels of mix down and are interconnected with CobraNet, a fiber-optic ring, as opposed to traditional copper

snakes. They have two full Pro Tools HD accel rigs and 96 tracks of Votari hard disc in the broadcast room that Rosenberg uses just to catch the worship services. “When we bought those machines, we knew we could

bounce all those sessions all out to Pro Tools and after that, remix every-thing in Pro Tools or move them out in the opposite direction and not lose anything,” Rosenberg said. “I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to test out

some of this bidirectionality!”Interestingly, Front of House is centrally

located in Worship Center room. Literally. “I’m actually standing at the same level as the audience and mixing from among them,” Rosenberg said. “And I really want to be a part of it, right there.”

Another key element Acoustic Dimen-sions pushed for was an acoustical change in the room itself. “The room was pretty dead; it just wouldn’t respond,” Rose said. “There was no ceiling, per se, so there was concern

that people wouldn’t even be able to hear each other sing.” Now, acoustical panels hang from the roof deck to help provide some sound return to the congre-gation.

“There are a surprising number of musicians in this church,” Rosenberg said. “You can’t do a big audio upgrade in a church that doesn’t have, as a part of its vision, to reach people through music, specifically church music.” As an audience member, or when someone’s playing on stage, “it’s an incredible mo-ment between you and God,” he added. “People are trying to give something back to God, here’s what I’ve trying to convey to my guys: We may be back here pushing buttons, but we’re also a part of all that as well. It’s a

completely symbiotic relationship.”

House Console: DiGiCo D5 “Live” 112EX (Dual power supplies, 5 DSP cards, dual MADI cards, ST optics for Optocore I/O), DiGiCo I/O rack w/24ch Analog IN, 16ch AES IN, 16ch AES OUT, 40-ch Analog OUT, all snakes Whirlwind custom-made

Monitor WorldConsoles: 1 x DiGiCo D1 Live Custom (Dual power supplies, 5 DSP cards, dual MADI I/O cards, Tour Optics for Optocore I/O), DiGiCo Local I/O Rack w/32-ch Analog IN, 8-ch AES IN, 8-ch AES OUT, 40-ch Analog OUT, 1 x SoundTracs DS-00 Post Production Console w/2 x EX-00 expansion wings (4 x 56-ch MADI cards, 512-ch on Optocore I/O, 32 faders, 160 max. input channels w/6 x EFX processors), 3 x 16-ch Aviom Network I/O cards (total 48 outputs), 3 x Aviom A-16D Pro 8ch distribution hubs/power supplies

Proccessing: 7 x BSS London BLU-80, 5 x HP ProCurve switches (for CobraNet audio and system controls), 1 x Yamaha NHB-32C CobraNet gateway, 1 x Lexicon PCM-91 Reverb, 1 x Sweetwater Systems Rack Mount PC w/2 x RME MADI I/O Cards running Steinberg Nuendo, 1 x TC Electronic EQ Station (AES Digital I/O)

Consoles & Processors

Choir rehearsal room (200 person capacity): 1 x Midas Venice 240 console, 2 x Shure ULXP24 w/ Beta 58, 4 x Crown K2 amps, 1 x BSS FDS-336T MiniDrive, 1 x Ashly GEQ3102, 2 x EAW MK2394, 2 x EAW SB625 subwoofers, 2 x EAW SM200 floor monitors

Chapel area:1 x Allen & Heath 2800/24 input mixer, 2 x Shure ULXP24 wireless w/ Beta 58 handheld & W151B lavalier/body pack, 1 x Aviom AN-16i input mod-ule, 1 x Presonus ACP88 compressor/gate,1 Ashly 4.24G Digital EQ, 1 x BSS London BLU-16 DSP, 4 x EAW MK2394, 2 EAW SB625 subwoofers, 4 x Crown K2 amplifiers, 3 x EAW SM200 floor monitors

Other Systems

System Design Consulting Firm: Acoustic Dimensions

Lead Designer: Robert Rose

System Design: Ryan Knox

System Installer: Parkway Communications

Crew

“I’m actually standing at the same level as the audience and mixing from among them.”

- Cliff Rosenberg

The smaller “chapel” room

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Purple

On Broadway

By BryanReesman

18 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

I was wondering how Alice Walker’s deeply poignant and deeply disturbing drama The Color Purple would be interpreted as a

Broadway musical, especially at a time when so many literary and filmic adaptations are gratuitously brought to the Great White Way, but I was pleasantly surprised. The well- written show has a magnetic lead in LaChanze, a highly talented ensemble cast, and a score that spans African music, R&B and blues. And the multilayered story—on its most basic level, about a woman named Celie who struggles through life with an abusive, controlling husband after hav-ing grown up with an abusive, controlling father—is incredibly powerful.

Live engineer Carin Ford is behind the board for this intense theatre experience. She first entered the business in 1989 through Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, working the sound effects for the actress. That sounds easy, but with 600 cues in the show plus background music, Ford stayed on her toes and really interacted with the lead. From there, she moved on to mixing shows including Les Misérables, Beauty and the Beast, Ragtime, Seussical The Musical, Mamma Mia!, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Caroline, or Change. Here she talks about working on this sonically-demanding production, which is her third with sound designer Jon Weston.

FOH: Effects were used sparingly here. I noticed the reverb on Nettie’s voice when she was speaking her letter to Celie, and there were gunfire sounds during the African sequence. But was there anything else?

Carin Ford: Not really. The only thing that has background noise is the whole Africa scene, and that’s the war stuff. The rest is just specific things like car horns and a telephone ring, but that’s it. During production they wanted to try other things, like birds chirping in certain parts and horses and carriages in a town scene, but it just sounded like noise.

What kind of console are you running?

I’m using a Cadac J-Type. We’re using three frames of a Cadac.

Just mics on the actors?

Exactly. Of course, there are mics in the pit. The woodwinds are double-miked, upper and lower, and then we’re just using single mics on the trumpets [NeumannU89] and the trombones [AKG C12]. On the strings, we’re using the Neumann M 147, just one for each instrument. There is an overhead [M 147] on the two violins and viola and one is over the cello. We’re using the PLM 170s for the lower woodwind mics, and we’re using Sennheiser MKH40s for overhead.

Is it normal to double mic the woodwinds?

Yes, because all the woodwind players play at least two or three different instru-ments. So when they’re playing the piccolo flute, you’re using the overhead mics. And then for saxophone and clarinet, you use both mics, but have a combination of the two for the different instruments.

There is hand percus-sion as well, correct?

We are using a Sennheiser MKH-40 on the toys and a Sennheiser MKH-60 shotgun mic over the African drums. The Sennheiser MKE-2s are used on the SK-5012 transmit-ters for the actors. There are two actors using Countryman mics. They’re all single-miked.

What about the rest of the pit?

On the harmonica, we are using a Sennheiser ME 104, and we are using an AKG C-416 clipped onto the acoustic bass. The electric bass is on a DI. On the guitar amp, we were using a 441, but we changed it, and I don’t remember what mic we are using now. For the acoustic guitars, we are using a Neumann KM-100.

Has any mic ever gone out during a show?

It has only happened once on a lead. On the leads, we don’t tend to move the mikes unless they sweat, and most of them don’t sweat. But the dancers, of course, can go sometimes, but surprisingly, they haven’t been bad.

Our backstage guys, Pete and Bob, are my RF guys and really good at catching those guys before they sweat. They’re con-stantly listening, and they can catch these guys before they get back onstage. Some-times they can’t catch them because they blow them out just before they go onstage or as soon as they get onstage.

Are you using any processing or other outboard gear?

Not a lot. There’s nothing really on vocals. We’re using some gates on the drums just to keep our drummer under control. We use it on the drummer and the bass, and that’s about it. We’re just using a Lexicon reverb unit, I think the 480, for the band and for vo-cals. There’s a special reverb for Nettie during her letter monologue.

Are you running any speakers in the back to fill out the sound?

Under the balcony are EAW JF60s. For onstage foldback, we are using d&b E3s. We have three stage left and three stage right in the wings. For the off-stage monitors, we are using Hot Spots hung together with a 9-inch black and white conductor monitor for off-stage singers.

What are the challenges you have faced on this show?

The challenge for me—because this show is more R&B, which I haven’t done a lot of—is to be able to mix and find a good balance be-tween the band and the vocals. With R&B, you don’t want the vocals to be too far out.

You have a lot of voices to mix, and some peo-ple have more powerful voices than others.

The desk has some automation. On the sidecar, the input faders for the ensemble are automated. The faders for the principal char-acters are not automated. Putting the chorus on automated faders allows us to program a mix for each cue so that I can bring up the men and women up on two VCAs and know that the balance is good.

Is it tricky when you have someone substituting for a cast member?

That can be difficult. The woman who is the understudy for Shug, the nightclub singer, has a very different voice and acts very differently than the regular cast members.

Are subs in the pit also problematic?

That can be a challenge. I’ve had sub trumpets come in, and maybe one doesn’t play quite as loud as the regular player, but then you can get somebody else who plays much louder. So I constantly have to keep my eye on that, but that’s just the nature of the business, no matter what show you do.

We’re also dealing with the musical writers—Allee Willis, Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray—and all of them come from the pop world. None of them have ever done a Broadway show. So it’s also difficult dealing with these folks because they don’t understand that this isn’t going to be like a rock concert. I remember Allee Willis coming to me and saying, “I can’t hear these speakers here.” I’m like, “If you do hear them, we’re not doing our job.” Things like that have to be explained. We had to explain to them that certain instrumentation in certain songs needs to be a certain way without compet-ing with the vocals. That’s a difficult balance, too. Mixing the show, I have to juggle what Jon Weston wants to hear, what the director wants to hear and what the music depart-ment wants to hear.

What’s the most fun aspect of working on this show?

I love the music, and I know a lot of the cast members. I’ve worked with LaChanze, who plays Celie, and Kingsley Leggs, who is Mister. I worked with some of these folks in Atlanta on the trial run.

How did the show change from Atlanta to New York?

The basic framework is the same, but they added songs and changed certain things. The scene when Mister is drunk in the road and his son is coming after him used to always be between the two of them, but then they brought in Sophia and these towns-people. And “Big Dog” is a brand new song that wasn’t in Atlanta. They also improved the transitions because they would just fall through the cracks. They really Broadway-ized the show, meaning they took out some of the harshness of the story; certain key lines and key scenes that would have been a little more harsh, like how the film was.

What do you like most about this show?

I love the music, and I love the book, although I love the music most. When I heard that this was happening, I was determined to do this show because I love Allee Willis, Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray. I figured with that music, I had to get in on it, and I had worked with musical director Linda Twine be-fore on Caroline, or Change. With all the other shows I did, I didn’t pursue any of them. They all came to me. But this one I had to do.

The other reason I wanted to do this was that I knew it was a powerful story that would really affect people. One of the great things about mixing this show is listening to the audience’s reaction; hearing what they think during the show and after. The great thing about it, too, is that I’ve been in this business for 17 years, and this is the first legitimate Broad-way show I’ve done where the majority of the audience is black. So if this is what it takes to get black folks to come to a show, something other than Medea’s Family Reunion, it’s great.

Things are slowly changing. Bombay Dreams recently pulled in a large Indian audi-ence. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more shows like this on Broadway that cater to a broader audience rather than another revival of a tried-and-true show.

They’re talking about bringing The Wiz in, with a hip-hop version of the roles. They’re talking about doing an interracial cast for that, even though it’s a black show. It may work. Who knows? I’d like to see more of that, but I’m just glad that The Color Purple has really touched people.

The Sound of

PurpleThe ColorThe Color

Carin Ford

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I love gadgets, buttons, knobs, faders, attenuators, meters and especially

anything with blue LEDs on the front panel. What I never did enjoy was looking at a gaggle of wires behind the rack or actually ever having to move a rack full of stuff.

I understand the “need” for the confident and knowl-edgeable FOH person to have as much outboard gear as possible. All praise the el-evated audio budget! But at some point, a 6-foot rack of processing for the fixed part of a fixed house system (or small portable system) just doesn’t make sense anymore.

While most of my staff and I have sat through numerous certification training sessions on brutally intensive DSP system management units, I will suggest that many average FOH tech types would do them-selves a great service to borrow a laptop. Downloading some software and installing it is not all that difficult.

In Fig. 1, you will see that we have a really simple three-way bi-amped main system and four channels of stage monitors. Basic. You will also see I could easily run out of room drawing in all the processing possibilities! Even in this rudimentary system, we have a minimal nine pieces of equipment that really never need to be adjusted once the room is “tuned”. Averaging out typical sizes for this gear comes down to about 18 to 20 spaces.

In Fig. 2, we have eliminated about 40 pounds of equipment, about 20 balanced cables (i.e. ,120 points of connection) and saved 10 to 12 rack spaces!

Some people call them system controllers, some call them loudspeaker management and some of the install pieces do so much that it is hard to know exactly what to call them. Regardless, it’s not just about the rack space. In reality, we have also provided a piece of gear typically capable of changing all the attributes of the system with just one button!

Imagine if you needed the same system to do distributed sound and needed a delay for the four speakers now being used as stage monitors. What if you needed all those speakers to get a mono signal? What if you wanted to send four mixes to a postproduc-tion point (or points) and didn’t need the stage wedges?

Not all DSP controllers are created equal, of course, and the most complex units can cost thousands of dollars. However, you really can replace a dozen pieces of equip-ment for a few hundred dollars if you do a little research.

I always recommend getting a unit with at least two more outputs than you think you need. You will use them! Another suggestion is to make sure you can gain access to system presets either through a simple selector switch or at least via an RS-232 port on your laptop. I know some units tell you how easy they are to navigate with the knobs, but a couple hundred dollars for these kinds of options will develop your faith in digital processing. Designing a whole new system setup in just a few minutes and clicking a mouse is way better than re-patching cables. (Do they still do that?)

It’s not unusual to “program” a system before it’s ever in place, and with a couple

minutes of tweaking, you’re done minutes after the speakers are in place. You can even make specific adjustments for elevation, humidity and ambient temperatures. Try that on your graphic equalizer!

There are also many units available with digital I/Os, so you can grab a CAT5 cable and go direct to any number of postproduction possibilities.

One of the best features common to most DSP control devices is the security code user lock-out functions. Even the well-meaning volunteers slinking around the rack with a Phillips-head screwdriver looking to thwart security covers on cross-overs will be repelled by the wonderful world of digital! A world without need for security covers on audio equipment…pinch me, I must be in heaven!

The point is that there are too many reasons not to step into the present decade, donate some of that old gear and try some-thing well worth the time, effort and money. If you’re still confused, send me an e-mail ([email protected]) and I’ll help get you on the digital path.

Sound Sanctuary

By RichardRutherford

www.fohonline.com

A friend and I went to a concert recent-ly to hear a very popular band. But it was so loud that it was impossible to make out individual voices or instruments. We put cotton in our ears, which seemed to help. On the break, we went to talk to the sound guys and discovered that they all had ear plugs in their ears!!! Hello? Get a clue! How can you get a good sense of the proper volume level for your audience with plugs in your ears? Was the problem that the sound system was bad or was it dufus/already deaf sound people?

Donna RamosNew Hampshire

Paul H. Overson: This really brings up a dilemma. Was it the sound person(s), the art-ist or the management? What is too loud? I recently heard a sound guy say that he hated hearing people talk during the concert. He told me that he would just overpower all audience talking.

Is the protocol for a rock concert the same as for a ballet or a symphony? Should talking not be allowed? When do volume levels build excitement and when do they impact comfort levels of the audience?

Venues today are starting to impose dB limits and enforce them with fines and/or a total shutdown of the event. Is the problem

with our industry for not policing itself, or are we powerless to overcome the artist/management because they pay us?

What do you think, Brian?Brian Cassell: Dilemma really seems

to be the right word here, Paul. Personally, I never wear earplugs when I mix FOH (mixing in monitor world is another story as I use personal monitors whenever the artist does). I figure that if I can be comfortable with the sound level in the room, most others can too. Fortunately, I’ve never been forced by an artist or management to push the sound beyond what I thought was reasonable.

On the other side of things, I have oc-casionally been asked to turn things down when the sound was traveling further than expected. And when that happens, a polite “no problem, officer” usually helps the situ-ation as long as you promptly pull the mix buss back a bit and don’t try and creep it back up. I mean, let’s assess the differences here: On my belt, I carry a multi-tool, a knife, a flashlight and a two-way radio; Sergeant Turnitdown and Deputy Itstooloud each have most of this plus a Glock and some handcuffs. I think we’ll comply.

Joking aside, the reality is that we as an industry need to seriously police ourselves before someone steps in to do it for us. If we don’t, our jobs are going to get real difficult real fast as we become the middlemen

between the artist’s already excessive stage volume and the venue manager’s insistence on maintaining some arbitrary volume in the house. Things would be so much simpler if we put the reigns on the dB levels ourselves. For the health of our own ears, as well as for the concertgoers, it’s the right thing to do. So we must ask ourselves, how do we accomplish this?

Paul H. Overson: I have had many oc-casions when the level was dictated by the management/artist. I was told in no uncertain terms what the level should be and then they turned it up. I was so loud that I put in earplugs just so I could mix. I tried to point out that the audience was wincing and covering their ears as well. I didn’t do me any good.

What were my options? I tried to get the guitar player to turn down his stack (that worked only once). I had the monitor engineer (who worked for me) turn down the monitors, and that helped. The monitor engineer put guitar amps on cases so that the sound was directly hitting the ears of the players and the players voluntarily turned down the volume. I have put drums in a cage and that really helped with the extra loud drummer. These are all tricks, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.

I have also had engineers try to over-come a bad room with excessive volume, but the results have not been great. It really

comes down to who has the most power (financial or executive), and that says it all.

Brian, what are your thoughts on this? Brian Cassell: Gosh, Paul, I have to say

that I’m glad I’ve never been in quite that situation. Sounds like the kind of client that I wouldn’t want to do repeat work for. And that’s saying something when it’s a struggle for a small company to keep the gear out of the shop and in the venue where it can make money.

Unfortunately, money really does talk. And maybe in this case, it’s speaking a little too loudly. Not only do we need to protect the hearing of those in the room, but we need to protect our own reputations as audio providers. On top of that, as business-men, we have to consider the liability side. I’d hate to see my company’s name on the list of persons named in a liability lawsuit for hearing damage.

Mark Amundson recently addressed some contract issues in his Theory & Practice column. Maybe we should add a clause to our contracts, allowing us to set limits of reasonable and safe acoustical levels for the performance. It might not fly with a touring act, but it could be a sign of “sound company, beware!” if a client feels the need to strike that line from the contract.

The Anklebiters

By BrianCassell and Paul H.Overson

Turn iT up!no, Down!

no, up! no…

Small Rack, BIG SOuND

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

22 May 2006

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Ad info: www.fohonline.com/rsc

200.0605.Ads.ss copy.indt 23 4/27/06 4:56:01 PM

Production Profile

24 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

Replacing a charismatic front man is never an easy task, and when that means someone with the vocal power

and range and total command of the stage as the late Freddie Mercury, it looks im-possible. Maybe it was a need to get back onstage or maybe the band just did not want the Broadway show We Will Rock You to be its last hurrah. (We Will Rock You did fairly poorly in a truncated Las Vegas run and closed earlier this year.) Side note: Yeah, the story line for We Will Rock You was silly—a quasi-sci-fi tale of a world without rock

music and the rebels trying to revive it that did a passable job of stringing together the hits of Queen. But Mamma Mia! (a similar kind of show featuring the music of ABBA) is at least as silly, the music is not as cool and it remains a hit, running concurrent shows in London, Melbourne, New York and Las Vegas, and selling out seven years after its initial opening. Go figure.

Guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor teamed up for the better part of the past year with Bad Company vocalist Paul Rogers for a tour that did good business

both in the States and Japan. Tour audio was handled by Clair Brothers under the direction of system engineer/crew chief Bob Weibel, whose biggest hurdle of the day was the carpet on the floor of the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas. “It helps the room sound better, but it’s murder to roll cases in. And this is a rolling stage, so they had their hands full. But hey, at least there is no ice,” he quipped.

According to Weibel, the tour is a pretty straightforward rock show without a lot of high-tech bells and whistles. “The most no-table thing is that we are using six per side of

the newer Prism II subs, and we also have the new FF-2 front fills,” noted Weibel, explaining that the Prism II was really developed for rap shows and that they were being used on the Queen tour. “They are dual 18s in a band-pass resonant chamber. They are a relatively narrow bandpass. I don’t think they even go above 80Hz,” he said.

“We’re manipulating them with delay somewhat to control that classic phase issue. You can’t make that classic center peak and the surrounding nulls go away, but you can moderate it somewhat.”

Clair Brothers CrewHE: James “Trip” Khalaf MME: Graham Blake (Indy)SE/CC: Bob WeibelStage Engineer: Patrick MurphyStage Technician: Ryan LawlessSystem Technician: Anthony Rossi

Touring Arena System44 x CBA i-4 curved array system36 x CBA i-4b bass supplements8 x CBA FF-2 Front fill12 x Prism II sub-lowsMidas XL4 house consoleMidas H3000 monitor consoleMonitor system: CBA 12am, 12am-II, 2x15 wedges, and HL15 w/Martin bins side fillsFOH EFx: Summit DCL200, Eventide H3500 Lexicon 480xl, Yamaha SPX990, dbx 160xl, Cranesong STC8Drive system: Clair/Lake I/O system

By BillEvansMembers of Queen and Bad Company’s Paul Rogers Team Up With Clair For a “Killer” Tour

System Engineer-Crew Chief Bob Weibel with Clair Prism II subs and FF-2 front fills

Phot

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The Biz

25May 2006www.fohonline.com

When you hear that infectious four-note audio signature on television, you know without even consciously

realizing it that there’s “Intel inside.” The mak-ers of components of larger systems, who have tended to labor anonymously in years past, are waking up the need to market their own brands. It’s a worldwide phenomenon that transcends market sectors: Siemens informs you that they may not make the tele-

vision set, but they make the technology that makes it brighter; Boeing takes 30 seconds next to a Budweiser commercial during a football game to extol their aircraft despite the fact that most viewers aren’t currently in the market for a $30-million 737.

OEM speaker manufacturers are getting on that same boat. “The speaker manufactur-ers are being more assertive about increas-ing their brand awareness,” says Jack Kelly, president of Group One Ltd., which distrib-utes the UK-based Celestion brand in the U.S. Kelly adds that Group One made a strong effort to build brand awareness for Celes-tion to stimulate demand for Celestion OEM speakers in the P.A. market. (Celestion has long been a major supplier to guitar ampli-fier manufacturers.)

At a time when the industry is contending with decreasing revenues and margins as lower-cost suppliers enter the market, and as actual manufacturing by es-tablished brands moves offshore to compete, creating a recognizable brand image acts as a hedge against price erosion by creating an image that reflects the use of higher-quality materials.

Eminence, a speaker manufacturer named after the town it’s headquartered in in Kentucky, has been a longtime supplier of OEM speaker products to companies includ-ing Fender, EAW and Community. Chris Rose, the company’s marketing manager, says Emi-nence considers itself a link in a chain that extends from the components suppliers who punch out speaker baskets to the manu-facturers of the enclosures, with Eminence and the handful of other established OEMs, including RCF, 18 Sound and B&C, as a nexus in the market. “There’s a whole chain out there that results in a good speaker being matched to a good enclosure—that’s where the magic comes from,” he says.

However, the era of the Wizard of Oz, where the engineer works behind the curtain and the P.A. brand takes at least per-ceptual credit for the speaker, is coming to an end, Rose agrees. And that’s a good thing for all involved. “When the brand is strong for the speaker, we feel it adds credibility for the enclosure maker,” he says.

That’s led to Eminence instigating a worldwide brand-awareness campaign,

something that Rose acknowledges wasn’t part of the corporate strategy until relatively recently. Six years ago, Eminence began af-fixing its own label to its OEM speakers. And China, the elephant in pro audio’s parlor, was a major factor in the decision. “A lot of this coincides with so much of the manufactur-ing moving to China,” he says. “The need to market the brand is probably the most dy-namic change in the OEM speaker business in the last few decades.”

That’s not a glib comment, either for Rose or for the sector as a whole. Like much of pro audio in the 20th century, speaker manufacturing was as much a guild-like craft as an industry. A relatively small group of companies manufactured products and components for an equally familial collection of OEM companies and dis-tributors. That bucolic landscape was largely ripped apart during the last decade, as anyone in the music recording business can attest to. A few pockets of pastoral quiet remained, but were soon caught up in the globalization of manufacturing. Speaker makers were among them.

Eminence, a city of about 3,500 people, is located between Louisville and Frankfort, in the Bluegrass region the state takes its motto from. It’s emblematic of the type of business that making speakers was when Shanghai was an exotic travel poster instead of an FOB destination. The father of company president Rob Gault founded the company there in 1966. Rose says there’s still a tremen-dous sense of obligation felt towards the community from which Eminence, the speaker company, has drawn its workforce for 40 years. Eminence has a factory in China now, and Rose sees it as a necessary and positive move—one that seeks to grow his business, not undercut domestic manufac-turing. “Our customers are selling speakers

to Costco and Wal-Mart now, in products that would never have been on our map a decade ago,” he says. “Overseas manufactur-ing is part of what it takes to grow that, and developing the brand name is what you have to do to differentiate yourself and your product from the larger flow of prod-ucts that come out of this bigger range of OEM manufacturers.”

OEMs may face global competition now, and the estimated single-digit growth of the professional speaker sector means a lot of company growth will come from taking existing market share. However, there is a new and expanding niche in the market: boutique P.A. system developers that constantly need leading-edge speaker designs and refinements. Relatively new companies, such as EM Acoustics and

Danley Sound Labs, are becoming growth opportunities for OEM speaker suppliers. The nature of the high-end, highly custom-ized products they seek is also a hedge against Asian competition.

Another area of opportunity is audio companies entering the transducer arena, such as QSC’s venture into powered speak-ers. Andy Farrow, U.S. sales manager for Celestion, which supplies some of QSC’s speakers, says these new avenues of demand are proliferating. “We’re coming across them on a weekly basis,” he said on his return from what he described as a particularly robust NSCA show in March.

OEM speaker makers will find more opportunities like these in coming years. They’ll have to, as the sector becomes more globally dynamic.

By DanDaley

Eminence is emblematic of the type of business that making speakers was when Shanghai was an exotic travel poster

instead of an FOB destination.

Stepping Out Of The Shadows

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Product Gallery

26 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

By BillEvans

Company E-mail Model PricePhysical Dimensions

(H x W x D)Weight Driver Size & Numbers

Max SPL Free Space, continuous

@ 1 meterFlyable?

Internal Crossover for Passthrough to Mid-High

Boxes?Flat to What Frequencies? Power Requirements

Crest Performance www.crestaudio.com LQ 15PSW $1,599.99 24.50" x 21" x 27" 112 lbs15" cast-aluminum-frame

transducer128 dB No Yes 45Hz - 120Hz 120 VAC

Bag End Loudspeakers www.bagend.com P-Quartz-R $5,750 40" x 31" x 31" 240 lbs 4 x 18" EL-18A drivers131 dB, SPL @ 45

HertzYes No ± 3 dB from 8Hz to 80Hz 88 to 270 VAC auto sensing

Danley Sound Labs, Inc. www.danleysoundlabs.comDTS-20 $4,667 88" x 18" x 20" 205 lbs 1 x 12" woofer 125 dB SPL No No 15Hz - 150 Hz ± 3 dB

TH-115P $3,925 40" x 22" x 28" 150 lbs 1 x 15" woofer 132 dB SPL Yes No 36Hz - 200 Hz ± 3 dB

DAS Audio Of America www.dasaudio.com

Compact 218Sub 2000 $5,363 40" x 27" x 32.5" 205 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 143 dB Yes Yes 40 - 140Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

A $5,363 40" x 27" x 32.5" 205 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 143 dB Yes Yes 40 - 140Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

AERO 182A 2000 40" x 27" x 32.5" 235 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 140 dB Yes Yes 28 - 85Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

Dynacord www.dynacord.com

Madras M 18 $3,150 MSRP 19.9” x 31.7” x 27.5” 54 kg 1 x EVX 180B 130 dB NoIntegral 124Hz, 24 dB L.R.

lo-pass filter for use w/ Madras M 15 or M212 tops

35Hz - 145HzLocking PowerCon mains

connector with Edison plug - 4 amps

D-Lite PowerSub 315 $3,300 MSRP 18.3” x 23.7” x 26” 42 kg 1 x Electro-Voice DVX 3150 129 dB NoAdjustable x-over points of

80Hz, 100Hz and 160Hz32Hz - 160Hz (-10 dB), 37Hz - 128Hz (-3 dB)

Locking PowerCon mains connector with Edison plug

- 4 amps

EAW www.eaw.com NTS22 $4,658 MSRP 17.6" x 25.9" x 30.2" 98 lbs 2 x 12" woofers 132 dB YesFixed low pass frequency; high pass frequency is switched for

NT full range system -34Hz - 135 Hz 115 VAC

Electro-Voice www.electrovoice.comSbA760 List $1,690, MAP $1,430 23.7" x 16.9" x 26.2" 94.7 lbs 15" EVS-15FR 128 dB No N/A 42Hz - 150Hz @ -10 dB / 55Hz-150Hz @ -3 dB 120V

Plasma P2 List $3,090, MAP $2,590 35.8" x 18.8" x 23.6" 140 lbs 18" EVX-180B 132 dB No 100Hz 40 Hz - 100Hz @ -3 dB / 30Hz - 110Hz @-10 dB 120V

FBT www.fbtusa.comPSR 118sa $3,200 29.53" x 20.75" x 29.35" 150 lbs 1 x 18" w/ 4" dual coil 130 dB Yes Yes, 100Hz 35 - 100Hz 10 amps

FBT Maxx 10sa $1,679 MSRP 24.8" x 19" x 25.2" 90 lbs 15" w/3" dual coil 129.5 dB Yes Yes, Stereo L&R 36 - 120Hz 6 amps

ISP Technologies www.isptechnologies.comXMAX 212 $3,999 42.5" x 24" x 45" 225 lbs 2 x 12" 136 dB No 24 dB/octave stereo 35Hz - 3 dB to 100Hz -6 dB 24 dB/octave xover 120VAC 9 mps typical

XMAX218 $3,800 Retail 22.5" x 48" x 30" 230 lbs 2 x 18" 137 dB peak No Yes, stereo 24 dB/octave 32Hz - 3 dB to 100Hz -6 dB 24 dB/octave crossover 120VAC 16 amps typical

JBL Professional www.jblpro.com

VPSB7118DPAN $5,917 MSRP 20.25" x 27.63" x 32" 75 lbs 1 x 18" 129 dB SPL 1m Yes 80Hz/125Hz (DSP) 39Hz - 145Hz (± 3 dB) 6A @ 120V/3A @ 240V

VT4882DP $5,978 18" x 39.9" x 39.8" 154 lbs (70kg) 2 x 15" 133 dB Yes No32Hz - 110Hz, 28Hz - 120Hz

100-120VAC/200-240VAC Auto range

VT4881ADP $4,649 22.4" x 31" x 31.5" 137 lbs (62 kg) 1 x 18" 130 dB SPL Yes No 34Hz - 125Hz, 25Hz - 160Hz100-120VAC, 200-240VAC

Auto Select

L-ACOUSTICS www.l-acoustics-us.com SB15P TBD 17.5" x 20.5" x 20.5" 80 lbs 1 x 15" 131 dB No 45Hz - 100Hz 115 VAC

Mackie www.mackie.comSWA 1501 MSRP $1,259.99 23.5" x 17.2" x 23.7" 88 lbs 1 x 15" woofer 128 dB No 120Hz -3 dB (47Hz-120Hz) -10 dB (36Hz-120Hz) 120 VAC

SWA 1801 MSRP $1,699.99 28.5" x 23.5" x 23.5" 132 lbs 1 x 18" woofer 135 dB No 120Hz -3 dB (45Hz-120Hz) - 10 dB (35Hz-120Hz) 120 VAC

Meyer Sound Laboratorieswww.meyersound.com

700-HP$7,560 (w/o optional

rigging)22.5" x 45.93" x 30"

(w/o rigging)204 lbs

(w/o rigging)2 x 18" cone drivers 139 dB max peak Yes No

30Hz - 150Hz (± 4 dB), 28 - 175Hz (± 10 dB)

8.8 A rms max long-term continuous@115V

600-HP$6,090 (w/o optional

rigging)22.5" x 41.4" x 22"

(w/o optional rigging)182 lbs (w/o

optional rigging)2 x 15" cone drivers

138 dB max peak output

Yes No39Hz - 130Hz ±4 dB, 36Hz - 150Hz ±10 dB

8.8 A rms max long-term continuous@115V

Peavey www.peavey.com Impulse 115P $1,549.99 24.375" x 21.125" x 27" 106 lbs 15" Low Rider 128 dB No Yes 45Hz - 120Hz 120 VAC

Renkus-Heinz www.renkus-heinz.comDR18-2 $4,675 pro net 24" x 48" x 24" 204 lbs 2 x 18" 135 dB No No 32Hz - 120Hz 115 VAC or 230 VAC

PN212-SUB $2,340 pro net 14.5" x 32" x 23.25" 113 lbs 2 x 12" 129 dB No No 40Hz - 120Hz 115 VAC, 230 VAC

WorxAudio Technologies, Inc. www.worxaudio.com

TL.118SS-PMD-2 $5,780 22.5" x 28" x 30" 176 lbs 1 x 18" 124 dB/1m@26Hz Yes No (26Hz - 150Hz 3 dB) (19Hz - 150Hz -10 dB) 4 amps

TL.215S-PMD-2 $5,100 18" x 28" x 30" 187 lbs 2 x 15" 134 dB 1W/1m Yes No (41Hz - 220Hz -3dB) (34Hz - 220Hz -10 dB) 8 amps

TL.218SS-PMD2 $7,400 22.5" x 48" x 30" 285 lbs 2 x 18" 129 dB/1m@26Hz Yes No (25Hz - 150Hz 3 dB) (17Hz-150 -10 dB) 8 amps

Yamaha Corporation of America www.yamahaca.com MSR800W $1,099 23.625" x 20.625" x 23.25" 99.1 lbs 1 x 15" Cone122 dB 1 watt,

1 meterNo Yes 40 - 120Hz 120V 60Hz

I have often thought of subwoofers as the audio equivalent of whatever it was that inspired Scottie to howl at Capt. Kirk, “I

need more power, Captain!”Big subs need to move big air, and that

takes big power. The usual result was a rack of amps dedicated to the subs and the one piece of gear so heavy and unwieldy that no one wanted to touch at the end of the night.

But then, along came the powered sub with the driver and the power and often crossover and other processing all in one box. Still heavy, but easier to deal with on a number of levels.

First, the driver and the power are made to work together. So you don’t really need to worry about things like total power output on the amp and what the efficiency

of the driver will do to your final SPL. With a powered sub, you just worry about SPL and how it sounds. Oh, and power draw—don’t want to be tripping breakers in the middle of a show.

There are many in the sound tribe who dis-like the idea of powered speakers because if an amp goes, it is one thing to deal with it in a rack on the ground, and another to try to get to an amp that is flown in the speaker cab. But with subs, which are more often on the ground, that may be a moot point in a lot of cases.

Regardless, if you are open to the idea of power and driver in the same box, there are some very nice choices out there in a wide range of prices. Here’s a look at some of them…

Powered Subs

JBL VPSB7118DPAN

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27May 2006www.fohonline.com

Company E-mail Model PricePhysical Dimensions

(H x W x D)Weight Driver Size & Numbers

Max SPL Free Space, continuous

@ 1 meterFlyable?

Internal Crossover for Passthrough to Mid-High

Boxes?Flat to What Frequencies? Power Requirements

Crest Performance www.crestaudio.com LQ 15PSW $1,599.99 24.50" x 21" x 27" 112 lbs15" cast-aluminum-frame

transducer128 dB No Yes 45Hz - 120Hz 120 VAC

Bag End Loudspeakers www.bagend.com P-Quartz-R $5,750 40" x 31" x 31" 240 lbs 4 x 18" EL-18A drivers131 dB, SPL @ 45

HertzYes No ± 3 dB from 8Hz to 80Hz 88 to 270 VAC auto sensing

Danley Sound Labs, Inc. www.danleysoundlabs.comDTS-20 $4,667 88" x 18" x 20" 205 lbs 1 x 12" woofer 125 dB SPL No No 15Hz - 150 Hz ± 3 dB

TH-115P $3,925 40" x 22" x 28" 150 lbs 1 x 15" woofer 132 dB SPL Yes No 36Hz - 200 Hz ± 3 dB

DAS Audio Of America www.dasaudio.com

Compact 218Sub 2000 $5,363 40" x 27" x 32.5" 205 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 143 dB Yes Yes 40 - 140Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

A $5,363 40" x 27" x 32.5" 205 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 143 dB Yes Yes 40 - 140Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

AERO 182A 2000 40" x 27" x 32.5" 235 lbs 2 x 18" 4" voice coils 140 dB Yes Yes 28 - 85Hz 115V 50Hz/60Hz

Dynacord www.dynacord.com

Madras M 18 $3,150 MSRP 19.9” x 31.7” x 27.5” 54 kg 1 x EVX 180B 130 dB NoIntegral 124Hz, 24 dB L.R.

lo-pass filter for use w/ Madras M 15 or M212 tops

35Hz - 145HzLocking PowerCon mains

connector with Edison plug - 4 amps

D-Lite PowerSub 315 $3,300 MSRP 18.3” x 23.7” x 26” 42 kg 1 x Electro-Voice DVX 3150 129 dB NoAdjustable x-over points of

80Hz, 100Hz and 160Hz32Hz - 160Hz (-10 dB), 37Hz - 128Hz (-3 dB)

Locking PowerCon mains connector with Edison plug

- 4 amps

EAW www.eaw.com NTS22 $4,658 MSRP 17.6" x 25.9" x 30.2" 98 lbs 2 x 12" woofers 132 dB YesFixed low pass frequency; high pass frequency is switched for

NT full range system -34Hz - 135 Hz 115 VAC

Electro-Voice www.electrovoice.comSbA760 List $1,690, MAP $1,430 23.7" x 16.9" x 26.2" 94.7 lbs 15" EVS-15FR 128 dB No N/A 42Hz - 150Hz @ -10 dB / 55Hz-150Hz @ -3 dB 120V

Plasma P2 List $3,090, MAP $2,590 35.8" x 18.8" x 23.6" 140 lbs 18" EVX-180B 132 dB No 100Hz 40 Hz - 100Hz @ -3 dB / 30Hz - 110Hz @-10 dB 120V

FBT www.fbtusa.comPSR 118sa $3,200 29.53" x 20.75" x 29.35" 150 lbs 1 x 18" w/ 4" dual coil 130 dB Yes Yes, 100Hz 35 - 100Hz 10 amps

FBT Maxx 10sa $1,679 MSRP 24.8" x 19" x 25.2" 90 lbs 15" w/3" dual coil 129.5 dB Yes Yes, Stereo L&R 36 - 120Hz 6 amps

ISP Technologies www.isptechnologies.comXMAX 212 $3,999 42.5" x 24" x 45" 225 lbs 2 x 12" 136 dB No 24 dB/octave stereo 35Hz - 3 dB to 100Hz -6 dB 24 dB/octave xover 120VAC 9 mps typical

XMAX218 $3,800 Retail 22.5" x 48" x 30" 230 lbs 2 x 18" 137 dB peak No Yes, stereo 24 dB/octave 32Hz - 3 dB to 100Hz -6 dB 24 dB/octave crossover 120VAC 16 amps typical

JBL Professional www.jblpro.com

VPSB7118DPAN $5,917 MSRP 20.25" x 27.63" x 32" 75 lbs 1 x 18" 129 dB SPL 1m Yes 80Hz/125Hz (DSP) 39Hz - 145Hz (± 3 dB) 6A @ 120V/3A @ 240V

VT4882DP $5,978 18" x 39.9" x 39.8" 154 lbs (70kg) 2 x 15" 133 dB Yes No32Hz - 110Hz, 28Hz - 120Hz

100-120VAC/200-240VAC Auto range

VT4881ADP $4,649 22.4" x 31" x 31.5" 137 lbs (62 kg) 1 x 18" 130 dB SPL Yes No 34Hz - 125Hz, 25Hz - 160Hz100-120VAC, 200-240VAC

Auto Select

L-ACOUSTICS www.l-acoustics-us.com SB15P TBD 17.5" x 20.5" x 20.5" 80 lbs 1 x 15" 131 dB No 45Hz - 100Hz 115 VAC

Mackie www.mackie.comSWA 1501 MSRP $1,259.99 23.5" x 17.2" x 23.7" 88 lbs 1 x 15" woofer 128 dB No 120Hz -3 dB (47Hz-120Hz) -10 dB (36Hz-120Hz) 120 VAC

SWA 1801 MSRP $1,699.99 28.5" x 23.5" x 23.5" 132 lbs 1 x 18" woofer 135 dB No 120Hz -3 dB (45Hz-120Hz) - 10 dB (35Hz-120Hz) 120 VAC

Meyer Sound Laboratorieswww.meyersound.com

700-HP$7,560 (w/o optional

rigging)22.5" x 45.93" x 30"

(w/o rigging)204 lbs

(w/o rigging)2 x 18" cone drivers 139 dB max peak Yes No

30Hz - 150Hz (± 4 dB), 28 - 175Hz (± 10 dB)

8.8 A rms max long-term continuous@115V

600-HP$6,090 (w/o optional

rigging)22.5" x 41.4" x 22"

(w/o optional rigging)182 lbs (w/o

optional rigging)2 x 15" cone drivers

138 dB max peak output

Yes No39Hz - 130Hz ±4 dB, 36Hz - 150Hz ±10 dB

8.8 A rms max long-term continuous@115V

Peavey www.peavey.com Impulse 115P $1,549.99 24.375" x 21.125" x 27" 106 lbs 15" Low Rider 128 dB No Yes 45Hz - 120Hz 120 VAC

Renkus-Heinz www.renkus-heinz.comDR18-2 $4,675 pro net 24" x 48" x 24" 204 lbs 2 x 18" 135 dB No No 32Hz - 120Hz 115 VAC or 230 VAC

PN212-SUB $2,340 pro net 14.5" x 32" x 23.25" 113 lbs 2 x 12" 129 dB No No 40Hz - 120Hz 115 VAC, 230 VAC

WorxAudio Technologies, Inc. www.worxaudio.com

TL.118SS-PMD-2 $5,780 22.5" x 28" x 30" 176 lbs 1 x 18" 124 dB/1m@26Hz Yes No (26Hz - 150Hz 3 dB) (19Hz - 150Hz -10 dB) 4 amps

TL.215S-PMD-2 $5,100 18" x 28" x 30" 187 lbs 2 x 15" 134 dB 1W/1m Yes No (41Hz - 220Hz -3dB) (34Hz - 220Hz -10 dB) 8 amps

TL.218SS-PMD2 $7,400 22.5" x 48" x 30" 285 lbs 2 x 18" 129 dB/1m@26Hz Yes No (25Hz - 150Hz 3 dB) (17Hz-150 -10 dB) 8 amps

Yamaha Corporation of America www.yamahaca.com MSR800W $1,099 23.625" x 20.625" x 23.25" 99.1 lbs 1 x 15" Cone122 dB 1 watt,

1 meterNo Yes 40 - 120Hz 120V 60Hz

Powered Subs

Peavey Impulse 115P

DAS Audio AERO 182A 2000

Worx TL.218SS-PMD2

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Product Profile

28 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

“Digital Goes Midas.” No, I didn’t coin this phrase (nor did I have anything to do with the Matrix-

like magazine ad). The phrase is the promo-tional tag Midas (Telex, Klark Teknik) hung on their new digital mixing console. I would have said “Midas puts the analog in digital.” However, I am not an ad guy; I am simply a writer for FOH who found himself an invited guest of the Midas folks to witness the un-veiling of XL8 digital desk.

The press pre-unveiling took place at the enormous Musikmesse show in Frank-furt, Germany, on March 29. (In the interest of full disclosure, FOH, like a number of other U.S.-based publications, had not planned on sending anyone to MusikMesse. FOH readers should know that Telex, the parent corporation of Midas as well as EV, Klark Teknik and others, saw the XL8 introduction as important enough that they paid airfare for some journalists, including FOH’s Jamie Rio. While Jamie was able to cover some other gear at the show, the Midas launch was over two days at three hours per day. There is a lot here to write about. We will get more from Jamie on other aspects of the Messe show in next month’s FOH. –Ed.) This special launch was chock-full of info. So much so that after two hours I was nearly in a coma—in a good way. The following will hopefully explain why Midas hopes to take this new console to the front of the class.

Failure Is Not An Option

The very first thing that the Midas reps let us know was that throughout the three years of R&D and the $10 million it took to get this console up and running, their primary concern was reliability. Only time in the field will tell that story, but there does appear to be a high degree of redundancy in this system. That word “system” is an impor-tant distinction between digital and analog consoles. When you purchase a Midas XL8, in addition to the control surface, you get four 24-input digital stage boxes with splits and a separate set of 24 independent balanced outs for broadcast or recording. You also get DSP boxes and I/O boxes and an outboard

moving fader EQ. Also, the XL8 is able to control other computers via its touchscreens, keyboard and mouse. For instance, if the system is set up as an install, you can view and control the house HVAC system through the desk. No, really.

But before I get off on a tangent, let me get back to the reliability aspect of the XL8. The control surface has five multiple- redundant power supplies. The stage boxes sport dual integral power supplies. Midas decided to use the open-source Linux oper-ating system as the foundation of the system and all master controls are duplicated. As a matter of fact, you could run the stage boxes via a laptop if the desk went down complete-ly (also possible with a number of other digi-tal mixing systems). Midas will also offer 24/7 global telephone support via service centers located in Minneapolis, Kidderminster (Midas HQ in the UK) and Singapore.

The use of Linux is important, but it is not the only way in which Midas opted to go with an integrated open architecture. Rather than inventing their own protocol, they leased Sony’s AES50 digital audio distribu-tion. With calls for the standardization in systems for the control and distribution of digital audio getting louder all the time, this is a potentially huge move, one that opens Midas up to the rest of the world. Using the Sony protocol, the XL8 can run up to 100 meters of dual redundant (there’s that word) connectivity between hardware elements using CAT5 cable and up to 500 meters using optical fiber. The system incorporates an automatic integral delay management sys-tem which Midas says eliminates the comb filtering problems associated with latency. (For you analog guys, this is the time delay inherent in all digital devices that is added because of the conversion form analog to digital and back.) We’ll have to wait to really see it in action to confirm that.

Still on the open architecture tip, Eth-ernet TCP-IP & USB tunneling are used for third-party add-ons, and keyboard-, video- and mouse-switching are on the control sur-face. Basically, Midas is using tried-and-true technologies from the computer world for the connectivity and communication. Which

just freed up more time and money to work on the desk itself.

Knobs, Buttons and Faders

Now that I have given you all this background infrastructure information, how about we look at the control surface? The desk looks very analog except for the day-light-viewable display screens. Three banks of eight each make up the input channels and those banks go four layers deep. The “top” channels are each fully displayed on the input screen. Three Midas mic pre amps are present at each input channel along with a line input for 96 total inputs, and each input channel has a very analog feel. The input gain is where you would expect it, the aux and pan controls are where they should be, and the look and feel is very Midas. Hard-ware is dedicated, meaning that knobs don’t change function: The gain knob is a gain knob, etc., and nothing else. Next to each bank of eight input channels is the EQ, com-pression, effects, aux sends and “anything else I forgot” strip. This control strip is also very analog and very Midas. You do not have to travel through layers of digital pages with this desk. Basically, you turn a knob or touch a button and you see what it is supposed to do. The color-coding of control groupings allows you to work without having to read. For example, I can set the drums up as red buttons, the vocals as blue, the lead vocal as green, guitars as orange, etc.

Like with other digital desks, there is no need for board tape. Individual channels can be named via the main channel button and the process is painless. There is actually a pulldown menu with a variety of instrument names or you can type in the individual instrument. The desk is also perfectly set up for dual operators. I can have eight drum inputs on the left side of the control surface and send it to my partner on the right side or vice versa using any combination of input channels. This is a handy feature and can free up one engineer for a specific task while the other engineer is working on a completely different piece of the mix without moving

their assigned locations.The master section of the console has

the “all meters, all the time” screen. That’s pretty self-explanatory, letting you see every input channel. Of course, there is a screen for all processors, whether it is EQ, compression, gates, limiters or effects processors. Every-thing is onboard and visually accessible. All in all, there are five daylight-visible screens at the front of the desk. Of course, full capability theatre-style scene automation is onboard, along with snapshot scene automation and cross-scene global edit capability.

The fact of the matter, folks, is that I am only scratching the surface of this digital sys-tem. But the most important thing is I can tell you that with all it has to offer it is very easy to operate. Midas U.S. sales manager Matt Larson took a little extra time with me after the initial introduction and went over the operation of the desk. About 15 minutes into this second demo, I had a pretty clear idea of how things worked. Not because I am some kind of genius, but because the console is very analog in operation.

Midas had the system set up in its own outdoor tent at the Messe show. The sound was great, but to tell you the truth, I could not tell if it had that “Midas sound.” I own a Midas, and I have to be at the board personally to hear and feel that tonality. I think Midas has developed an exceptional product. On the one hand, Midas knows that they will automatically sell a certain amount of these units. Large sound companies will almost certainly have to have at least one of these systems in their arsenal. The question is how well Midas will sell outside of their already predetermined customer base. They certainly have spent the time and money on this project. There is no doubt that the console looks and feels like the best of Midas. Only time will tell.

Midas XL8By JamieRio

(L to R) Matt Larson, U.S. sales manager for Midas/KT; Big Mick; Alex Cooper, director of console engineering for Midas; Richard Ferriday, brand development manager for Midas/KT.

200.0605.ProductProfile.BK.indd 28 4/28/06 3:35:14 PM

Ad info: www.fohonline.com/rsc

200.0605.Ads.ss copy.indt 29 4/27/06 4:56:33 PM

30 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

There are those magical moments in the recording studio when musicians give birth to a song, yet it is when those

same musicians play that song in front of an audience that it comes to life. Live sound mixers are in a unique position to watch as audiences and musicians respond to each other. Likewise, these Front of House engineers have to respond almost instantly to problems that arise, which can run the gamut from faulty gear to failing instruments to singers who might need a bit of technical assistance to hit all the appropriate notes. For many active producers working these days, including Ryan Greene, Don Gehman, Ross Hogarth and Mark Howard, this was the perfect training ground for the stresses and joys of the studio environment.

Although Greene had been working as a staff engineer in Los Angeles, he says he learned some valuable lessons during his live-sound gigs around town. “When you’re doing live sound, you really learn frequen-cies,” he explains. “If something is ringing in the system, you don’t have a lot of time; you have to know.” He and other members of the live sound crew would play a game as the band was sound checking, called “Name That Frequency,” where they would try to guess what frequency was being altered by another engineer. “It was stupid, but I really learned a lot. It was almost ear-training in a weird sort of way.”

In addition to the sonic challenges that live mixing affords, according to Mark How-ard, working in that environment also gives you a head start when it comes to tackling technical problems in the studio. “In the live world, you show up, you’ve got a P.A. and you set it up. ‘Why doesn’t this work? The show is going to start in 10 minutes...’ It’s all about fast thinking and knowing and trouble-shooting, and I think that kind of technical thinking works in the studio, because you plug in and if it doesn’t work then you’ve got to think. A lot of studio guys don’t have that kind of training—they kind of work at their pace and it’s slow,” he says. “For me, every time I go to record, it’s like you’re onstage, and that’s the opening of the show and you better have your fader up and you better

By David John Farinella

Jumping Off the Road

Ross Hogarth

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31May 2006www.fohonline.com

have your level when that guy starts to sing. You can’t mess it up or there can’t be no sig-nal, because that might have been your take.

“You have a small window of opportunity to get performances out of people,” he adds. “I steal performances out of people, because if you don’t get them and you start to labor, then you’re not going to get that soul. I rely on that kind of stuff for vocals. If I looked at the percentage of all vocals or overdubs, I think a lot of the great stuff comes from that very first time through. They are thinking, ‘Okay, this is my first pass.’ They’ll try a bunch of stuff and you’ll get an amazing take, but once they start to refine it they lose a lot of the character.”

For example, Howard points to the guitar tracking sessions with Marc Ribot on Tom Waits’ 2004 album Real Gone. “He’s an amaz-ing guitar player,” Howard reports. “The guy is phenomenal. The first pass, the guy just plays a bunch of crazy stuff and it’s wild, but once he starts to refine it he loses that. It’s perfect and it’s amazing, but the excitement of it is kind of tamed. So, that’s what happens; the more you sing the song, the more you re-fine it. For some things, that’s great, but when you are going for performances and you want attitude and you want all that stuff, it’s going to happen in one, two or three takes.”

Ross Hogarth moved from the road to the studio while he was working with guitar-ist David Lindley as a guitar tech. “David was working on a solo album, and Jackson Browne, who he had been with for years and years, was producing it. Jackson’s engineer was working on the stuff and then they had something else to do, so David was basically left with me and an assistant who was more trained than me, but I was more trained than David, so I was plopped into the chair to basi-cally run the tape machine,” Hogarth recalls. “It was a very strange position, but it was a lot of fun and very exciting. I hadn’t yet made the total transition and I was still sort of considered a road guy, so I went out of town and did some more gigs. Then, I got a gig with Don Gehman on a record that he was producing with a guitar player (Who Am I? by Todd Sharp) that I had worked on the road tuning. It was a great place to be, you know; it’s where I wanted to be.”

Gehman had a special affinity for Hogarth’s position, because he had gone from working on the road with Stephen Stills as a live-sound mixer to the studio. “I was really burned out on this 301-nighters-a-year schedule,” Gehman recalls. “Stephen saw that my heart was really into music and not so much in this travel thing, and he offered me an opportunity to help finish a record that he was working on at the time (the 1975 release Stills). So, I did it, and he thought I was good and had the right personality, and he set me up at a place called Criteria Recording Studios in Miami, which at the time was like Atlantic South—Tom Dowd, Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin were all there. The Bee Gees came in. The Eagles. It was just a great place to be for most of the ‘70s, and it was where I kind of cut my teeth on how to produce records.”

Not only did working at Criteria give Gehman an understanding of how to work in a studio versus the road, it put him at the right place at the right time. John Mellen-camp, who was then working under the

stage name John Cougar, had been brought to Criteria to work with the legendary producer Tom Dowd, but Dowd was busy with a Rod Stewart project. “Tom thought that maybe the Albert Brothers (Howard and Ron), who were another set of producers there, might do well with him,” Gehman says. “So, they made a record with Mellen-camp where I did most of the work, and out of that situation, John came back to me to co-produce records with him. That’s really

where people began to really know me as a record producer.” The first Gehman- Mellencamp production was the 1982 offering American Fool, an album that fea-tured the break-out songs “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane.”

This was excerpted from Producing Hit Records: Secrets from the Studio by longtime FOH contributor David John Farinella. More information on the book can be found at

Jumping Off the Road

Ross Hogarth

In the live world... It’s all about fast thinking and knowing and trouble-

shooting, and I think that kind of technical thinking works in the studio.

Christine McVie’s Band

200.0605.Producers.JH.indd 31 4/28/06 3:32:21 PM

On the Bleeding Edge

By SteveLaCerra

32 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

Back in my days as a long-haired metal-head, I played drums and sang backing vocals for a band called Dagger. Love

us or hate us, we were competent musi-cians who took pride in our ability to play and sing. The most widespread comment I received after a show was, “Who’s playing the background vocal samples?” Interestingly, there wasn’t anyone with a sampler or a tape machine hiding behind the curtain: We were simply singing backup vocals. I vividly re-member spending countless nights rehears-ing nothing but harmonies until we’d get them right. We wanted to sound like our CD.

Nowadays, audiences expect a band to sound like the record. Is it because they are more discriminating than they used to be, or is it simply a sense of entitlement that

their favorite band should sound “just like the CD”? Could it be a lack of appreciation for how much work it takes for a live band

to sound the same onstage as they do in the studio? Or is it that audiences have become

so numb to lip-syncing that they don’t know the difference between live and Memorex?

It may be a combination of all of the

above, but the net result is the same: Competition is fierce, and that may be the reason many acts have resorted to integrat-ing studio vocal-processing technology into their live shows. Some of that technology includes fixing out-of-tune vocals and vocal-ists handling their own effects on stage. Let’s look at these one at a time.

Pitch-accuracy of vocals is a topic near and dear to my heart. I have zero patience for artists who can’t sing in the studio, and less than zero for artists who can’t sing live. Of course, the familiar model of tuning vocals is our audio-vision of a sub-par singer soar-ing to new heights, bolstered by the latest pitch correction technology from TC-Helicon, DigiTech or Antares. You’d be surprised at the number of lead singers who are “auto-tuned” on-the-fly at the FOH console, and we’re starting to see pitch correction applied to backing singers as well.

Many people feel this is cheating, and to some extent, I agree with them. When was the last time you saw a drummer who was being time-corrected? (On second thought, don’t answer that. I see plenty of drum-mers playing along with a click onstage). It’s almost like the steroid problem in baseball: If everyone is doing it, how can you possibly remaining competitive while abstaining?

Some of these vocal processors include the ability to modify the “character” of the voice, adding parameters that control the size of one’s chest cavity (no wisecracks please), add vibrato where there was none, or make your next door neighbor sound like Mickey Mouse. Which one of these knobs makes me sound like Frank Sinatra?

The interesting thing is that using pitch correction on a voice doesn’t have to be audible in the Front of House mix to be effective. What, you say? According to Kevin Alexander at TC-Helicon, “When a person learns to sing, one of the things they listen for to determine if they are in tune, is the beating between their own voice and the people they are singing (or playing) with. This lets them know when they are flat or sharp. If their own pitch-corrected voice is sent into the monitors as a reference, they’ll hear beating between the corrected voice and their natural voice, and naturally adjust their pitch until the beating goes away—at

which point, they are in tune.” So, feed your pitch-corrected signal into

your lead vocalist’s monitor mix, and quite soon, they will learn to sing on key. Fascinat-ing. There are a plethora of tools available for the job. Hardware boxes manufactured by TC-Helicon (VoiceLive, VoicePro), Antares (ATR-1a, AVP) and Eventide (H8000FW) can fix pitch in real time. If that doesn’t float your boat, Manifold Labs’ Plugzilla is a hardware box that will run your favorite standard VST plug-ins without a computer, making it a breeze to use software in live situations. Employing any of these tools, you can elect to either fix a singer’s pitch in the FOH mix, or send the fixed voice to their monitors and let them figure it out themselves.

Stomp Boxes for Singers

The flip (and much more fun) side of the vocal-processing coin is the trend for lead singers to control their own effects on stage. Guitar players have been aggravating sound engineers with this for years and now vocalists are in on it, too. Singers want to hear Front of House effect cues in the moni-tors, which is difficult in club situations or tours where the band is not traveling with a monitor engineer. From the sound engineer’s standpoint, there are important questions to be raised when the mic is routed through a vocal effects device: Where does this thing patch in, at the stage or the FOH console? Is the output mic or line level? Is the output sufficiently quiet? Do I have to worry about ground issues? Will the vocal still be intelligi-ble when the singer initiates the “chipmunk” patch? Most importantly: Does the singer know how to use it, and have the patches been set for the same output level?”

The answers depend upon the device. In the case of the DigiTech Vx400, there are balanced XLR outs on the back panel carry-ing the processed output at line level, but their Vocal 300 provides mic level out. That brings up the next question: Do I need to add any additional processing? In the case of the Vx400, the answer is “probably not.” The latter is capable of EQ, compression, chorus, flange, phase, pitch and reverb. Just when you thought you were off the hook for cueing ef-fects, there’s preproduction coming your way. In the way that guitar processing or modeling can change the output level of a guitar rig, variations in vocal presets can change the output level of the lead vocal. This is unac-ceptable and must be dealt with in advance—especially where the vocal sound includes a distortion component. Maybe that’s not a bad thing…maybe it’s billable hours spent at rehearsals to work out the vocal patches.

In addition to being the Front of House engi-neer and tour manager for Blue Öyster Cult, Steve “Woody” La Cerra teaches aspiring audio minds at Mercy College in White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached via email at [email protected].

Voice of a New Generation

You’d be surprised at the number of lead singers who are “auto-tuned”

on-the-fly at the FOH console.

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Regional Slants

33May 2006www.fohonline.com

Being in this biz for only 10 years, I guess it’s safe to say that I am a baby. All of the biggest houses in the biz have

been around for an average of 30-plus years, and a recent FOH poll revealed that a very small percentage of sound hire companies’ owners are under the age of 40. I just cel-ebrated my 38th birthday.

Three times in the 10 years HAS Productions has been around, it’s lack of longevity in this biz has been questioned by a visiting FOH guy, all really big shows. In this biz, stakes are high and there are no second chances, so as crushing to my ego as it is, I understand their perspectives. With it only coming up three times, I guess I should feel fortunate.

The Short VersionsA very good friend of mine who was (and

continues to be) a well-respected promoter gave me plenty of gigs for the “anklebiter” level I worked in at the time. In fact, as I have grown, he has continued to give me bigger and better gigs.

About nine years ago, a new large venue opened up where my friend was put in charge of all production and booking of the acts. I, of course, called on him with the expectation of handling all of the shows. He informed me that I was not able to handle acts of the size he was booking. I argued that gear was easy to sub rent, and then, he said it: “You are not experienced enough to deal with these acts.” I was crushed! I went to the venue for one of the first big shows, and Toby Keith was the act. Not as big as he is now, but big enough. After seeing the big production rental for the show, I thanked my friend for saving both of us a lot of grief. He was right; I was not ready.

However, after 10 years (9½ years after the Toby thing), HAS Productions has come a long way. We have hired some very seasoned staff members and have a few younger guys who still actually love every part of a gig, even the crappy ones. Today, I am confident that we could handle the gig.

The second incident came six years ago. We had taken over a venue from a larger competitor. During NFR (National Finals Rodeo, a huge week-long event in Las Vegas), they would book a lot of country.

I received a rider for a pretty big rodeo act. Looked the rider over and realized we had almost all of the gear required. I eagerly called the production manager to advance the show. The first words out of his mouth were, “You’re who? With who? I assumed the ‘big’ guy was doing the gig.”

My heart sank. I started telling him that we did these kinds of shows all the time and I had the gear he was asking for. “On your rider, you want KF 850s. Cool—that’s what we have.”

His response was, “Uh, don’t you have this other box, or what”? I said the 850 was the only box on his rider.

Next, I said, “Well, you want SM 222 wedges, I have those too.”

“I want something smaller,” he shot back.This went back and forth for a while and I

ended up asking him, “Well, do you want any-thing that is actually on your rider?”

Fast-forward a bit. The venue, of course, booked the act for the entire week. From load-in to load-out, he treated us like crap. We did everything right. Well, maybe if I had brought him a bottle of aspirin every day to deal with his hangover we would have gotten along better. Oh, did I mention he was a smoker who dumped ashes in our console every night? It

almost seemed like he wanted us to know he didn’t give two craps about us or our gear.

The worst part? The venue booked them during NFR for the next three years. Every year, it was the same. The entertainer was truly one of the nicest people we had ever worked with, and I believe if he knew what this guy was about, he would have fired him. Unfortunately, the performer’s health took a turn for the worse and he passed away. But this guy actually had the balls to call me for work! “Uh, hey man. So I live a couple hours away and can commute if you need anything. I think we work well together.” UN-FREAKIN’-BELIEVABLE!!

The final story happened just a few weeks ago. I have been “romancing” a new client, lots of work coming from this guy. His first event was a corporate event for about 300 real rich people in a tent. They had hired a founding member of one of the biggest acts of the last 30 years. We got the rider and

it was surprisingly easy to put together a bid and submit it to the buyer. A few weeks passed and the buyer called to tell me we were the middle bid and we had the job.

My crew chief/shop manager called the “heavyweight” FOH guy to advance the show. The guy freaked out, telling my guy that none of the gear we were offering would do, and

what were we thinking? It was exactly what was on the rider, we told him. “Oh, that is the wrong rider,” he replied (we have all seen this one before). Even this big, heavyweight FOH guy couldn’t get the right rider out. I thought he would be more together.

We had a portion of what he wanted and told him we would need to get back to him on the rest of the list. After a few calls, we had secured all of the equipment he wanted. This also meant we needed to rent gear we hadn’t budgeted for, but I needed to make an impression with the FOH guy and the cli-ent. My intent was to eat the rentals even if it meant losing money on the gig.

My crew chief started calling Mr. Heavyweight and left several messages. No response. We sent e-mails with lists of exactly what he wanted. No response. About two weeks before load-in, I called my client, who made a call to the FOH guy and was told, “Those guys don’t know what they are doing.”

“The guy at HAS I advanced with was unprofessional and gave me the run-around.”

“Won’t return calls.” (Heavyweight FOH guy NEVER called.)

“Besides, I have never heard of them.” That’s the gist of it right there.

Well, we got the boot from the gig. Which was the first time that had happened in 10 years.

Now, the client is having second thoughts about using us at all. This would be a high-six-figure-a-year client, and now because some %@*! says he doesn’t know who we are, we may lose the whole gig for the long term.

Look, Mr. Heavyweight, if you’re not com-fortable, just say so up front. You don’t need to slander me or my company—especially to the client. (Big attorney word, slander. Ten out of 10 people I talked to about the incident said to sue him.)

He could have said, “Hey Larry, maybe we can do something down the road with a bit less stress and see how it goes.” That would have gone a long way.

I would have gracefully bowed out if he would have just said, “I am just not comfortable without a name-brand company. This event is just too important.” I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have backed out just the same. That would give me the opportunity to keep peace with the client and maybe work something out with this guy for the future.

So, here we are. I am perplexed about this last story and am sure I can’t possibly be the only guy this has happened to. So please feel free to send me your feedback, tell me to stop crying about it or share you stories with me. You can contact me at [email protected].

By LarryHall

Getting Large Through Being Small

The guy freaked out, telling my guy that none of the gear we were offering would do, and what were we thinking?

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Theory & Practice

By MarkAmundson

In Part 1 of the Wireless Microphones piece, I described wireless mic limitations, preferred locations of mic and receiver, RF

link budgets and antenna polarization. In Part 2, we’ll cover radio frequency names, antenna patterns and compression/expansion circuits.

SuperlativesUs techno-geeks are quick to toss out

acronyms like VHF and UHF without a care, hoping that no one will bother to ask why a user might choose VHF or UHF as the frequency band for transmission. Starting with HF (high frequency), we move up to VHF (very high frequency), then on to UHF (ultra high frequency), then to SHF (super

high frequency) and, believe it or not, EHF (extremely high frequency). Each of these high-frequency superlatives stand for a range of frequencies, or bandwidth. HF has 3 mega-hertz to 30 megahertz, VHF has 30 megahertz to 300 megahertz, UHF has 300 megahertz to 3 gigahertz, SHF has 3 gigahertz to 30 gigahertz, and EHF has 30 gigahertz to 300 gigahertz. And these are all waves per second of radiated electromagnetic energy, better

known as radio frequencies (RF).The reason I am blathering about Hertz-

ian waves and superlatives is that these waves travel from transmit antennas to receiver antennas at 300,000,000 meters per second. If your transmit frequency is 300MHz, then a new wave starts just as the previous wave expands to one meter beyond the an-

tenna. Much like sound waves, the one meter is a “wavelength”.

Antenna TheoryTo cut to the chase on antenna theory

for wireless mics, most wireless mics and wireless mic receivers use “wire antennas” cut to a quarter wavelength of their nominal transmit frequency bandwidth. That is why

VHF antennas tend to be the telescoping whip types at the receiver and floppy wires at the mic or belt pack. UHF antennas are much shorter and tend to be non- telescoping rods on both the wireless mic and receiver. The reason for only a quarter of their wavelength in size is that they use the “groundplane” to bounce and balance the RF

waves for efficient transmission and recep-tion. See Figs. 1 and 2 for depictions of a UHF wireless mic and receiver.

The groundplane for the mic receiver is the chassis and any other conductive rack-mounting materials. On most wireless mics, the metal mic grip is the ground plane. By designing the quarter wave antennas and a quarter wave or more of nearby ground-plane, the RF waves can be transmitted and received well. But the mechanical configu-ration of the wire/rod/whip antenna and the groundplane defines the way most of the RF energy travels to/from the antenna. This yellow defined area in the figures is the antenna pattern of best transmission and re-ception and looks a lot like mic and speaker patterns. Note the steep “nulls” at the ends of the wire antennas where not much energy is transmitted or received. And knowing the nulls is what I want you to take away from this diagram so you know not to locate a receiver/transmitter RF path where these nulls are occurring.

This means the receivers should be not high above the stage, or well below the stage. Also, do not place the receivers down the “boresight” line of the typical mic-handling angle (down-front, behind-above). But beyond these few null points, there leaves a lot of front/back/sides locating of receivers for good reception. As I mentioned in Part 1 of wireless mics, you typically have little to no control of how the “artist” handles the wireless mic, but you can locate the receivers reasonably close and out of the null paths.

The Ol’ Squeeze-OlaTo get from the microphone diaphragm

to the console, wired mics have—at most—a transformer and wire in the path. But most wireless mics have amplifiers, VHF or UHF

transmitters and receivers with frequency modulation (FM) to keep the static out. But through the air, FM transmission only has about 50dB signal to noise ratio, and most microphones require about a 90dB or bet-ter signal to noise ratio to be at parity with wired mics. To get the extra tens of decibels of dynamic range, a compressor circuit in the wireless mic squeezes the 90dB down into

the 50dB FM channel. At the receiver, the re-verse must be done by expanding the 50dB back to 90dB with an expander circuit. Fig. 3 shows a typical block diagram of wireless mic and receiver signal paths.

While compression and expansion circuits are well-known in audio gear, making a very high-quality compressor- integrated circuit to fit inside a small microphone is quite a challenge. Then add problems like very small battery voltages, and the compressor must lightly “sip” power from the same battery to not drastically decrease talk time on the wireless mic. This is why most wireless mic manufacturers spend precious engineering resources developing, and marketing resources adver-tising, that their compressors and expanders are the best, and make comparison to wired mics. So note those bandwidths, distortions and dynamic range specifications, as well as battery life, when comparing wireless mic systems.

VHF vs. UHFMany years ago, VHF wireless mics were

the only affordable option. But as the RF electronic technology improved, UHF mics came about. UHF wireless systems offered smaller antennas and a less crowded frequency spectrum to be exploited. But as I mentioned in Part 1 on wireless mics, higher frequencies like UHF undergo more attenuation when penetrating performers in the path of the receiver. For awhile, this oddly made VHF wireless less expensive and more reliable, until UHF receiver technology could handle weaker UHF signals. Today, only a few VHF wireless mic offerings are still available, mostly for the cost-conscious music industry (MI) buyer who can live with the bigger antennas.

Wireless Microphones

Most wireless mic manufacturers spend precious engineering and marketing resources

advertising that their compressors and expanders are the best, and make comparison to wired mics.

Part 2

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

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200.0605.Theory.BK.indd 34 4/27/06 5:27:16 PM

Road Tests

35May 2006www.fohonline.com

By BillEvans

I once heard from someone who had reason to know that a decade ago, a huge rock band well-known for their vocal

harmonies had all of the parts sampled and played back live by a keyboard player lo-cated out of sight of the audience. It was not about being able to sing—these guys always could and still can—it was about thickening things up and getting closer to the sound of the record.

Ten years ago, that sampling method was really the only way to get the dou-bling effect live. I have heard people try a number of other methods, including delay and chorus, but it never sounds quite right. The problem is that to really get the effect of a live double—which will always vary in timing, pitch and energy from the “root” track—you need a lot of processing power and rocket scientists to write the algorithms that both describe those varia-tions and account for their randomization. Then, it has to sound great and be easy to use. There have been some products out there (mostly vocal harmonizers) that could be used to get a doubling effect, but they were either fairly lame-sounding and hard to figure out, or very expensive and still hard to use. Enter the TC-Helicon VoiceDoubler.

The GearThe VoiceDoubler is a single rack-space

processor that looks a lot like other TC products (a good thing). From left to right on the front panel, you will find a power button and a large display panel that tells you what preset you are using and other important info about the audio. Let’s not gloss over that power button—too many companies have been leaving this off as a cost-saving measure or locating it on the back, making it hard to access in a rack. Attention gear manufacturers: Power buttons belong on the front. Thank you.

The combo LED/LCD display shows pre-set number, a level meter that monitors both input and output levels (this is important, more later), and further right, the LCD part gives the name of the preset along with the values for the four edit parameters mapped to the four knobs that appear to the right of the display. Don’t get scared by terms like “parameters mapped to knobs.” The Doubler is easy to use and very useful even if you never get past the presets.

To the right of the edit knobs is a section with four buttons and a data wheel. Spin the wheel to find the preset you want and hit the

Recall button to make it active. The Edit button puts you in

edit mode, Store saves the preset and Bypass takes the Doubler out of the signal chain. The back panel sports XLRs ins and outs, RCA jacks for SPDIF in and out, AES/EBU in and out, MIDI in, out and through and an input for a footswitch that can be used as a simple bypass or a preset up, down and bypass.

Let’s go back to those knobs for a sec: In live mode, those knobs are active and labeled for the most likely to be edited on the fly groups—Timing, Pitch, Overdub Level and µMod Level. These are self- explanatory, except the last one. The µMod is the VoiceDoubler’s internal effects unit that does classic vocal effects on one singer at a time, including chorus, detuning and delay.

The GigsWe used the VoiceDoubler with female

backup vocalists in a couple of different situations. The first time out, we brought the unit to a rehearsal after opening the box and glancing at the gear, noting the XLR ins and outs. Knowing from experience that A) the venue we were using would most likely have a Mackie mixer with quarter-inch aux and

send jacks, and B) that at least some of the other TC-Helicon

products had no preamp and could not take a direct mic input, I started to open the tool-box and grab a couple of adapters. But then I noticed that the two XLR ins were labeled Voice and Aux and figured that meant one was a direct mic input and the other a line level for an aux send. Big mistake.

When I got to the venue and found the expected quarter-inch jacks, I thought, “No problem, I’ll just plug the mic right into the Voice input and we’ll be ready to rock.” Wrong. When it wouldn’t work, I finally looked at the manual and was reminded about the old cliché about the word ass-u-me.

Turns out that in this case, Voice refers to an input that will get the vocal overdub treatment, and Aux is any other signal that will receive only the µMod effects processing. While the labeling could have been a little clearer, I should have checked the manual before I left those adaptors at home. Bottom line is that the Doubler stayed in the box that first time out. My bad.

The next time out, same venue, same band, but this time, I read the manual (OK, most of it) and had those adapters with me. Setup was a cinch. In its default mode, the VoiceDoubler gets its input from an

aux send and gets patched back into a pair of channels that gives you immediate control—at the console—of the rela-tive levels of the dry input vocal and the virtual overdubs. This is a very nice touch for live use.

How did it sound? Using the VoiceDou-bler on one backup singer, our two singers sounded like six and the backups were thick and sounded very natural. We had to remember to mute the effect channels between songs in case someone spoke on the mic because by itself, it sounded a little strange, but in context it was great. The only problem is that I found myself wanting two of them so I could put one on each of the girls. Something is gonna have to come out of the rack…

TC-Helicon VoiceDoubler

What it is: Vocal doubling and effects processor.

Who it’s for: Anyone who needs to thicken live or recorded vocals.

Pros: Easy to use, sounds like a TC, plenty of live control.

Cons: Rear panel labeling could be clearer.

How much: $1,249 MSRP

200.0605.RoadTests.JH.indd 35 4/27/06 5:22:24 PM

Road Tests

36 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

Anyone who does one-off or touring gigs has been there. It’s late, it’s been a long day and you have hundreds of

feet of heavy snake to drag and coil into a box, which then weighs a ton, and you have to push it around to get it into the truck. Sometimes, if you are really lucky, the truck

has no lift, so you get to muscle it up a ramp. It’s one reason why we have been watch-ing the development of digital snakes that transmit over fiber or CAT5 and fit in a case that you can carry onto an airplane without a sideways glance from the flight attendant.

The GearThe product that was sent for review was

the RSS S-4000 digital snake system. It comes in a couple of different configurations: 32 x 8, 64 x 16, 96 x 24 or 128 x 32. The -S-4000 is also available in custom configurations

including 24 x16, 48 x 16, 56 x 24 and 96 x 32. This system runs at 24-bit 96KHz. RSS is part of Roland, and this system was devel-oped by some of the same rocket scientists who designed the popular all-in-one Roland recording units.

With the basic 32 x 8 configuration like

I used, there are four main hardware pieces when using the system in a “split” configura-tion. The first is the “Modular Rack.” For all you analog guys, this would be your split box on stage. This is where your mic preamps and analog-to-digital conversion take place. Every channel has a signal, clip and 48-volt LED for onstage monitoring. It also has a cool power switch that looks like a missile launch button with a plastic cover. That way, some drunk band roadie can’t turn it off by “accident.”

The second piece is a hub (required

only when doing splits). The modular rack is hooked up to the hub via two Ethercon connectors. (If you are not familiar with these, they look like a computer network plug wrapped in an XLR shell, and they are pretty bulletproof.) One is the main and the other is a redundant backup that automatically switches over if the main loses connection somehow. There is a non-audible 1 sample loss when switched over. (Samples are mea-sured in microseconds; trust me, you can’t hear it.) Roland has a proprietary hub that will be available soon, but you can also use a consumer brand such as D-Link or Linksys. The hub is sort of your “split.” One set of Ethercons (CAT5e cable) goes to FOH and the other set goes to monitor land.

FOH and monitor land both get an S-4000H FOH unit and an S-4000R remote controller. This is your D-to-A conversion to go into your console as well as your preamp control. Inputs and outputs from the console interface into the FOH unit via D-Sub con-nectors. Each connector holds eight channels of audio. (Rumor has it that Roland is work-ing on a mass pin version and I confirmed this with a call to Roland.)

The FOH remote is also plugged into the FOH unit from an RS-232 port. The remote controller can control up to 40 channels of audio. It controls phantom power, preamp gain and has a -20dB pad. If an input channel clips on the remote, the clip light will stay on until you hit the “clip clear” button. However, you can only control the preamp gain from one place, FOH or the stage location.

One really cool thing I did notice about the phantom power was a half-second or so mute when you turn it on. That will definitely come in handy with visiting engineers in-stead of the “Whoops, sorry!” we are all used to. The remote also has presets for storing gain settings for repeat acts. We did find out that you cannot run Clear-Com through the snake though due to voltage restrictions.

The GigThis year at NSCA, I took a visit to the

Roland booth and they had a comparison between a standard analog snake, which was conveniently 400 feet long, and their digital snake. (Over CAT5 like we used, you can only

go 350 feet.) I listened to some music, hit the A/B switch and I was blown away. It sounded like the soundman turned down the suck knob! Compared to the analog snake, the Roland had a lot more clarity and warmth to it. It was a complete night and day difference.

The show that I used this on was for Juice Newton at the Silverton Casino Hotel Lodge in Las Vegas. It was at their outdoor event center for roughly 1,200 people. Even with the unfamiliar connectors and hubs and converters we were not used to having on a gig, setup was a snap.

While prepping for the show, I did try unplugging the main Ethercon (CAT5e cable) while audio was running through the snake to see what would happen. Absolute-ly nothing! It switched over automatically without any audible change whatsoever.

I’ve heard our rig at the Silverton many times, more than I would like as a matter of fact. The system always sounds good but this time was a lot different. It was a lot fuller and clearer than ever before at that venue. Even the visiting engineer noticed the difference. And packing up did not involve sweat, grunt-ing and swearing—at least not when it came to the snake. Sweet.

RSS S-4000 Digital Snake System

By BrianKlijanowicz What it is: System for transport of digi-tized audio in a live setting.

Who it’s for: Touring and one-off soundcos. Installs where running a ton of copper is not practical.

Pros: Fewer potential RF and AC noise problems compared to analog; CAT5e cable is a lot cheaper, lighter, smaller and easier to run than W4, Ramlatch or Veam; a substantial reduction in sonic signal quality degradation over longer cable runs compared to analog snakes; redundant power supply available

Cons: You can only control gain from ei-ther FOH or stage, not both at the same time; D-Sub fanouts feel kind of thin and cheap; cannot run Clear-Com through return lines

MSRP: $7,995 for 32 x 8 system with re-mote control, stage and FOH units. Pric-ing for custom configurations available by contacting Roland Systems Group.

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200.0605.RoadTests.JH.indd 36 4/27/06 5:23:14 PM

Beth GladenOwner/engineerSweet Spot Audio ProductionsCleveland, [email protected]/soundchic

Services Provided:Live sound, both medium and small scale. Sound, stages and lighting.

Clients:New company! First year of going out and doing this on my own! Clients include The Grog Shop, The Winchester and several other local bands.

Quote:“I’ll do it!”

Personal Info:I am a 20-year veteran of the audio indus-try and finally decided to go out and do it

for myself! I put together three different systems, bought a truck and started telling everyone I can think of. Wish me luck!

Hobbies:Music, fashion, cooking, home studio.

Equipment:My consoles are Allen & Heath GL-2200 se-ries 32 and 24 and a (dare I say it?) Mackie 1604. Amps are all Crown. Speaker sys-tems are Martin, EAW and JBL. Outboard is mostly BSS, with a couple TC Electronic M-1s and a D-2. Also Ashly EQs on the monitors. Mics are the usual SM 58s and 57s, Beta 57s, Beta 58s D112, D-6 as well as Beta 52. Sennheiser 421s, ATM Pro 25s and AKG & Rode condensors.

Don’t Leave Home Without:My M-1, D-2 and my Tascam burner.

Jake ObermeierOwnerAJ AudioFort Worth, [email protected]

Services Provided:Full sound system, FOH mix, monitor mix.

Quote:“Nothing to do but to do it.”

Personal Info:I’m the only 18-year-old I know who owns their own sound company.

Hobbies:Editing videos.

Equipment:EAW KF650s, EAW SB 850s, Crest HP8-40, Shure SM58s, Shure PSM 600 personal monitors. dbx DriveRack. Audix drum mics, dbx 166XL compressor/limiters.

Don’t Leave Home Without:Cell phone.

The best disruption repair I ever saw didn’t involve any human problem, but an electrical one. It was a blazing

hot day at the Philly Folk Festival a while back. During an afternoon round robin at one of the side stages, among the per-formers was a “name” who obviously was none too happy to be playing to a bunch of hicks (comment: “If I knew I’d be doing workshops, I would have brought my knife so I could show you how to whittle.”) and a fairly newly-established Susan Werner. Name brand had just finished a song, and Susan stepped up to the mic and launched into “So Heavy (When You’re Holding Up the Ceiling).” About a minute into the song, something apparently shorted out in the amp, resulting in a 60Hz blast at about 120

dB. The soundman, after a brief attempt to correct the problem from the board, tore down behind the stage and pulled the plug, eliminating the noise, but leaving the stage 100% acoustic. When we could all hear again, we realized that Susan had waded out into the middle of the crowded hillside and was leading the multitudes

in an a cappella chorus of “So Heavy”. A minute or so later, the sound restored, she strolled back up to the stage and finished the song with amplification. She got a two-minute screaming standing ovation. Name brand got polite applause and was not invited back.

Mike Space

In The Trenches

37May 2006www.fohonline.com

Welcome To My Nightmare

If you’d like to see yourself featured in “In the Trenches,” visit www.fohonline.com/trenches to

submit your information to FOH, or e-mail [email protected] for more information.

Gigs from Hell. We’ve all had ‘em and the good folks at FOH want to hear about yours. Write it up

and send it to us and we’ll illustrate the most worthy. Send your

nightmares to [email protected] or fax them to 702.935.5584.

Ego Check

http://go.to/tonygleeson

200.0605.Night/Trench.BK.indd 37 4/27/06 5:14:35 PM

38 www.fohonline.com38 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

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Case and RackHardware

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RECORDING ARTS INSTRUCTOR (LIVE SOUND)Beginning Fall 2006

Citrus College, now celebrating 90 years of service, is a comprehensive two-year community college dedicated to serving the residents of eastern San Gabriel Valley in the Los Angeles, CA area.

We seek a full-time (10-month) tenure track instructor of Recording Arts. This assignment will include a wide variety of courses included in the District’s Recording Arts Technology Program. Will act as lead live sound faculty and coordinate with adjunct faculty for the instructional program. May consist of day and/or evening hours.

For information or application, visit our website at: www.citruscollege.edu or call our Job Hotline: 626.914.8553EOE M/F/D/V

Manager - Digital Technical Services

As the world’s largest supplier of professional audio equipment with total group sales exceeding $4bn, this is an exciting opportunity to join a major international company.As part of Harman International Industries, Harman Pro North America is the US distributor for the Soundcraft and Studer brands of audio mixing consoles. We are currently seeking a ‘Digital Technical Services Manager’ to oversee all aspects of service and training related issues for our growing range of digital audio consoles.

Reporting directly to the Vice President/General Manager, the successful applicant will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of technical services to insure we deliver the highest level of support to our customer base.

The role will require a degree of travel which in the early days may be up to 60% of your time. Early on you will be sent to Europe for vigorous training on all aspects of service and support to insure you are well equipped to handle all aspects of the role.

This is a newly developed role and represents a ground floor opportunity to join a small team of audio professionals dedicated to delivering the highest levels of service.

You will need energy, enthusiasm, the ability to travel at short notice, as well as being an outgoing individual with an existing understanding of current digital audio technologies. Good communication and presentation skills are also pre-requisite. Ideally you will have a degree in an associated field and/or have a minimum of 5 years experience in a similar role.

The role will be based in Northridge, CA and where appropriate, re-location expenses will be paid. Salary and benefits will be commensurate with the role.

Duties will include:

• Pre/post sales support including on-site demonstrations and post sales operator and service training.

• The setting up and monitoring of a 365 day 24/7 emergency phone service.

• Preparation of training materials

• Sales engineering support

• Managing the release of software updates to the customer base

• Expanding the department as requirements grow

Harman International Industries, Inc. is an equal opportunities employer

If you are interested in this position, please email us your resume to [email protected] or fax us at (818) 920-3208. Please be sure to include “Digital Technical Services Manager” in the Subject line.

Employment

200.0605.Index.ss.indd 38 4/27/06 5:08:12 PM

39May 2006www.fohonline.com

INDEX

A-Line Acoustics 34 814.663.0600 www.a-lineacoustics.comAudio-Technica 31 330.686.2600 www.audio-technica.comD.A.S. Sound Products 30 888.327.4872 www.dasaudio.com dbx 03 801.568.7660 www.dbxpro.comDigidesign 23 650.333.2137 www.digidesign.comEAW 20,21 800.992.5013 www.eaw.comEventide Inc. 19 201.641.1200 www.eventide.comHear Technologies 25 256.922.1200 www.heartechnologies.comL-AcouSTIcS 05 805.604.0577 www.l-acoustics.comMackie c4 800.898.3211 www.mackie.comMc2 Audio 09 516.249.1399 www.mc2-audio.co.ukMeyer Sound c2 510.486.1166 www.meyersound.comMidas 07 800.392.3497 www.midasconsoles.comPeavey 29 866.443.2333 www.peavey.comRoland Systems Group 15 800.380.2580 www.rssamerica.comRutherford Design 36 818.775.0046 www.rutherforddesign.comSLS Loudspeakers 33 417.883.4549 www.slsloudspeakers.comTc Electronic c1 818.665.4900 www.tcelectronic.com

TcS Audio 06 858.487.1600 www.tcsaudio.comTMB 13 818.899.8818 www.tmb.comWestone Music Products 04 800.525.5071 www.westone.com/musicWorxAudio Technologies 08 336.275.7474 www.worxaudio.comYamaha commercial Audio 1,11,c3 714.522.9000 www.yamahaca.com

MARKETPLACE

Audio East 39 866.274.4590 www.audioeast.comdblittle.com 38 423.892.1837 www.dblittle.comHi-Tech Audio Systems 38 650.742.9166 www.hi-techaudio.comHybrid case 38 800.346.4638 www.discount-distributors.comMusic Gear capital 38 800.614.4083 www.musicgearcapital.comNorthern Sound & Light 38 866.796.6232 www.northernsound.netSound Productions 38 800.203.5611 www.soundpro.com

For advertiser information go to www.fohonline.com and click on Instant Info.

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continued from page 8

coordinated with show production and other trades for access to scaffolding and conduit. The team was assisted by New orleans-based church Interiors employees chuck Wicker and chris Frazier, along with volunteers from their partner manufacturers. Wire pulls and rigging points for the P.A. cluster and choir monitors were completed, along with demolition of an existing sound room, on the first day.

The First Emanuel sanctuary system now includes a Yamaha M7cL digital mixing con-sole, and several models from the YamahaInstallation Series loudspeaker line for the house P.A., choir speakers and monitors system, driven and processed with Yamaha Pc4801N and Pc9501N amplifiers and a DME24N digital mixing engine. Rapco sup-plied custom floor boxes, panels and cabling, while H.S.A. provided custom wooden racks and component housing.

“We had originally planned on using a three-box rig with two 60 by 40s on the bot-tom, plus a 90 by 40 to carry the balcony,” says Wood, “but when we actually saw the space, the room was only about 45 feet from the back of the chancel area to the wrap-around balcony, so a third box would have been overkill. We ended up doing a 30º splay, with the bottom of the cluster about 28 feet off the floor, and the coverage was more than sufficient.” under-balcony support was also deemed unnecessary, since the few rows of seats were well-covered by the house P.A.

First Emanuel’s classic Southern Gospel choir, band and pulpit are more than cov-ered by more than a dozen Shure wired and wireless mics. All house and monitor feeds are routed from M7cL, with auxes set for the choir mix, plus and floor mixes for the pas-tor and band. A Yamaha AW16G digital audio workstation and model MSP10 Studio moni-tors also share the front of house position, ready to record services.

“We also knew that the DME24N had plenty of processing power and are using it for speaker processing, system EQ and cross-over,” he adds. “The initial programming was completed before we went to New orleans, but we did do some fine tuning. The room required some adjustments at around 200Hz and some smoothing out around 630Hz, and we do have hard limiters on everything since many of the operators are volunteers. A few effects are being sourced from the M7cL, so there was no need for an outboard rack.”

“obviously, prime time network televi-sion is a great vehicle to expose products to potential customers,” says Dan craik, prod-uct manager for Yamaha commercial Audio, who, along with district manager chris Taylor, worked with Wood to help provide the First Emanuel system. “But this was different from the usual installation in that the goal was not to sell product, but to provide a quality sys-tem to a deserving group of people.” Yamaha is providing special training with the First Emanuel staff on the new gear.

New Orleans Church Restored on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

200.0605.Index.ss.indd 39 4/27/06 5:08:32 PM

FOH-at-Large

By BakerLee

40 May 2006 www.fohonline.com

I was already seething and it was only two hours into the second day of a video shoot. The artist had chosen to play live

with her band and record a full set of tunes to Pro Tools for a concert-style video. She had hired a well-known recording engineer who is much noted for his live productions and a video company that boasted a roster full of film and lighting luminaries. I had worked with the artist for quite a few years and was called upon to provide and mix the live audio portion of the video and record-ing. I was told that the artist was paying for the project out of pocket and was asked to keep the budget as low as possible. Wanting to be of as-sistance, I quoted a fairly low rate for the shoot, which included the equipment as well as my day rate for the three 12- to 14-hour days the production would require.

The first day, we were scheduled to load in and set up from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. with a dinner break until 9 p.m., after which there was to be a full band sound and video check from 9 p.m. until 11 p.m. The fol-lowing day, we were to return at 10 a.m. for a quick check, and then commence shooting the video at 11 a.m. for the next two days. The producer insisted that I load into the venue at 9 a.m., but I suggested that with all the lighting and video equipment loading in at the same time that it would be prudent to stagger the load-in and have me arrive at 4 p.m., which would then give me plenty of time to get set up and running. The producer told me that I should be there no later than 1 p.m. as the video and recording crew were quite fast and would probably be finished by the time I arrived. I told her I thought she might be a bit unrealistic in her scheduling, but agreed to a 1 p.m. load-in.

The venue happened to be a small club in midtown Manhattan in which I had al-ready done a few shows, and I knew that the potential for overcrowding could be as likely as it is for the number 1 train during rush hour. I was not proven wrong, and when I arrived for my load-in at 1 p.m. I found myself working around and under the lighting and video crew, who had only begun to set up. I gritted my teeth, and with the one loader I brought (budget constraints, ya know), managed to run feeder cable and to get the console, snake and racks all set by 4 p.m. To reduce the stage volume, the artist and the producer had decided to have everyone on personal monitors with one pair of wedges downstage for the singer—just for some fill. I was running six mixes of PMs, one mix of

wedges plus sending a left and right to the in-house system as the band had planned to do a performance (for the video) in front of a live audience.

The recording engineer had decided that he would bring all the microphones, and I was to bring stands, cables and two wireless microphones. By the 6 p.m. dinner break, I had the two wireless microphones and all of

my personal monitors up and working and I fully expected to start setting the stage by 7 p.m. At 7 p.m., the backline arrived with some of the musicians and I helped them get set up, though I still did not have an input list. At 9 p.m., the microphones were still not set up, and I was told that the recording engineer and his A-2 had left for the evening and would return the following morning. When I expressed concern to the producer, he called the engineer, who told him, “By the time Baker arrives, he will have to play catch-up.” The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the musicians had also left for the evening.

My callback time for the following morn-ing was 10 a.m., and when I arrived at the venue, the stage had still not been set and it became apparent that the A-2 knew very little about miking a stage. Since I was told that I would be playing catch-up, I assumed that someone knew what they were doing, but there I was, working alone (budget, ya know), and explaining how to neatly run cable to the sub-snakes on stage. When everything was finally patched I had to run back to my console and start getting my mix and dialing in the musician’s ears. As it turned out, not every musician had used ears before and they were not used to playing in such an isolated manner, thereby extending the time it took for them to get comfortable during sound check.

The band members kept complaining that the sampler, which was being run by the guitarist, kept changing levels between

songs, and though I tried to explain that the samples were all playing back at different volumes, it still became my problem to fix. I had eight open wireless channels and was finding that I needed to change one or two of the RF frequencies to ensure that there would be no signal dropout. All of this takes a bit of time, especially when working alone, but I considered this to be a normal sound check, even accounting for all the anomalies.

The only real problem with my sound check was that the producer wanted to start getting some footage and was wondering why it was taking me so long to get set. The situation was getting frustrating as all energy was focused upon me while I was trying to iron out problems that were not mine other than by association. At one point the keyboard player, with great fanfare and exasperation, loudly complained, “Now I have nothing in my ears!” I walked over to the stage and plugged his ears back into the belt-pack, and though he apologized, I was fuming and beginning to lose patience with the situation.

While I was walking back to the console, the producer and artist decided to have a meeting with me to understand who was to blame for the shoot running so far behind schedule. While I didn’t want to fan the flame of the blame game, I told them that I had expected to do the check the night before, but everyone had left before the job was done. My answer seemed to appease them for the moment, but I was furious at bearing the brunt of other people’s ineptitude. I walked back to my console and one of the guys from the lighting crew (who seemed to understand the situation) said to me, “You must have the patience of a saint.”

He was wrong, of course, since at that very moment, I was headed to the road case I kept for these special moments, but as I was opening the case marked “Uzi,” I stopped for a moment to ponder the situation. I remem-bered a few years ago reading a news story about wrist bands people were wearing that bore the legend “WWJD.” It stood for “What would Jesus do?” and was intended as a way to get oneself to think about a course of action before embarking upon it. Not being one who wore that accessory, this may seem out of character—who knows, it may have been the “saint” comment that provoked the thought—regardless, I found myself asking the question, “How would Jesus mix?”

I closed the case and turned away from my reactive desire to give a big shout-out with my Uzi, and it came to me in a flash. First of all, Jesus would always have a 12-man crew, which would include a monitor engineer, an A-2, a backline tech, a stage manager, a production manager, a tour man-ager and six loaders. He wouldn’t need an electrician as he is always tied into a higher source of power, but, if need be, he could do his own electrical tie-in, though not while walking on water. If he arrived at a show and the system was too small for the venue, he could turn Mackies into line arrays, and if the mix was bad, he could always fix it by the laying of his hands on the console.

Hospitality would never be a problem, for those who accept him as their A-1 will never want for hunger or thirst. He would equalize his mix by dumping the seven deadly frequencies of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth, while at the same time, boosting the frequencies of love, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness. If a musician lashed out at him about the mix he wouldn’t fight back, he would just turn the other knob.

He wouldn’t stand for hypocrisy and would probably say, “Render unto video, lighting and recording that which is theirs and render unto live sound that which is live sound’s.” In regard to blame, he would prob-ably say, “Let those (in production) without blame cast the first cable.” He would never mix with effects, though he could always work a miracle or two. His vocal mix would always be strong and affirming, while his background vocals would always be mixed to sound like an angelic choir. He would also definitely give new meaning to the “VOG” microphone. He would be selfless in his approach to mixing, and would never take the easy route—which means that he would most likely be in great demand with “metal” and “goth” bands. He would teach all those around him that the true mix is within and, of course, all his mixes would be heavenly with a beautiful redeeming quality.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, I was thankful that I held my temper in check and my Uzi in its case. The video shoot turned out to be a huge success and the mix was sublime, with everyone involved reaching a higher level of consciousness, understanding and “unity.” That’s how Jesus would mix!

Coming Next Month...

• FOHInterview:ATale ofTwoGenerations FOHgrillsBrian Ruggles, whohasmixedBillyJoel for36years,andKyle Chirnside,whohasgone fromclubstoarenasina yearwithFallOutBoy

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The Sound of aHigher Power

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