Nathan Lively's Blog, page 30

Seeing Sound: Webinar Replay

Thanks to everyone that attended the live conference call on sound system tuning yesterday. I had a great time.

For those of you who missed it, here’s the recording. We discussed:

Findings and conclusions from last week’s survey.

The Goal of System Tuning: Does a system have to be “flat” in order to produce a good mix?
Mic Placement: The ideal position for setting delay between main and delay speakers.
Alignment Between Sub and Mains: My simple 3-step process for phase alignment.


How to be in demand as an professional.
The importance of confidence and consistency in sound system tuning.
Major stumbling blocks and how to solve them.
The special report on sound system design and tuning for small rooms with Bob McCarthy.
The big view of why we do system tuning and how to integrate it into your daily work.
More info on my upcoming offer (check your email tomorrow!)
The one action I want you to take today to start building more confidence and consistency in your work.

This article Seeing Sound: Webinar Replay appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
How To Tune A Sound System In 15 Minutes
Tuning vs. Toning A Sound System
SPECIAL REPORT: Sound System Design and Tuning for Small Rooms with Bob McCarthy

SPECIAL REPORT: Sound System Design and Tuning for Small Rooms with Bob McCarthy

Thank you for the massive response to my survey.

In my last post, I announced that I am putting together a training program for sound system tuning and I asked everyone on my mailing list to send me their top two questions on system tuning.

I got a bunch of responses, and going through all of them gave me two big ideas for what to do next. First, I’m going to do a webinar on system tuning on Monday, September 22 at 9am Pacific time where I will share all of my findings and conclusions from the survey. This won’t be a normal, boring webinar where you sit and watch a PowerPoint presentation. It will be more of an interactive conference call where we’ll be able to chat live about your specific projects.

Second, I’m going to share a great interview that I did with Bob McCarthy on sound system design and tuning for small rooms.

Are you ready for over an hour of on-the-job training with one of the most experienced sound system technicians in the world? Yeah you are! We will talk about:

How to measure sound systems in heavy wind.
Dealing with highly reverberant spaces.
The precedence effect.
When to subdivide your system.
The advantages and disadvantages to coupling your subs.
How to setup a basic cardioid subwoofer array.
How to aim a pair of L/R mains.
The next update to SIM3.
Combining speakers and microphones with shape and scale in mind.
The best way to potty train your dog.

For instant access to this special report, sign up for my free webinar by clicking on the link below.

Seeing Sound

Description:

Interactive conference call where we will discuss the findings and conclusions from my survey and the upcoming coaching program on sound system tuning.

Price: $0.00

Start Time: 09:00
End Time: 10:00

Date:

September 22, 2014

Registration Details

Personal InformationFirst Name* Last Name* Email*

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

Okay, now I want to show you the best technique I learned from this interview with Bob McCarthy. He calls it “the middle of the middle.” It’s a great strategy to approach horizontal speaker aim and measurement for these rooms where we walk in and all we’re given is two speakers on sticks to the far left and right of the stage.

At first you might think, “Well, I don’t want too much bouncing off of the wall and creating comb filtering, so I’ll aim them farther in.” But then you might also think, “I don’t want too much playing into the other side of the room because then that will create comb filtering.”

Bob’s approach is to split the room down the middle, then find the middle of the seating area in each half. This is where you will aim your speaker and make your on-axis measurement.

The overflow that you have potentially on a wall is no worse than you have, as a certainty, into the other speaker that’s coming from the other side.

So next time you are in a room like that, try it and come back to let me know how it goes in the comments below. If you have another technique to accomplish the same thing, I’d also love to hear about it.

This, and a bunch of other great techniques can be found in this special report.

Sign Up NOW

Before I go I want to share with you one of the biggest things I’ve learned about sound system tuning.

Like many of you, I read a couple of books and articles on system tuning and then I thought, “Great, now what?” Also like many of you I went to a couple of great seminars and then I thought, “Great, now what?”

My WHAT happened after I decided to take my measurement rig with me on a four-month national theatre tour of the musical review, Route 66. Every day I was in a new venue doing measurements and training my ear over and over again and slowly, it started to make sense.

This is the kind of transformation that I want to help you achieve. And how are we going to do that?

Well, I’m taking you all out on an intensive six-month tour. Pack your bags!

Just kidding. (Maybe next year.)

The HOW is going to surprise you, but I’m going to save that for the webinar.

Sign Up NOW

This article SPECIAL REPORT: Sound System Design and Tuning for Small Rooms with Bob McCarthy appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Sound System Design And Optimization with Bob McCarthy
BOOK REVIEW: Sound Systems: Design And Optimization by Bob McCarthy
Tuning vs. Toning A Sound System

Quick announcement and a Favor

Oh, hi there!

I am VERY close to finishing my highly-anticipated sound system tuning coaching program.

I have been working on this for more than two years, and I am finally ready to wrap it up. I will release the program in late September.

This program will be entirely focused on sound system tuning. It will include five live group-coaching calls with me and Merlijn van Veen, exclusive content, weekly assignments, and a private online forum. This is going to be a complete download of my best tips and techniques about sound system tuning.

The program will cover all the ways that we can become more consistent in live audio, and Merlijn and I are going to show you the exact steps you’ll need to build the necessary skills.

HOWEVER, before I finalize everything and open the doors, I need to make sure I have covered everything. I need your help.

Please take a few minutes to answer this super-short survey and have the chance to win FREE admission to the entire program. There is really only one thing I want to know…

[contact-form-7]

This article Quick announcement and a Favor appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Merlijn van Veen and Understandable Misunderstandings

Merlijn van Veen and Understandable Misunderstandings

 

Merlijn van Veen is a sound engineer and system tuning expert in the Netherlands.

He has been with Harlekijn Holland, the company of renowned European singer Herman van Veen, for the last 8 years and mixes more than 150 performances a year, both indoor and outdoor.

NATHAN LIVELY: What’s your favorite thing to do in Soest (Netherlands) when you’re not working?

MERLIJN VAN VEEN: I love to watch blockbuster movies and television series. I also like to play games (board and computer) and have a profound passion for making various calculators to aide me in my educational endeavors.

Since the arrival of my 15-month-old daughter, it has become a challenge to find free time between her, my wife, and work. Being on the road a lot is a blessing in disguise. There’s lots of time to kill and this is where I made most of my calculators.

How did you get your first job in audio?

I quit the Art of Sound (studio recording) education at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague before graduating, arguably for misguided reasons. I’m never sure whether to regret it or not. It’s funny if you think about it because 15 years later, they invited me to teach system design and optimization over there.

When I dropped out of school, the department head at the time gave me a contact at the Dutch Broadcast Company, something I’m still humbled by today. One week later I was doing sound for the worldwide first edition of the reality show Big Brother. I worked on that show and various others for the next 5 years.

I know you are on tour right now. Walk us through a day in your life.

Correct. We literally just started our national tour in the Netherlands, which will continue until summer 2015.

Our country is an exception to many European standards when it comes to installed sound systems. We have little over 450 theaters and pretty much all of them come with decent sound systems that are included in the package so to speak. That being said, there’s still room left for improvement IMHO.

Even today I run into a lot of what I like to think of as understandable misunderstandings. By that I mean poorly-informed decisions caused by a lack of understanding with regard to physics that lead to over- or under-coverage and poor time alignment and level management. This is one of the reasons I started teaching. Today I primarily listen to raw pink noise on untuned systems. I have my preferred tracks that I like to listen to but only after I tuned the system and have plausible reason what to expect.

In the past when a given system was supposedly designed and tuned by a renowned engineer, I’d be intimidated and automatically assume that it would work out fine only to find out that he or she apparently had a different application in mind.

On tour, we start at 1PM with the load-in. After the desks and multicores have been put in place I’ll request access to the system, preferably a direct connection, respecting their speaker protection. I carry a Dolby Lake Processor with me which I prefer 9 out of 10 times over the house DSP as it will save me some propagation delay and AD-DA conversions.

I’ll spend anywhere from 1 to 3 hours (depending on the complexity of the system) tuning the system using Smaart v7 and four microphones. This might seem like a lot of time but I know from experience that I’ll be thankful for it by sound check because I will have provided myself with a white canvas, a frame of reference. This way of working has allowed me to produce consistent results from venue to venue with the exception of natural reverberation, which is inherent to each venue.

Around 4PM we do a brief line check, about 40 channels, and 5PM is dinner time. Sound check starts at 6:30PM and lasts till doors. The show starts at 8PM. Two sets, each an hour long, and as much as one hour of encores.

Load out takes an hour and on most days I’m home between 1AM and 3AM. When we’re doing a international tour, say Germany, Austria, Switzerland or Belgium, we bring our own system and start one hour earlier (noon).

You’ve created some great audio calculators to aid in system design for free on your site. Are they primarily for education or do you use them in the field?

With the exception of the Subwoofer Array Designer most of my calculators are developed for educational purposes. However, I do consult the air absorption, floor-bounce, and delay study calculators for confirmation when I’m in doubt.

What’s in the measurement rig that you take out on the road?

I use a Macbook Pro running Smaart v7 in combination with a RME fireface 800 audio interface. I’ve got five microphones: four Audix TM-1s and one DPA 4091. The Audix mics have been calibrated by me (see my post at the Rational Acoustics forum for the procedure), thanks to Smaart’s microphone correction curve feature, to match the DPA within 0.5 dB (both level and tonality). I’ve been fortunate to have my DPA compared to an official Meyer Sound SIM3 DPA (B&K) 4007 and stay within 0.5 dB. Close enough for me.

The mics are connected by means of 25-meter cables on drums, and everything is color-coded using shrink tube and tape to match the color of the traces in Smaart. This way I can instantly deduce which trace belongs to what microphone and position.

Give us an overview of your procedure for verifying a sound system before sound check, once everything is set up.

When I arrive at a venue the first thing I do is evaluate the design and decide for myself which speaker(s) or array(s) are best suited to cover the macro shape. This will be my starting point and I’ll subdivide from there, making use of the available speakers.

I always carry front-fills with me ’cause there are always too few that are spaced too wide, or they’re mounted in the stage lip and have no chance of reaching the second row once the audience arrives.

Next I verify that the various speaker configurations and/or arrays are actually optimizable; this is not always the case. Then it’s all about proper speaker positioning, rotation, and aiming using laser pointers, protractors, inclinometers, levels, and both tape measures and laser distance range finders.

The latter is, without a doubt, the most important aspect of system design. It determines what is covered, how much of it is covered, and where the seams will end up.

Finally, I’ll measure at carefully chosen positions that will provide me with way more valuable information than arbitrary sampling the room in order to map system behavior. The data will guide me through the process of equalizing and time alignment.

Provided I have “good” gear to start with, I’m mainly managing:

low frequency coupling (between other speakers and/or the room)
buildup in the back of the venue
high frequency absorption by air

A great deal of time is also spent phase aligning the subwoofers to the main system.

During sound check I’ll walk the room making minor (1 to 2 dB at most) changes to (sub)systems, tweaking by ear whilst keeping the above in mind.

What is the most exciting advancement in audio technology for you right now?

Education, education, and education.

IMHO there are few industries that are so drenched with voodoo, superstition, and understandable misunderstandings as live audio.

There’s also a lot of valuable information and experience kept secret, through which some people become successful, that could benefit us all. Struggling to become a respectable engineer and making all the mistakes our predecessors have made before us seems un-pragmatic and doesn’t benefit the industry, the artists, and most important the (paying) audience.

I like to teach and am not afraid of creating new competition with my students. I couldn’t have achieved any of this without the help of others who feel the same way, even if I had to pay a fair price for it. I’m a big fan of the pay-it-forward approach. Besides, I’ll always be 15 years ahead of them.

Where is the best place for people to follow your work online?

My website and Facebook page. This is where I publish my calculators and post articles that I feel could benefit the industry, as well as other stuff.

This article Merlijn van Veen and Understandable Misunderstandings appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Sound System Design And Optimization with Bob McCarthy
11 Lessons I Learned From Ken ‘Pooch’ Van Druten
How To Tune A Sound System In 15 Minutes

11 Lessons I Learned From Ken ‘Pooch’ Van Druten

In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with Kenneth ‘Pooch’ Van Druten, the FOH sound engineer for Linkin Park, Alice and Chains, Kid Rock, and System of a Down. We discuss:

How Van Druten got his first job in audio.
The number one skill that gets him in the door for every job.
The value of microphone placement.
Why speaker coverage is important beyond anything else.
How to set gates using side-chains and virtual sound check.
Results and trends from Van Druten’s annual hearing health check.
Mixing monitors for Pantera.
Van Druten’s SPL strategy for Linkin Park.
How Van Druten managed to record and mix every Linkin Park show for two years solid.
Whether mixing live show recordings is a viable second income stream?
Good plugins for vocals.

Details from the podcast:

All music by Linkin Park
Van Druten on Twitter and Facebook
Linkin Park community forum
Berkelee College of Music in Boston
SMAART school
RTA = real time analyzer
Interview with John Huntington
Waves Max Volume plugin, Waves 1176 compresser
Miles Kennedy
808
LEQ = a single decibel value which takes into account the total sound energy over the period of time of interest
Quotes:

“One of the things that you have to do to break into this industry is be willing to do anything.”
“Often someone will ask me, ‘How’d you do that?’ And I’ll say, ‘I have no idea.'”
“I worked with an engineer that made me spend an entire day moving an SM57 microphone centimeters around a guitar amp.”
“The only kind of relationship I can have with an artist is an honest one.”
“Being a great system engineer is a different skill set than the one I have.”
“Coverage is important beyond anything else.”
“The entire drum kit is an instrument. Not just the tom or the snare.”
“There are situations when you just can’t win.”
“I listen to 200 shows a year. It’s important to me not to listen to those at 106dB A-weighted.”
“You mix at 100dB? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t know if you’ve measured crowds recently. At a Linkin Park show, if there are 11 songs, there are 11 times where it goes to 107 dB A-weighted no problem.”
“I feel responsible not only for my own hearing, but for the hearing of people that come to my shows.”

Takeaways:

Don’t wait till after college to get an internship. Van Druten started as a studio intern at a local recording studio when he entered school and by the time he graduated he was the head engineer.
Learn social intelligence and empathy (i.e., how to talk to crazy people) because you have to be able to get along with them before you can get the job.
Mic placement is important. Time spent learning it now will benefit you for the rest of your career.
People can sniff bullshit, don’t just say what you think people want you to hear. In a world of yes-men, you can be remarkable by being honest.
When talking to artists about making changes, remind them of the big picture of production quality.
Be precise and referential when talking sound level. E.g., “I mix at 102dB SPL A-weighted 10min LEQ at FOH 100ft from the downstage edge.”
The audience at a loud rock concert like Linkin Park can be louder than the show itself.
Mixing the live shows of the band you are working with is fun, but you won’t make much more money and it is a lot more work than you expect it to be.

This article 11 Lessons I Learned From Ken ‘Pooch’ Van Druten appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Mixing The Biggest Festivals In Europe with Dave Swallow
6 Smart, Proven Methods To Control Feedback Onstage (Without EQ)
Learn from the Sound Engineers for Tori Amos, Prodigy, and The White Stripes Online

Are you a student or recent grad?

Welcome!

For a long time, I’ve wanted to make a special course for students and recent graduates.

Deciding how to get started in the audio industry when you have no professional network and little on-the-job training can feel like an overwhelming challenge. Would you believe I’ve started from scratch in seven different cities? É verdade! 

This program will help you learn from my my successes and my mistakes. It will focus on clarifying and committing to your ideal career path. It will be short and intense, designed to create forward momentum and make you unstoppable. It will include a four-week, step-by-step system with weekly open office hours, 24-7 coaching through email and a private online forum, exclusive unreleased interviews, and my book Sound Design Live. It’s everything I wish the 23 year-old me needed to get on the right path and feel secure about the future.

The course will cover all the ways that you can develop unique and valuable skills, build your professional network, and commit to the career of your dreams.

HOWEVER, before I finalize everything and open the doors, I want to make sure that I have truly covered everything. I need your help.

Please take a few minutes to answer this super-short survey.

[contact-form-7]

This article Are you a student or recent grad? appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Balls Of Steel: 10 Surprising Tips For Live Audio Engineer Training
Sound Design Live eBook – FREE Chapter
The Sound Design Live eBook Is Live!

Sound Girls: Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato

40+ years of combined experience on career advice, mixing, and health on tour. Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato are incredibly generous and have opened their lives up for your benefit.

Keyes is the monitor engineer for Pearl Jam. Pettinato has been FOH engineer 
for some of the biggest pop tours such as 
Thievery Corporation, Joan Osborne, Gwen Stefani, Jewel, and 
Ke$ha.

Together they created Soundgirls.org, which provides community and support to women working in professional audio. Unlike other online forums I was surprised by how often helpful conversations on career building take place, which is mostly missing from every other pro audio forum I’ve visited. Another unique feature is the ability to connect with a mentor. The site is free, .

Career
How did you get your first job in audio?

Pettinato: I interned at a local sound company, working basically for free. I worked in the shop during the week and did shows with local bands on weekends.

Keyes: I worked doing load outs and then eventually full time for Rat Sound.

Looking back, what are some of the best choices you made in your career that helped your long term success?

Pettinato: Never taking a gig doing monitors. LOL Once I started mixing FOH, that’s all I’ve ever done. For years I would get calls to do monitors on this tour or that. Not that I couldn’t do it, I just knew that if I ever did, and was any good at it, I would never get back to the other end of the snake. There always seemed to be a lot more work available for monitor engineers, but focusing on FOH instead of trying to bounce back and forth has made me better at my job as a FOH engineer.

Keyes: Deciding to do it full time- quit my job, moved into a warehouse without hot water and lived and breathed sound. Doing whatever needed to be done. Saying Yes to gigs – even if they scared me to death.

Our business is built on personal referral. What have you done to make that work for you?

Pettinato: I’ve made it a point to keep current with my contacts and make sure they know what I’ve been doing and when I am available.

Keyes: By being a team player and doing the best job you could at any given time. Not bitching about the gig, and always treating each gig like it mattered. Learning the difference between ego and confidence.

It can be difficult to find your best fit in pro audio because every job is different and you might need a year or more of experience before you really have a feel for it. Most audio people I talk to say that they just fell into it and went from job to job until they found one that stuck. Is there a shortcut to finding your best fit instead of just doing every job in the industry until you find the right one?

Pettinato: There are so many options out there from live, to recording, post, sound design, broadcast, sound for video games, etc…. If you’re not sure where you want to go, try talking to some people who do what you think you want to do. Find out what a day in the life of their job is like. Read about it and see if you can imagine yourself doing that job day in and day out. A little research into what the job is truly like may save you from having to switch gears somewhere down the road. However if you find your chosen path isn’t quite what you expected, many of your skills and knowledge will transfer to another area of the industry so don’t be afraid to try a new path.

Keyes: I think it might be different for everyone, but sometimes you have to narrow things down with some common sense – If you get bored easily then studio work might not be the best fit. If you are overly sensitive then monitors might not be where you want to sit. I would suggest researching the different aspects, you might find one that sounds interesting and then start working towards that goal. But again – you might think you want to tour – until you get out on one – and find you do not travel well.

What is the guidance you give to people about finding a mentor? Should you offer to assist for free for a day or a week? Or just shadow for an hour? How do you like to be approached about this personally?

Pettinato: It depends on the situation. First you’ve got to figure out what you’re looking to get out of it. Are you looking for work experience or just some advice? Next find someone willing to mentor you and what they can offer. Touring does not lend itself well to mentoring or interning. There is too much liability and expense (hotel rooms, travel, etc…) involved in bringing someone on tour as an intern, but it’s easy enough for someone to make a day visit to see the production and what goes into a show when time permits. I know Karrie mentioned SoundGirls.Org’s mentor group, which is a good place to start.

Keyes: I think that is different for everyone. There really is not a lot of time on the road to have someone come along and for insurance reasons it is probably going to be hard to get an internship. We have a group on SoundGirls.Org called mentors where people can volunteer to be a mentor or look for one. I think the key is taking any opportunity that presents itself – whether it is to spend a day with an engineer or volunteer for a community event.

One of the most common questions I get is how someone can get back into mixing more music who is currently working in other areas of the industry. It seems like a waste of time for these people who already have solid skills and years of experience to start over at the bottom mixing little shows in bars hoping that someone will offer them a gig. Could they be building relationships in other ways that would help speed up this process and find their own clients?

Pettinato: This business operates on word of mouth and who you know. If a band doesn’t already have a FOH and Monitor engineer the first thing management does is pull from their stable of engineers they’ve used and know, or they turn to their Production Manager and/or Tour Manager to hire them. If none of their usual suspects are available they reach out to engineers who are highly recommended by someone they trust. No one wants to take a chance on someone who is unknown so you have to find a way to prove yourself.

You need to put yourself in a place where there will be an opportunity to mix. Whether that’s a club or venue on the touring circuit, or with a major touring sound company. If you are not an established live engineer you are not going to walk into a mixing gig with a well known artist, nor with a sound company. You’ll have to start out as a stage or PA tech but there may be opportunities to mix if you show initiative. Many times support acts on large tours will show up needing someone to mix.

Keyes: The reality is you are not always going to get to mix – I know plenty of engineers that go back and forth from system teching to mixing. I think it is important to be able to system tech in addition to mixing.

You do have to start at the bottom – maybe not loading trucks – but as a system tech. You might have solid recording experience – but live is a different beast – I am not going to pretend I could walk into a recording studio. You need to have years of live mixing experience to get the Beyonce gig and mixing all those bar bands helps.

And sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time. So if it is live sound – you want to be working a gig.

Most management and production teams have their own groups of people they use and trust. The best way to network is by working gigs with them and proving yourself – or being recommended.

Do you have any problem with men joining SoundGirls and participating in forums?

Pettinato: No. We’ve actually have a lot of support from men in the industry.

Keyes: Not at all – and we welcome it – But it needs to be with respect to the women engineers and first and foremost a safe place for the women in the industry to come.

In reference to Touring Life and Motherhood or How You Can’t Have it All: I’ve been told by a lot of people that you can’t have a family and be a sound engineer. Recently Darryn De La Soul told me that all of the sound engineers she knows with kids have partners that do not work. This is one of the big reasons why I started my program From Surviving to Thriving , because I believe that audio professionals should be able to be successful in their careers and have the lifestyle they want. Karrie, after you had twins, you thought you would drop touring completely, but you kept working and found some balance. Could you help me dispel this myth that sound engineers can’t have a great family life?

Keyes: You have to do what is right for you first. If you are not happy – you are not going to be a good parent. On the other hand I was not going to put my kids in boarding school and tour for 10 months of each year and I was not going to raise them on the road either. It is not going to be easy – but what is? It is a different schedule and needs different planning – but just because it is not a constant, doesn’t mean it can’t work.

Sometimes it takes looking at it in a different light – I guess because working around music seems like a selfish pursuit – when the reality is that there are jobs that send parents away for months at a time, sometimes for over a year. Or parents that work 16 hour days everyday of the week.

For me it was finding a balance.

I think as societal norms continue to change we will see more women in the industry as they don’t feel the need and pressure of getting married or having children and as men find that they can be stay at home dads or fill the role of primary parent that picks the kids up from school, gets them to sports practice and not feel that that makes them a failure.

As I said in my piece, it is about finding a balance that works for your family. For me it was Pearl Jam and touring less. It gave me the ability to parent my kids and also work in my chosen field, for others it might be working the local theatre. We all have to make sacrifices – who says the guys that are on the road all year are not making sacrifices for their families? It’s just a societal norm and no one says they are absentee fathers.

Tech
Why would you ever double up stage monitors? For example, in your epic post about the Lighting Bolt fall tour 2013 you end up with 9 stage monitors around Eddie Vedder and 6 of them are playing vocals. What’s the strategy there? If it’s for more SPL, why not get a bigger box? If you have the same source coming out of multiple boxes, won’t there be phase issues?

Keyes: It is 8 wedges – with six being used to reinforce his vocal at the level he desires. It is for SPL and coverage – you can’t really achieve overall loud coverage with two wedges. It is not simply about a larger box – a larger box could have less components in it and simply be bigger. Bigger is no the answer. If it was we could just build a PA around him.

The main wedges are the side wedges and where they are placed allow for the greatest rejection of feedback in relation to where he stands and the microphone placement. So these are able to get loud with min. EQ. The front wedges are used for warmth and the rears help fill in volume – the flown side fills keep it all focused to wear he is standing.

What is the goal of sidefill monitors? Does it cover a specific part of the stage that other monitors don’t cover?

Keyes: In the configuration we are using them it is for the singer – whether or not they are actually solving an issue. Then the goal was to make sure they only covered in the middle of the stage and did not hit the other musicians – who did not desire having louder vocals onstage.

What are some of the best methods you’ve found for reducing stage volume? Working on small stages can be especially difficult when you have loud guitar amps and drums right behind singers and acoustic guitars.

Pettinato: Stage volume is a difficult battle. If the artist isn’t willing to work with you (or each other) then you can’t win the war. Whenever you can get the amps off stage or at least aimed away from the mix position, it helps. Vocal Mic choice becomes more about gain before feedback AND isolation so you can get the vocal above the backline. Mixing FOH becomes more about reinforcing what isn’t amplified on stage as opposed to mixing and having everything in the PA.

Keyes: Well this is always a battle – and it really is up to the band or artists to address this. Some will be willing to work it out and some won’t. For us it has been a gradual thing over the years. The baffles we are currently using have been one of the best things we have ever implemented.

Do you carry any kind of sound system measurement hardware/software? What is your procedure for testing the system and verifying that everything is working properly?

Pettinato: I’m pretty old school being that the only tools I use are my ears. If I am carrying production, my system tech will noise the system to do a component check. When that’s done I have a CD with various songs that I use to ring out the PA. I walk as much of the room as I can, listening to how the system reacts with the room acoustics.

Keyes: Mine is rather simple. After we have prepped the system in the shop and tested everything before it leaves to determine if it is working properly and in phase, I pink each mix everyday, turning on and off the highs and lows and EQs. Then I ring it out with my voice. I travel with a rig all the time, but the process would be similar if I had a one-off rig.

Health
How do you protect your ears? Do you ever mix with IEMs or earplugs? Do you visit the audiologist regularly?

Pettinato: When I’m not mixing and I’m at FOH or in the audience, I wear earplugs. I have mixed with musician’s earplugs on occasion, most recently when I was mixing a boy/pop band a few years ago. The audience was mainly young girls ages 6-26 who screamed non stop. The screaming at some of the shows reached levels of 118dB. I would pull them out for a few minutes every couple songs to make sure I wasn’t over compensating but I don’t like having to mix with earplugs. I had my hearing checked in 2012 for the first time in probably 15 years and was happily surprised to find out I had barely any change.

Keyes: Pearl Jam uses both IEMS and wedges, so yes, I use both. I never mix with ear plugs. I wear ear plugs if I am attending a show or watching the support band.

What are some good health practices that you’ve developed? How do you maintain your energy levels during long days in difficult conditions?

Pettinato: I try to work out on every day off and get a good night’s sleep whenever possible. Eating healthy can be incredibly difficult depending on the tour and my level of will power, but I try to eat to lots of veggies and protein and coffee, coffee, coffee.

Keyes: Get as much sleep as you can and eat well. Don’t stay up late drinking.

What is your feeling about loading and pushing heavy gear and boxes? Do you tell crew or managers that there are certain things you won’t do? It can be a terrible feeling to be totally drained after loading in before the sound check has even started. A lot of people tell me that they want to get away from this, but I’ve found that it’s always a part of the job.

Pettinato: I actually enjoy the physical part of it but it can be exhausting at times. You need to know your limits and know when to stop trying to do everything yourself. The stage hands are there for a reason, use them. If you injure yourself by trying to do too much, that’s a problem for the tour. No one expects you to do the impossible but you are expected to do your job. How you do it is up to you. Moving gear is part of the gig but no one says you have to do it all by yourself.

Keyes: I have never felt limited – you have to know how to move the gear. Most people do not expect you to lift heavy things without help – no matter what gender you are. No one wants broken road crew. I never felt drained after a load in – if anything it gave me more energy because it was a work out. I use to load in and set up a Sound System with one other person all the time. The PA did not have castors either – so everything was loaded with hand trucks up the truck ramp. I don’t buy that it is too heavy.

My tech is a skinny and wiry fellow. I know several women and men that are stronger than he is. Some do have physical ailments that severely limit their participation in load in/out, so that is going to be hard.

I find men and women use the physical lifting of gear as a reason they cannot succeed.

Take Aways

Research the industry.
Find a mentor.
Stay connected and up-to-date with colleagues and clients.
You can have the lifestyle you want and be a sound engineer, through balance.
There is no shortcut, so be active and visible.
Sometimes you need a million monitors on stage.
Stay healthy.
Be unstoppable.

This article Sound Girls: Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
How To Become A Sound Engineer
How To Become The WORST Live Sound Engineer Ever
The Best Search Engines For Sound Engineer Jobs

Multi Channel Wireless Home Theater Sound Systems

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.

In this episode of Sound Design Live I speak with the president of the Wireless Speaker Association (WiSA), Jim Venable. We discuss the nuts and bolts of WiSA’s wireless audio standard that is currently used in home audio, but has obvious future application in pro audio. We also talk about 802.11a, dynamic frequency selection, and marketing for sound engineers.

The primary purpose of the WiSA association is to insure the integrity of the wireless link between the transmitting device and the receiving device.

Details from the podcast:

All music in this episode by Daniel Sierra.
WiSA on Twitter
802.11a (5.1-5.8GHz) – world wide unlicensed band.
AVB – audio video bridging
The blog post I referred to in our discussion on marketing for sound engineers – Opening Up The Marketplace To Sound Engineers
Quotes

You’ll have to figure out how to market [your] reputation in a global space.
This is what we call the spousal approval factor.

This article Multi Channel Wireless Home Theater Sound Systems appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
How To Use Plugins with an Analog Console And Wireless Control
Show Networks and Control Systems

Conference Room Sound Design

Why isn’t conference room sound design better?

I work in a lot of conference rooms and there are some things that have always puzzled me. Luckily, I know someone who does conference room sound design for a living. I interviewed Josh Srago for the Sound Design Live podcast and he’s come back to answer more of my annoying questions.

#5: Why isn’t the quality better?

Most hotels that I’ve worked at have a house “sound system” that’s comprised of an uncoupled array of ceiling mounted drivers. The quality is, as one of my colleagues described it, “like a broken speaker in a trash can.” He was exaggerating, but it’s not far from the truth. These quality issues combined with the lack of directionality of the sound system can make it difficult to get enough gain before feedback.

It seems like the hotel or in-house AV company would make more money if their permanently installed systems were more flexible, because they would be able to sell more packages with less labor.

You’re looking at the right result, but from the wrong angle. Most of these facilities have extremely antiquated systems in them. They are being upgraded, but that takes time and money. For a facility to invest in a solution that would meet all the needs that any potential client would ever need in the given space would require not just one system solution, but multiple system configurations that could be rolled out in tiered fashion regardless of how the room was configured. While that is technologically feasible with the currently available equipment, it is also extremely costly.

Why would the hotel invest in a costly state of the art system when they can charge these clients for the cost of the room rental and then again for the need to hire an outside company to provide the system? The hotel wants these events to cost more, and providing a solution that you envision doesn’t allow them to rent as much equipment or bill for as much time for the technicians to work the event. Keep in mind that while the hotel has to pay for the technician, the amount they are charging for that technician is drastically higher.

#4: Why isn’t the design more utilitarian?

Why aren’t there tie lines all over the room for audio, video, and lighting? I understand that the rooms were designed to accommodate anything, but they must have known that we would need to send signal around.

Why aren’t there more obvious rigging points and places to hang lights and speakers? Instead of offering the room as a blank slate, wouldn’t it be better to offer a menu of options and layouts that have been guaranteed to work? We aren’t there to reinvent the wheel every time.

Again, it simply comes down to money. When construction is taking place, the audio video systems are typically the last trade to get involved in a project. By that point it is the goal of the architect and the client to maintain a certain aesthetic. This combined with the cost of installation for variety of possible places that equipment could be connected usually leads to a compromise where the design that gets implemented calculates for the place where the signals will most commonly be connected.

#3: Why aren’t the acoustics better?

Nothing creates echo and standing waves quite like a rectangular room full of 90º angles. The floor is covered with carpet, hallelujah, but why don’t the walls include more absorption and diffusion? To add to the mess, the most common sound reinforcement is a speaker on a stick. There’s no vertical angle option, so it plays directly to the back wall. As speech intelligibility is paramount, why aren’t the designs done with better acoustics?

My answers are going to start to sound like a broken record, but: cost and aesthetics. Sound treatment isn’t the visual that most architects or hotel owners want in their rooms to create a grand visual of elegance or even functionality. That isn’t to say that they aren’t capable of it, but think back to when many of these ballrooms and banquet halls were designed. Sound systems at that point in time weren’t what they are now, and the idea of a portable speaker on stands just didn’t exist. People relied on actual vocal projection to be heard, making the idea of a rear wall reflection something that might not have even been considered. For the hotel to now go in and add these materials would be costly, not only from a materials and installation perspective, but also from a lost business perspective. Many times these banquet halls are rented out months or even years in advance and finding the time where lost income won’t be a factor for this kind of overhaul can be extremely difficult.

#2: Why are small format analog consoles so popular?

Break-out rooms and smaller events only need a couple of inputs, but the small format analog mixing boards are not much help. They have limited EQ, sometimes with no selectable frequency and nothing on the output side, and no dynamics or delay processing. Wouldn’t they be better served by a vocal channel or an automixer or a small Software Audio Console setup?

This is starting to change. We are more commonly seeing a centralized audio DSP system like Biamp, Symetrix, QSC, or Media Matrix that provides for the auto-mixing and preset routing or active routing configurations are available. This is becoming even easier with the evolution of digital audio transportations like Dante and AVB where the signals are going through the A/D conversion not at the rack, but at the floor plate/wall plate itself. But the small format analog consoles were all that was really available for a technician in the room to have going back just ten years. Small format digital consoles are still a very new technology, and the cost of which is starting to reach the point that makes them reasonable for this kind of environment.

The other factor that comes in is that the people working the systems in these environments have not always been audio visual professionals with a full understanding of how this equipment works. Having an analog solution that just about anyone could walk in and “sort of” make work was also important.

#1: Why aren’t feedback suppressors more popular?

There is one hotel that I work at regularly that has some feedback suppressers and they are helpful. I know they are not great, but normally all you get is a graphic EQ, which is useless, especially when you have a presenter who is moving around the stage or room. It seems like a feedback suppressor would be the thing to use to quickly grab feedback instead of sacrificing your system linearity by removing whole bands unnecessarily.

I’m not a big fan of feedback suppressors in general. While feedback is always possible when an omni lavalier microphone starts meandering around on stage, I maintain that with a 1/3 octave graphic EQ and enough time, the audio engineer should be able to ring out the system to recognize which frequencies are more likely to feedback. I always treat feedback suppressors like the band-aid solution for when someone isn’t there to run the system. Ring out your microphones first, accounting for the recognized feedback frequencies, and then if it’s going to be an auto-mixer system you have the feedback suppressor available as a catch all for the off chance occurrence.

The other thing with feedback suppressors is that they take time. It’s not an instantaneous elimination of the feedback, it takes time for the processor to analyze which frequency is feeding back and eliminate it. This can take several seconds depending on the manufacturer and, for the audience, that is often several seconds too many.

BONUS: Why is most of the video transport still done in analog by VGA and 5-wire?

Fiber and SDI video transport have been around for a while, but in most of my day to day work as an AV tech I’m using analog video by VGA or 5-wire. Is that because digital cables are more expensive or harder to use?

The answer is source device. VGA is still the most common source device on PCs, which are typically the most common computers for presentations and live environments. It is slowly going away. A lot of people are very comfortable with VGA, but we are seeing them disappear for an HDMI, Thunderbolt, for Display port. There are a lot of different factors at play that will help decide the new most popular port including size and cost. The move to 4K signal transmission requires a certain amount of bandwidth that is only available on the most recent digital output types.

VGA is still such a trusted port that a lot of the designs I see have a newer connection, like HDMI, but will still offer VGA as well.

Conclusion:

Because $.

This article Conference Room Sound Design appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
What is Audio Visual Integration?
6 Smart, Proven Methods To Control Feedback Onstage (Without EQ)
The Poor Man’s Galileo

What is Audio Visual Integration?

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with writer, educator, and AV integrator Josh Srago. Srago has worked in recording, broadcast, television, concert sound, corporate events, and AV integration. In our interview he claims that having no specific focus was the best career choice he ever made, and walks me through the life cycle of an AV integration project. Srago also talks about the value of a CTS certification from InfoComm, and explains to me why VGA is still so popular in corporate events. Make sure you stick around through the end when we go head to head on the question: What is the real goal of sound system measurement?

Details from the podcast:

All music in this episode by Josh Srago and Munch Is Missing
Check out Srago’s course Audio DSP Fundamentals at InfoComm on Thursday at 10:30am.
Srago’s article: Have you measured your room recently?
San Francisco State University, Ex’pression College, Full Sail
JK Sound, TOA, Integrated Communications Systems
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union
InfoCOMM, CES, CEDIA
CTS = Certified Technical Specialist
AVB, AVnu Alliance
VGA, 5-wire (aka 5-BNC), HDMI, Thunderbolt, Display port, Mini display port
My interview with Dave Swallow
Quotes

“The best decision I ever made in my career, period, was to not have a specific focus.”

“I didn’t like studios. I didn’t like sitting there tuning a tom drum for 45 minutes. It drove me nuts.”

The life cycle of an AV integration project

Client

Construction company.


Needs Analysis

Responsible: Presales Engineer, Project Manager, Independent Consultant.


Design

Responsible: Project manager, Presales engineer.
Check equipment model number and prepare bid.


Bid

Public: Lowest bid wins.
Private: Interview process to defend design.


Equipment purchase

Collaborate with electrical contractor and head of IT for power and network connections.
Collaborate with general contractor for aesthetic goals.
Collaborate with furniture manufacturer for equipment integration.


Build

Union may handle all of this.


Program

Equipment functionality based on needs analysis.


Punch

Consultant returns for final checklist.

This article What is Audio Visual Integration? appeared first on Sound Design Live. Sign up for free updates here.

P.S.
Best Tips For Building A Career In Pro Audio
Balls Of Steel: 10 Surprising Tips For Live Audio Engineer Training
Conference Room Sound Design