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Come Together
Have you noticed the music in your elevator
getting better lately? Installed
sound, in general, has taken leaps forward
in terms of quality and management in
the last few years. At the InfoComm show in
June, the purveyors of installed sound systems
gave plenty of praise to the live sound sector
for raising the sonic bar across the board. They
cited how the enhanced emphasis on touring
in the music business has raised expectations
of consumers for better audio in all aspects of
their lives.
Install Prime Time biz
And if imitation is flattery, their live sound
counterparts are returning the favor in the form
of adapting gear to meet the requirements of
the installed sound universe. David Scheirman,
vice president of tour sound for JBL Professional,
says the inherent robustness of live sound
technology makes it ready for install prime
time. “Product characteristics like integral, loadrated
suspension fixtures and comprehensive,
standardized software for remote control and
monitoring all make tour sound products readily
adaptable to the needs of the fixed installation
sound system market,” he says.
Paul Freudenberg, vice president of sales
and marketing with L-ACOUSTICS, pointed
to the more stylishly rounded and nuanced
rigging connector on the company’s 112
XGH cabinet. “In the old days, you’d have to
fasten the dolly boards, and it didn’t matter
much how it looked as long as it worked,”
he says. “But if the cabinet is going to be installed
and becomes part of the interior design,
it needs to look like it was esthetically
designed.”
40
The Biz
Theory and Practice
Apples and Oranges biz
This was only L-ACOUSTICS second InfoComm
appearance, an arrivisté status
they shared with several other live sound
companies at the show. As recently as just
five years ago, manufacturers regarded live
and installed audio as apples and oranges.
But that all changed with phenomenon like
churches morphing into performance spaces
and traditionally static spaces like retail
stores and museums looking to create im-
mersive lifestyle environments with sound
as a critical element. With the inclusion of
the NSCA expo merged with this show, Info-
Comm, this year, underscored the extensive
convergence that’s taking place between
live and installed audio.
Jeff Rocha, sales director at EAW, says the
convergence has been taking place at the
highest levels. “When CEOs hear touring acts
sound great at their corporate events, it naturally
follows that they won’t want less when it
comes to sound in other parts of their businesses,”
he says. EAW is also restyling some of
its gear to give a better esthetic in installed
applications. He adds that mid-sized and
small line arrays have literally had a new niche
created for them in installed scenarios.
“It’s not that touring equipment hadn’t
been used in installed sound situations like
theaters and even churches,” he explains.
“It’s that more spaces are becoming performing
spaces” — retail, airport concourses,
theme parks — “and the industry is learning
to adapt touring sound technology into
applications that used to be serviced by
installed sound gear that wasn’t necessarily
appropriate for music.” Dan Montecalvo,
marketing manager for Audio-Technica, puts
it succinctly: “More people are coming from
More people are coming from the live-sound
side of the business over to installed sound, and
they’re bringing the stuff they like with them.”
— Dan Montecalvo, Audio-Technica.
Less Than Zero
Zeroing out a console — the methodical
process of bringing all the live audio
mixing console knobs, faders and
switches to a benign state of usage. This way
the future engineer using the console will
not have to be observant of every last detail
before connecting the system to the console
and fear immediate mayhem. But zeroing out
a console is more than a courtesy after the gig;
it should also be a practice before the gig.
The Process tp
Zeroing out most analog consoles typically
starts with the faders. Unless the console
is partially active providing recorded music
before the gig, you want to turn down all the
faders, including the main left-center-right,
auxiliary, subgroup and channel strip faders.
Yeah, having mute groups on helps, but until
you have programmed them or understand
why other channel faders have to be up, send
all the faders to the bottom and hunt down
the channel strip equalizers and flatten them
all at unity gain first.
I recommend centering the swept frequency
controls on the parametric equalizers
and choosing wide frequencies for high- or
low-pass filters. Nothing aggravates the next
console driver more than high-pass filters
stuck at 200 Hz when gig time pressure is
on. Choose a more wide-open value like 80
Hz or lower to let the next person narrow up
the response bands. Leave the channel strip
equalizer strips “inserted” and not bypassed
— another hair-pulling aggravation in stressful
gigs with no zero-out time.
For channel strip gains and assorted other
preamp controls, bring the gains back down
to around the 10 o’clock position with the XLR
jack as the chosen input. Also, you can remove
the pads, polarity flips and phantom power
settings as you regain the channels. If there
are high-pass switches or controls, leave the
switches engaged or back off the controls to
a low frequency so that channels needing extra
bottom-end will have action taken by the
next user. Nothing like chasing hum on channels
not needing subwoofer support. For auxiliary
sends, send them all packing back to full
attenuation until you have effects and other
mixes to support. Pay extreme attention to
the pre/post and stereo/dual mono switches.
A safe bet is leaving things in post-fader mode
and each aux control in mono send mode.
AUGUST 2008 www.fohonline.com
the live sound side of the business over to installed
sound, and they’re bringing the stuff
they like with them.”
Converging Markets biz
Seeing veteran live sound mixer Robert
Scovill, now marketing manager at Digidesign,
at an installed sound exhibition viscerally
clinches the sense of convergence between
the two sectors.
“From the manufacturers’ perspectives,
the line has gotten pretty blurry,” he agrees.
It’s also affecting Digi’s product and marketing
strategy to an extent. “We’re not so
much adapting the technology for the market
as building scale for installed sound,” he
explains. “We want to continue to work from
a single-software platform, but we’re also
Tackling the master section is mostly
common sense. Once all the faders are down,
check the signal routings and un-flip any fader
flip switches so that groups and aux send
masters are obvious. Also, check for global
pre/post settings on aux masters on lower
cost consoles. Then back down on the headphone
monitoring levels and choose the L-R
mix as the default monitor when a PFL or AFL
switch is not activated. And, of course, leave
the mute group in a safe condition with all
channels muted by the groups or with individual
channels muted if not in a mute group.
If you have marked up board tape on the
console, it is at your discretion to remove it.
There is no reason to leave it on the console if
a good zeroing out is performed. The exceptions
would be if the next act is keeping the
same mic patching or if there are bad channels
that need identification.
The Courtesy tp
At the end of a gig, it is a nice courtesy
if you zero out the console to leave it for the
next user. Of course, if it is very likely you will
be the next user, you may gamble on leaving
things half-zeroed so that EQ settings and
By DanDaley
going to continue to move downmarket to
build products that are smaller and that can
address more markets.” Digi is also reconfiguring
its existing products, such as creating a
single-rack solution for its Icon console that
eliminates the need for a snake, making it a
better fit for fixed installations.
In fact, Scovill confides, in the four years
that Digidesign has exhibited at InfoComm,
it took a while to realize that it wasn’t a matter
of selling the odd console into the fixedsound
market, but rather branding their way
into it. “We realized we needed to position the
brand, not just the technology and products,”
he says. “It’s the difference between seeing
a market where we can sell some stuff and
a market where we can create demand that
wasn’t there before.”
Kevin Hill, managing director at Spanish
speaker maker D.A.S., says the branding
aspect is being helped by the fact that live
sound companies are increasing the amount
of installed sound work they do to balance
revenues during off-touring seasons. “Historically,
those customers have not been as
brand-conscious as the touring clients are,”
he says. “But that’s changing as the big touring
sound providers are doing more installed
work. They’re bringing brand awareness with
them into this marketplace.”
The increased emphasis on live touring
sound as the music industry’s core revenue
stream has been a boon to live sound systems
manufacturers, but it’s also brought
more competition to the field — it sometimes
feels as if there is an individual microphone
for every independent artist on the road.
continued on page 43
By MarkAmundson
preamp gains are left for the next performance.
An efficient console operator should
be able to dial in EQ and rough gains very
quickly from a zeroed-out console.
Zeroing before the gig also helps familiarize
yourself with the console if you have not
been on that brand/model for a while. Feeling
all those controls and faders may provide
a clue on how well-maintained the console is
before mixing. Loose controls and sticky faders
may provide a scenario of how to defensively
drive the console to avoid crackles and
pops before the show goes on.
The Ego tp
I once had an ego enough to not zero
out the console because I wanted the next
user to see the mixing prowess I had as a
teaching aid. Today, I am much more likely
to play nice and zero out for fear that someone
else will see my bad mixing habits instead.
But there is another reason to zero out
each night, especially when you really are a
good console operator, to the point where
your pay is very well up in the compensation
ranks.We know of a few FOH engineers
continued on page 43