We were doing several Phil Collins stadium shows running up from the southern tip of South through Central America with a last stop in Caracas Venezuela before heading to Puerto Rico. In the early 90’s, Venezuela had a large wealthy population from oil and Chavez had not taken over.
We did a show on April 28, 1995 in La Rinconada Baseball Stadium. The venue was okay but not great and the generator that we rented locally to power the sound system was horrible. Sound check went okay and the doors open. The front of house riser was three tier with Sound on the bottom, then lights, then spotlights on top. Rob “Cubby” Colby and I were on the sound riser checking out the crowd when suddenly there was a loud buzz in the system. Turns out the generator had more problems and we were told to hold down the fort and deal with it because it was too close to showtime to work on the genie. I called to the stage and asked for one of the Showco sound engineers, Robert Drewes, to come out and help.
Fortunately he was there because about a third of the way through the show, suddenly a fan that had climbed up on the spot tower got thrown below by the operator. The guy was obviously jacked up and after hitting the sound deck came up swinging. Robert and I grabbed him and threw him down to the hands of the police waiting below. The whole time, Cubby is mixing Phil Collins like nothing is going on and Robert and I go back to finding noisy channels to mute between songs.
Disaster was avoided and the show happened, gear was packed and transported to the Antonov freight airplane for an overnighter in San Juan on 4/29.
Now this is when the story gets interesting, more about this in part 2.
A2 or Assistant Audio for TV sports can be fun and profitable. Being an A2 has less pressure and is more involved on the field or court than the A1 sitting in a TV remote truck. I started doing TV remotes in the mid 1980’s working basketball, football and baseball primarily. This summer, I had the opportunity to work some pro soccer games as an A2. The booth setup for all types of sports is remarkably similar and hasn’t changed much in 40 years.
This is a typical booth setup with Play by Play, Spare and Commentator headsets, they are always in this order left to right.
Pre / Post Game and Halftime standups for commentary using hand held (stick) mics with in ear IFB (Interruptible Fold Back) for comms to the remote truck producer.
The audio setup in general is fairly easy, there are 3-4 12 pair (DT12) cables run from the truck to a stadium panel near the remote truck. Thousands of feet of cable to the broadcast booth can present a problem. The mics, IFB’s and PL (Party Line) Intercom connections are made at a panel in the booth. This takes about an hour or less to set up and the next hour is for testing and troubleshooting the bad lines. Games last about three hours so you have another five that include tear down, dinner and hanging out. I would not say that there is much an art to this as signal flow, patching, troubleshooting and handling the booth announcers in a professional manner. Getting their ear pieces in place with the stick mics in place during a commercial break can sometimes be a scramble. Many A2’s carry their own table mults (three married pairs of XLRs for headsets and Foldback) as the ones provided by the remote trucks can be dodgy. The other thing you want to have is a Whirlwind Q-Box which is basically a signal generator, headphone amp and cable checker all in one little box. If you are lucky, your A1 will be experienced, patient and fun to work with, if not, good luck!
Tuning a sound masking system on four new floors at a building in downtown Dallas. PPE is required for active construction, it is not a fashion statement. System is AtlasIED DSP/amps/speakers using AKG omni calibrated mic w/ MOTU PC interface and REW RTA software. System is designed to prevent others from hearing conversations nearby.
The masking system is tuned to an industry standard frequency roll off designed to sound pleasing and unobtrusive. The overall level is set to about 47 dBA.
Attenuators are provided to adjust levels for groups of speakers to provide more granule calibration.
Speakers are hung in the plenum space above the drop tile ceiling in an upward facing position. The speakers are typically spaced about 15′ apart depending on ceiling height, plenum depth and ceiling type. Normally the speakers are part of a 70 volt system. The speakers are tapped at 1 watt but may tap higher or lower to even out the SPL within a specified area.
Mixing sound for conferences, trade shows or industrials in hotel ballrooms isn’t fun, sexy or artistic but it does pay the bills. Hitting queues and flying by the seat of your pants as the corporate types, who are not experienced platform presenters, may make your hair prematurely grey. The good news is the task of riding gain over multiple mikes in a Q&A session or round table became much easier thanks to Dan Dugan.
In the early days with many simultaneous presenters, we had to rely on our reflexes to raise the mic for the person talking. If you had all of the mics up at once, they would either feedback or sound really honky. Dugan was working on this problem as early as 1970 and one day: “I was messing around with logarithmic level detection, seeing what would happen if I used the sum of all the inputs as a reference. That’s when I accidentally came upon the system. It was really discovered, not invented. I didn’t really know what I had, just that it worked like gangbusters.”
Dugan moved inside Yamaha’s QL-series of mixers in March 2014, as an option on the graphic equalizer processing page. This internal version could mix 8 or 16 microphones.
Now the Dugan plug-in is as easy as a soft patch, turn them on, turn them up and pay attention (optional).
The Blumlein Pair miking method was developed by Alan Blumlein, a British engineer, in 1931 as part of his patent for stereo sound. This technique provides excellent stereo imagery for the recorded tracks. Note that the top microphone is inverted and close but not touching the bottom mic. The microphones are at a 90 degrees and in figure 8 pattern.
AKG 414 XLII Coincident Pair viewed from downstage
Blumlein Pair viewed from choir position .
For this choir I used only the two mics to record 40 members and the separation and dispersion was amazing. The stands are Atlas MS25 heavy duty bases with PB21XCH booms that include 2 pound counterweight. This stand reduces stage vibration and movement which would affect the recording.
I hope that you get an opportunity to try this fabulous miking technique on a choir or orchestra, you can try cardioid patterns for a 200 degree pickup from the conductor’s podium position for an orchestra. Please let me know how this worked for you!
From the first time I was introduced to George Wheatly, Linda “Lunar” Johnson, and John “JR” Rea at Mother Blues by my high school friend Steve “the gopher” Miller, I knew that I had to get on the road. George was always planted at the bar, drink in hand with his back to the band, George defined the word “Cool”. Lunar was a real cute rock and roll chick who always looked stoned. JR was the greatest storyteller of the time, he could make you wish you were on the Titanic.
JR hired me at Showco in May of ’78 and altered the coarse of my life. My first Showco live sound gig was the Bee Gees in Pontiac Stadium on July 28, 1979. I was on the supplemental sound crew along with Craig Schertz, Watson Hudgins, and Steve Stepanion. It was fairly uneventful save a double 12″ speaker box falling off the top level of scaffold and splitting into four pieces. One of the carpenters ran up with a toolbox, wood glue, and an air stapler and had it back together in minutes. I left Michigan the next day with Craig “The Chief” and headed to a Chicago, Ill to meet Robin Magruder at an air freight depot to transfer gear into freight containers bound for The Who and Led Zeppelin UK dates. This was a debacle as the flight we had chartered was resold by the air carrier and we were told that we were out of luck. Robin blew a gasket and made them find another flight while Craig and I shuffled gear brought in the depot from various tours that were converging. We worked straight through the night and there was a lot of yelling and cursing. At one point Craig fell asleep on a work trunk and I thought that he was going to meet an even earlier demise at the hands of one of the freight workers. We went straight to New York to complete the shuffle and the gear left on time to our great relief.
My next day in the Showco shop I was summoned from the paint booth into BJ Schiller’s office. BJ informed me that he did not know what I had done to deserve it but I was going to be rewarded by going on the “Cakewalk of the Year” tour with Willie Nelson and Leon Russell. I was given Mike Garvey’s phone number and told to go home and pack. I called Garvey and he told me that the crew was going to meet at Willie Nelson’s Whiskey River bar on Greenville Ave and roar. My roommate dropped me off there with my suitcase and I walked inside spotting Garvey in a line of guys at the bar. The bartender was performing a ritual on the group called a Reverse Margarita whereby the patron lies his head backwards on the bar and gets the ingredients poured directly in his mouth. I was introduced to Buddy “Budrock” Prewitt who insisted that I be initiated as a rookie roadie. Fortunately, the Bartender, Kenny Hawn, was a friend of mine and stuck up for me, at that point, I was in good favor. That night I met Poodie Locke and was also introduced to the monitor mixer and my tour mentor Pete Stauber. That night, the bus was packed full of band and crew and I had to sleep on the front lounge fold down bunk. Above the bunk was line with cowboy hats and during the long bumpy road to Louisiana, one of the hats covered with metal stick pins of various shapes fell on my head. After about the third time, I threw the hat on the floor. The next morning, I heard a very nasally but stern voice say, “how did my hat get on the floor?” The owner was none other than Paul English, Willie’s ex-boxer, pistol packing drummer (sorry Paul), I mumbled something under the blanket about the bumpy ride. I got up and walked out of the bus seeing the beautiful shore of Lake Charles and for the first and last time in my career, I was asked for my autograph. I thought to myself, wow, this is going to be fun!
One of the greatest service opportunities for an audio engineer is being able to mix sound for their church. There are many different types of services and within a given church there may be different styles such as traditional and contemporary.
Traditional churches may vary with different types of praise music during multiple services. In addition, the size of the congregation at the multiple services may effect the sound. Always know what the sound requirements are going to be before you arrive so you have a plan to get mics in place quickly.
Early morning services may be a simple pastor, organ, and soloist. My approach for the early service is to go easy on the levels. The congregation should be able to hear every word without realizing the sound system is on. If the congregation is smaller at the early service, you will want to avoid exciting the room or physical structure by keeping the volume lower. This will provide a much more natural sound.
Subsequent services with more attendees will require increased volume. Pre-service chatter and gathering music will make it necessary to have the pulpit level up to get the attention of the congregation as the service starts. With more attendees the acoustic properties of the room will change and you can give more sound energy to the service.
The most important thing to remember is to let the spirit flow through and help you to mix the sound so everyone can understand the message and enjoy the music.
First United Methodist Church of Rockwall Texas – Easter 2019
Mixing sound through down fills and main bowls can be a great challenge. The variety of events in modern sports stadiums require the sound system to be versatile, have great coverage and adequate amplification.
It’s critical in sporting events for the attendees to hear announcements and field referee’s calls. It’s tempting to turn the field mics up too much but often less is more. Two bad things can happen if the down fills are too loud, the referee mic feeds back and they are distracted by the sound making them unintelligible. In an exciting sporting event, the crowd reaches well over 100 decibels and it is a great challenge to get the field mics over the crowd.
A well designed digital signal processor (DSP) program can be your best friend. Having capability to adjust levels of zones and eq will help you greatly as well as accommodate situations where the field is utilized for something other than sporting events like concerts, exhibitions or races.
Mixing events in stadiums can be a lot of fun and very gratifying for the audience and board op if done correctly.
