Harman Buyout Dead - FOH Online

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ThE NEws MagaziNE For LivE souNd 

Las vEgas, Nv — voting for the 2007 Parnelli awards 

has begun. subscribers can cast their votes online for 

the best of the live production industry at www.parnelliawards.com/vote. 

a full ballot listing all nominees can 

be found on page 27. The Parnelli awards take place Friday, 

Nov. 16, at the Peabody hotel in orlando, Fla. Tickets 

can be purchased at www.parnelliawards.com. 

since 2001, the Parnelli awards have recognized pioneering 

and influential individuals and their contributions 

to the live event industry, 

continued on page 48 

OCTOBER 2007 Vol. 6 No. 1 

Pumpkins Trick Out the Fillmore 

saN FraNCisCo — Famously finicky, smashing Pumpkins (shaved) headman Billy Corrigan 

was unsatisfied with the sound at san Francisco’s Fillmore venue. what to do about it? how about 

bring in your own stage and system? it’s not every day you do an install over a legendary venue. 

hey, why not install all new Foh gear less than a week before the show? To find out exactly how 

they got what they wanted, check out page 32. 

Parnelli Voting Now Open 

Terry Lowe (right), publisher of FOH and PLSN, and 

Joe Aldridge (left) of UNLV, with Stephanie DeFraga, 

recipient of the inaugural Parnelli/PLSN/FOH 

scholarship 

Harman Buyout Dead 

NorThridgE, Ca — harman international’s $8 billion buyout died sept. 21 as private 

equity firms Kohlberg Kravis roberts & Co. and goldman sachs group inc. claimed a “material 

adverse change” and announced their intention to back out of the deal. The move 

caused harman stock to plummet. harman stock peaked at 122 in late april on news of 

the buyout and was running at about 

112 before news of KKr/gs intentions 

hit. at press time, it was running in the 

low 80s after dipping as low as 78 after 

the news broke — a drop of 36% from 

its peak. 

according to published accounts 

from the associated Press, the Washington 

Post and the Financial Times, officials 

from the private equity firms are claiming 

their decision is not based on the 

current tumultuous marketplace and 

tight credit situation brought on by the 

failure of the subprime mortgage market, 

but declined to comment further on 

the reason. an anonymous source, which 

the a.P. says is “familiar with the negotiations,” 

claims the decision is based upon 

uncertainty regarding harman’s finan- 

cial health and that it is not a negotiating 

tactic. 


AMS Picks Up Turbo 

agoura hiLLs, Ca — after 

sennheiser Electronic Corporation announced 

it will no longer distribute Turbosound 

products in the united states 

and Latin america, u.s. distribution of 

the u.K.-based installed and live sound 

loudspeaker systems manufacturer was 

immediately snatched up by american 

Music and sound, bringing that group 

— which also distributes pro brands 

including allen & heath and Focusrite 

— a big step closer to being able to 

cover the entire signal chain. 

Turbosound has also announced 

that simon Blackwood will take over 

the role of managing director from Philip 

hart effective oct. 1. as well as leading 

the company as managing director, 

Blackwood will continue to oversee 

Turbosound’s sales channel management, 

while hart moves to the position 

of chairman of Turbosound. hart also 

serves as a board member of parent 

company Proel. 

“we have a number of strategic 

plans already in place, one of which is 

focusing on expanding our business in 

the key u.s. 


16 

24 

30 

Sound Matches 

the Bikes Roar 

You’ve got to bring the sPL when 

your audience has ridden hundreds of 

miles on a growling motorcycle to get 

to your party. The sturgis Motorcycle 

rally brings in enough people to the 

Buffalo Chip campground to make it 

the third largest city in the state for the 

duration of the event, and every one of 

them wants to rock out. in order to let 

the rock roar, Buffalo Chip upgraded its 

point source system to a line array this 

year. For the full story on how the gig 

went and the crowd’s reaction, turn to 

page 18. 

FOH Interview 

We also have a more refined side — 

check out our interview with the crew 

of the Montreaux Jazz Fest. 

Road Test 

The new Future Sonics Ear Monitor, a 

Peavey power distro and the Lexicon 

M300 get out of the shop and onto the 

gigs in our Road Tests. 

Product Gallery 

It’s an all-in-one box for your sound 

manipulation needs — this month’s 

Product Gallery focuses on Digital 

EQs.

Ad info: http://foh.hotims.com/


C o N t E N t s 

What’s hot 

What’s hot 

Feature 

AES Preview 

Yes, we will all sit around bitching about how it 

is a recording show masking as a live event show, 

but first, here is a look at some of the new toys. 

Welcome To My Nightmare 

An expanded tale that includes killer eggplant, 

broken teeth and cola missiles. And he swears 

it’s all true… 

FEEDBACK 

What Up? 

How are you doing? First off, I really like what you guys 

do with FOH. The EPD is really a valuable tool, as well. I started 

working at the Vic Theater in Chicago in ‘98 and have since 

gone on to much bigger things and much smaller gigs. I was 

just reading your review on that new Audix mic. It really made 

me smile. It’s really hard when the singers bring in the condenser, 

and they insist on using it. It’s always the cover/tribute 

bands that are like this. These are the same bunch that brings 

the two full stacks of 4x12s into a 300-seat bar. It just won’t 

work, and they never want to take your advice. 

I have been doing this rock ‘n’ roll BS since ‘95 and the majority 

still has little or no faith. Sometimes you just have to put 

12 

36 

Features 

16 FOH Interview 

Not one, not two, but three takes on the worldrenowned 

Montreux Jazz Festival. 

18 Production Profile 

Bikes, babes and big bad bands. Just another 

evening at the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis, South 

Dakota. 

20 Hometown Heroes 

We asked, and you voted. Here are the regional 

winners in the 4th Annual FOH Hometown Hero 

Soundco Awards. 

24 Road Tests 

The Lex MX300 Effects processor gets juiced 

up by a Peavey Distro, and it all ends in a set of 

Future Sonics Ear Monitors. 

28 Whose Mix Is It Anyway? 

A fractured fairy tale about intellectual property, 

honorable mixers and the Central Scrutinizer. 

30 Product Gallery 

Digital EQs are great tools. But the blade cuts 

both ways…and it’s sharp 

32 Installations 

So what if it’s the freakin’ Fillmore? When you 

want your own P.A. — and you are Billy Corgan 

and Jon Lemon — you get your own P.A. 

44 Regional Slants 

Cruising with Jonny B. How a prog-rock bass 

player grew up to become a solid local and 

regional soundco owner. 

the earplugs in and go with the flow. Actually, I don’t even 

bother trying to explain how the stuff works to the weekend 

warriors anymore. It seems better just to tell them that they 

rock, and that I really dig what they are doing. I swear they just 

don’t believe me when I tell them that Van Halen was using a 

little Bluesbreaker amp behind the massive stacks on stage. 

Some big acts even have the miked cabs in a road case 

just to keep down the SPL. The quieter the stage volume is, 

the better it’s gonna sound the majority of the time. I like to 

say that some amps and cymbals are for outside use only. The 

weirdest thing is that the real artists actually want to work with 

you to get the best sound. Local yokels are just like, “I’ve been 

working on this guitar sound for years, and it’s the best! ”Or, “ 

This Beta 87 is the best mic cause it’s the most expensive.” 

www.fohonline.com 

OCTOBER 

2007, Vol. 6.1 

Columns 

38 Theory and Practice 

Actually, this time out it is theory VERSUS practice. 

39 The Biz 

What spiraling ticket costs may mean for the 

future of the biz. 

40 The Bleeding Edge 

The MI biz has MIDI. Why can’t pro audio decide 

on — and adhere to — a standard for transport 

of digital audio? 

42 Vital Stats 

He may never cop to it, but EAW’s Jeff Cox may 

be the individual most responsible for the bandwagon 

that line array has become. But he was 

the first on it in the U.S. 

48 Sound Sanctuary 

Even the church market has room for a little 

self-power. 

52 FOH-At-Large 

AES: Let the feeding frenzy begin. Just don’t forget 

about that stack of riders back at the shop… 

Departments 

4 Editor’s Note 

2 Feedback 

5 News 

9 International News 

11 On the Move 

12 New Gear 

14 Showtime 

42 In the Trenches 

We have a Chi-town cover band called Hairbangers Ball, 

and all six of them insist on using the 87s, even the drummer. 

The drummer, of course, needs hi hat and overheads 

always, no matter what size venue they are playing. It’s 

weird, cause I was taught that 80% of what we do is communication, 

and 20% is technical. I still believe in this but 

know I have learned to pick my battles. Anyways, thanks 

for putting out FOH. 

PLUR Mike J. 

Freelancer for life! 

Jam Productions, Edge Audio Services, Frost Lighting, The Aragon 

Ballroom, The Vic, The Park West, The Riviera and the vast suburban 

wasteland of cover bands.


Editor’s Note 

Does 

Anybody Really 

Know What Time It Is? 

Yeah, it’s a cheesy headline, what 

can I tell ya? Like so many other 

choices we make in life, it seemed 

like a good idea at the time. So, it is actually 

official. FOH has made it through five 

years. Pretty amazing. I know there are a 

few folks out there who lost money on 

this particular bet. 

I sit here well after midnight, after working 

to get this issue out on time and waiting 

for my lovely wife (and our intrepid 

production manager) to make her way 

home from the office I left four hours ago. 

And I am trying to think of where I was five 

years ago. I was living in another state. My 

now–senior-in-high-school daughter was 

just starting middle school. My wife was still 

in publishing doing pretty much what she 

does now, but for a different company. I was 

brand new to the world of big-league live 

event production, having come from about 

a decade on the MI side of the equation. I 

was two months out from gastric bypass 

surgery, had broken the 300 pound mark 

for the first time in longer than I could remember 

and had just starting to eat solid 

food again. I was mixing anklebiter shows 

and doing the occasional band gig. 

A lot has changed. We lost one dog and 

gained two more. Gave away an iguana and 

got a macaw. Moved to Las Vegas (a year 

ahead of the company). Where walking a 

block used to be a chore, now I run several 

miles a few times a week and did a halfmarathon 

late last year. I still mix the occasional 

gig (but they have gotten bigger), 

still play in a band that has the same name, 

but probably none of the same people. Still 

married. My daughter still thinks I’m a moron, 

and I am still under 190 lbs. Like I said 

— big changes. 

What about the business? I remember 

five years ago, I drove from L.A. as far 

as Palm Springs to see someone actually 

touring with a new board from a company 

called DiGiCo. It was a digital console with 

touch screen — unheard of just five years 

ago. I drove from L.A. to Fresno to see a 

midsized tour using a line array. The idea 

of digital system control was likely on a 

drawing board somewhere, but it had 

not yet transformed into a product you 

could buy and use on a gig. The thought 

of Digidesign — a recording company — 

making major inroads into the live world 

was laughed at. And I was one of the ones 

laughing. 

Now it is hard to find even a midsized 

tour that does not use a digital console 

with touch-screen interfaces. Every soundco 

bigger than the guy down the street 

with a few speakers and a pickup truck has 

a line array. None of us are laughing about 

that recording company moving into live 

sound, and there are probably a dozen digital 

control and transport schemes, none 

of which seem to easily work together (my 

latest pet peeve, which I will be pounding 

on in a panel discussion at AES — this 

could be entertaining). 

And we are no longer the new kid. In fact, 

we have been around long enough to have 

OCTOBER 2007 www.fohonline.com 

By BillEvans 

a couple of very big companies so pissed at 

something we wrote that they refuse to talk 

to us. Hey, there’s an accomplishment… 

And more change and growth is coming. 

We have published our first book (an 

extension of Mark Amundson’s popular 

Theory and Practice columns). We continue 

to grow the Parnelli’s — the only 

awards in the live event industry aimed at 

people, not gear. We have greatly expanded 

our online presence and are starting to 

experiment with things like video components 

for gear reviews and show coverage. 

Our sister mag PLSN has started a series 

of educational webinars, and you will see 

a bunch of those from FOH aimed at the 

sound tribe very soon. 

But some things don’t change. There 

may be a plethora of digital boards out 

there, but I am still more likely to see a 

Yamaha than anything else. People are 

still using point-and-shoot systems designed 

20 years ago, and sometimes they 

even work well. But the biggest thing 

that never changes is that the people 

who I like and admire in the business 

are the ones in it because they love what 

they do. We may bitch and moan about 

the long hours and too much work, but 

few of us would give it up for a straight 

day gig. Not even me. 

Thanks for a good run. Let’s see where 

we are when FOH celebrates a decade. It 

seems like a long time away, but when it 

gets here, it will seem like I was writing this 

yesterday. 

Publisher 

Terry Lowe 

tlowe@fohonline.com 

Editor 

Bill Evans 

bevans@fohonline.com 

Managing Editor 

Geri Jeter 

gjeter@fohonline.com 

Associate Editor 

Breanne George 

bg@fohonline.com 

Technical Editor 

Mark Amundson 

mamundson@fohonline.com 

Contributing Writers 

Jerry Cobb, Brian Cassell, 

Dan Daley, Jamie Rio, 

Steve LaCerra, Nort Johnson, 

David John Farinella, 

Ted Leamy, Baker Lee, 

Bryan Reesman, Tony Mah 

Photographer 

Steve Jennings 

Art Director 

Garret Petrov 

gpetrov@fohonline.com 

Production Manager 

Linda Evans 

levans@fohonline.com 

Graphic Designers 

Crystal Franklin 

cfranklin@fohonline.com 

David Alan 

dalan@fohonline.com 

Web Master 

Josh Harris 

jharris@fohonline.com 

National Sales Manager 

Dan Hernandez 

dh@fohonline.com 

National Advertising Director 

Gregory Gallardo 

gregg@fohonline.com 

General Manager 

William Hamilton Vanyo 

wvanyo@fohonline.com 

Business and 

Advertising Office 

6000 South Eastern Ave. 

Suite 1 J 

Las Vegas, NV 89119 

Ph: 702.932.5585 

Fax: 702.932.558 

Toll Free: 800.252.2716 

Circulation 

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P.O. Box 161 7 

North Hollywood, CA 91615 

Front Of House (ISSN 1549-831X) Volume 6 Number 

1 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, P.O. Box 16147, North 

Hollywood, CA 91615-6147. Front Of House is distributed 

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 obtained 

by calling 702.932.5585. Editorial submissions 

are encouraged, but will not be returned. All Rights 

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permission of Front Of House. 

Publishers of...

MONTREAL, QUEBEC — The first Festival 

International de Jazz de Montréal was held 

at Man and His World (the former Expo 67 

World’s Fair site) and attracted 12,000 spectators. 

Twenty-seven years later, the Montreal 

Jazz Festival had some 30 countries 

represented with 500 concerts, attracting 

over two million attendees, many that 

travel to Montreal every year to join in the 

festivities. Celebrity guests included Bob 

Dylan, Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Jarrett, 

among others. 

Hugo Tardif has served as technical director 

responsible for the outdoor shows at 

the jazz festival and joins Solotech as one of 

the two sound department’s technical coordinators, 

along with Daniel Rioux. Solotech 

provided production for the three megastages, 

along with NEXO products provided 

by Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems Inc. 

NEXO gear included a NEXO GEO T rig 

(10 T4805s and one T2815 with six CD18s 

per side) for the main stage with Alpha EF 

side fills on the stage. A NEXO GEO D rig (6 

x D10 and 2 x GEO Sub per side) with PS15 

fills was used on a second stage, and a GEO 

S system (7 x S805 and 1 x S830 with 4 x 

CD12s per side) with PS8 fills was provided 

for the third stage. 

“Having a very good understanding of 

the festival’s needs, and after dealing with 

the architectural difficulties of a sound system 

bouncing against the downtown area 

buildings, the choice for a good line array 

system was clear,” Tardif says. 

“Many different brands of line arrays 

were used in the past, but were difficult 

to tune because the location is not a real 

open-field situation,” Tardif says. “The NEXO 

cabinets were much more manageable in 

this particular situation.” 

After discussing the matter with Yamaha’s 

Michel Trepanier, the opportunity was born. 


“When we installed the 

small, lightweight GEO D 

and T rigs, everybody was 

amazed with the power and 

clarity of the system. To be 

able to provide such a clear 

and crisp-sounding system 

was a relief and a blessing for 

us,” Tardif adds. “The lightweight 

aspect of the GEO T 

system was also very helpful 

for the festival’s team, as this 

year two giant video screens 

were added, which limited 

the weight capacity of the 

mobile stage.” 

News 

Montreal Jazz Fest Uses Arrays for Downtown Sound 

Grace Cathedral 

Upgrades Audio 

Capability in Time 

to Install New Bishop 

Montreal Jazz Fest 

The new Specta-C console at Grace Cathedral 

SAN FRANCISCO — Grace Cathedral 

recently undertook the first step in an audio 

upgrade and installed a new Spectra-C 

40-channel console from APB-DynaSonics. 

This upgrade was under time constraints 

from the start because the first phase had to be 

completed in a few short weeks for the installation 

of the new Bishop of California, a major 

event attended by close to 3,000 dignitaries, 

political and religious leaders. According to 

A/V consultant Arthur Yeap of Novo Group, the 

project “was part of phased installation that also 

involved replacing an old wireless system with 

a new system of head-worn and handheld mics 

and an assisted listening system. 

“The original console was also obsolete, so 

we had to move quickly with a replacement,” 

Yeap says. The Spectra was rushed from APB in 

New Jersey after being measured in detail for a 

raised wooden enclosure for the console located 

in the cathedral nave in front of a column. 

“Even using the existing column speakers, 

which are delayed, you could hear an immedi- 

foh.hotims.com 

ate difference with the APB console,” Yeap says. 

“We heard it, their technical staff heard it, and 

info:http:// 

we were all astounded.” Ad 

2007 OCTOBER

Ad info:http:// foh.hotims.com 

News 

Rock, Pop and Retro Folk Concerts Tour This Summer with Heil Sound 

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, IL — As Billy Gibbons 

said recently, “Yep, we’re the same three guys 

and the same three chords.” That little old band 

from Texas, ZZ Top, has been touring this summer 

with Heil Sound PR 30 and PR 40s used by 

drummer Frank Beards. A pair of PR 30s is being 

used on Gibbon’s guitar cabinets, and a pair of 

PR 40s on Dusty Rhodes bass rig. Also along on 

this tour are the Stray Cats with Brian Setzer, who 

is using PR 30s on his guitar cabs. Clair Brothers 

is providing the production for the tour. 

Also on the road this summer is the 

American Idol Live! tour, which traveled with 

a package of Heil Sound microphones. Ten 

finalists from the latest installment of American 

Idol, including winner Jordin Sparks, are 

performing arenas and state fairs throughout 

the U.S. Drummer Gromyko Collins is 

using PR 30s on overheads, a PR 40 on kick 

and PR 20s on snare and toms. The band 

also uses PR 40s for the backup singers and 

PR 30s on guitars. 


Joan Baez spent much of the summer playing 

at festivals and theatres throughout Germany, 

Spain, France and the U.K. Monitor Engineer 

Jason Rabion, working with Heil Sound, 

provided Baez with a prototype PR 35 mic. 

Joe Walsh wrapped up his summer tour 

at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, 

Fla. Walsh’s tour used 40 Heil Sound microphones 

for his band, which consists of two 

drummers, bass, keyboard, additional guitar 

player and three backup singers. 

No Rest During 

Summer Break 

WEST CHESTER, PA — Acoustical consulting 

firm SIA Acoustics employed an Aviom 

Pro64 digital snake — featuring the new 

6416dio Digital I/O Module — during the 10week 

MAD SQ MUSIC concert series featuring 

jazz and R&B performers this summer in 

New York City’s Madison Square Park. Aviom 

gear was also used on Taylor Hicks’ tour, as 

drummer Felix “D-Kat” Pollard used a Pro16 

personal monitor mixing system. Chicago 

drummer Danny Seraphine has been using 

his Aviom monitor rig on the road in support 

of the new band’s debut CD, California Transit 

Authority. 

ZZ Top has the same three chords and new Heil mics. 

Mom & Company Celebrates in Montreal 

FOH at Mom & Company in the Theatre St-Denis 

MONTREAL, QUE- 

BEC — Allen & Heath’s 

iLive digital mixing 

system was recently 

employed to manage 

a sold-out event, entitled 

Mom & Company, 

held in Montreal’s 

2,200-capacity performance 

venue, Theatre 

St-Denis 1. The variety 

show was themed as a 

celebration of parenthood, 

featuring 2 MCs 

and live entertainment. 

An iLive system comprised of an iDR10 

stage rack and an iLive-144 control surface 

was used for FOH sound. The show used 56 

mic inputs, 16 digital inputs and eight digital 

outputs. In addition to the 54 mics, digital 

inputs included two CD players, three additional 

effects processors and three VTRs. 

Head of sound for the event was Robert 

Grimard, who was responsible for programming 

iLive and mixed the main comedy show. 

Technical Designer Gil Perron from Reno Productions 

specified the system for the event. 

Grimard commented, “It’s hard to say 

which feature of this mixing system impresses 

me the most, but I must say that if I 

had to name a few of the things that really 

DON’T FORGET TO 

VOTE ONLINE FOR 

7 TH Annual 

Parnelli Awards 

at 

www.parnelliawards. 

com/vote 

blow me away it would definitely start with 

audio quality — iLive is the most analogsounding 

digital system I have ever tried.” 

Dany Bedar’s engineer, Dan Meir added, 

“After a couple of minutes, I felt very comfortable 

with the basic operations of the 

iLive system. Even though I’ve had plenty 

of experience in the digital domain, I was 

surprised by iLive’s simple, straight-tothe-point, 

analog-like feel. The EQ section 

sounded very transparent — no digital 

harshness of any kind — and I am very impressed 

with the smoothness of the high 

ends. It’s great to be able to mix instead of 

just compensate, as I am used to doing on 

other digital consoles.” 

Oregon Jamboree 

Jams Out 

PORTLAND, OR — Horne Audio 

Inc. used a combination of compact 

Electro-Voice line arrays to keep 

sound focused and sightlines open at 

the recent Oregon Jamboree country 

music festival. 

“Our client asked that we try an 

alternative to ground-stacked subs to 

keep the low end from overwhelming 

the seating areas directly in front of 

the stage,” says J. Peter Horne. “So, we 

decided to fly two side-by-side arrays 

of six XLC215 subs per side, keeping 

the low end off the ground alongside 

our main hangs of twelve XLC-DVX 

per side and side fill arrays of eight 

XLD281 per side.” 

The company flew down-fill hangs 

of two XLD281 boxes under each main 

XLC array and flew a delay tower array 

of XLC-DVX. 

“The coupling effect with the sub 

arrays worked very well, as it gave us 

the low-end output we needed for 

this deep venue without blocking the 

view — six-deep sub arrays meant we 

were well clear of the deck — or focusing 

too much energy on the front 

rows,” Horne says. “Using this combination 

of compact XLC and XLD arrays 

allows us to provide full coverage and 

plenty of power handling without the 

clumsy footprint or crowded sightlines. 

We upgraded our XLC127 boxes 

to the new DVX woofers for this season, 

so now the whole EV rig is loaded 

with DVX woofers.” 

Taking place over the first weekend 

in August, this year’s Oregon Jamboree 

featured headliners Dierks Bentley, Trisha 

Yearwood and Jo Dee Messina. For 

the past five years, Horne Audio Inc. 

(Portland, Oregon) has used EV line array 

systems at the festival.



News 

Knitting Factory Stays Ahead of Curve with Sound System 

NEW YORK — Long recognized as a key 

showcase for cutting-edge and new music, 

the Knitting Factory’s three-floor venue’s distinctive 

main space stage has hosted such 

musical attractions as Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, 

Bill Frisell and Death Cab for Cutie, among 

others. A technical renovation to revamp the 

venue incorporated Meyer Sound systems 

into the mix with UltraSeries loudspeakers. 

Knitting Factory Chief Engineer Jason 

Tubbs worked with Meyer Sound to design a 

system that would enhance the audience and 

artist experiences. Sonic Circus Inc. installed 

the entire system, which included new FOH 

and monitor consoles. 

The result was a combination of four UPA- 

2P compact narrow coverage loudspeakers, 

two UPJ-1P Compact VariO loudspeakers and 

a pair of USW-1P compact subwoofers. 

The L-shape, hard surfaces and expansive 

balcony of the 400-capacity main space 

LOS ANGELES — Nothing provides 

a better focus for an urban population 

than a free summer concert series, a 

fact that is illustrated by MacArthur 

Park’s historic Levitt Pavilion for the 

Performing Arts. To properly accommodate 

sound reinforcement duties 

for a diverse roster of acts, LA Sound 

Company, in conjunction with Brian 

Riordan of Levels Audio, used Crown 

I-Tech and XTi Series power amplifiers, 

driving a fully JBL loudspeaker setup. 

“We have had good experience in 

the past with Crown I-Tech and XTi systems,” 

says LA Sound Co. Owner Richard 

Ralke. “So, they were a natural choice for 

us to use at Levitt Pavilion. Aside from 

sounding excellent, which is our number 

one criterion, the Crowns are easy 

to program, incorporate a lot of powerful 

DSP and are very efficient with low 

power consumption. The I-Tech Series, 

in particular, is also extremely versatile 

in handling a wide range of speaker impedances 

and outputs.” 

Because of scheduling changes, 

the pavilion’s sound system was specified, 

designed and assembled in just 

three weeks. To streamline system 

impose an interesting set of acoustical challenges 

on its revamped loudspeaker system. 

However, the narrow symmetrical pattern 

and control of the UPA-2P, combined with 

the high-frequency performance of the 

UPJ-1P, was used to sculpt the sound in the 

venue’s primary stage. “When we installed 

the new Meyer system, we just kept turning 

it up and up to 115 dB,” Tubbs recalls. “This is 

almost like a hi-fi system. It’s putting everything 

exactly where I want it to go.” 

Inverting the UPA-2P cabinets allowed 

improved intelligibility under the 100-seat balcony. 

“When you’re way back in the balcony, 

you can see the lower part of the box — and if 

you can see it, you can hear it,” says Tubbs. “We 

were able to put the boxes up higher than in 

our previous install, so sight lines to the stage 

are better, and it feels bigger. Artists who return 

here feel it right away; they’re constantly 

asking us, ‘Did you change something?’” 


In addition, the renovation includes Meyer 

Sound USW-1P subs with a flat response from 

32 to 180 Hz. “Those are built right into the 

center stage,” Tubbs says. “Adding the USW-1P 

subs took our sound to the next level. You can 

feel some of that bass guitar in your gut, the 

drive of the kick drum — the low end off the 

floor pushes you around a little bit without 

being overwhelming.” 

Despite its big sound and multiple 

performance halls, the Knitting Factory 

suffers from space constraints — a common 

problem for New York City venues 

— which makes the compact profile of 

Meyer Sound’s design effective. “With everything 

in the box, you don’t need to deal 

with crossovers and dialing up settings, 

because it’s ready to go,” Tubbs says. “In a 

smaller club like the Knitting Factory, taking 

up less space is absolutely necessary. 

We need every inch we can get.” 

MacArthur Park’s Levitt Pavilion for the 

Performing Arts Hosts Summer Concert Series 

Crown provided power for the MacArthur Park Summer Concert series, 

but did it bring good cake? 

adjustment, all Crown power amplifiers 

are networked via Ethernet using 

Harman Pro’s HiQnet communications 

and control protocol. 

“We can set up crossover filter parameters 

and delay from a PC and load 

them into each amplifier,” says Sound 

Co. owner Richard Ralke. “In fact, JBL 

supplied us with new systems settings 

for the loudspeakers, which we used to 

reprogram each amplifier; it only took 

us a couple of minutes. We also had to 

ensure that the entire P.A. system could 

be taken down in just 45 minutes, since 

the owners strike the venue at the end 

of each evening performance. We designed 

the custom amp racks with multipin 

connectors so that the system can 

be rolled out, powered and ready to go 

in a very short time.” 

Levitt Pavilion’s sound system 

currently comprises four JBL VerTec 

VT4887A line array cabinets flown per 

side and powered by four Crown I- 

T4000 amplifiers, two JBL ASB6128V 

subs stacked per side powered by a 

pair of Crown I-T6000s, plus eight JBL 

SRX712M stage monitor cabinets driven 

by a rack full of eight Crown XTi 4000s. 

The Knitting Factory 

Virgin Festival 

Takes South 

Stage at Pimlico 

Race Course 

BALTIMORE, MD — MHA Audio of Hagerstown, 

Md., provided audio coverage and 

sonic quality at the Second U.S. Virgin Mobile 

Festival’s South Stage and Dance Tent. 

Company Head Mike Scarfe and his team 

relied on a setup that included left and right 

hangs of Martin Audio’s W8L Longbow line 

array speakers with flown W8LS subs. The system 

also included Martin Audio power amps 

and XTA control. 

The Virgin Mobile festival, held Aug. 4–5 at 

Pimlico Race Course, featured the full gamut 

of contemporary rock and rap genres: art rock, 

indie rock, rap rock, electro and dance rock, 

hardcore, post-hardcore, emo, power pop and 

nu metal. Over 32,000 people attended for a 

diverse concert line-up that included the Police, 

Velvet Revolver, the Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang 

Clan and Smashing Pumpkins, among others. 

Virgin Mobile Festival

Maroon Five Not Blue About Console 

DALY CITY, CA — Maroon 5 engineer Ryan 

Cecil is using a Digidesign VENUE system 

for monitors on the band’s current tour in 

support of their sophomore studio outing, 

It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, released this 

spring. 

Cecil runs 48 inputs from the stage to 

the FOH Rack, which houses the full five-DSP 

card complement. He also makes extensive 

use of the Venue system’s PQ matrixes to 

provide an added level of flexibility (compared 

to traditional auxiliary busses), employing 

six PQ matrix outputs along with 24 

auxiliary busses to drive effects and other 

miscellaneous items. 

“Having user-defined inputs on the matrix 

mixers is amazing when you need to send 

a number of sources to an effects plug-in, but 

don’t want to dedicate an aux or sub-group,” 

he says. “This has made it able to do what I 

would generally need a 40-bus console to 

do — that and the ability to drive any effects 

plug-in from a channel strip direct output.” 

Cecil credits word of mouth for his 

choice. 

“I decided to trust what my fellow engineers 

were saying and took VENUE along for 

the ride,” he says. “I had only seen it on a few 

gigs, but never got a chance to mix on it. I 

was given a chance by the folks at Scorpio 

Plymouth Jazz Festival Puts 

Audio on Island Breeze 

TOBAGO — Soundco Rent-A-Amp recently 

provided the live audio system for the 

Plymouth Jazz Festival, held on the Caribbean 

island of Tobago, supported by JBL Professional 

VerTec line arrays. 

With a 5,000-person audience extending to 

300 feet from the stage, providing even coverage 

with high fidelity throughout the seating 

area was a significant challenge. To overcome 

these obstacles, Rent-A-Amp deployed a JBL 

VerTec system with 16 VT4889 large-format line 

array elements and 16 VT4880 arrayable subwoofers 

arranged on each side of the stage, for 

64 VerTec loudspeakers in total. Crown Macro- 

Tech MA5002VZ and XTi amplifiers were used, 

as well as the Soundcraft Vi6 mixing console. 

The three-day festival featured numerous 

world-class acts, including Elton John, Al Green, 

Earth Wind & Fire and Diana Ross. Now in its 

third year, the Plymouth Jazz Festival brings together 

legendary performers from around the 

globe for a unique concert setting. 

Sound in Boston to come down and pre-program 

what I could on it. A week later, and 

with only about an hour of set-up, I had the 

band playing in rehearsals on it fully satisfied,” 

he continues. Its ease of use was particularly 

important to him. 

“On this tour I am filling in as production 

manager, and that wouldn’t have been possible 

with an analog desk,” he says. 

With the help of Digidesign, Cecil also 

created a talkback system for the band. “The 

guys all have switch mics that come into the 

console,” he says. “I have that set up with a 

ducker plug-in on the cue bus. When the 

guys ask for something, it keys the ducker to 

News 

lower the overall volume of the cue mix and 

keep their talkback on top. It keeps it from 

getting way too loud in my ears.” 

Rane Granted Patent on Perfect-Q Technology 

MUKILTEO, WA — The U.S. Patent & 

Trademark Office has granted U.S. Patent 

7,266,205, “Linearized Filter Band Equipment 

and Processes,” to inventor Ray Miller 

The stage for the Plymouth Jazz Festival 

International News 

and assignee Rane Corporation. 

The technologies patented are used 

in Rane’s live sound graphic EQs, the DEQ 

60 and DEQ 60L, in the Drag Net software- 

Arrays Power Trinidad Megachurch 

TRINIDAD — The 3,000-seat Trinidad 

Christian Center in Petit Valley, Trinidad, 

has installed a Renkus-Heinz self-powered 

loudspeaker system for its productionbased 

worship services as part of an ongoing 

program of investment in its facilities. 

The church — one of the sun-kissed 

Caribbean island’s largest houses of worship 

— hosts eight to ten services a week in its main 

hall, where the new system has been installed, 

while a second smaller hall caters for 1,200 

people; further breakout halls serve community 

events, children’s groups and special events. 

A high, curved ceiling characterizes the 

wide, 180-degree fan-shaped main hall, where 

system integrator AMR, based in Barataria, Trinidad, 

began a series of upgrades of the room’s 

house system in 2005. Systems Engineer Clifford 

Beckles comments: “There needed to be 

a sense of where the voice is coming from, a 

sense of localization; it was about directivity.” 

Worship services, which are entirely volunteer-led, 

generally involve loud music ministry. 

Almost every member of the choir has their 

own solo microphone: “It seems to be a Trinidadian 

thing, and it makes the engineer sweat!” 

Trinidad Christian Center in Trinidad 

comments Beckles. The system comprises four 

self-powered PN102/LA cabinets a side. These 

cover the entire main body of the seating. 

They used a Renkus-Heinz PN82/12 and 

two compact PN82/9 self-powered cabinets 

in the near fill area, four more of which were 

deployed in two delay zones at the room’s extremities. 

Beckles says, “To EQ the room, we 

used a 1/3 octave EQ at locations around the 

room, looked at it with SMAART in a few different 

areas and dialed it back in by hand.” 

Clifford Beckles concludes: “The Senior 

Reverend downloaded an intelligibility software 

package to check out the results for 

himself and found the system was perfect, 

with almost totally flat EQ apart from a few 

deliberate dips to suit the required sound for 

the worship space.” 

controlled RPM series Programmable Multiprocessor 

DSP units, and in the Serato Rane 

Series Graphic Equalizer Pro Tools plug-in for 

the Digidesign ICON and VENUE consoles. 

Maroon 5 engineer Ryan Cecil 

According to the company, this new 

technology allows creation of a true “graphic” 

equalizer, one whose output response is 

designed to match its slider settings. 


Ad info:http:// foh.hotims.com

10 

International News 

Fez Fest of Sacred Music Celebrates Moroccan Heritage 

The Sacred Music festival filled up the city square of Fez, Morocco. 

Amps Freshen Crowd 

at DecayDance 

LONDON — Britannia Row at Frankfurt’s 

Prolight & Sound 2007 purchased 84 of Outline’s 

new T9 computer controlled amplifiers 

for its Butterfly inventory. First outing for the 

new amplifier system was at London’s Hammersmith 

Apollo for DecayDance. A sold out 

multiband line-up featured Fall Out Boy, Cobra 

Starship and Gym Class Heroes. Left and 

right hangs of 12 Butterfly hi-packs were used 

together with 6 x Subtech 218s per side. 

“We did a brief ‘A’ and ‘B’ test between 

our existing Outline TP6.5s and the new T9 in 

the warehouse,” says Systems Engineer Adam 

Smith for Britannia Row. “These new amps and 

wiring have taken the Butterfly to new heights. 

To prove the amount of headroom available, 

I am backing off the highs by 12 dB and the 

low-mids at 9 dB; subs now run at 3dB. 

“Control was via Dolby Lake units with 

the new amps and software,” Smith says. 

“I now have total control of all the system 

anywhere in the listening environment. The 

CHESSINGTON, ENGLAND — George Michael 

made his return to the world’s arena 

stages using two DiGiCo D5 Lives for front of 

house sound with a D5T on band monitors. 

But for the first Wembley show, a third D5 was 

added to mix the sound for a live television 

broadcast. Engineers Ruadhri Cushan and 

Niall Flynn were in charge of mixing sound 

via the DiGiCo console. 

“Both Niall and I were a little apprehensive, 

mainly because we both come from a 

studio background, and the idea of doing 

a live mix straight to TV was a little scary,” 

BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND — Northampton-based 

Production Hire provided sound 

reinforcement for the newly opened Club 

2020 in Bournemouth, a property of the City 

Centre Leisure Group. 

Production Hire and club owner Mark 

Neal went for a combination of Martin Audio 

Blackline speakers and ground stacks of 

the original Wavefront 8s in front of the DJ 

booths on each floor. The 840-person capacity 

club has a ground-floor dance room 

(and adjacent tented chill area) that leads 

down to a VIP mezzanine room and main 

room in the basement. 

On the ground floor, two stacks of 

Wavefront W8 and W8S complement sets 

of AQ12 and AQ8s — as well as the F10 DJ 

monitors. In the large tented area, guests 

FEZ, MOROCCO 

— Filali Music recently 

deployed 

its new JBL VerTec 

system at one of 

Morocco’s premiere 

annual events, 

“Festival des Musiques 

Sacrées du 

Mondeo, Fes, 2007,” 

at Bab Boujloud, a 

large city square 

in the historic Moroccan 

city of Fez. 

great news is also that with the addition 

of a DSP card inserted into the amplifiers, 

we can control individual elements within 

the arrays, and with a further addition of a 

smart card, can actually tailor the amplifiers 

for even more power. Because the amps 

can operate from 95 volts to 240 volts, this 

means we can work anywhere in the world 

with no power supply problems.” 

The DecayDance event 

Ruadhri says. “If we were going to pull it off, 

we would need to get familiar with the D5 

very quickly, so when DiGiCo invited us down 

to their demo rooms to run through it, we 

jumped at the chance.” 

Although only part of the show was 

broadcast live, the entire tour was being recorded. 

The existing setup included two stage 

racks with 56 inputs into each, those 112 lines 

feeding the two D5s and D5T. Adding an additional 

D5 into the chain was straightforward. 

“A PC-based ADK system with Samplitude 

software was used to record the shows, which 

chill out with music delivered at reduced 

volume through another pair of AQ8s. 

“I use Blackline for aggression and cut 

on the dance floor — and for DJ monitoring,” 

Neal says. “It has that bite anywhere you need 

it. The AQs produce a smooth, transparent 

sound and are perfect for the bar areas.” 

For the mezzanine VIP lounge — where 

a permanent DJ booth has been set up 

— there are two more AQ8s. The stairway 

then leads down to the deceptively large 

main club, with its resin-coated floor. Here, 

two ground stacks, each with two W8 and 

two W8S and a pair of F10s, immediately 

announces their intentions, while two more 

F10s serve as DJ monitors. 

Multiple AQ12s are used for in-fills, 

with further bass extension coming from 


The mainstage system setup included 12 

VerTec VT4888 midsize line array elements 

(six per side) and eight VT4880 arrayable 

subwoofers (four per side). System processing 

was handled by a dbx 4800 loudspeaker 

system controller, in combination 

with JBL’s DSP files. 

“We were very satisfied with the 

first use of our new JBL VerTec system 

at the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, 

not only with its output capabilities, 

but also with its musical quality,” noted 

Yousef Filali, owner of Filali Music. “Bab 

Boujloud is a vast area and can accom- 

NUREMBERG, 

GERMANY — The 

Alterna Stage at 

the festival Rock 

Im Park, which 

together with its 

associating event 

Rock Am Ring is 

one of the largest 

German rock 

festivals, hosting 

The Rock Im Park crowd 

about 100,000 

visitors each year, 

was set up with audio by HK Audio Cohedra. 

The Alterna Stage was an open-air stage 

that played to a capacity of 25,000 viewers 

and featured artists of many different musical 

styles. In 2007, bands such as The White 

Stripes, Machine Head, Type O Negative, Mia, 

Wir Sind Helden and Jan Delay played on the 

Alterna Stage. For so many different styles, a 

multilateral sound system was required. 

George Michael Returns to Arena Stage 

seems to be one of the few bits of kit that was 

capable of recording all 112 inputs simultaneously 

for up to three hours at a time,” Ruadhri 

says. “This also got a feed directly from the 

stage racks, which meant we were able to 

play back previously recorded shows to start 

building a mix, while getting to grips with the 

console at DiGiCo’s premises.” 

Perhaps the biggest challenge was “stadium 

spill” from Michael’s mic. 

“We had some reconfiguring to do for 

Wembley — we had added some extra audience 

mics, which needed to be sent to 

Club 2020 Goes Crazy for 8s 

a pair of AQ215 floor-mounted subs, while 

a pair of AQ6s service the floor’s dedicated 

chill-out bar. 

The company has done the same with 

the audio in this multizone venue, where 

the routing and gain structure are assigned 

to line-configured BSS Soundweb 

9088iis (with two SW9008 expanders) and 

an SW9010 “Jellyfish” wall remote for local 

source select and volume control. This provides 

a capacity of 24 outputs and eight inputs 

— with most channels in use. 

“The whole system is correctly timeligned 

and EQ’d, and any DJ source can be 

sent anywhere in the building,” Neal says. 

“We have already had acts like 

Babyshambles and Peaches Geldof playing 

here — and we have the pedigree of 

modate an audience of several thousand 

people. Our first event with VerTec was 

a real success.” 

This year marked the 13th annual Festival 

des Musiques Sacrées du Mondeo, or “Fez 

Festival of World Sacred Music.” International 

artists included Johnny Clegg, Angelique Kidjo 

and more. The festival draws thousands 

of visitors each year to celebrate Islamic heritage 

in Morocco’s ancient holy city. The event 

not only features international musical talent, 

but also brings together politicians, religious 

leaders and social academics to discuss urgent 

sociopolitical issues. 

German Fest Confronts 

Multiheadliner Festival 

“Cohedra has 

optimally covered 

all resulting 

demands on the 

sound system,” 

says Wolfgang 

Geisler, CEO of 

the rental company 

Pave. “The 

feedback we’ve 

gotten from the 

many diverse 

FOH engineers 

was, except for few exclusions, outstanding. 

Positively mentioned was especially 

the minor sensitivity for wind, 

the high coverage and the high fidelity 

also at high acoustic pressures. We 

are using the system always at a top 

acoustic pressure level of about 108 

dB/A at the FOH stand, which is sufficient 

for all requirements.” 

The load-in for George Michael’s return to arena-sized shows 

the broadcast truck separately from our 

music mix,” Ruadhri says. “The show passed 

very smoothly.” 

The DJ booth and dance floor at Club 2020 

sound system that will appeal to the caliber 

of DJs like Erick Morillo and Trevor Nelson,” 

says City Centre Leisure’s Josh Simons. “In 

addition, the versatility of the system will 

enable the venue to stage the type of different 

events they have planned.”

D i g i d e - 

sign has appointed 

Frank 

Loyko to the 

position of 

w o r l d w i d e 

director of 

sales for the 

D i g i d e s i g n 

Venue live 

sound prod- 

Frank Loyko 

uct line. In his new position, Loyko will be 

responsible for defining and leading all 

live sound sales strategies worldwide, including 

managing Digidesign’s direct live 

sound sales team. As one of the founding 

members of loudspeaker manufacturer 

EAW, Loyko has more than 30 years of 

professional audio sales experience. Most 

recently, Loyko served as the senior vice 

president of international sales at LOUD 

Technologies Inc. 

Gary Pace 

has been appointed 

to 

the position 

of national 

sales manager 

for Dynacord. 

Pace will 

team with Jeff 

Taylor (Dyna- 

Gary Pace 

cord Product Manager, Americas). Most 

recently, Pace held a sales and marketing 

position with LSI. He also spent more than 


CORRECTIONS 

Hear Technologies 

heartech.com 

DiGiCo 

www.digico.com 

nine years as the global sales and marketing 

manager for Littlite gooseneck lamps 

and accessories. Beginning in the late 

1980s, Pace was busy managing and marketing 

independent and major recording 

artists, with clients including ICP, The God 

Bullies, Green Day, Tori Amos, The Lemonheads, 

The La’s and Kid Rock. 

Martin Audio has appointed Reflex 

Marketing as sales representatives for the 

New York Metro and Northern New Jersey 

territories. Reflex, an independent sales 

firm specializing in the M.I., Pro Audio, 

Contractor and Audio Visual markets has 

been in business since 1983. Company 

principals, John McFadden and Bob Brennan, 

started Reflex based on the belief that 

“the dealers and manufacturers are our 

partners.” 

Bill Woods 

has been appointed 

to 

the position 

of group sales 

and marketingdirector 

for MC2 

Audio, XTA 

and Quested 

M o n i t o r i n g 

Bill Woods 

Systems. Woods, a veteran of the pro audio 

industry, has worked on a freelance basis 

representing Quested for the past three 

years. Later he returned to live sound, 

working for Ashly Audio to help the company 

establish Camco in the U.S. Market. 

Brian T. Edwards 

has joined 

Production Resource 

Group, 

LLC (PRG) as 

general manager 

of the company’s 

Los Angeles 

office. Edwards 

will oversee all 

aspects of PRG’s 

Brian T. Edwards 

Los Angeles division, including sales, event 

labor and rental operations. He will report 

to Joe Schenk, Sr., president of PRG’s West 

Coast operations. Veteran of nearly two decades 

in the motion picture and television 

lighting support industry, Edwards comes 

to PRG from Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, 

N.Y., where he served for three years as 

vice president of operations. 

Sennheiser 

E l e c t r o n i c s 

C o r p o r a t i o n 

has hired Sebnem 

“Sebi” Altug 

for the position 

of project 

manager for 

marketing comm 

u n i c a t i o n s . 

Sebnem Altug 

She brings nearly a decade of experience 

in marketing and communications, mar- 

Model MSRP Frame Size Inserts EQ Metering Power Features 

Mix Back $2,495.00 16x12x2x2 16 4band w/ dual sweepable mids LED ladder Internal Auto switching. 240 W 

D1 69,100 16x8x1 Up to 160 

CSD5/D5 

4-band parametiric per channel plus 16 

insertable 6-band parametrics 

30-segment 

LED bridge 

300 W Max 

On The Move 

keting research and advertising and film 

to the job. In coordination with the industry 

team leaders and product managers of 

Sennheiser’s many distribution channels, 

Altug will manage key communication 

projects for all Sennheiser products and 

services. 

TOA Electronics 

Inc. has appointed 

two new 

associates to its 

administration department, 

Lada 

Smirnova, director 

of finance and administration 

and 

Dino Marinopoulos, 

materials manager. 

Smirnova has extensive 

experience 

Lada Smirnova 

in management, 

financial analysis, 

accounting, and 

human resources. 

Marinopoulos, a 

former employee of 

Office Depot, is experienced 

in the areas 

of supply chain 

Dino Marinopoulos 

management, inventory control and fulfillment 

and logistics. Both Smirnova and Marinopoulos 

will work with other members of 

the administration department to continue 

to improve customer support in the areas of 

product availability and delivery. 

In the Sept. ‘07 issue of FOH, we left a couple of companies out of the Product Gallery on monitor consoles. Info for DiGiCo and Hear appear below. 

$92,390 

(CSD5) 

24x16x1 Up to 160 

4-band parametiric per channel plus 32 

insertable 6-band parametrics 

30-segment 

LED bridge 

300 W Max 

The Mix Back is a flexible, moderately priced 16 x 16 monitor mixer. With 2 stereo and 12 mono outputs, ADAT and H Bus 

outputs, it’s a companion to the Hear Back PM system. The mixer can be used as a stand alone monitor mixer. 

The D1 Live provides simultaneous processing of 64 mono/stereo channels and can be expanded up to 160 channels, in any 

combination of mono/stereo with full access to 224 inputs and 224 outputs. Each channel provides full routing from the 

remote mic pre amps, 240mS delay, Hi and lo pass filters, 4 fully parametric eq’s and dynamics with side chain filtering. 

The CS-D5 Live digital mixing system provides the full, extensive feature set of the D5 Live, with the exception of the 

optical I/O, creating a D5 Live at a price point in line with basic consoles. Tech advantages include a full 48 busses, 128 input 

channels, which can be increased with extra DSP to 160. 224 inputs and 224 outputs can be connected to enable large routing 

capabilities for multi-stage events and large orchestral performances, while digital redundancy ensures the show will go on. 


Or is it PLASA in review? With the big Euro show and the most significant U.S. audio 

show just weeks apart, it is hard to really tell. Some of this stuff was introduced 

in September in London, and you are sure to see all of it in New York in October. 

Now, if there were only an actual show that actually focused on live event production 

— especially the audio side — all would be right with the world. Meanwhile, here are 

some new goodies… 

beyerdynamic OPUS 900 

The Opus 900 system includes 

interchangeable capsules 

designed for multiple 

uses. The latest capsule changes 

include the introduction of 

the EM 981 S, an electret condenser 

capsule, and the CM 

930 B, a full range capsule. 

The UHF-based receiver 

system is housed in a metal 

chassis and is available in 

single, dual and quad channel 

versions. It includes a “jog 

wheel” designed for quick access and reconfiguration of the system. Two choices of pocket 

transmitters are available within this system: TS 900 M, with metal housing, and TS 900 C, in 

a plastic case with rechargeable contacts. Both include an LCD for channel selection, group 

and battery status, gain control, silent on/off switch and four-pin mini-XLR input connector. 

www.beyerdynamic.com 

12 

New Gear 

Adamson Metrix 

The Adamson Metrix is a compact twoway 

true line source array for smaller to 

mid-size venue installations, or for use as 

an under hang-, side-, front- or balcony-fill 

cabinet in larger installations. It is designed 

for touring applications of all sizes. 

The Metrix includes an Adamson 

ND8-ML 8.5” Kevlar neodymium midlow 

frequency driver, plus B&C’s DE800 

1.4-inch HF compression driver with its 

patented high-frequency wave-shaping 

chamber. It can be used as a main P.A. 

system for smaller touring applications when used in conjunction with the Metrix double 15inch 

subwoofer, as well as a front-, side-, or stage-fill box for full-sized touring applications. 

Designed for use in arrays of six or more elements, each enclosure has a five-degree vertical 

x 120-degree horizontal coverage pattern. 

www.adamsonproaudio.com 

APB DynaSonics ProRack-Monitor 

Slated to debut at the upcoming AES Show 

in New York City, the APB DynaSonics ProRack 

Monitor mixer, featuring 16 mic/line input 

channels, allows users to create eight stereo 

mixes and two mono mixes from a 10-rack 

space format. All eight stereo mixes are generated 

from the input channels using rotary controls 

for level and small, horizontally mounted 

slide faders (with center-detent) for panning. 

The two additional mono mixes on rotary 

controls can be sourced pre or post the 

channel’s main level control. Each channel also 

includes separate, internally illuminated Mute 

and PFL switches and six-segment LED meters. 

The ProRack-Monitor includes insert points on 

all inputs and outputs, and a separate line input to each mix. A variable frequency high-pass 

filter is included on each input channel with a 20Hz to 400Hz sweep range at 12dB per octave 

for detailed, tunable control. The mixer’s internal EQ is designed to provide fixed high and low 

frequency EQ bands and two mid-sweep EQ bands with a one-octave bandwidth. 

www.apb-dynasonics.com 


AES Preview 

Crest Audio CV20 

Crest Audio has introduced the first production model of the Crest Audio CV20 live 

sound analog console at PLASA 2007. Features include an A/D and D/A NexSys module option. 

It is designed so any number of analog audio outputs per module can be converted to 

digital EtherSound and CobraNet protocols, which allows a digital snake to interface directly 

into the CV 20. The module can also covert digital audio into analog. One NexSys module will 

allow for up to 16 channels of A/D and D/A conversion. Multiple modules can be plugged 

into the console back frame. 

The CV 20 includes full-VCA control, not only on the input channels, but also on group 

channels (aux channels in fader-reverse mode). Four-band sweepable EQ with Q control on 

the mids is provided on all mono inputs. Twelve auxiliary sends and eight subgroups come 

as standard on all CV 20 models with fader-reverse functionality. 

www.crestaudio.com 

JBL Professional VRX918SP, VRX932LAP 

Using the JBL DrivePack DPC-2 amplification system, both models are designed to be 

fully self-contained, powered loudspeakers. 

The VRX918SP is equipped with a top-mounted, threaded, 20-millimeter socket that 

can receive the optional SS4-BK pole. The VRX918SP’s enclosure is constructed of birch 

plywood coated in JBL’s DuraFlex finish and is heavily braced to maximize low-frequency 

performance. The CNC-machined, 16-gauge steel grille is internally lined with acoustically 

transparent foam to provide additional driver protection. The rear of the enclosure 

is fitted with T-nuts, which are designed to attach the optional WK-4S caster kit. 

The VRX918SP is equipped with a top-mounted, threaded, 20-millimeter socket that 

can receive the optional SS4-BK pole. The VRX918SP’s is an 18-inch powered subwoofer 

enclosure is constructed of birch plywood coated in JBL’s DuraFlex finish and is heavily 

braced to maximize low-frequency performance. The CNC-machined, 16-gauge steel 

grille is internally lined with acoustically transparent foam to provide additional driver 

protection. The rear of the enclosure is fitted with T-nuts, which are designed to attach 

the optional WK-4S caster kit. 

www.jblpro.com 

Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q 

The Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q 

is designed to provide a complete 

drive system that integrates crossover, 

delay, equalization, limiting and power 

amplification functions. It also includes 

load verification and monitoring 

features for all system components, 

including loudspeakers. The power 

amplifier platform is based on the 

circuit designs of the FP+ Series and is 

designed to integrate into the Dolby Lake processing environment. 

The PLM 10000Q incorporates an R.SMPS (Regulated Switch Mode Power Supply), 

which is designed to provide stable rail voltages even with significant fluctuations in line 

voltage. Other features include the Intercooler copper-finned cooling system, power density 

and protection and fault monitoring. The PLM 10000Q includes proprietary Voltage Peak 

Limiter (VPL) implemented in the DSP domain, dubbed Inter Sample Voltage Peak Limiter 

(ISVPL), and is designed to provide both AES digital and analog inputs, plus network ports 

for integration into new DANTE low-latency digital audio networks. 

www.labgruppen.com


Meyer Sound Self-Powered MM-4XP 

Meyer Sound will introduce at the AES 

convention in New York the MM-4XP miniature 

loudspeaker — a self-powered version of 

the MM-4 miniature wide-range loudspeaker. 

According to the company, the MM-4XP is a 

palm-sized box with a face roughly four inches 

square capable of producing 113 dB maximum-peak 

SPL with its onboard amplification 

and processing. 

www.meyersound.com 

Turbosound TA-500t 

Turbosound has introduced 

the TA-500t wide-dispersion, 

trapezoidal threeway 

touring loudspeaker 

with integrated flying hardware. 

It is available in two 

different formats — switchable 

bi-amped/tri-amped or 

self-powered/networkable 

— and is designed for flown 

and ground-stacked touring, 

downfill and in-fill use and in 

fixed installations. 

The TA-500t features a 1inch 

HF driver on a Polyhorn 

device, a 10-inch MF driver on 

a Polyhorn and Turbo-loaded 

15-inch LF driver. It covers 

the frequency range from 60 

Hz to 20 kHz, and the 50°H x 25°V dispersion pattern is designed to focus energy on audience 

areas with minimum overspill. According to the company, the self-powered TA-500tDP version 

is fully networkable, allowing real-time control and monitoring of operating parameters 

with a PC and TurboDrive software over a BVNet network, or remotely over a VPN (virtual 

private network). Both versions are supplied with a detachable, stackable wheel board to aid 

handling and trucking. 

www.turbosound.com 

Renkus-Heinz RHAON Empowered 

Sygma SG Series 

The Renkus-Heinz Audio Operations Network 

made its public debut as a full-production product 

at PLASA 2007 in the shape of the Sygma SG Series 

loudspeakers. 

RHAON is designed for all aspects of loudspeaker 

setup and digital audio distribution, control and monitoring, 

using standard Ethernet hardware. It provides 

internal loudspeaker-specific DSP, up to 64 channels 

of digital audio distribution. Both RHAON RJ45/Ethernet-based 

digital and analog audio connectivity 

are provided standard on each loudspeaker. 

www.rh.com 

XTA Electronics AudioCore 8.50 

XTA Electronics 

has announced the 

launch of its latest 

version of AudioCore 

control software, 

Version 8.50. Audio- 

Core software allows 

remote control of 

XTA’s current range 

of products, with up 

to 32 units controlled 

via a PC computer 

using a wide variety 

of XTA-approved interfaces, 

including 

RS485, USB interfaces 

and via TCP/IP (with 

suitable XTA approved adapter). It is compatible with Windows 98/ME/2000, NT and XP. 

Version 8.50 is updated with the addition of Array Control and features such as global 

ganging, which allows users to control many parameters common to all units on the network 

in a seamless fashion. Bands of parametric EQ, gains or delays can all be grouped together, 

so adjustment will automatically update all other units in the set. 

www.xta.co.uk 


Soundco 

MSI, 

Gand Concert 

Sound 


ST 

Showtime 

Venue 

Indian School Steele Park 

Phoenix, AZ 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Chris Freund, Adrian Stone 

MON Engineer: Tony Zagarelli 

Systems Engineer: Brian Dietz 

System Tech: Arthur Cassidy 

GEAR 

FOH 

Console: Yamaha PM4000 

Soundco 

Asbury Audio 

VENUE 

Allstate Arena 

Rosemont, IL 

Phoenix Fabulous Fourth of July 

CC Ryder Express 

Speakers: EAW KF850, KF300, SB850 

Amps: Crown 

Processing: dbx, Drawmer, (2) EAW 8750, Lexicon, 

Roland, TC, Yamaha 

Mics: AKG, Sennheiser, Shure 

Power Distro: Motion Labs 

Rigging: CM 

Snake Assemblies: Whirlwind 

MON 

Console: Soundcraft SM20 

Speakers: EAW SM500, JH560 

Amps: QSC 

Processing: dbx, Klark-Teknik 

Screamfest 07 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Mike Gallun 

MON Engineer: Robert Lightner 

Systems Engineer: Adam Rosenthal, Joe Perona 

Tour Manager:Tom Marzullo 

GEAR 


Console: Midas Heritage 3000 

Venue 

Stone Pony Outdoors 

Asbury Park, CA 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Jason Dermer 

Systems Engineer: Bennett Prescott 

Lollapajewza 

Speakers: 20 Nexo CD 18, 14 Nexo Geo S, 42 Nexo Geo T 

Amps: Camoc V 6 + 200V 

Processing: NEXO NX242 Lake Mesa 

Mics: Countryman headsets, Shure wireless packs 

Power Distro: Motion Labs 

Rigging: CM 

Snake Assemblies: XTA active 

MON 

Consoles: Yamaha PM5D 

Speakers: MSI 2x15 wedges, Sennheiser IEMs 

Amps: Powersoft 

Processing: Dolby Lake 

ST 

ST 

GEAR 


Console: APB Dynasonics Spectra T 

Speakers: EONA ADRaudio L 2821 HH 

Amps: Self-powered 

Mics: Audix OM & D series 

Rigging: Genie Lifts 

Snake Assemblies: Link USA/Eurocable 

MON 

Speakers: EONA ADRaudio M 1225 HH 

Amps: Self-powered 

Processing: Symetrix 533e GEQ 

Soundco 

Total Sound 

Productions, LLC

ST 

Soundco 

C.O.L.T. Sound & 

Lighting 

Venue 

Cahuilla Creek Casino 

Anza, CA 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Band Engineers 

Monitor Engineer: Chris Mathews 

Systems Engineer: Alan Morgenstern 

Systems Techs: Jeff Peterson & Jeremy Vermillion 

ST 

Venue 

National Museum of the American Indian 

New York, NY 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Bob Suchocki 

Monitor Engineer: Ken Prinns 

Systems Engineer: Jimmy Cardinale 

GEAR 


Console: Crest GTX40 

Speakers: (4) EAW LA128 

(4) ElectroVoice QRx212 

Eddie Money & Air Supply 

GEAR 


Console: Yamaha M7CL-48 

Speakers: JBL VerTec 4889 

Amps: Crown MA5000. iTech 8000 

Processing: dbx Driverack 

Power Distro: MStar square D 

Snake Assemblies: Ramtech 

MON 

Speakers: JBL MStar 

Amps: QSC 

Processing: TDM 

Venue 

Largo Cultural Center 

Largo, FL 

Peace Frog/Doors Tribute 

CREW 

FOH Engineer: Gary Sastamoinen 

Monitor Engineer: Rob Mondora 

Systems Engineer: Rob Mondora 

Production Manager: Rob Mondora 

Systems Techs: Don Short, Scott Dempster 

ISES “Big Apple Awards” 

Amps: Crown MA3600, Crown MA2400 

Processing: Ashley, BSS, dbx, Klark-Teknik 

Mics: Shure ULX Wireless 

Power Distro: Custom 

MON 

Consoles: Monitor Desk–Yamaha LS9 

Speakers: (4) ElectroVoice QRx112 

(2) ElectroVoice QRx115 

Amps: Crest CA9 

Processing: dbx 

ST 

GEAR 


Console: Midas Verona 400 

Speakers: Renkus-Heinz T-3 

Amps: Crest, Renkus-Heinz p3500 

Processing: dbx, Lexicon, Rane, Yamaha 

Mics: Audio Technica, Sennheisser, Shure 

Power Distro: Proprietary 

Snake Assemblies: RSC, Whirlwind 

MON 

Speakers: EAW JFX560 

Amps: Crown 24x6 

Processing: Rane 

Soundco 

JK Productions 

Soundco 

Morningstar 

Productions, LLC 

We 

Want You! 

FOH wants your gig 

shots, horror stories and 

resume highlights! Go to 

www.fohonline.com/submissions 

to send us your Showtime 

pics, Nightmare stories and In 

The Trenches stats. Or e-mail 

b g @ f o h o n l i n e . c o m 

for more info. We 

cover the industry 

— and that means 

you! 

www.fohonline.com 2007 OCTOBER 

15 


For 41 years, the Montreux Jazz Festival has 

been drawing a phenomenal array of artists 

from all corners of the world and all 

over the musical map. For nearly three weeks 

every summer, the festival presents a diverse 

roster of musicians spanning jazz, rock, blues, 

world beat and more. With two main halls and 

several smaller stages, the logistics of staging a 

festival of this magnitude are challenging. FOH 

spoke with several visiting engineers, as well as 

the festival’s sound coordinator Pierre-André 

Aebischer of Niveau2, the soundco for the festival, 

to get a sense of what it takes to put the 

show together every year. 

Matthew Mannase, FOH, and Tony Luna, ME 

for Rufus Wainwright 

FOH: Have you played the festival before? 

This is our first time here. 

First impressions? 

MM: It’s a very civilized festival. At most 

of the summer festivals, like Glastonbury or 

Roskilde, I’m used to about two feet more 

mud and 40,000 more people between me 

and where I’m trying to get to. The logistics 

here are very well organized. 

From a technical perspective, this is a great 

place to do a show. There’s clearly a lot of attention 

paid to system design, and the room is 

surprisingly flat; I didn’t need to tweak the EQ 

at all. I quite like the sound of the MICA array. 

I’ve been mixing on a Digico D1, so the VENUE 

console was a bit of a last-minute surprise, particularly 

since we only got the briefest of line 

checks. But the systems tech and the in-house 

crew were brilliant, and we had everything sorted 

pretty quickly. 

TL: Festivals can be pretty stressful. Things 

are rarely on schedule, and there’s usually 

just enough time to do a line check and rush 

through dinner before downbeat. It’s a welcome 

change to do a show where most of the 

setup and technical issues have been taken care 

16 

FOH Interview 

Montreux Jazz Festival 

Pierre-André Aebischer, sound coordinator, Montreux Jazz Festival 2007 Montreux Jazz Festival 

By DanielKeller 

of. The systems are tuned and the equipment is 

excellent. The local crew here is totally professional, 

and I can concentrate on my job. 

MM: It’s also great that Meyer, Shure and 

Digidesign have a presence here: people like 

Buford Jones, Rob Scoville, Paul Giansante. It’s 

a chance to see familiar faces, talk shop and 

relax a bit. 

Michael Briggs, FOH, George Benson and Al 

Jarreau 

FOH: Have you played the festival before? 

MB: I’ve been here eight times over the 

past 14 years, mostly with Jarreau and a couple 

of times with David Sanborn. I know George 

has played the Festival 15 or so times, but this is 

my first time here with him. I love coming here. 

We’re on the road for most of the year: South Africa, 

Australia, Europe, and Asia in the fall, then 

on to the Americas, but this is always one of the 

high points of the tour. 

You’re touring with one band, but two headliners. 

Does that make for a very long night? 

It used to be longer. We originally toured 

with separate bands for Al and George, as well 

as an opening act, Raul Midon, an incredible guitarist/vocalist. 

I was mixing them all on a Digico 

D5, which was all we carried for FOH. It made 

for a pretty long day! This year, we decided to 

streamline the tour; we’ve combined the bands, 

and we’re carrying a lot less gear and personnel. 

I’m only carrying a single rack that holds a 

BSS901, Aphex 661 and a Schubert parametric 

EQ a la Gamble, mainly for Jarreau. 

So you’re using a different house system every 

night? 

For this leg of the tour, yes. We’ve been using 

the local P.A. du jour, and I get a new system 

every day to deal with. Working with the latest, 

and sometimes repairing the oldest technologies 

on a daily basis has made me a better engineer 

over the years. It’s a pleasure to come 


Stravinski Auditorium, Montreux, Switzerland 

here and know I’m working with a MILO rig in a 

great-sounding room with a professional staff. I 

was walking the room during sound check, and 

I noticed it didn’t get louder as I walked forward. 

The level and the coverage were smooth and 

totally consistent everywhere in the room. 

Also, the VENUE has become my favorite digital 

console. I love being able to configure things 

exactly the way I want them. The preamps are 

the best available in a digital console, and I can 

actually use all the onboard gates and compressors 

because they sound great, not to mention a 

long list of fantastic Pro Tools plug-ins. 

What is it that makes Montreux stand out for 

you in such a long string of dates? 

I always look forward to coming here because 

it’s like a sanctuary. I’m surrounded by 

professionals, some of the best in the industry. 

I can talk gear, get questions answered, get 

things fixed if I need to. All this on the beautiful 

shores of Lake Geneva. 

But more important, I know things have been 

All photos by Jesse Goff photoGrAphy 

taken care of, and I can devote my full attention 

to doing my job. I can walk in knowing we’ve got 

a great sounding room and a great vibe; how can 

you have anything but a great show in a place 

like this? In the words of an Argentinean drummer 

friend of mine, “Montreux, what a country!” 

Pierre-André Aebischer, sound coordinator, 

Montreux Jazz Festival 

FOH: You have a few long-standing relationships 

with audio manufacturers. 

PA: We’ve worked with Meyer Sound for 21 

years and with Shure for 14. We started working 

officially with Digidesign when the VENUE was 

introduced, though the relationship goes back 

further. 

Do you have a standing system design, or 

does it change every year? 

The festival is always changing and evolving, 

and we’re constantly refining our technologies 

and logistics. We look at the design of each

The classical Stravinski Auditorium rocks out in Montreux 

venue every year, and as new equipment becomes 

available, we find ways to employ it. 

What’s involved in the planning process? 

When we’re putting together the show 

every year, we work with our systems designer, 

Martin Reich, and the people from Meyer 

Sound to spec out the audio systems, taking 

into account any changes in the acoustics of the 

venues, the availability of new products and any 

feedback from previous shows. They also meet 

with the Digidesign people to discuss the mixing 

console needs and with the Shure people to 

talk about microphones and wireless needs. 

Then each venue is modeled using MAPP 

Online Pro to create a detailed layout of the 

systems, including the placement and angles of 

the speakers and predictions of the array coverage. 

Once we draw up an inventory, we source 

the equipment via several regional rental companies. 

We have long-term relationships with 

these partners as well; we know who’s strong in 

what areas and who has what inventory. 

Then when setup is completed on location, 

we bring in the SIM 3 system to fine-tune the 

rigs, using the Galileo for processing. 

What kind of challenges do the rooms present? 

Stravinsky Auditorium, our main venue, is 

always a challenge. It was designed as a classical 

hall, with a reverb time of several seconds, and 

we try to take that down to about one second. 

The acoustic treatment was proposed by John 

Meyer and was designed and implemented by 

the company that originally built the room’s 

acoustics. 

The sound regulations in Switzerland are 

also a big challenge, and we have to constantly 

pay close attention to our levels. The Meyer 

line arrays help a lot because we can achieve a 

very even coverage with them, and the Galileo 

processors, with their considerable processing 

power and multiple I/O, enable us to distribute 

the sound, time align, filter and EQ the systems 

neatly and efficiently. 

The festival has a reputation for showcasing 

a lot of cutting-edge equipment. 

Many of our partners like to showcase new 

products here because it offers such a wide 

range of music and conditions. Meyer Sound 

has shown a lot of their loudspeakers here, including 

the MILO, MICA and M’elodie arrays, 

and their MJF-212 monitor, which is named for 

the festival. Shure has debuted wireless systems 

and microphones here, and of course, Digidesign 

brought in the VENUE console when it was 

first introduced. 

How has the VENUE influenced production? 

The VENUE has reduced the amount of outboard 

gear we need, which has enabled us to 

reduce the overall footprint of the FOH areas. 

It’s also streamlined the live recording process 

and made it easier to link directly with the production 

trucks. A lot of visiting engineers really 

love it because they 

can just bring a USB 

drive and dump 

their settings, and 

even their personal 

plug-ins, into the 

desk, which saves a 

lot of setup time. 

You also do full 

video production? 

Both main halls 

are equipped for 

five or six camera 

HD shoots, with 

one main camera, a couple of booms and 

two or three on stage. We send live video, 

along with direct multichannel feed, to two 

dedicated production trucks in the basement 

parking area. 

We’ve worked with the Voyager trucks for 

many years, but this year, one of their trucks 

caught fire only two weeks before the start 

of the festival, so we had to make some lastminute 

decisions. We brought in two expanding 

trucks and had acoustical engineers using 

Meyer’s SIM 3 system and spreadsheets to design 

and create accurate mix rooms. We used 

two identical trucks so we could duplicate the 

arrangement precisely. 

The editing suites are running pretty 

much all day. Most of the shows are edited 

and archived. Eagle Vision releases them as 

part of the Live at Montreux series of DVDs. 

You were holding shows at the Casino 

again for several years, but you’ve 

stopped that this year. Why? 

The Casino is where the festival began 

and, of course, it’s been made famous by 

the song “Smoke on the Water.” It was nice 

doing shows there again from a historical 

perspective, but it’s about one kilometer 

from the Convention Centre, through 

some pretty crowded streets, and the logistics 

were pretty challenging. Claude 

(Nobs) usually introduces the acts on the 

main stages, and he had to ride on the 

back of the technical director’s motorcycle 

to get from one place to the other. It was 

a lot of running around for the technical 

staff as well. 

Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info

18 

Production Profile 

Bikes, Bands and Buffalo Chip 

By MikeLethby Sure Sound and Light powers Sturgis Rally’s “best party anywhere” 

Take one of the longest running fan 

club gatherings in history, an estimated 

500,000 folk riding gleaming hogs 

around thousands of square miles of the 

Black Hills in South Dakota, the city of Sturgis 

— usual population 6,000 — and a huge 

natural amphitheatre, hosting some of the 

biggest rock’n’roll bands on the planet, and 

you have a true North American phenomenon. 

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the legendary 

Buffalo Chip, for 27 years the rockin’ 

heart of Sturgis Rally, and the campground 

where aficionados of the Black Hills Motor 

Classic come to party. For two weeks every 

year, it becomes the state’s third largest city. 

Slash and Velvet Revolver at the 

Buffalo Chip amphitheatre 

The Black Hills Motor Classic, now in its 

67th year, is arguably the classic and custom 

motorcycle event that outruns them all. Sturgis’ 

population swells from 6,000 to 20,000 

for two weeks during this annual celebration 

of all things two-wheeled. Look around and 

you’ll see hogs — thousands of the gleaming 

beasts — some standard, some custom, some 

just plain outrageous. Eighty percent, it’s estimated, 

are Harleys, and you can certainly hear 

’em coming. 

Of the over 100 campgrounds scattered 

throughout the Black Hills, Buffalo Chip is second-closest 

to the city center; it’s four miles out 

and has been a prime driving force behind the 


event’s popularity among both riders and music 

fans. The Chip’s Web site (www.buffalochip. 

com) hints at the delights on offer at the campground 

from Domino’s pizza delivery to laser 

light shows and motorcycle rodeos. The Web 

site also points out that the biggest names 

in rock’n’roll rarely say no to invitations from 

founder/owner Rod ‘Woody’ Woodruff, who 

provides a great, safe, family-friendly campground. 

A temporary, self-contained city in itself, 

everything is in place at the Chip, from ATMs to 

restaurants, ambulance and fire departments 

to vendors such as Taco Bell. Unique among 

the campgrounds, there are permanent mains, 

water and sewer utilities, 

along with ample parking 

space for the largest 

RVs in the land: This 

is the festival comfort 

zone, 21st-century style. 

For years, the Chip’s 

amphitheatre, the Wolfman 

Jack Stage, has 

provided the Rally’s rock’n’roll 

heartbeat. Many and great have been 

the stars that rock out every evening after a 

long day’s biking, yarning, stunt riding, motor 

cross bike jumping (with Robby Knievel), admiring 

hogs and generally showing off. This 

year, the Chipsters were treated to another stellar 

line-up headlined by Toby Keith, Velvet Revolver, 

ZZ Top, Poison, Foreigner, Papa Roach, 

Edgar Winter and Grand Funk Railroad. 

Sure Sound & Light is Buffalo Chip’s longtime 

audio provider, and for several years has 

supplied a large point source array system. Last 

year, their team began working toward an allnew 

line array solution for the show, in alliance 

with several of the artists — so times truly were 

a-changin’ at Sturgis for 2007. 

AVA rep Ben Shipman 

The Big Deal 

The Buffalo 

Chip amphitheatre 

measures 

some 400 feet 

from front to 

back and 650 feet 

across, backed 

by a low hill that 

screens it from 

both the city of 

Sturgis and, much 

closer, a smaller 

STLA9-mainhang 

Renkus-Heinz STLA/9 line array 

stage fronting one of the site’s most popular 

spots — a dive pool. 

With such a wide and deep area on the 

edge of town, the audio challenge was twofold: 

coverage of the broad crowd plus containment. 

The huge audience sprawls way out to either 

side of the stage and back to the hill facing 

the stage — virtually 180 degrees of horizontal 

coverage — and without tight control, sound 

from a high-power P.A. would spill across the 

wide-open spaces to residents far beyond the 

Chip’s fringes. 

Sure Sound & Light owner Larry Suhr listened 

to a Renkus-Heinz STLA/9 large-format 

line array last year and made a favorable mental 

note about the system’s performance. When it 

came to designing a system for this year’s Rally, 

he called Renkus-Heinz area rep Ben Shipman 

of AVA to find out what the California-based 

manufacturer could offer. 

The result was the Buffalo Chip’s first-ever 

line array — a main system comprised of 12cabinet 

left and right hangs of self-powered 

STLA/9s, a pair of four-box STLA/9 ground 

stacks as out fills, with two Renkus-Heinz 

PN102/LA compact line array cabinets, also 

self-powered, as front fills. Sure provided its 

own subwoofer system, using six 4x18” and six 

2x18” subs per side. 

Out front, a Yamaha MC7L provided mixing 

and onboard effects for the support acts, while 

the headliners brought in their own boards, 

including a Digidesign VENUE, Yamaha PM5D 

and Midas XL4. Ensuring sonic consistency, 

whatever the sources, Sure also equipped the 

rig with a Dolby Lake Processor, augmented 

by some visiting engineers with tablet-based 

Smaart systems to ensure fine-tuning to their 

own specific requirements. 

Velvet Revolver engineer Toby Francis, who 

mixed the band on their midweek headline 

slot, said afterward, “I first worked with this 

system a year ago, and I was completely blown 

away by it. It’s punchy top to bottom, clear and 

smooth when you want it to be and incredibly 

responsive.” 

AVA’s rep Ben Shipman, having helped the 

deal, remained on site from setup to load out, 

contributing to the deployment of two additional 

compact PN102/LA cabinets as highpower 

VIP seating area fills to deliver the coverage 

for all. 

As the PN102/LAs deliver a reported 150 

degrees in the horizontal, this was, says Buffalo 

Chip Production Manager Steve Owen, a 

good call. “Suddenly we’re able 

to deliver the same level and 

quality of sound into areas of 

the audience where it had been

Dave Rahn and the Jägermeister girls 

more difficult before,” he says. “The previous 

system, although we had done well with it 

over the years, took a lot longer to hang and 

rig than the Renkus-Heinz solution; it really 

was no match for the more modern solution 

when it came to providing the even coverage 

and level across the entire space we needed, 

because with this new solution we’ve actually 

got two different, but matching, types of 

line array — one large, one compact — that 

work great together to cover a big site. 

Owen concludes, “Factor in that many of 

our headlining bands have been requesting 

a switch to line-array technology for a whole 

variety of reasons, the generic change made 

total sense, and this rig just sounds and 

works great.” 

Renkus-Heinz’s National Sales Manager 

Dave Rahn and VP of R&D Ralph Heinz also 

made the trip to join the support team on 

site — and stayed. “We always enjoy not just 

supporting the customer, but really getting 

in there and listening to what people say 

about our products,” says Ralph. “And there 

were some great bands!” 

As with any festival, being light on your 

feet in terms of production flexibility is essential. 

“As you’d expect,” says Steve Owen, 

“we have headline bands’ engineers coming 

through here with very different mixing 

styles and using their own boards; everything 

has to be just right when they walk up 

and plug into our system. So, a system that 

delivers the output, plus is very clean and uncolored 

and responsive to those engineers, is 

what you absolutely need.” 

He continues, “Also, a really road-proven, 

self-powered solution was great because 

it eliminated the need to create that whole 

‘amplifier world’ either beside or under the 

stage, with all the mass of cabling that entails 

and the water protection considerations 

of outdoors shows. It just removes a whole 

other level of complexity in a situation where 

you’re having to run fast and think on your 

feet anyway.” 

Don Dodger, FOH for Foreigner, said, 

“We played Sturgis at the Buffalo Chip 

campground stage, and to my surprise, the 

new Renkus-Heinz line array was strong. I’d 

wanted to use it since it came out; I’ve always 

liked Renkus-Heinz products, but this new 

line array blew me away — a big open-air 

amphitheatre and it had no problem filling 

it perfectly. I was very impressed: 

little EQ and whole 

lot of punch!” 

Meanwhile, Tim “Poppa 

Smurf” Lawrence, mixing out 

front for Poison, had this to 

say: “The Renkus-Heinz line 

array is very nice: compact, 

smooth sounding and can 

handle pretty much everything 

— all the volume and 

dynamics I could want without 

ever going into pain.” 

The Challenges 

Were there practical 

challenges? Of course there 

With such a wide and 

deep area on the edge of 

town, the audio challenge 

was twofold: coverage 

of the broad crowd plus 

containment. 

were; it’s a festival. One 

afternoon, Rahn noticed 

that one of the STLA/9 

cabinets was producing 

an anomaly at a specific 

midfrequency. After five 

minutes of analysis, and 

after donning a pair of sturdy boots, Mr 

Rahn himself had lumbered up the hung 

array’s “hardware ladder” and hot-swapped 

a PM3 amplifier module from the identified 

cabinet, with no interruption to the day’s 

proceedings. “Smart road design is like 

insurance,” he says. “You don’t expect any- 


thing to go wrong 

on the road, but 

if it does, the crucial 

thing is that 

design is ready to 

cope with it.” 

Buffalo Chip, Sturgis, S.D. 

A final word, 

from Woody, who says, “The new system 

contained the sound very well, while at 

the same time ensuring excellent sound 

throughout the amphitheatre. Like I said,” he 

added, “we were trying to outdo ourselves. 

Our audiences come here for a good time, 

and over the Buffalo Chip’s two-week rally, 

including nine days of nationally prominent 

entertainment, they’ll spend hundreds, 

maybe thousands of dollars on getting here, 

accommodations, entertainment, food and 

drinks. We wanted to give them the best. I 

think this year we truly blew ’em away with 

our sound.” 

2007 OCTOBER 

19 


Feature 

FOH Hometown Heroes 

Peers Honor Six Who Stand Out in Their Region 

By KevinM.Mitchell 

Despite their different zip codes, backgrounds and equipment preferences, every one 

of these six sound companies quickly jumped to the same explanation when asked 

about what makes them successful: It’s the people they hire. 

“We invest in people,” Bobby Brantley says emphatically. “I say this again and again, you 

can have the best gear out there, but if you don’t have the right people behind the gear, 

you’re starting with one hand behind your back.” 

“I think it’s the people we hire that help us stick out,” echoes Roy Kircher of Austin’s Big 

House. “It’s as important as the gear.” 

It’s hard to disagree — or argue with the success — of that. Yet obviously, the “people” 

part of the equation must start at the top. Selected by their peers, these six companies are 

honored as standouts in their region. They are: 

20 

Great Lakes Sound 

Toledo, OH 

The team at Great Lakes Sound 

Bill Robison was installing small sound systems for bars and 

working with local bands when he founded Great Lakes 

Sound in 1985. Today, they have ten full-time employees 

and serve corporate, music, sporting, theatrical and festival 

clients. Their reach has expanded beyond the Midwest, and 

they’ve grown into a full-service company handling lighting 

needs as well. 

“About a year and a half ago, we started focusing on the 

business end of things,” says Vice President Todd Mitchell. 

“Not only audio and light, but also staging and a store that 

sells equipment.” 

Mitchell, who has been with the company since 1997, says 

that while they go as far as St. Louis and Phoenix, Toledo continues 

to be their biggest market, followed by the tri-state 

area that includes Michigan and Indiana. “We do a lot of nonprofit 

fundraisers, and as Toledo has a lot of big insurance 

companies here, we handle many corporate events. Also we 

do about 90% of the larger festivals around here.” 

At Great Lakes, they keep their eye on the ball: “We have a 

creative staff here and we just stay on top of things. We don’t 

focus on what other people are doing; we focus on what our 

markets need, what our customers want.” A solid foundation, 

a diversified customer base and a passion for what they do 

are all key to their success. Also, respect is important. 

“We have a lot of good allies, and we try not to burn any 

bridges,” Mitchell says. “We try to maintain friendships with 

everyone in the area.” 

The future entails Great Lakes making things better, bigger 

and maintaining the infrastructure of the organization. 

“We follow Bill’s business plan, which involves growing slowly 

and keeping up with trends. 

“Bill is not a hands-off person. For example, he’s out driving 

a truck down to a job this morning!” Mitchell laughs. “He 

has a lot of passion about what he does.” 

OCTOBER 2007 


Out of all these honorees, one will receive the Parnelli Award for Hometown Hero in Orlando, 

Fla., at the gala award event on Nov. 16. The Parnelli is the industry’s highest honor for 

live event professionals. (For more information on the Parnellis and to make your reservation, 

go to www.parnelliawards.com.) 

Carlson Audio 

Seattle, WA 

Carlson Audio’s Mark Carlson (L) and Jon Myers (R) 

Two decades ago, Jonathan Myers worked for another sound 

company, which also employed Mark Carlson, and left it to follow 

his own road. He toured with bands, went back to school, and then 

was all set to start a sound company in Spokane, Wash. Meanwhile, 

Mark Carlson got wind of Myer’s idea. Carlson was already prepared 

to launch a similar company in Seattle, so the two decided to join 

forces. 

“We spent virtually a year putting a business plan together and 

then officially launched the company in 1990,” says Carlson. “It started 

in a 10-foot by 18-foot garage, and the plan was to service the 3,000seat-and-under 

market, which wasn’t being serviced at the time 

in Seattle. We achieved our goal rather quickly, and then business 

flourished.” 

T o d a y 

they have 

a 22,000square-foot 

facility, and 

Midwest: Great Lakes Audio 

Northwest: Carlson Audio 

Southwest: Big House Sound 

Southeast: Brantley Sound Associates 

Northeast: Firehouse Productions 

Canada: Sound Arts 

“We know who pays the bills, and what 

we’re asked to do is often inconvenient. In 

fact, MOST often it’s inconvenient!” 

— Mark Carlson 

their gear and people have toured with clients all over the world. 

The core staff numbers under 15, with a tried-and-true list of freelancers 

topping 100. They handle everything from corporate to 

national touring acts. Recent clients include REM, Pearl Jam and 

Modest Mouse. 

“I think our proudest achievement is that we’ve grown our market 

in and out of our region, and we’ve gained the trust of clients as 

we’ve grown,” Carlson reflects. “Picking up national tours, and gaining 

the respect of FOH engineers has been really rewarding.” 

Like all artists, they make it look easy: “We know who pays the 

bills, and what we’re asked to do is often inconvenient. In fact, MOST 

often it’s inconvenient! [Laughs.] But early on I heard, ‘You can’t tell 

your clients what they want,’ and it’s something we take to heart.” 

While they have toyed with opening offices elsewhere, including 

Portland and Las Vegas, they took a step back from that and 

came to the conclusion that their core business strategy still holds 

up — that serving their customers as they have in the past makes 

the most sense. “We’re sound guys,” Carlson shrugs. “We do events. 

So we’re happy where we’re at.”


22 

Feature FOH Hometown Heroes 

Brantley Sound 

Associates 

Nashville, TN 

(L/R) Operations Manager Dario Ceragioli, Owner Bobby Brantley and 

General Manager Keith Beck of Brantley Sound Associates 

Bobby Brantley was born into the business, a business 

his father built out of the garage. At the age 

of nine, he found himself being the cue card boy for 

Porter Wagoner, and from there he found himself 

pitching in with dad doing sound for many Billy Graham 

Crusades. By 1983, Brantley Sounds Associates 

(BSA) was incorporated. The next year, Bobby graduated 

from high school and went to college to study 

radio/TV. He 

“Everyone here is a vital 

operations manager.” 

— Bobby Brantley 

hooked up 

with Amway 

and was suddenly 

doing 

36 weeks a 

year in corporate shows; then he was on to the Nashville 

Symphony Orchestra. 

Clients over the years have included Summer 

Lights of Nashville, Fair St. Louis, Ronnie Milsap, Tony 

Bennett, Amy Grant, Ray Charles, Tom Jones and 

many others, including Pope John Paul II’s historic 

visit to St. Louis. BMI, SESAC and ASCAP regularly 

turn to the company for its annual events. Brantley’s 

father passed away in 2000, and his mother was president 

of the company until he bought it outright in 

2004. Since then, he’s continued to build and expand 

on the company’s good work. 

Despite it all, he has a favorite: “You set a goal, 

and when you hit it, you feel like you succeeded,” he 

says. “Mine was to mix a show for James Taylor.” In 

1996, he mixed Taylor’s performance with the Nashville 

Symphony Orchestra. 

Today, Brantley has 26 employees, plus 45 freelancers. 

They “don’t have all our eggs in one basket.” 

They equally handle corporate, touring and local clients 

like Vanderbilt University, which can use up 16 

rigs of equipment when all of its colleges have commencement 

services. 

Brantley’s future goal is not opening a new or 

even bigger office, but to “grow the business to the 

point that I can let it run itself.” To that end, he encourages 

everyone at Brantley to take ownership of 

the work: “Everyone here is a vital operations manager.” 

He gives credit to his upper management team, 

too: “My posse is Operations Manager Dario Ceragioli 

and General Manager Keith Beck.” 

Firehouse 

Productions 

New York, NY 

Sound Art 

Winnipeg, Manitoba 

Canada 

The cheerful Sound Art team 

Dave Cousins started what would become 

Sound Art out of his parent’s garage in 1981. 

“I was always the kid with the biggest stereo,” he 

says. After college, he recorded demos for bands 

and did some road work. When he made the leap 

into forming a company, three of his fellow sound 

engineers jumped in with him. “They are still with 

me 20 years later. 

“We all did it because we had the same kind 

of passion,” he continues. “We all like music so 

much…and we went from having the loudest stereo 

in our room to the biggest one in a theater!” 

he laughs. 

From Winnipeg, Sound Art has branched out 

with offices in Calgary, Toronto and, most recently, 

Las Vegas. Vancouver is penciled in for the 

Sound Art treatment in 2008. He has about 45 

people working full time with another 20 added 

in the summer. They handle everything from small 

corporate work all the way up to international 

touring. “We’ve had systems around the world,” 

Cousins says. “Recently, we’ve worked with Jewel, 

Bryan Adams, Bare Naked Ladies, Dido and Sarah 

Mclaughlin.” 

But only call on them if you just want sound. 

“We’ve always been purely sound, and we’re 

kind of a dying breed. But we have some good 

partners, companies that are pure lighting. Anything 

that is not audio feels like work! Your heart 

is not in it.” 

They handled the infamous post-SARS event 

at the Skydome in Toronto, where numerous acts 

played to 70,000 people. “There was a lot of gear 

in there! We had 24 delay clusters thrown around 

the place: That was probably the largest single gig 

we’ve done.” 

Typically, he salutes his people when asked 

the reason for his success. “There’s a fair amount 

of ego in this business, and we try to avoid that,” 

Cousins says. “Going back and forth between the 

different areas of work is something we’re aware 

of. You get off a tour, and you need to be deprogrammed. 

Suddenly there’s no catering — you 

have to get your lunch yourself!” 

Bryan Olson started behind the controls 

as a monitor engineer. He 

mixed for Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears 

and The Cure, among others. He also 

worked for other sound companies 

when he stared building his own monitor 

packages. 

“I was always looking for the perfect 

sound wedge,” Olson tells. “I never came across anything I was entirely satisfied 

with, so I decided to start experimenting in the wood shop. After making a lot of 

different-shaped boxes and trying every driver available at the time, I finally came 

up with and started using what is known today as the F-12 and F-15. With these 


Big House Sound 

Austin, TX 

At Big House Sound with Rod Nielsen (L) and Roy Kircher (R) 

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of being 

in Austin knows great things happen on Sixth 

Street. You can add “Big House Sound” to that list. 

Roy Kircher spent 10 years with Asleep at the 

Wheel, and Rod Nielsen had worked with national 

Christian acts and had a recording studio. “We met 

on Sixth Street, both mixing for bands down there, 

and got to know each other,” Nielsen explains. “Then 

we started talking about buying a system together.” 

Big House Sound was launched in 1992. 

“For years we reinvested everything we made 

back into the company, expanding our inventory,” 

says Kircher. “We were gear junkies! [Laughs.] And 

that made us stick out in the Austin market because 

we always brought out the new technology and exceeded 

the standards of the other companies who 

weren’t reinvesting.” 

Today, the company boasts an 18,000-squarefoot 

warehouse it purchased five years ago. With 12 

full-timers and 20 subcontractors, Big House Sound 

handles large-scale events, tours and Texas symphonies. 

Most recently, they were pushing faders for the 

Austin City Limits Music Festival. 

Nielsen considers Austin’s 1999 New Year’s 

Eve celebration as one of the company’s crowning 

achievements (memory jog — all the computers 

were going to crash, and the world was going to end, 

remember?). Around 260,000 partiers showed up, 

and they provided the audio support for the entire 

event. Kircher adds that they’ve also done a lot of 

state inaugurals, which are also important. “We try to 

treat every event, whatever the size, with the same 

amount of respect,” he says. “Of course the big ones 

stick out, but the smaller corporate events require as 

much effort as the big ones! You take pride in those 

as well.” 

“We’re still extremely interested in this work and 

still willing to put in a lot of energy and keep up with 

the new equipment,” Nielsen says. “We’re always figuring 

out how the new gear sounds — not just read 

about it in press releases.” 

Next up is a little more focus on the touring industry, 

which the company has dabbled in, but not 

explored completely. They are currently eqing for 

Blues Traveler. 

proprietary boxes, for years we specialized only in monitor systems.” 

Firehouse officially was founded in 1994, and today it is a large-format, fullservice 

sound company. “Not only do we have a fairly large P.A. inventory, we also 

have a full-scale communication and RF division.” Recent projects include Live 

Earth, CBS Fashion Rocks, Broadway on Broadway, 911 Memorial, among others. 

“Currently, we are gearing up for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors, BET Awards, and the 

Latin Video Music Awards,” he adds. 

And then there’s the touring: Nine Inch Nails, High School Musical, Interpol, 

Hall & Oates and Crowded House are among the current acts Firehouse is taking 

care of, and currently “The crew is hard at work getting Hannah Montana out the 

door.” 

His philosophy is simple: “Always plan ahead to avoid disappointment!”


Where was this product 10 years 

ago? The answer is never satisfactory, 

but a lot of time is needed before 

clubs and other public venues can upgrade 

to current legal standards for power 

distribution. Peavey is the first broadline pro 

audio manufacturer to address this missing 

link in setting up sizable sound reinforcement 

systems. 

The Distro is a two-rackspace portable 

power distribution unit (PPDU) built to Underwriter’s 

Labs standards with a 10-foot 

feeder cable and a NEMA 14-50 plug for 

typical club receptacle usage. From a mating 

14-50 receptacle, which is usually rated 

for 50 amperes at 240 VAC, the Peavey Distro 

splits out six 20-ampere at 120 VAC circuits. 

Each circuit is protected by a 20-ampere 

magnetic circuit breaker that also doubles 

as a front panel power switch. The remaining 

front panel feature is the pair of neon 

feeder-hot indicators, which meets the National 

Electric Code (NEC) requirement for 

monitoring the integrity of hot feeder wires 

to the neutral feeder. 

The rear panel sports a massive feeder 

cable strain relief to allow the four conductor, 

six-gauge feeder cable to pass through 

into the Distro chassis. The remaining feature 

on the back panel, are six duplex NEMA 

5-20 receptacles to permit distribution of 

the 20-ampere subcircuits. These recep- 

24 

Road Test 

When it comes to Lexicon, I have 

been hanging back in the weeds, 

waiting for a reverb/effects offering 

that would appeal nicely with live sound 

applications. There wasn’t a lot of hoopla 

about the Lexicon MX300 Effects Processor 

when I spotted it at the winter NAMM show, 

but it looked perfect for what a mid-priced 

effects unit for live sound applications 

should be. 

The Gear RT 

Let’s talk about the panels first. For the 

live sound engineer, the Lexicon MX300 

looks like a “Goldilocks” kind of multi-effects 

offering. Not too few presets, not too 

much price. 

Looking at the front panel, the MX300 

starts off with the requisite input gain control 

and dual four LED bars for a digital -24 

dB, -12 dB, -6 dB and 0 dB before clip indications. 

Then comes the digital LED activity 

indicators for S/PDIF and USB, followed 

Lexicon MX300 Effects Processor 

OCTOBER 2007 

By MarkAmundson 

by the backlit monochrome Liquid Crystal 

Display and Page/Select encoder control 

to browse through the menus. Three buttons 

for Exit, Tempo and Bypass are co-located 

with three smaller encoder controls 

for editing parameters on any peculiar effects 

patch. A segregated Program section 

contains another large encoder control for 

patch selection by Store, System and Bypass 

buttons. Two LEDs are placed next to 

a dual seven-segment numeric LED display 

for indicating whether a factor or user-programmed 

effects patch is in use. 

The back panel of the Lexicon MX300 is 

all business with XLR and TRS phone connectors 

for analog stereo signal inputs and 

outputs. The S/PDIF connectors are the 

usual RCA phono jack style, and the MIDI in 

and through connectors are the DIN five-pin 

style. Besides the USB-B connector for computer 

interfacing, an additional TRS phone 

jack is included for various purposes, including 

tap tempo and program changes. 

Peavey Distro 


tacles are high-quality “spec grade” items 

able to receive 15- or 20-amp Edison plugs 

(NEMA-5-15 or NEMA 5-20), common to almost 

every electrical appliance. 

Taking off the chassis cover of the 

Peavey Distro, everything was in order. All 

the interconnect wiring was 12-gauge with 

crimp lugs going to the feeder posts and 

routing through the breakers to the receptacles. 

Everything that was screw terminal fastened 

had lock washers on them so that the 

bumps of road use would not shake loose 

any connections. Overall, the build quality 

was innovative and well executed. 

In use, I found the Peavey Distro everything 

I wanted for a PPDU in a rack panel. While 

I do not have the six-inch height standoffs for 

outdoor use, it is expected that most users 

will have the Distro mounted in wheeled amp 

racks or have enough common sense to keep 

the unit off the ground. I do not recommend 


Now let’s focus on the brains that 

drive this train. The Lexicon MX300 architecture 

is standard fare with a central 

processor commanding dual DSPs for effects 

generation. What I really like about 

the MX300 is that you can software patch 

the DSP processors in series or parallel 

without mechanical switches. The MX300 

contains 10 categories of reverbs, seven 

categories of delays and seven modulated 

effects types that can be mixed and 

matched within the stereo/mono and series/parallel 

routings. 

But no normal sound person would 

ever go straight to unique patch programming 

without taking a gander at the factory 

preset patch listings. The 99 factory 

patches are about half reverb blends and 

half everything else. I auditioned each 

patch with a mic, mixer and headphones; 

some of my favorites were the tight plate, 

live hall, big snare, Sizzlin’ ‘60s delay and 

drum delay. 

persons using the Distro without some kind of 

rackcase around it. While the chassis is up to 

the task, and provides a handy place to stow 

the feeder, it makes common sense to stow 

the unit in a case for extra roadworthiness. 

Looking for niggles in the Peavey Distro, I 

could only come up with one minor detail — I 

would substitute white receptacles for black 

receptacles. The rationale is two-fold: The first 

is mostly cosmetic, as most back-of-rack areas 

are poorly illuminated; plugging in power 

cords is best done by visual location rather 

than feel. The second reason is: White or ivory 

receptacles do a better job of indicating carbonization 

of plug/receptacle prongs, which 

lets you take action to clean the contacts. 

I heartily endorse going through the ritual 

of dabbing Caig Labs DeOxIT and PreserveIT 

(red and blue) onto all your receptacles and 

plugs used for power distribution. I keep the 

little 7.4 milliliter bottles of the red and blue 

The Gigs RT 

My general take on the Lexicon 

MX300 is that this multi-effects processor 

is a really good middle-of-the road 

effects unit and great value for the bucks. 

My good cues were the internal power 

supply, plenty of input signal range (+24 

dBu) and plenty of nice low-distortion 

processing. I really could not find any 

flaws with the MX300, but I might be 

more tempted to create my own “special 

sauce” patches for vocal plates, vocal 

halls and percussion ambiance. 

What it is: Multi-effects processor. 

Who it’s for: Providers with deep ears and 

shallow pockets. 

Pros: Price, flexibility, quality construction. 

Cons: Nil. 

How much: $295 SRP 

Web site: www.lexiconpro.com 

Cramolin just for the small cap-brushes. That 

way, I can paint up the receptacles and plugs, 

do a few wet matings to wipe the contacts 

well and swab the excess fluid off the contact 

and adjoining surfaces. 

Overall, while other companies offer similar 

products, Peavey has heard the voice of the 

masses better than the rest. This Distro unit is 

not only plug-and-play for soundcos. Having 

the right plug on the right cable for the right 

number of circuits keeps users from getting 

into electrical trouble. 

What it is: Portable power distro. 

Who it’s for: Anyone still using Home 

Depot power strips. 

Pros: Compact, rugged, and nothing else 

like it. 

Cons: Rear receptacle color. 

How much: $599.99 

Web site: www.peavey.com


26 

Road Test 

By BillEvans 

Anyone who has been paying attention 

already knows that I am a big 

fan of personal monitors. I have 

tried probably a dozen different models 

from at least four different companies, 

and using them as a performer has really 

helped me understand how to handle 

personal mixes as a sound guy. 

The Gear RT 

You may already know this, but let’s 

start at the beginning. There are two major 

formats of personal monitors: universal 

fit and custom fit. Pretty much anything 

under $500 is going to be universal 

fit, which means anyone can use any pair. 

All of them use some kind of silicone or 

foam sleeve to “couple” the driver to 

the ear canal. Until recently, universals 

sounded universally OK, at best. 

The other format is custom fit, which 

requires going to an audiologist and having 

impressions taken of your ear. This 

involves have a silicone goo injected into 

the actual ear canal and letting it harden. 

That representation of your ear is used to 

make a custom product fitted to your ear 

only. This is significant because when it 

comes to both sound quality and attenuation 

of other sounds around you (a major 

advantage to personal monitors), fit 

is everything. 

Within the formats of universal or 

custom there are a number of ways to 

approach actually making sound. Because 

they are inserted in the ear, most 

companies have gone with hearing aidbased 

technology that uses vibrating 

rods called armatures to produce sound. 

Armatures were developed specifically 

to best reproduce the frequency range 

of the human voice — like I said, hearing 

aids. Some armature-based personal 

monitors use multiple rods with 

or without a crossover to assign certain 

frequencies to specific armatures. This is 

one reason the Shure E5 was considered 

— for a long time — one of the best and 

most “pro” choices for universal fit monitors. 

I have a set of custom fit Westones 

that are three-way armature devices that 

sound really good. 

Future Sonics, on the other hand, started 

and has stuck with “dynamic drivers” 

— basically very small speakers — and the 

result has been that their products have always 

had a reputation for greater warmth 

and better low-end response. Starting 

with a consumer product they designed 

that was aimed at the iPod crowd and 

OEM marketed, Future Sonics has used a 

new driver, which has very much upped 

the game for personal monitors across the 

board. A more refined version of that driver 

was used in the Atrio Series, and further 

refinements have gone into the mg4plus 

drivers found in this latest iteration of the 

Future Sonics Ear Monitors brand series. 

My pair came in black (flesh tone and 

custom colors, even wild finishes like the 

Future Sonics EarMonitors 

platinum ones Justin Timberlake was 

sporting on the recent MTV Video Music 

Awards and HBO special, are available). 

All Ear Monitors are full-range devices 

that sport an easily replaceable 50-inch 

cable designed to reduce microphonics. 

The isolation factor cuts down ambient 

sound by a whopping 20 dB — great for 

protecting your hearing on a loud stage 

— and with a sensitivity rating of 112 dB, 

they put out a lot of volume with a small 

amount of input power. 

The Gigs RT 

I first tried them with some recorded 

music just to get an idea of how they 

sounded. Like every other Future Sonics 

product I have tried, I was impressed. 

I wore them for about an hour and was 

very happy with the sound. Highs were 

crisp (a problem for me as almost 25 years 

of playing in rock bands has taken its toll 

on the upper end of my hearing in one 

ear) and, while it should be impossible to 

“feel” bass with an in-ear device, I felt like 

I was feeling the bass. 

The most notable part of this initial 

test is that over the hour, I kept turning 

the music down because I did not need 

to have them loud in order to “feel” the 

music. I ended up with the volume a full 

third lower than I usually use with other 

in-ear devices and heard everything and 

had a very good listening experience. 

This is very significant because lower 

volume means your ears hold out longer. 

It may also help with the problem 

monitor mixers have with some singers 

who start using in-ear devices and stop 

projecting. I have both mixed and heard 

a number of singers who were lost in 

the house mix, and there was nothing 

the FOH guy could do because the 

singer was just not hitting the mic hard 

enough. (I was out at a Collective Soul 

gig not too long ago, and despite the 

FOH guys’ efforts, the lead singer spent 

the entire show buried in the mix. When 

I talked to someone on the crew who 

shall remain nameless, I got just the 

story I expected. Since moving to personal 

monitors — which he had cranked 

— he had sung softer and softer, as he 

did not have to fight the band to hear 

himself in wedges. This is a pretty common 

problem.) 

I took them into a rehearsal situation 

with my own 10-piece horn band. This 

is always a tough gig because I have to 

set up and run the system in addition to 

playing. We use a Hear Technologies Mix 

Back and Hear Back system, which gives 

individual players a “baseline” stereo 

mix, and then six “more me” controls. 

In a full band situation, the increased 

low end helped me “feel” the all-important 

kick-drum without sacrificing vocal 

clarity. I got a better baseline mix and 

— even with the rest of the band on various 

universal fit products — that better 

starting place meant less bitching and 

moaning about individual mixes. 


Finally, I A/B’d a set of the universal 

fit Future Sonics Atrio Series earpieces, 

a couple of other universals and another 

set of custom fit pieces along with the 

new Future Sonics Ear Monitors brand. I 

used a couple of tunes I am familiar with 

and that have lots of layers of sound: 

“The Keys to Her Ferrari” by Thomas Dolby 

and “Black Cow” by Steely Dan. While 

each device has its own sonic signature, 

and these kind of comparisons are massively 

subjective by their very nature, 

I found that the Ear Monitors gave me 

an added level of detail and clarity that 

was very noticeable. And once again, I 

found myself turning the Ear Monitors 

down by about 25%. 

The Bottom Line RT 

It all depends on your situation. If you 

are doing MON for an act where your main 

gig is to make the “star” happy, then you 

had best be using whatever the star is using 

so you hear just what they do. In more 

“varied” situations, you have a bit more leeway. 

Either way, the new Ear Monitors are 

worth a listen. They are accurate enough 

that I can get a really decent basic mix with 

a lot less effort, and that makes the rest of 

the job easier. And if you have any input 

at all into what your star uses, these are a 

great choice. Just the fact that you can mix 

more quietly can make a world of difference 

for your star. It might get that person 

who thinks they no longer have to sing 

with any volume to open their mouths 

again. And the guy at the other end of the 

snake will love you for it. 

What it is: Custom-molded personal monitors. 

Who it’s for: Monitor engineers and 

performers. 

Pros: Great sound at lower volume. Well built. 

Cons: None. 

How much? $798 plus cost of impressions. 

Web site: www.futuresonics.com

A Night Honoring the Industry’s Finest 

Companies & Practitioners 

When: November 16, 2007 • 7pm 

Where: The Peabody Orlando Hotel • Orlando, FL 

Lighting Designer of the Year • Set/Scenic Designer of the year 

Lighting company of the Year • Staging Company of the Year 

Set Construction Company of the Year • Video Rental Company of the Year 

Rigging Company of the Year • Hometown Hero: Lighting 

Pyro Company of the Year • FOH Mixer of the Year • Video Director of the Year 

Monitor Mixer of the Year • Sound Company of the Year • Sound Designer of the Year 

Hometown Hero: Sound • Production Manager of the Year 

Tour Manager of the Year • Coach Company of the Year 

Trucking Company of the Year • Freight Forwarding Company of the Year 

Participating Sponsors 

VOTING NOW OPEN! 

SILVER SPONSORS 

www.parnelliawards.com/vote 

Bob Heil 

Audio Innovator 

Award 

Named after Rick “Parnelli” O’Brien, an 

extraordinary production manager and human 

being, the awards are given to those who, like 

O’Brien, exemplify the “FOUR Hs.” 

HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION 

GOLD SPONSORS 

Gerry Stickells 

Parnelli Lifetime 

Achievement 

Award

A Long Time Ago, On a Channel 

28 

Feature 

By BillEvans 

Once upon a time in the kingdom of 

Hertz, a small duchy in the southwest 

corner of the Land of Ohm, 

a rebellion was brewing among the foot 

soldiers who made the kingdom’s many 

events sound excellent. These foot soldiers 

once were seen as the equal of the 

kingdom’s high priests, as their knowledge 

and expertise allowed them to 

make even the rattiest of sound systems 

sing like a choir of angels. But they had 

recently seen their status in the kingdom 

drop precipitously as some in positions 

of power in the kingdom began to suggest 

that they could be replaced by a new 

magic called digital technology. 

“Why,” these power brokers cried, 

“must we pay these lowly mixers to do 

a job that can be handled by a mere apprentice 

armed with a pre-setup digital 

console? For we are jealous of both their 

knowledge and the fact that they mock 

our ignorance and spend their off days 

in the company of strippers while we are 

stuck in the shop.” 

And, indeed, some in the community 

of mixers found themselves out of longterm 

gigs as their expertise and experience 

was translated into mere data and 

handed to an apprentice earning far less 

gold for his efforts. 

The Road Only Appears to be 

Paved with Good Intentions 

OCTOBER 2007 

Strip Far, Far Away… 


From the earliest remembered times, 

those who could summon excellent sound 

to entertain the masses were held in high 

regard, and their art was little understood 

by most. Armed with only the most basic 

of tools, but fortified with enquiring 

minds and excellent ears, these honorable 

knights were able to make sound for 

thousands with components never designed 

for such purposes. Their abilities 

were so prized and so little understood by 

those not of their order that their services 

were valued greatly, and some in their 

ranks were well compensated, indeed. 

However, the tools that the mixers 

used to ply their trade became more 

and more complex and costly, until none 

but the most wealthy among them — or 

those willing to gamble on where the future 

would lead — were able to purchase 

the largest of these tools. Indeed, all mixers 

had a cache of special tools they employed 

to achieve their desired results, 

but these tended to be the smaller and 

less costly of the tools of their trade. 

To procure the larger items they 

needed, the mixers and those who 

employed them turned to a small group 

of merchants who rented the gear to 

those who needed it. These merchants 

often employed mixers and technicians as 

well. There were many of these merchants 

and, indeed, many mixers crossed the line 

to rent gear themselves and start their 

A Fractured Fairy Tale That Asks the Question, 

“Whose Mix Is It Anyway?” 

own rental companies. But there was 

one merchant — the Central Scrutinizer 

— who was greatly feared because his 

great size made him vexingly powerful. 

All were careful not to offend the Central 

Scrutinizer. 

Meanwhile, in another kingdom called 

the Valley of Silicon, another band of the 

tech priesthood was perfecting a machine 

that could do computations once only 

able to be completed by the cleverest of 

humans. It could do these computations 

many times faster than its human inventors 

and could store the outcome of these 

formulas for instant recall at any time. 

Over a short period, this machine became 

smaller and less costly and made 

its way throughout the kingdom, as once 

complex tasks were reduced to a series of 

computations that this new device could 

solve and store. Soon, everyone used this 

machine in their daily tasks until the machine 

became just another part of the 

lives of the people. This came to pass 

even in the kingdom of Hertz. 

The Evil Plan is Revealed FOH 

In Hertz, the honorable mixers resisted 

the new machine for some time, 

complaining that while the smaller size 


Photo manipulation by Erin Evans 

of the device and the ability to store 

their sacred settings was nice, it was 

impossible to get the same sound from 

this machine as from the tools they held 

dear for so long. But behold, the Central 

Scrutinizer and his minions began 

convincing Those Who Pay the Bills that 

the new device would save them much 

gold due to its smaller size and would 

require less space, making it less costly 

to transport and allowing Those Who 

Pay the Bills to sell more seats and earn 

more gold. 

Behold that, for many years, mixers 

had cleaved to a tradition called “zeroing 

out the board.” This meant that at the 

end of each show, they would remove 

all of their sacred settings and return the 

console to a neutral state. This served the 

dual purposes of leaving a clean slate for 

the next mixer to use for building his own 

mix, and it protected the sacred settings 

of each mixer. But with the new machine, 

each mixer could save his sacred settings 

in a different place and easily return to 

them for the next show. What had once 

taken hours was accomplished in mere 

seconds. Little did they know that this 

convenience would give the Central 

Scrutinizer even greater power. 

Soon most of the honorable mixers 

were using this new machine, often 

against their own wishes. But in a short 

time, most began to appreciate the ability 

to recall their sacred setting with the 

push of a single button. Meanwhile, the 

Central Scrutinzer and his minions began 

to procure the data that represented 

the sacred settings of each mixer for 

“archiving” purposes. Soon the mixers 

began to see that the Central Scrutinizer 

could take that archive and hand 

the sacred settings to an apprentice 

and no longer have need of the mixer’s 

services. When a mixer approached the 

Central Scrutinizer and asked that his 

sacred settings not be given to another 

who lacked the experience to create 

such settings himself, The Scrutinizer 

laughed and banished the mixer from 

his presence. 

The Revenge of the Mixers FOH 

But behold a group of the mixers 

— even those who had once been 

counted as minions of the Central Scrutinizer 

— began to see that they were 

being played for chumps, and that their 

knowledge and expertise were being 

“borrowed” by others who were often 

not worthy. And they were vexed, crying 

out, “Whose mix is it anyway?” And the 

Central Scrutinizer just chuckled and 

counted his gold. 

But some mixers came to realize that 

those things that could be saved in the 

machine could also be deleted. Soon, 

many of them were armed with a new 

weapon called a USB Key. This powerful 

weapon allowed the mixer to save his 

sacred settings to a device that only he 

controlled and allowed him to delete the 

settings from the machine at the end of 

each show. Armed with this new weapon, 

some began to fear the Central Scrutinizer 

less, suggesting that he commit unnatural 

acts upon himself and vowing to rent 

their gear from others. 

While the Central Scrutinizer retains 

much of his former power, many question 

his worth and the battle continues 

to this day. 

The Moral FOH 

If you are a mixer, remember that 

intellectual property law can get pretty 

gray, and that if you don’t protect the 

mix you have developed — often over 

the course of several tours — than you 

may have little recourse if someone else 

takes it and decides they don’t need you 

on the bus. 

If you run a sound company: The next 

time a digital console comes back after 

a show with its memory wiped, and you 

need to spend time re-uploading basic 

patching and other settings, thank the 

Central Scrutinizer.


30 

Product Gallery 

The idea of an equalizer that has 

the precision inherent with a 

digital inter face and the ability 

to save settings is way attractive. In 

the right hands, and used with care, it 

can be the audio equivalent of a Jedi 

light saber. But that sword can cut 

both ways…. 

Company Model MSRP Dimensions (HxWxD) 

Ashly Audio, Inc. 

www.ashly.com 

Behringer 

www.behringer.com 

dbx Professional Products 

www.dbxpro.com 

Dolby Laboratories- 

LiveSound Group 

www.dolby.com/ 

livesound 

Klark Teknik 

www.klarkteknik.com 

Mackie 

www.mackie.com 

Rane Corporation 

www.rane.com 

Sabine 

www.Sabine.com 

TC Electronic 

www.tcelectronic.com 

Yamaha 

www.yamahaca.com 

Digital EQ: 

A Double-edged — 

and Very Sharp — Sword 

Protea 

4.24G 

Channels/Optional Expanders 


Equalizer type(s) 

$2,340.00 3.5 x 19 x 8 Quad 28-band graphic 

DEQ1024 $2,340.00 3.5” x 19” x 5.3” Stereo 31-band graphic EQ, low cut, high cut 

DEQ2496 $2,340.00 1 3/4” x 19” x 8 1/2” Stereo 31-band graphic, 10-band parametric, three dynamic eq’s per channel 

dbx iEQ31 $2,340.00 5.25” H x 19” W x 7.9” D Dual Precision digital 31-band Graphic EQ 

LPD, LP4D4, 

LP4D8, 

LP4D12, 

LP8D8 

Klark Teknik 

DN9340E 

$2,340.00 

2-RU rackmount: 3.44 x 19 x 

13.78 inches (8.74 x 48.26 x 

35 cm) / 20lb(9kg) 

16 channels of digital i/o 

AES/EBU format, 4in/4out 

4in/8out, 4in/12out, 8in/8out 

$2,340.00 W19” / H3.5”(2RU) / D12” Dual 

Multi-layer EQ with available 1/3 octave / parametric / arbitary EQ curves. 

Exclusive raised cosine filter shapes include Mesa flat-topped filter. 

Five-mode dual 31-band graphic equalizer Choice of Q: constant, reciprocal 

and proportional, plus DN360 and DN27 emulations. Dual 12-band parametric 

equaliser. All bands configurable 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Four configurable 8thorder 

filters per channel High pass/Low-pass High shelf / Low shelf Notch. 

Full function delay line per channel up to 1s delay available Delay available 

in Time (milliseconds, microseconds) and Distance (feet/inches or metres). 

Threshold Dependent Equalization: Two dynamic EQ filters per channel. 

Quad EQ $2,340.00 3.5” x 17.4” x 10.7” Quad 30-band, Adaptive-Q graphic equalization. 

DEQ 60 $999.00 3.5 x 19 x 6 2 30 Band Graphic 

Graphi-Q2 

GRQ3121 

Graphi-Q2 

GRQ3122 

EQ Station-8 

Yamaha 

DME64n, 

24n 

Not so long ago, I was at a multi-band 

show. The first three bands were mixed 

by the “house” engineer (actually the 

system tech for the soundco), and they 

sounded really good. Then the headliner 

came on with their own engineer, and 

the mix went to hell. (Stop me if I have 

already told you this one — I do have a 

$2,340.00 1.75” x 19” x 10” 1x2 

$2,340.00 3” x 19” x 10” 2x2 

$2,340.00 2 RU 

$6,500, 

$3,600 

DME64N: 480 x 145 x 

411.5mm, 3U; DME24N: 

480 x 101 x 411.5mm, 2U 

tendency to repeat stories. Oh wait this 

is print, you can’t stop me. O.K., just skip 

ahead if you must.) When I asked the 

system guy later what had happened, 

he told me that the visiting engineer 

had “grabbed 25 points on the Helix 

and pulled them all down 6 dB.” He then 

proceeded to scream at the system guy 

8-ch analog with 8-ch digital 

option 

16-input and 24-input 

variations, both with dual 

auxiliary sends 

about the system not having enough 

gas. With great power comes great 

responsibility. 

While EQs like this are increasingly 

migrating into the base feature set on 

digital consoles, here are some choices 

if you are going the outboard route. Feel 

the force and use them wisely. 

31-band graphic EQ, 12-band parametric EQ, 12-band FBX feedback exterminator, 

high & low pass filters. 

31-Band Graphic EQ; 12-band Parametric EQ; 12-band FBX Feedback Exterminator; 

high and low pass filters; crossover filters. 

6-band Parametric, 29-band graphic and dynamic EQ 

Yes, PEQ, GEQ

Ashly Protea 4.24G 

Analog Interfaces Digital Interfaces Interface Description Features 

XLR, TRS MIDI, RS232 

XLR Inputs, Outputs AES-EBU, S/PDIF Inputs, Outputs 

XLR inputs, XLR, 1/4” outputs AES-EBU, S/PDIF - XLR, TOSLINK connectors 

XLR, TRS 1/4” phone, Phoenix 

terminal block 

XLR Analog I/O available in 

modules of 4 up to a total of 

16. Exclusive IsoFloat ground 

isolation to eliminate ground 

loops. 

Audio inputs/outputs 3-pin 

XLR 

240 x 64 fluorescent backlit LCD 

display, individual band up/down 

buttons, bypass, mute buttons. 

Lighted faders, 2 x 12 segment LED 

meter 

320 x 80 back-lit LCD, rotary encoder, 

menu buttons, multi-function LED 

bargraph meters. 

none Sliders, buttons, knobs 

8 AES in and 8 AES out standard. 1 Toslink. 

Dante audio over Ethernet standard / 8 in and 

16 out. Cobranet module optional. 

Dual Ethernet ports; RS-232 8-pin Mini-DIN 

socket (front); AES/EBU digital in/out; word clock 

synch port to DN9331 Rapide graphic controller; 

9-pin D-type (rear); Power 3 pin IEC; full remote 

control, wired or wireless, via PC and ELGAR and 

EQ Controller remote control software; backward 

compatible to non-Ethernet DN9340 using 

Ethernet to serial port converters. 

XLR, TRS none 

XLR, TRS & Phoenix Terminal 

Block 

XLR, TRS RS232 Serial, Phoenix contact closures 

XLR, TRS 

Rane DEQ60 

XLR balanced I/O 

Euroblock, BNC, USB 

For remote control, the Dolby Lake 

Controller software has a graphic interface, 

optimized for a wireless touch 

screen or tablet PC. 

Touch strip and rotary controls; full input 

and output metering is provided 

plus dedicated meters for the T-DEQ 

function. An LCD display provides 

visual reference for all functions. 

LED display,V-pot controls, frequency 

select and function buttons. 

none Sliders 

RS232 Serial, contact closures on Phoenix 

connectors 

AES/EBU via 25-in D-Sub connector, Ethernet, 

MIDI 

The DME64N features 4 mini YGDAI slots on its 

rear panel for optional I/O cards. The DME24N 

features one slot. These slots support analog 

inputs and outputs when using high-precision 

A/D and D/A cards with up to 8 I/Os, as well as 

AES/EBU- ADAT- and TASCAM-compliant digital 

I/O cards with 16 I/Os, EtherSound, CobraNet. 

Analog control of digital EQ and other 

processors on front panel with sliders, 

control knobs, LEDs, and numeric LED 

readout; Full software control of all 

functions. 

Analog control of Digital EQ and 

other processors with sliders, control 

knobs, LEDs, and LED readout; Full 

software control of all functions. 

Color TFT QVGA 320 x 240 pixel 

display 


dbx iEQ-31 

Sabine Graphi-Q2 GRQ3122 TC Electronic EQ Station-8 

Backlit LCD, front panel controls, 

LED status indicators, jog wheel and 

SCENE, Home and Utility keys. The 

DME24N provides SIGNAL and PEAK 

LED indicators on the front panel for 8 

inputs and outputs. 

Mackie Quad EQ 

Programmable: compressor/limiter, delay, high and low pass filters. 

Feedback destroyer, feedback indicators, noise gate/peak limiter, pink 

noise generator, relay-controled hard bypass,selectable cut/boost 

range. 

Feedback destroyer, VPQ virtual paragraphic EQ for parametric control 

of graphic EQ, 61-band RTA with auto EQ, digital delay, dynamics processor, 

limiter, 64 presets. 

Advanced feedback suppression‚ highpass filter, limiter, digital noise 

reduction, switchable range (+/- 6dB, +/- 15 dB) per EQ channel. 

The Dolby Lake Processor provides front panel metering and control 

through a portal interface. Each of the four front-panel portals can 

represent multiple channels of level and limiter metering. Portals also 

provide user-configurable text labels and mute controls. 

Built in RTA, A, B, and C weighting Pink Noise Generator; 99 snapshots 

available for recall, variable HP & LP filters for each channel, Universal 

Power supply. Comes with RTA Mic and XLR cable. 

Perfect-Q and Proportional-Q switchable, low, mid, and high tone controls, 

low and high cut filters and A/B switching. 

FBX Feedback Exterminator filters; one channel in, two channels out; 

front-panel lockable (each function); blank front panel versions available. 

FBX feedback extermimator filters; One channel in, two channels out; 

front-panel lockable (each function); blank front panel versions available; 

FBX Feedback Exterminator; Compressor/Limiter; Delay; Crossover; 

Front panel lockable by function; up to 8 units linkable with software 

control. 

600 ms delay, peak limiter, optional motofader 64 remote, virtual EQ 

station PC application. 

Yamaha DSP processing power, 24 bit/96kHz processing support, Automatic 

Audio Input Detection, ambient noise compensator component. 

2007 OCTOBER 

31

All photos by steve Jennings 

Smashing Pumpkins in concert 

By DavidJohnFarinella 

As one of the most legendary venues in 

the land, The Fillmore in San Francisco 

has hosted many of yesterday and 

today’s music legends. Pick your era, pick its 

definitive band and the odds are they have 

performed on the hall’s hallowed stage. So, it 

made perfect sense for the Smashing Pumpkins 

to reintroduce themselves to fans during 

an 11-night run at The Fillmore. 

And while it made sense for band and fans 

alike, it proved to be a challenge for the production 

team at the venue as well as for Jon 

Lemon, who has served as the Pumpkins FOH 

mixer on and off since 1995. See, the Pumpkins 

didn’t want to play through the Meyer M3D 

line array that the venue had installed. Nobody 

had been granted that option before. 

“Ever,” affirms Morgan Pitman, who 

serves as The Fillmore and The Warfield’s 

production manager. “We didn’t even do it 

for Eric Clapton. It was a big thing for them 

with the resurgence of the band, so after 

some negotiation, we were able to come to 

an agreement.” 

P.A. Shootout 

FOH Engineer Jon Lemon had experienced 

the Fillmore’s three-a-side M3D array in 2006 

when he was working with singer Sia Furler. “So, 

I knew the P.A. and, realistically, the Smashing 

Pumpkins are a loud rock band. I approached 

the production [people] there and said, ‘We’re 

going to be there for so long, why don’t we put 

in our own P.A.?’ Of course, it came back that we 

couldn’t do it because nobody had ever done 

32 

Installations 

“We Want Our OwnP.A.” 

Smashing Pumpkins Install Their System into the Legendary 

Fillmore Auditorium for an Extended Run 

it. That has never really been a good reason for 

me, and we kept chipping away at it, throwing 

it up to the senior management of Irving Azoff 

and the people at Live Nation. Then they agreed 

to it.” 

It wasn’t just a matter of taking down the 

M3Ds and flying a new line array, though. A 

team of structural engineers, riggers, city engineers, 

house engineer Nathan Harlow and 

Derek Featherstone from Pro Media/Ultra- 

Sound had to check and double-check the 

venue’s structural integrity. After an initial inspection, 

the team determined that all new 

hang points would have to be established, 

and that a new structural beam would have 

to be installed in order to support those. 

“That all ended up being a real rush in the 

last week,” Lemon reports with a laugh, “in 

true rock ‘n’ roll fashion.” 

The move-in points meant the P.A. would 

hang three feet down stage from the front 

line rather than a couple of feet up stage. 

Was this the end of the story? Hardly, since 

these dates also became a time to experiment 

with the P.A.s. A Clair Bros./Showco i3 

rig was the first setup and lasted for the first 

half of the 11 dates. Then the crew brought 

in an L-ACOUSTICS dV-DOSC line array system 

— 12 per side with four dV-DOSC subs. 

As a side note, after hearing the different 

systems in the room, Pitman decided it was 

time to upgrade and has since installed a 

Meyer Sound MICA line array. 

Flying the two different P.A.s didn’t pose 

a problem, reports Lemon. “The i3 flies really 


well, it goes up quickly, and it happened in a 

short period of time,” he says. “The difference 

is that the dV-DOSC is a lot lighter. But, it was 

really a quite simple exercise. I thought it 

would have been more of a hassle, but we 

did it, turned it on and it was all there.” 

Housecleaning at FOH 

In addition to racks and stacks, Lemon 

swapped out every piece of gear at the FOH 

position for these shows. While that’s not 

über-unusual, moving a DiGiCo D5 console 

into the position was crucial for Lemon. “By 

the time we landed at the Fillmore, we were 

choosing from a palette of 77 songs for the 

set,” he says. “Some of [the songs] are just Billy 

with an acoustic [guitar] through to the whole 

band fully rocking out, and you need to be 

Jon Lemon at FOH 

able to make adjustments to present them in 

the best light.” 

In addition to its flexibility, the D5 was 

selected because Lemon recorded every 

show from a MADI split off the board. At the 

Fillmore run, another pair of engineers was 

tracking the shows into two 96K Pro Tools 

rigs for potential special releases. A camera 

crew also came in toward the end of these 

shows for a DVD release. 

The goal, says Lemon, was to make sure 

that everything was done correctly. After 

all, the band was playing three-plus hours 

a night with set lists that stretched to 25 

songs. The P.A. was crucial, but so was the 

feel of everything from staging to lights. In 

fact, after a one-off show in Santa Cruz in 

the middle of the run, Pitman received a call



Installations 

Smashing Pumpkins in concert 

“That all ended up being a real rush in the last 

week, in true rock and roll fashion.” — Jon Lemon 

from the tour manager that the band wanted to 

lay sheets of plywood over the carpeted stage. 

Then there was the lighting rig. “That’s 

the biggest pile of lights I’ve ever allowed 

in this room,” Pitman reports laughing. “I 

had structural engineers come out and 

redo my stage and spec it all out for me. I 

don’t normally put 6,000 pounds worth of 

lighting on the stage.” 

At the end of it all, that goal was 

achieved. “The band wanted to make these 

shows special for the audiences, because 

they were using them as experimental 

writing sessions and extending jams to 

tighten up as a band,” Lemon says. In part, 

he adds, this is the sound of the Smashing 

Pumpkins in 2007. “There’s so much more 

texture now. There’s no doubt that all of 

them are better players, and the new ones 

are great players. It’s a natural progression 

and it’s quite good.” 

Pitman was happy with the end result 

as well, adding with a laugh: “I’m sure this 

was a great learning experience for everyone 

to take an arena-sized production and 

cram it into a small little club.” 

Billy Corgan


Illustrations by 

Tom Gleeson 

Back in the day (1982), I was the electronics 

tech for a sound company 

out on a major tour. More than 210 

dates were booked, including a Euro tour 

leg, and I was a happy camper. Living on 

the bus was tight as there were 13 of us 

crammed into the Eagle 10, and seating 

accommodations rivaled that of the “Hot 

Bunk” approach used by the Navy — you 

get up from your seat, and the threesecond 

rule applies: Three seconds later, 

someone else has your seat. 

When we get to Denver, sound’s loaded 

in at the usual 10 a.m. Rigging had 

gotten there at 6:00 a.m., and the lighting 

guys at 8:00 a.m.; everything’s on schedule 

for a 12:00 noon band load-in. Our buddy 

Murphy is watching from up on a catwalk, 

deciding how he can have the most fun at 

our expense. Murphy has a very warped 

sense of humor. 

The load-in time for the band also coincides 

with lunch for the rest of us. Dutifully 

heading down to hospitality, I meet with 

the caterer who’s supposed to be providing 

a number of vegetarian meals for certain 

crew members that day, as the lunch is 

36 

Welcome To My Nightmare 

Nightmare on Murphy Street 

— Denver Edition. 

An improperly grounded 

and filterless scoreboard 

has just removed several 

pieces of equipment from 

the show’s inventory. 

I bite down hard on a seed 

that the caterer missed, 

and now I am without three 

teeth. Two are broken off 

below the gum line, and the 

third is torn in half. 

“something special.” For those of you who 

have not been on the road, “something 

special” generally hits about show time in 

the form of unscheduled and urgent trips 

to the restroom. Not wanting to give my 

old friend Murphy the upper hand, I opt 

— along with six others on the crew — to 

pass on the special and go with something 

plain and ordinary. Cheese sandwiches 

would be fine. Murphy takes note. 

The caterer tells 

me that he won’t make 

anything other than 

the special, and that I 

could have that or go. 

As I leave the caterer, I 

run into the road manager 

who takes an immediate 

affront to the 

caterer’s approach and 

leads me back into hospitality. 

A few terse words later — mostly 

dealing with the financial aspect of the situation 

— and a substitute is agreed upon. 

(Go figure this one: The caterer didn’t want 

to make the six meals at all, but now he’s 

doing eggplant parmesan.) 


“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” 

— Murphy’s Law 

Off I go to mic the drums while the 

meal’s being prepared. Murphy winks as 

the fun’s about to start. 

Now, given that I am an electronics 

type, and being one of the only two on 

the tour (my boss being the other one), I 

get called to the stage as the power supply 

in the artist’s pre-amp has given up the 

ghost. A couple of 15-volt regulators later, 

the bass rig is back in business, and I am 

on my way to catering to eat the eggplant. 

Murphy rubs his hands in delight. 

The caterer tells me that he put the 

eggplant on the table. I check the room 

to find the empty dish — someone has already 

eaten it. I am told that it is my tough 

luck and now, two hours after my scheduled 

lunch, I can “deal with it.” 

About this time, the now-infamous 

road manager approaches and asks me 

how lunch was, right in front of the caterer. 

As I start to speak, the caterer interrupts, 

reaming the road manager about 

me not sitting around waiting for him to 

serve the meal, and he figures “someone 

else got it.” Not being new to the rodeo 

biz, the road manager tells him to fix another, 

or he won’t get 

paid at all. 

I have a couple 

more “duty calls,” and 

then I get to sit down 

to what appears to be 

wonderfully prepared 

eggplant parmesan. I 

am starving and in a 

hurry since soundcheck 

is now less that 

an hour away, and 

I still haven’t miked 

the drums. I didn’t even notice that the 

seeds hadn’t been completely removed 

from the eggplant the way the road manager 

instructed. (FYI — They grow 1/4-inch 

nuts in eggplants.) I bite down hard on a 

seed that the caterer missed, and now I 

am without three teeth. Two are broken 

off below the gum line, and the third is 

torn in half. The caterer is fired on the spot, 

as the road manager had walked back into 

hospitality just as I let out the scream signaling 

the end of my pain-free day. Murphy 

snickers. 

After dismissing the caterer, the road 

manager finds a dentist (actually an oral 

surgeon) who can extract the remains of 

the two teeth and temporarily cap the 

third, but the appointment isn’t until 8:15 

that evening. The opening act goes on at 

7:00 p.m., they’re done at 7:35 p.m., with 

the headliner starting at 8:00 p.m. It is 10 

minutes to the dentist’s office, and the 

runner is standing by to take me there. 

The plan is set. Murphy begins to chuckle. 

The VIP Club of the arena is now providing 

catering for the dinner meal, and a 

mixture of ground-up stuff is given to me 

to drink. Not very filling, and even harder 

to swallow given the circumstances, but 

relief is in sight as the opening act starts. 

Now 7:35 p.m. approaches, and I am 

standing by to remove the mics, pull the 

mic cables and get the headliner onstage 

before I depart for the dentist. A couple 

minutes into the break-down, everything 

goes silent. I look out to FOH to see why 

the preprogrammed music has stopped, 

only to see mushroom clouds rising from 

both the FOH and lighting positions. 

Screams can be heard now as the monitor 

engineer has just lost the intercom. He’s 

talking to the FOH engineer, and I am redirected 

away from the mic cables toward 

the more immediate problem of finding 

out what just happened. 

Murphy starts laughing. 

An improperly grounded and filterless 

scoreboard has just removed several pieces 

of equipment from the show’s inventory. 

A digital reverberator, several lighting 

controllers, some insignificant items and 

all five keyboards are the casualties. So 

much for the dentist. 

In the ensuing minutes, soldering stations 

are set up in two areas. My boss is 

doing what he can to get the equipment 

fixed at the FOH and lighting positions, 

as the band’s lead tech and I are running 

triage on the keyboards. Two of them

I dive on the keyboard, covering it with 

my face-down body, when a few hundred 

cups of Coke hit me square in the back. 

are beyond help; two of them have some 

good parts. One is in fair condition, but 

will not tune. (This was back in the days 

when there was actually a separate tuning 

voltage generated by the power supply). 

Much to my dismay, the manufacturer had 

not included that circuit diagram on the 

schematics. 

The lead tech and I are running around 

like mad trying to get one keyboard to not 

only work, but to take the programs required 

for the show and remain in tune. As 

this was back in the pre-MIDI days, this involved 

a cassette tape player dumping the 

note-on/note-off info into the keyboard 

through a 1/8-inch cassette deck input. The 

road manager gets a music store and an 

electronics store to reopen, is getting us 

the required repair parts and has rented 

an OBXA from the music store so we can 

do the show. Murphy is cracking up. 

The OBXA arrives, but it won’t take 

the programs. A newer version of the 

operating system is what I figure to be 

the culprit. In front of the road manager 

and the storeowner, I grab the 

side-cutters and remove the power 

supply board, which was hard-wired 

in place. It goes into the band’s surviving 

keyboard in hopes of fixing the 

tuning problem, but now all we have 

is one that will take the programs, but 

still won’t remain in tune. I will have 

to crouch behind the keyboard setup 

onstage and hit the Auto-Tune button 

every time it drifts out of tune. A plan 

is set, and it is show time. 

Now the audience (bless their collective 

hearts) has tried to be patient 

with this two-hour changeover from 

one three-piece band to another, but 

the 14,000 raging maniacs have grown 

A couple minutes into the breakdown, 

everything goes silent. I look 

out to FOH to see why the preprogrammed 

music has stopped, only 

to see mushroom clouds rising from 

both the FOH and lighting 

positions. 


quite restless. As a matter of fact, groups 

of them are counting down, pointing at 

me and yelling “Three, two, one, You ASS- 

HOLE!” 

I become aware that this is happening 

just as the adrenalin wears off, the pain 

returns and I realize that the bleeding — 

which had stopped — is now back with a 

vengeance. Someone gets me one of the 

paper cups (usually full of soda) crammed 

with crushed ice and water in an effort to 

stop me from crying like a bitch. It is now 

one hour and 45 minutes past my dental 

appointment and that, as they say, is that. 

As all this happens, enter the promoter. 

He swaggers onstage across the 

white shag rug and takes the stage-right 

mic. Did I mention the headliners played 

on a white shag rug that covered the 

whole stage? Well, they did. He begins 

by complimenting the audience for their 

patience and gets booed big-time for his 

effort. The punters don’t want to hear any 

of that. He continues, “I know you are all 

upset, and I’m sure everyone has something 

they want to throw…” Murphy’s 

having hysterics. 

About this time, several people start 

running for the stage-right mic position. 

Mostly burley lighting types, as I am too 

much in shock to even move, as the promoter 

continues, “On the count of one, 

two…” 

Just as he was about to say three, the 

two closest of the guys running toward 

him make a tackle that would have made 

Redskin Hall-of-Fame linebacker Sam Huff 

proud. 

It’s way too late. I see the arc of the 

rising missiles and slap the lid of the keyboard 

closed. Others are running with 

guitars as the missiles reach apogee and 

start their descent. From the looks of it, 

more than a quarter of the cups will land 

onstage — and most seem to be aimed directly 

at my newly repaired keyboard and 

me. I dive on it, covering it with my facedown 

body, when a few hundred cups of 

Coke hit me square in the back. The oncewhite 

shag rug is now a sea of brown. Over 

on stage right, there are fists flying as I 

raise my head to see the hapless promoter 

being beaten within an inch of his life by 

at least five individuals. The fire marshal 

stops them, arrests the promoter on the 

spot and charges him with inciting a riot. 

Murphy laughs so hard he falls out of 

the truss and disappears into the Cokecovered 

stage. 

The show goes on. I sit out of sight behind 

the keys, playing button pusher and 

dealing with the pain in my jaw. Then we 

pack up and haul-butt for Salt Lake City. 

But that’s another story. 

Dave Fletcher 

Tampa, Florida 

P.S. — I hereby certify and affirm under 

penalty of punter-torture that the 

aforementioned is true and accurate in all 

respects. 

Recently, I went to see the band when 

they played in town. As I was being met 

at the backstage entrance by the Denver 

lead tech, now stage-manager, he was relating 

this story to one of the new guitar 

techs, who then asked me if it was true. 

I showed him the two still-missing teeth 

and the gold crown that covers the remains 

of number three. I’m not sure he 

believed it even then. Now the rest of the 

world knows why I would rather not go to 

Denver or relive that night ever again…. 

2007 OCTOBER 

37

38 

Theory The Anklebiters & Practice 

Theory OR Practice 

Yes, it is time to get back up on the 

soapbox and address the critics — in 

this case, the critics of FOH magazine 

and, especially, yours truly. From time-totime 

we receive comments that FOH is not 

technical enough and doesn’t expose the 

readers to rigorous acoustical theories. Now 

I am all for rigorous acoustical theory, but I 

am in the upper five percentile of readers 

who actually understand what is being said 

and the incremental benefits of the theory 

being proffered. So I think I will leave those 

kinds of physics papers for the Audio Engineering 

Society (AES) transcripts and those 

other magazines that need to publish highbrow 

treatises to show editorial gravitas. 

BTW, our last reader survey found that just 

10% of readers found FOH “not technical 

enough,” and nearly half that number said 

it was “too technical,” The majority (86%) 

placed us in the “just right” range. 

Book Smart TP 

Having said all that, there is nothing 

wrong with devouring all the audio industry 

information you can. I have no problem 

with audio technicians and engineers taking 

university acoustics courses or attending 

Syn-Aud-Con seminars. And believe me, 

I have a lot of bookshelf space dedicated to 

books on audio topics, including both Audio 

Cyclopedias, the Yamaha Handbook and tons 

of tomes related to audio engineering. Of 

course, I am showing my age as I have an ancient 

copy of the Radiotron Designer’s Handbook 

due to my fascination with all things 

vacuum tube. I am probably the only person 

in my county with a working tube tester and 

tube caddy carrying case, and who can fix 

your old 1950s Bogen public address amplifier 

in a jiffy. 

OCTOBER 2007 

However, being book smart only gets 

you half way to being competent. You gotta 

get out to the gigs and either assist or lead 

on the setup, performance and tear-down of 

the shows. Starting out, you may be working 

with garage bands, helping them muddle 

through their first public performances to 

gain experience. And you might be working 

with gear not entirely designed for live 

sound performance. Nevertheless, get out 

there and do some networking with other 

production people and performers, and you 

will get exposure to better gigs and gear. 

Physicists vs. Engineers TP 

My mind often wanders to the classic 

comedy movie, Animal House, in which John 

Belushi as Bluto, the gross impulsive frat 

boy, is both physicist and engineer. In one 

memorable scene, he precisely measures a 

fellow frat mate’s brother’s car windshield 

and then smashes the windshield to bits 

with a mallet. Like the precise Bluto, physicists 

(acousticians) measure accurately the 

room (or transducer characteristics), but 

it’s the engineers who, like the windshieldsmashing 

Bluto, put all this theory into common 

practice. 

On one hand, we can agree that if you 

have a concert hall performance in the evening 

with all day to load in and tweak the 

sound system, it can be expected that the 

staff system engineer will have a handle on 

the venue acoustics, speaker coverage and 

speaker placement to provide most patrons 

with good sound. After all, there are serious 

sums of ticket money at stake to ensure a 

worthy show. 

On the other hand, there are local and 

regional soundco guys like me who have 

street dance productions in small towns 


— where the street is closed off at 6:00 p.m., 

the show starts at 8:00 p.m. and some rickety 

version of a performance stage is provided 

with a street lamp power panel in a 

dubious state of usability. The good news 

is that the acoustics are just as good as the 

weather, road pavement and the expected 

crowds. An acoustician would not be very 

useful here, and might even be a detriment 

to time management for the outdoor street 

dance. In contrast, the local soundco owner 

might make an adequate stagehand for an 

indoor big-act concert, but would likely be 

experience-shy at trimming up the rigging 

and speaker processors in the larger venue. 

The moral of this physicist versus engineer 

debate is: Learn the acoustician’s 

concerns, but keep them in perspective, as 

you still need to get the show done. Also, 

although you don’t need acoustic analysis 

tools at a street dance, they certainly are 

handy when tuning up the rig at the shop 

and for the big shows. 

The Speed of Methane TP 

Often readers lambaste me because, 

when quoting the speed of sound, I round 

down to 1,100 feet-per-second. In my defense, 

I figure that two significant digits of 

precision is a good start for engineering 

work, and I can always work acoustical time 

delays because temperature and humidity 

affect the actual speed of sound. Most audio 

system engineers know this and will shorten 

up the delays on the speaker processing to 

delay the speakers until the crowd fills the 

indoor venue, bringing up the temperature 

and humidity. The engineer then tweaks the 

delay until the delay speakers allow most of 

the patrons to sense that the sound is coming 

off the stage and not out of the delay 


Meet the Author! 

speaker stacks. The physicist, however, will 

ask for accurate temperature and humidity 

numbers and calculate the delays via the 

speed-of-sound equations. Great for install 

system work, but likely a bit anal for concert 

system engineers. 

Getting to the numbers: My critics say that 

1,147 feet per second is the golden hallowed 

number that must always be used, because it 

was what they measured on a hot Iowa summer 

day in a college field house in high humidity. 

The engineer in me immediately pulls open 

my Radio Engineer’s Handbook and recites, 

“1,086.9 feet-per-second at zero degrees Celsius 

and zero humidity.” So who is right? The 

answer: 1,147 feet-per-second is more correct 

for indoor events in summer, and 1,086.9 feetper-second 

is better for an outdoor concert in 

a Minnesota January. But I maintain that 1,147 

is not the right number all the time, and that 

1,100 feet-per-second is close enough for this 

engineer. However, I did notice in my handbook 

that methane is about 1,147 feet-per-second 

in sound velocity (at 0ºC and 0% humidity), 

so I figure that Mr. “1,147ft/sec always” is full of 

methane and can be ignored. 

The Take-Home Message TP 

As chief editor Bill Evans eloquently put 

it when we were discussing this installment, 

“Which engineer would you choose for a 

last minute gig? The acoustics wizard with 

lots of book training, or the seasoned gig 

veteran who is Ohm’s law challenged, but 

finds ways of getting the show off on time?” 

My guess is that most of you would 

choose Mr. “Get ‘er Done” engineer, rather 

than the physicist. 

Any further comments please write them to 

marka@fohonline.com. 

Timeless Communications 

has just published Mark Amundson’s first book. 

LIVE SOUND, Theory & Practice 

To celebrate, Mark will be signing copies 

of his indispensable new book during AES. 

Come to the FRONT of HOUSE booth 955. 

Saturday, Oct. 6, from 1–2 p.m. and 4–5 p.m. 

Buy your copy at www.fohbookshelf.com

The backlash against ticket prices was 

clearly evident in Europe over the summer. 

Elton John, George Michael and 

The Who cancelled dates at big venues, while 

the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand 

played before vast tracts of empty seats. 

Ticket prices to see top acts have soared in 

recent years, driven by what some pop economists 

call “The Bowie Theory,” named for David 

Bowie, who years ago uttered a warning about 

the impact of online file sharing. Specifically, 

“Music itself is going to become like running 

water or electricity,” he advised. “You’d better 

be prepared for doing a lot of touring.” 

The theory suggests that bands that formerly 

kept concert prices low to help to sell 

albums and generate royalties, now regard live 

events as the best way to make money. A corollary 

to that might be, “Those who live by the 

sword, die by the sword.” 

Empty Seats and Cancelled Shows Biz 

Streisand’s show at Paris’ Bercy stadium was 

her first-ever at the venue, and promoters hiked 

the top ticket prices to almost $500. Yet 3,000 

seats went unsold. Her planned shows in Rome 

and Nice were called off, officially for technical 

reasons, after consumer groups campaigned 

against the prices. (To be fair, her U.K. shows 

in Manchester and London did all right.) Last 

February, Elton John cancelled a planned Paris 

mega-show, which had seats priced as high as 

$1,500, and replaced it with a gig at the Paris Zenith 

with a top ticket price of $300. The Stones 

played to a thin crowd at the Stade de France in 

Paris over the summer, and a gig in Belgium sold 

only 33,000 of 70,000 seats. George Michael and 

The Who abandoned plans to perform at the 

same venue and opted for a smaller hall. 

Are performing artists increasing the price 

of tickets to offset declines in record sales? Apparenty, 

they are if they think they can, and in 

Europe, at least, many of them guessed wrong. 

However, American promoters were more cautious 

with pricing. According to a list compiled 

by www.msn.com, many major touring acts 

kept a lid on prices: 

Beyonce: $47 to $125 

Smashing Pumpkins: $20 to $25 

Justin Timberlake: $54 to $155 

Genesis: $57 to $260 

Faith Hill & Tim McGraw: $49 to $97 

The White Stripes: $40 to $50 

Ozzfest: Free 

Supply Side — Rock ‘n’ Roll Style Biz 

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of touring business 

bible Pollstar, says U.S. promoters have 

cut the rate of ticket price increases this year 

and, significantly, he estimates that prices for 

the first half of the year were up only about 50 

cents (“cents” – not “percent”) on average from 

the year before. “And they’re still making a profit, 

and certain acts, like the Police, can still charge 

a couple of hundred dollars for the best seats 

without it skewing the average,” he says. 

European promoters likely will learn from 

their U.S. counterparts. Though live touring 

revenues have increased as recorded music 

revenues have decreased over the last 10 

years, and though in that time ticket prices 

have more then doubled, continuing to 

inflate those prices creates a backlash that 

ultimately stifles growth. More artists now 

receive most of their income from ticket sales, 

not CD sales. Labels Warner and Universal 

now are making participation in that revenue 

By DanDaley Tickets to Ride 

stream part of their strategy. The CD is folded 

into the concert package, even being given 

away, as Prince did in the U.K. earlier this 

summer, igniting a firestorm of protest from 

record distributors. 

Finding Balance Biz 

The leveling off of ticket prices in the U.S., 

combined with the increasing sophistication 

of shows and the inclusion of premiums such 

as CDs, suggest a maturation of the live concert 

business. That’s good for the industry and, 

as Bongiovanni points out, might also illustrate 

that unlike the vise-like grip with which 

the major record labels controlled the pricing 


of recorded music, the concert business is a 

much more market-driven proposition. 

“Live concerts give everyone immediate 

feedback,” Bongiovanni explains. “The artist 

knows immediately how the fans like a song; if a 

promoter wants to charge $100 for a ticket and 

no one’s buying, they know that quickly, too.” 

Visceral matters affect the economics as 

well. Albums are not a real-time proposition 

— the process can start and stop as needed. 

Tours and the revenue they generate, however, 

depend on the ability and willingness of artists 

to stay on the road. While their CDs might 

have started out with a $17.95 list price, the 

ticket prices an artist can command vary from 

The Anklebiters The Biz 

year-to-year, even month-to-month, creating 

economic unpredictability. “There’s a flux in 

the concert business that wasn’t there in the 

record business,” says Bongiovanni. 

This uncertainty is ultimately good for the 

industry, bringing it back to the kind of meritocracy 

artistry demands. But the increasing 

influence in the concert space of large corporations 

such as AOL, AEG and Live Nation, 

whose shareholders and accountants demand 

predictability, suggests that the business is 

headed toward a crossroads. And the outcome 

of that will largely determine if the fate of the 

live music business will be the same as that of 

the recorded music business. 

2007 OCTOBER 

39 


40 

The Bleeding Anklebiters Edge 

Sammy F. — Where Are You? 

We’ve said a lot in these pages 

about how digital technology has 

shaped our audio lives, including 

the ability to create scenes or snapshots 

for a digital mixer ahead of time, and then 

store or load them into a desk for show 

time. Mixing systems such as the Digidesign 

Venue, DiGiCo D5, Soundcraft Vi6 and 

Yamaha PM5D have the ability for true total 

recall of every setting, which means we can 

preprogram a show at a rehearsal, store the 

settings into some sort of memory and then 

load that data into another desk of the same 

type on location. This summer, I observed 

that — instead of carrying their consoles 

on tour — many bands requested in their 

rider that a particular console be provided 

by the promoter. Once the band arrived onsite, 

the engineer loaded their show into the 

desk, and off they went. 

Wouldn’t It Be Great If… TBE 

As I was programming a Yamaha M7CL 

the other day at a sound check, I had a brainstorm: 

Wouldn’t it be great if I could load my 

scenes for the PM5D into the M7CL? In fact, 

it’d be amazing if we could have a universal 

storage format that loads our settings into 

any digital console regardless of make or 

model. 

I don’t think it’s as far-fetched as it 

sounds. Not too long ago, the concept of 

one manufacturer’s keyboard triggering 

sounds from a keyboard made by another 

manufacturer was a dream. For 20 years, it 

has been called MIDI. It would be an incredible 

resource for engineers if audio manufacturers 

could create a universal file format 

for digital mixer settings. We could call it 

SAMFF — Standard Audio Mixer File Format. 

OCTOBER 2007 

I’d like to see the manufacturers of digital 

consoles get together and create a common 

file format that would allow you to (for 

example) load a scene from your PM5D into 

a DiGiCo D5 Live. 

Obviously, we can’t expect that every 

setting would be identical, or even that the 

desks would sound the same. But at the 

very least, we could have the more “utilitarian” 

aspects of a console scene stored to this 

format. Settings such as channel name, pan, 

EQ on/off, dynamics on/off, DCA and mute 

assignment, phase normal/invert and send 

levels could be translated easily from one 

desk to another. 

I don’t think it’d be realistic to expect 

that your kick drum EQ on a Yamaha PM5D 

would be the same as on the Digidesign 

Venue — particularly when third-party 

plug-ins are involved. But simpler settings 

such as a high-pass filter should be easier 

to translate from console to console; we’d 

avoid the need for traveling with a bag full 

of memory cards, and it would give engineers 

a starting point when faced with a 

new console for the first time. Total recall? 

No, but at least it could save you setup time 

when you get to the gig. Mixers from many 

manufacturers can already be controlled via 

MIDI. It can’t be that far of a leap to somehow 

map that data from MIDI to whatever 

data format is used to file settings on their 

digital mixers. 

And Now for Something 

Completely Different… 

TBE 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a 

trend in loudspeaker design toward selfpowered 

units. Active loudspeakers have 

a lot of advantages over their passive 

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brethren. To start, there’s that often scary 

decision regarding what power amp to 

match with your new speakers. The designer 

of an active loudspeaker knows 

exactly “how much is enough” and will do 

the grunt work for you in this department. 

You don’t have to worry about setting 

crossover points, what type of filters to 

use and at what slope. The amount of cabling 

required to set up an act ve system 

is much less than that required for a passive 

system, and setup time for an active 

P.A. is shorter. There’s also less truck space 

required because you can likely lose the 

amp racks (especially advantageous when 

using active monitors). Since the amps in 

most active designs feature limiters or 

protection circuits of some type, chances 

of blowing up a driver are reduced, and 

because many active loudspeakers feature 

active crossover circuitry, amplifier 

muscle is used efficiently. 

In the Land of Oz TBE 

Alas, all is not perfect in the “Audio Department 

of Oz.” Most self-powered loudspeakers 

are heavier than passive speakers 

of similar size, simply because the cabinet is 

housing one or more amplifiers. You’ll have 

to run AC service to wherever the speaker is 

located, and this must be done with care to 

avoid interference with audio lines. If something 

inside that active cabinet fails, you 

temporarily lose the entire unit. 

You might be able to replace a defective 

cabinet more quickly, but it will probably be 

difficult to repair (replacing a broken amp in 

a powered array during a show is probably 

not going to happen). That’s a drag because 

it means that you need a spare for the entire 

By SteveLaCerra 

active unit — which is often more expensive 

than having say… an extra power amplifier 

lying around. It’s worth noting that some 

manufacturers have addressed this problem 

by employing modular construction 

in their active speakers cabinets, whereby 

a power amp can be quickly removed from 

the cabinet and replaced without moving 

or disturbing the placement of the cabinet. 

Very clever. 

So, if self-powered loudspeakers are 

the bomb, why (other than economics) 

are sound companies still designing P.A. 

systems with passive loudspeakers? There 

is one thing you lose with a self-powered 

loudspeaker — the do-it-yourself aspect 

of P.A. system design. I’d heard more than 

a few owners of sound companies bemoan 

the fact that using self-powered 

cabinets “ain’t like the old days.” One gentleman 

told me he was frustrated using 

a particular powered line array because 

he felt the low-frequency crossover was 

too high. In a passive system, he’d make a 

quick adjustment at the crossover to correct 

what he felt was an audible problem, 

but the active system did not offer access 

to such parameters, precluding the possibility 

for user-tweaking or fine-tuning. 

Of course, there’s always a possibility that 

if you dismantle that cabinet, you might 

find some control hidden inside… . 

Steve “Woody” La Cerra has been out on tour 

all summer mixing front-of-house for Blue 

Öyster Cult. He can be reached via e-mail at 

Woody@fohonline.com. 

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42 

Vital Stats 

Who: Jeffrey Cox, vice president, EAW Brand 

Group. 

What: Design and manufacture highperformance 

professional audio equipment. 

Where: Facilities in Whitinsville, Mass., and 

Woodinville, Wash. 

When: Founded in 1978. 

Full-time employees: Approximately 400. 

Number of products in catalog: 200 plus. 

Services provided: Professional audio 

equipment backed by customer support 

programs such as the Application Support 

Group (ASG) for the contracting community 

and ELAN (EAW Line Array Network) for the 

touring community, as well as educational 

programs such as the EAW B4 Roadshow 

and Smaart School. 

(Ed. Note: As the person who first said, 

“Hmmm, that French dude may just be on 

to something,” Jeff Cox is probably the individual 

most responsible for the shift from 

point-and-shoot to line array in large-scale 

live audio situations.) 

Recent projects of note: London Symphony 

Orchestra; DJ Tiesto at Bill Graham Civic 

Auditorium in San Francisco; World Scout 

Jamboree for 40,000-plus in the U.K.; Iron 

Maiden, Foreigner, and Simply Red tours; 

Festival Ollin Kan in Mexico City; and 2007 

NHL All-Star Game in Dallas; among many 

others. 

In The Trenches 

Owner 

Soundguy Productions 

Portland, OR 

www.prosoundguy.com 

503.998.5420 

sndguytm@yahoo.com 

Services Provided: 

Live sound reinforcement, installs, 

consulting, diagnostics, recording 

Clients: 

PG&E Park; Outlaws Bar & Grill; Mambo 

Lounge; City of West Linn; Pacific 

Northwest Church of God; Cascade Blues 

Association; Best of the Best Music; Latin 

Expressions; Debris; Brace the Fall; Shunt 

and many, many more... 

Quote: 

“Get it done! It doesn’t matter if the gear 

is blowing up — get the gig done and fix 

it later.” 

Personal Info: 

Grew up in the Portland area, started playing 

guitar at age 17. Decided I needed a 

“career” and started doing sound. I really 

Recent company highlight: Introductions 

of Smaart v.6 and the UX8800 digital 

signal processor with Gunness Focusing 

technology. 

The most interesting concert I ever 

worked was… constructing and participating 

in the Yanni at the Taj Mahal shows 

in 1997. The most interesting one I ever attended 

was the Beatles show at the Seattle 

Coliseum in 1965.” 

People might be surprised to know… I 

have an abiding passion for skiing, and I 

don’t like tomatoes.” 

The best part of my job is… exploring what 

the root of a problem is and fixing it.” 

What’s in his car CD player: The Songs of 

John Lennon; Instant Karma: The Amnesty 

International Campaign to Save Darfur; 

Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East; Jackson 

Browne Solo Acoustic Volume I; Van 

Morrison It’s Too Late to Stop Now…; Otis 

Redding Live in Europe; Lucinda Williams 

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road; (Little Feat’s 

Waiting for Columbus is standing by, on 

the seat). 

I’m inspired by… laughter; my daughter’s 

eyes and sense of humor; Mark Sidman’s 

command of the English language; any red 

from L’Aventure/Stephan Ridge winery; people 

who live passionately.” 

Answer to the question, “Can there be too 

many knobs?” “Probably…” 

RICH MORRIS 

Rich Morris Lance Longley 

enjoyed it and began Soundguy Productions 

in 2005. I have a 6-year-old daughter, 

so I have no interest in touring; staying local 

and making the best of it is my path. 

Hobbies: 

Playing guitar, spending time with my 

daughter, hanging out with all my friends 

in the business. 

Equipment: 

Allen & Heath consoles, Audix mics, 

Crown amps, Sennheiser and Shure mics. 

Don’t leave home without: 

CASH! — You never know when you are 

going to get somewhere and remember 

that you forgot something. 


How many ties currently in your closet: 

Hawaiian shirts: 31; Ties: 0. 

Good ears: genetically predisposed or 

learned? “Both — it’s a matter of recognizing 

your predisposition and then developing 

it.” 

Words to live by: “The acceptance of error 

with grace is to refuse to be vain and so 

afraid of losing face.” — Stephen Stills. 

Inside the EAW lab 

Sound Check Inc. 

Fort Lauderdale, FL 

954.643.3508 

flyingfader1@juno.com 

Services Provided: 

FOH, monitors, system tech 

Clients: 

Bang Music Festival in Miami; Michael 

Bublé; Inner Circle; Sturgis motorcycle rally 

in South Dakota; MTV Video Music Awards; 

Reggae Bash in New York. 

Quote: 

“The wheel turns, and Karma is a b#%$*. “ 

Bio: 

Ten years ago, I emigrated from South 

Africa, where I worked with many great musicians 

in the recording industry. I taught 

at Full Sail for two years, then went back 

on the road for a while and started doing 

Jeffrey Cox 

EAW Engineering 

Iron Maiden in concert 

the corporate gigs. I have three kids and a 

fantastic wife. 

Hobbies: 

Sailing and teaching the kids to swim, Pro 

tools and Macs. 

Equipment: 

BSS, Crown, EAW, JBL, Lake, Midas, Nexo, 

Shure, Soundcraft, TC Electronics, VerTec 

and Yamaha PM5D. 

Don’t leave home without: 

SM57, Gerber, Gaff tape and G.B.C.S. (Gig 

Butt Control Solutions). 

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 trenches@fohonline.com for more info.


44 

The Regional Anklebiters Slants 

Cruisin’ 

with Jonny B 

From Bass Player to Soundco Owner — 

Growing Up Without Growing Old 

By DavidJohnFarinella 

Hundreds of bar bands around 

the States are looking for a few 

things — a singer that can captivate 

an audience, a guitar player who 

can play quieter than 110 dB and a 

rhythm section that can hold the whole 

thing together. Jon McDowell, known 

to his friends around Rockford, Ill., as 

Jonny B, could help with the rhythm 

section bit, since he’s been playing bass 

in local bands for over a decade. The 

fact that he also owned a set of mains 

and a lighting rig when he joined his 

first band was a bonus. 

“I went out and spent $300 on 

eBay and got the job done.” 

— Jonny B. 

The father of the guitar player in Vision, 

a progressive rock band that he 

played in during the early to mid-90s, 

owned a console, snake and a handful of 

monitors, so the two came together and 

formed Mr. G Productions. “When I joined 

that band it was like a match made in 

heaven,” McDowell says. “But then the 

band broke up, and the sound company 

kinda ended. I still have the cabinets laying 

around,” he adds with a laugh, “if you 

know somebody that wants ‘em.” 

He moved from that band to another, 

continuing to add P.A. and lighting gear, 

and in 1999, launched Jonny B. Enterprises 

Inc. (www.jbe-inc.com). McDowell started 

out with a house gig at a local bar where 

he did sound for bands like Saliva, Drowning 

Pool, Soil and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt. 

“It was the ‘80s bands, but it was good exposure, 

and it was a semicontrolled environment 

— unlike touring — where I knew 

how everything should sound.” 

From the club dates, which he still does 

at a handful of venues around town, Mc- 

Dowell expanded into servicing outdoor 

events. It began with the Block 5 Party in 

Rockford — he started on the side stage in 

2001 and then took over the main stage in 

2003. This past Labor Day, he worked at The 

Iron Horse Bike & Music Festival just outside 

of Sabula, Iowa. 

Unlike many who own and operate 

regional sound companies, McDowell 

has kept his day job at Martin Automatic 

Inc. in Rockford, Ill. He’s been there 17 

years and is currently in charge of the 

company’s electronics lab. “I get to work 

with electronics, so it’s hand-in-hand with 

the sound stuff I’m doing,” McDowell says. 

“I make most of my own cabling, and a 

handful of my cabinets I made myself. I also 

have ultimate flexibility.” 

As an example, he points to a recent 

phone call he received from a former 

brother-in-law who books the Badger 

OCTOBER 2007 

Music Theater in Reedsburg, Wisc. “He 

called me up at 10:30 in the morning, 

saying that he needed two mixing consoles 

with at least 40 channels for a 

Great White show that night,” McDowell 

says. “So, I walked into my boss and 

said, “I’ve got a chance to do sound for 

Great White tonight. If I get the time off, 

great; if you need me to be here, that’s 

fine, too.’” After making sure his day gig 

was covered, McDowell was off, and the 

show went on as planned. 

While he’s proud of the steps the 

company has taken over the past eight 

years, McDowell is the first 

to admit that Jonny B. 

Enterprises Inc. is 

the newcomer in 

town. “I handle 

the overflows — the 

little stuff that nobody 

wants to do,” he says. 

For instance, he recently did a show 

that featured a handful of second-stage 

Ozzfest bands. “We brought in a 10-box 

P.A., two monitor boards and a lighting 

package for $500. Nobody would have 

touched that.” Yet, he did, after talking 

to the show’s promoter and finding out 

that only a small amount of tickets had 

been sold. “I gave him my minimum operating 

cost, but it’s one of those things 

that I’ll help you out now, you help me 

out later. I’ve got a monitor guy who is 

kind of green, so it was a perfect chance 

for him to get a bunch of experience on 

a 40-channel front of house console. I 

showed up just in case, but it was a nice 

little test for the guy.” 

At the same time, there are the jobs 

that he gets from referrals. One example 

is work at this year’s Iron Horse 

Combined Driving Event in Caledonia, 

Ill. The job came to McDowell from a 

guy who manages a band that he does 

sound for occasionally. He went out, 

met with the event planner and then 

got to work, putting together a system 

that would work on the 400-acre property. 

In fact, this was the type of gig that 

combined his experience with electronics 

and pro audio. 

McDowell had to set up a P.A. inside a 

tent where a horse-and-buggy competition 

was planned and then set up another 

pair of speakers about a quarter of a mile 

away so that fans could keep up on the 

action. He found a half-dozen FM radios, 

went on eBay and purchased an FM transmitter. 

Then, he set up the distant system 

with a couple of Yamaha CM15Vs on a stick, 

a Crown XTI-4000 amplifier and a noise 

gate. “Anybody else would have been looking 

for multithousand-dollar professional 

links,” he says. “I went out and spent $300 

on eBay and got the job done.” 

That’s not the first time he’s used his 

electronics knowledge to build gear. In ad- 

dition to the company’s 

cabling, McDowell 

built the eight 

Labhorn subs he uses. 

“I refer to them as my 

children,” he says with 

a laugh, “because it 

took me nine months 

to build the eight of 

them.” The Labhorns are 

part of the company’s 

“A” system, which also includes 

eight Electro-Voice 

MTH-1 mains, powered by 

QSC amps. The company 

also has a smaller 10-box 

“B” system (four MTH-1Xs 

and six MTH-1s) and an 

eight-box “C” system (four 

Peavey DTH Concert Sub 

Is and four Peavey DTH- 

S4s) that are used for 

club dates. 

For consoles, Mc- 

Dowell uses a Ramsa 

WRS-852 together 

with a Soundcraft 

Spirit Monitor II as the 

company’s main rig. 

The 10-box rig has a 

Soundcraft Series 2 

board for FOH and 

a Behringer MX- 

8000 for monitors, 

while the eight-box 

setup gets a Mackie 

1604VLZ. McDowell 

will be looking under 

the Christmas tree for 

a digital board this 

year. “Maybe something 

Yamaha,” he says. 

“Depends on whether 

Santa thinks I’ve been 

good or bad.” 

McDowell’s looking 

to add one more small 

rig before the season 

changes. “In the winter, 

it boils down to bars and 

bowling alleys around 

here,” he reports. The “D” 

rig currently includes a 

pair of JTR Growler subs 

and Yamaha CM15Vs with 

Crown XTI-4000 power, 

but McDowell is looking 

to add and subtract some 

things. He’ll also use that 

smaller rig for sidefill on 

his bigger gigs. 

For a monitor rig to 

go out with the “A” system, 

McDowell supplies 

eight CGM 212s 

(although he specifies 

Baltic birch and 

different horns); EV 


FOH @ The Iron Horse Bike & Music festival, Labor Day weekend 2007 

Downtown Rockford at Davis Park 

Stage left for Kottonmouth Kings. 

Left stack — DJ; 

right stack — everything else. 

Monitor world for Static X



46 

The Regional Anklebiters Slants 

Jon McDowell at FOH during the 2005 Block 5 party in Rockford, Ill. 

OCTOBER 2007 

Stage at Static X at Forest Hills Lodge, May 2007 


Eliminator KW subs and tops are used 

as sidefills and the drum fill is an EV 

Eliminator KW sub plus a wedge. QSC 

and Crown power that package. The 

“B” system has eight Yamaha SM15Vs 

and a pair of Peavey SP4s for drum 

fills with QSC power; the “C” system 

has two Peavey SP12Ms, two SP15Ms 

and two JBL JRX125s for drum fill, 

plus Behringer power. 

Currently, the company has four 

employees, including McDowell, who 

work most of the events. The company’s 

owner believes it’s part of his responsibility 

to educate the newbies, 

so he holds classes at the shop to 

teach them about which equipment 

works on each musical genre, as well 

as the ins and outs of the pieces of 

audio gear. 

As he continues to build his business 

in Rockford, McDowell is looking 

to pick up the occasional regional 

tour, and he’s polished his touring 

chops on the Jagermeister Tour. “So, 

I’ve had my taste of it and would 

love to get to the point where I can 

quit my day job,” he says. “Maybe in 

another three or four years I’ll get to 

that. But, I don’t want to get too big 

before I have the people to handle 

it, either. Like a lot of people say, it’s 

not the shows that you don’t take 

that hurt you, it’s the ones that you 

do take where things go wrong that 

hurt.” 

Know a regional soundco that deserves some 

props? E-mail regionalslants@fohonline.com. 

Soldering 101 

Higher soldering temperatures 

risk melting other materials like circuit 

boards, plastics and the occasional 

finger that were not planned to 

melt under typical couple-second 

reflow time periods. If you have the 

luxury of setting a soldering iron tip 

temperature, choose 650 degrees 

Fahrenheit or use with 60/40 solders. 

Do not use solder without a rosin 

core (R or RMA) flux, as the flux in 

the core is needed to deoxidize the 

metals to be joined together. 

— Mark Amundson from Theory 

and Practice, PLSN September 2007


Over the last 10 years, we all have seen 

the market for self-powered speakers 

grow to the point where they 

are now at least as popular as nonpowered 

speakers. For someone like me, who has a 

small regional company and a relatively limited 

crew, using powered speakers makes my 

setup faster, easier and requires less thinking 

than a traditional passive speaker, amps and 

crossover system (the less-thinking part is 

very important for me and my crew). So, the 

next obvious question is: Why not use this 

self-powered speaker technology in a permanent 

house of worship installation? 

The simple answer is that you can permanently 

mount self-powered speakers in 

any location where you would install nonpowered 

speakers (given that you have 

available Edison plugs). But why would you? 

Early Experience SS 

When I first began my career as a sound 

system installer, self-powered speakers were 

more of a novelty than anything else. Installed 

sound systems were about matching 

the amp to the speaker’s resistance load and 

power-handling capabilities, making sure 

you set your crossovers properly and that 

you used good speaker wire. (Young sound 

guys, who have only ever used self-powered 

speakers, look at me like I am from another 

planet when I ask them about the ohm load 

of a cabinet.) 

The first time I installed powered speakers 

in a church was about eight years ago. 

The church already had a speaker cluster 

48 

Sound Sanctuary 

Powered or Not??? 

News 

Parnelli Voting Now Open 

continued from cover 

honoring both the individuals and companies. 

This year’s winners in such categories as FOH 

Mixer, Sound Company, Staging Company, 

and more, will be determined by online votes, 

so go online and let your voice be heard. 

The Parnelli program gives away more 

than awards, though. The inaugural Parnelli/PLSN/FOH 

scholarship at UNLV was recently 

awarded to Stephanie DeFraga in the 

UNLV Theatre program. 

This commitment to education is deeply 

rooted in the Parnelli ideal. Much more than 

being just about the person who gets the 

great gig and pulls it off flawlessly, a Parnelli 

award is also about moving our industry forward 

with the same qualities that defined 

the person after whom it is named. Named 

after Rick “Parnelli” O’Brien, an extraordinary 

production manager and human being, the 

award is given to those who, like O’Brien, exemplify 

the “four Hs”: Humanity, humility, honesty 

and humor. 

Part of the prestige of the Parnellis lays in 

its foundation as a peer-recognized award. To 

win a Parnelli, a person or firm is first nominated 

by their peers. Their peers then vote on 

these nominees, and a winner is declared at 

the Parnelli Awards ceremony. 

For more information, visit www.parnelliawards.com. 

hanging above the stage. I never have really 

liked this type of install, but it was a 

very popular way of hanging speakers, and 

I guess it still has some fans. At any rate, the 

cluster was blowing the sound right by the 

people in the front rows, so some additional 

boxes were needed to augment the system. 

I suggested mounting one full-range powered 

speaker box at either side of the stage, at 

about seven feet above the stage deck. These 

speakers could be directed at the front couple 

of rows of the church, and I used a separate 

send from the mixing board to drive them. 

This way, I could turn the powered speakers up, 

down or off, independent of the main speakers. 

I had a separate graphic EQ for the powered 

speakers, which allowed me to EQ them 

completely separate from the mains. Basically, 

the powered speakers acted as front fills for 

the main system. This worked very well and 

gave the church the flexibility necessary for 

the congregation’s listening needs. 

My next use of self-powered speakers 

was with a couple of powered wedges that 

I added to a monitor system. This house 

of worship had four monitors on its stage 

and needed some additional coverage. 

The monitor system was matched to the 

power amps, and adding new nonpowered 

speakers would upset the ohm (that word 

again) load. The stage also was prewired 

with speaker wires from an amp room a fair 

distance away. It was impractical to add another 

power amp and run the new speaker 

wires down the hall from the amp room to 

the worship stage. 


The Financial Times was the most 

outspoken, saying: “It was only a matter 

of time before private equity had a MAC 

attack. It is fitting that KKR, the original 

barbarian, was the first to play hardball 

on a private equity transaction by claiming 

a material adverse change (MAC) in 

the target’s business. That gave it cover 

to renege on April’s $8 billion buy-out, 

alongside Goldman Sachs, of audio 

equipment group Harman International. 

“It is a bizarre outcome. Before the 

credit markets blew up, Harman was so 

worried KKR might be getting too sweet 

a deal that it insisted on its shareholders 

retaining an equity stub in the company. 

Now, rather than thinking it has got a 

bargain, KKR is running for the hills.” 

Whatever the cause for the back out, 

it is almost certainly related to Harman’s 

automotive business, which accounts 

for a large majority of its overall trade. 

On the Monday after FFR/GS backed out 

of the deal, Harman announced much 

lower than expected profits, laying the 

blame at the feet of the automotive side 

and increased R&D costs related to that 

part of the business. 

As one source said, “They either can’t 

do the deal because they can’t get the 


So, I used an extra aux send from the 

board, which arrived at the stage via a 

hardwired snake. I just needed some Edison 

for my powered monitors, and I was 

set. These particular monitors had their 

own volume control, EQ and limiting, so 

nothing else was needed to get them up 

and running. Since then, I have added 

powered monitors to probably a dozen existing 

monitor systems. As a matter of fact, 

when I get a call to mix, I bring a couple of 

powered monitors with me in case I need 

some additional coverage. 

From the Sanctuary to the Street SS 

Harman Buyout Dead 

Of course, if you read my “Out Reach” article 

from last month’s FOH, you can see how 

easy it is to take a self-powered system and 

move it outdoors or to some other location. 

But to be fair, I am talking about permanently 

installed worship systems and the pros 

and cons of powered versus nonpowered. 

One of the potential cons related to 

self-powered systems is servicing. If your 

speaker box fails to operate, you’ve got to 

uninstall it to service it. With a nonpowered 

system, you can usually get to a power 

amp much more easily than getting to 

a speaker box. Of course, powered or nonpowered, 

speaker components usually fail 

before an amp fails. I am obviously talking 

in general, but the reality of planning a 

sound system is that you must plan for repair 

and replacement. You also have to be 

certain to plan out your Edison. Powered 

boxes need power. 

money, or the money would cost them 

so much that the deal is no longer as interesting 

for them. It will be interesting 

to see if it ends up in court or not. Sid 

is by no means a dumb guy and may, in 

fact, make Harman a ton of money for 

having them back out.” The MAC claim 

includes an attempt to keep from paying 

the contractually stipulated $225 million 

termination fee. 

AMS Picks Up Turbo 


marketplace,” Blackwood says. 

“American Music & Sound is extremely 

well aligned to take Turbosound to the 

next level in the U.S. They have a number 

of complimentary product lines in their 

roster to leverage our brand and are in a 

perfect position to market our products 

through their existing channels.” 

Lynn Martin, president of American 

Music & Sound noted Turbosound’s 

reputation for innovative systems and 

comments, “We are honored to have 

them on board, and we look forward to 

spearheading Turbosound’s push into 

the American market.” 

By JamieRio 

As far as picking out your system component 

manufacturers, I believe just about 

every speaker manufacture builds powered 

and nonpowered boxes. Once you have decided 

what manufacturer you will be using, 

you can price out the difference between 

powered boxes versus nonpowered boxes, 

amps, crossovers, etc. I actually would be very 

interested in somebody putting together an 

entire system — one powered and one nonpowered 

— using the same manufacturer’s 

products. I think it would be very interesting 

to see where things add up as far as price 

goes. If anyone out there decides to do this 

type of research, please e-mail me with your 

results. I would be very curious to know. 

Anyway, back to my subject. I have been 

leaning toward using powered install boxes 

for my latest projects, except in the case of 

wall- or ceiling-mounted speaker installations 

where the project requires four, six, 

eight or more speakers in a particular room. 

Finding Edison for all those speakers could 

be difficult. Needless to say, anytime I put 

something into a wall or ceiling, I will continue 

to use a nonpowered speaker. 

I think the bottom line here is that one 

type of system probably doesn’t sound better 

than any other type, but it may be easier 

for a church volunteer to operate a powered 

system rather than a nonpowered system. 

The plug-and-play aspect of a good powered 

system can really shine when you have 

a non-pro operating it. 

Send a letter to Jamie at jrio@fohonline.com

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Lighting Designer 

Abbey Holmes — Martina McBride 

Bob Dickenson — Super Bowl Halftime 

Show 

Butch Allen — Van Halen 

Patrick Woodroffe — Genesis 

Roy Bennett — Tim McGraw & Faith Hill 

Seth Jackson — Toby Keith 

Set/Scenic Designer 

Bruce Rodgers — Super Bowl Halftime Show 

Butch Allen — Christina Aguilera 

Jim Lenahan — John Mayer 

Mike Swinford — Kenny Chesney 

Seth Jackson — Toby Keith 

Roy Bennett — Tim McGraw & Faith Hill 

Lighting Company 

PRG — Justin Timberlake 

Bandit Lites — Toby Keith 

Ed & Ted’s Excellent Lighting — Beyoncé 

TMS Lighting — John Mayer 

Premier Global — Def Leppard 

Upstaging — Tim McGraw & Faith Hill 

Staging Company 

Brown United — Bonnaroo 

Mountain Productions — Crossroads 

Guitar Festival 

Stageco — Metallica 

G2 Structures — Kenny Chesney 

Kleege Industries — Bob Dylan 

Set Construction Company 

All Access Staging & Productions — 

Rascal Flatts 

Atomic Design — My Chemical Romance 

B&R Scenery — Super Bowl Halftime 

G&G Design Associates — BlizzCon 2007 

Tait Towers — The Police 

PRG/Scenic Technologies — Wicked 

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2007 Parnelli Ballot 

Be front and center as the industry salutes its finest 

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Bob Heil 

Audio Innovator Award 


When: November 16, 2007 • 7pm Where: The Peabody Orlando Hotel • Orlando, FL 

SILVER SPONSORS 

Video Rental Company 

I-MAG Video — Rascal Flatts 

Screenworks/NEP — Kenny Chesney 

Nocturne — Tim McGraw & Faith Hill 

Moo TV — Martina McBride 

Pete’s Big TVs — Bruce Springsteen 

XL Touring Video — Roger Waters 

Rigging Company 

Five Points Rigging 

Atlanta Rigging 

Kish Rigging 

Ocean State Rigging 

Branam West Coast 

Stage Rigging 

Hometown Hero Lighting Company 

Northeast — Earl Girls, Egg Harbor 

City, NJ 

Southeast — Theatrical Lighting 

Services, Huntsville, AL 

Midwest — Koster Design, Hollister, MO 

Northwest — M&M Audio Labs, Coeur d’ 

Alene, ID 

Southwest — Precise Corporate Staging, 

Tempe, AZ. 

Canada — Christie Lites, Toronto, Ontario 

Pyro Company 

Advanced Entertainment Services — 

Various Shows 

Pyrotek Special Effects — My Chemical 

Romance 

Strictly FX — Toby Keith 

Zenith Pyro — WWE Wrestlemania 23 

Pyro Spectacular — Super Bowl Halftime 

FOH Mixer 

Ken “Pooch” Van Druten — Linkin Park 

Dirk Durham — Toby Keith 

Chris Rabold — Widespread Panic 

Trip Khalaf — Roger Waters 

Robert Collins — Eric Clapton 

Tom Young — Tony Bennett 

HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION 

Video Director 

Andre Nolan — Martina McBride 

Bob Higgins — Santana 

Carol Dodds — Eagles 

Breck Haggerty — Tool 

Alastair MacDiarmid — Roger Waters 

Kevin Daniels — Toby Keith 

Monitor Mixer 

Bill Chrysler — Christina Aguilera 

Earl Neil — Toby Keith 

Kevin “Tater” McCarthy — Linkin Park 

Kevin Glendening — Justin Timberlake 

Stuart Delk — Rascal Flatts 

Mike Adams — John Mayer 

Sound Company 

Clair/Showco — Roger Waters 

Audio Analysts — Project Revolution 

Sound Image — Gwen Stefani 

Rat Sound — Red Hot Chili Peppers 

Eighth Day Sound — Arcade Fire 

Thunder Audio — Steely Dan 

Hometown Hero Sound Company 

Midwest — Great Lakes Sound, 

Toledo, OH 

Northeast — Firehouse Productions, New 

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Northwest — Carlson Audio, Seattle, WA 

Southeast — Brantley Sound Associates, 

Nashville, TN 

Southwest — Big House Sound, Austin, TX 

Canada — Sound Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba 

Production Manager 

Bill Rahmy — Red Hot Chili Peppers 

Ed Wannabo — Kenny Chesney 

Scott Chase — Tim McGraw & Faith Hill 

Mike Weiss — Barbra Streisand 

Jake Berry — Walking With Dinosaurs 

Chris Adamson — John Mayer 

GOLD SPONSORS 

Tour Manager 

Jerome Crooks — Beastie Boys 

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Coach Company 

Hemphill Brothers 

Four Seasons Leasing 

Music City Coaches 

Senators 

Ziggy’s Custom Coaches 

Trucking Company 

Janco 

Stage Call 

Rock-it Cargo 

Road Show 

Ego Trips 

Upstaging 

Freight Forwarding Company 

Rock-it Cargo 

Fed EX 

Shockwave 

Show Freight 

Horizon 

EFM 

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Parnelli Lifetime 

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2007 OCTOBER 51

FOH-At-Large 

Let The Feeding Frenzy Begin… 

By BakerLee 

The AES convention is the 

feeding frenzy of the audio 

world. Like sharks to chum, 

audiophiles from the world over 

descend upon the caucus and devour 

the newest, the latest and the 

yet-to-come of the best that audio 

manufacturers can offer. It is a 

feeding frenzy catering to the most 

basic needs of any gear-head. As 

exhilarating as it is overwhelming 

in its enormity, the experience of 

AES truly has the feel of a school of 

sharks gorging themselves on the 

massive body of a whale until they 

are overly satiated by their own 

gluttony and can do nothing but 

float belly-up in a stupor. Each year 

seems to bring more vendors, newer 

products and, in short, more bells 

and whistles. While many products 

are just the same old offerings in a 

new package, there are always the 

new designs, add-ons and plug-ins 

that make the convention exciting 

and worthwhile. 

As a vendor for a rental house, 

I am prone to stick with the items 

that tend to be the most requested 

on any given rider. As much as 

I would like to have everybody’s 

first-choice item, it is almost impossible 

to stock everything that 

everyone wants or needs. It is 

imperative for us to make our choices based 

upon our own buying budget and what we 

think will bring us the best return for the dollar. 

Whereas I, for example, am a big fan of the 

Joe Meek compressor, the unit is not necessarily 

an item that I would stock as a rental 

piece. However, it would make for a nice 

piece of gear in my personal effects rack. 

COMING NEXT 

MONTH... 

Installation: 

The Jersey Boys 

play Chicago and 

transform a historic 

theatre. 

Production Profile: 

Umbrellas to 

the ready — it’s 

time for Seattle’s 

Bumbershoot festival. 

AES 

As a vendor for a rental house, I am prone 

to stick with the items that tend to be the 

most requested on any given rider. As much 

as I would like to have everybody’s firstchoice 

item, it is almost impossible to stock 

everything that everyone wants or needs. 

The Avalon 737, on the other hand, 

is a great little pre-amp/compressor that 

can be used as a rental item as well as going 

nicely in one’s personal rack. In recent 

years, I have seen certain engineers who 

still have Aphex Aural Exciters in their 

racks, and they swear by them to this day. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with 

this unit, it was introduced in 1975 and 

was so in demand that it rented for $30 per 

recorded minute. It was, in its prime, considered 

the Holy Grail of audio electronics. 

Since then, it has become considerably 

cheaper and used in recording, broadcast 

touring and fixed installations. It’s a great 

piece of equipment, so how many units am 

I going to buy? Not a single unit! I don’t 

see it on riders anymore. 

We are all like kids in a candy store at 

AES. “I just need this, and this, and this…,” 

and year after year, it only gets that much 

more difficult to keep up. My wireless mi- 


crophones and personal monitors work 

fine, but I need the newer models because, 

not only do they sound better, they also 

scan internally until they find available frequencies. 

This feature is a real time-saver, 

especially when setting up multiple channels. 

Speaking of which, the airwaves are 

getting so crowded these days that the 

Helical Antenna is the next thing on my “to 

purchase” list, right after I get some new I/O 

cards for my PM5D. 

So what is it that makes a piece of gear 

become a staple of the industry? I tend to 

think of it in terms of ergonomics. Take, for 

example, the Heritage 3000, which debuted 

in 1999. It has all the features of the XL-4, but 

in a smaller package. It came on the market 

as a streamlined XL-4 and started to push 

aside the Yamaha 4K as the “go to” board 

because it has everything the 4K has plus 

more. With its automation and 24 auxiliary 

mixes (or 12 stereo), it was perfect for the 

oncoming tide of personal monitoring. 

By 2002, it was almost a 

necessity for any self-respecting 

sound company to have at least 

one Heritage 3000 in stock. 

Yamaha, who had introduced 

its PM4K in 1992 and whose hold 

on the market hadn’t been significantly 

threatened, decided to 

compete with Midas by releasing 

the PM5K. I like the console and 

thought that it might make a nice 

addition to my audio arsenal. 

However, at the time, the digital 

revolution was in full swing, 

and in my estimation, I could 

not foresee the need for another 

large-frame analog console. Not 

that my personal analysis had 

any effect on Yamaha or the marketplace, 

but as far as I could tell, 

digital was the next wave. 

It’s amazing to think that 

it was only seven years ago, in 

2000, that Yamaha introduced 

the PM1D, and that within only 

a few years, the PM5D started to 

inundate the market. With the innovations 

in the audio industry 

moving at such a quick pace, it 

is almost impossible, as an audio 

provider, to keep up. There are 

new products flooding the market 

each day, and while some are 

just repackaging the same old ideas, others 

are truly groundbreaking and have staying 

power. Many times, with the advent of 

some new product, it is the audio company 

that can accommodate the winning product, 

but the question still remains, “With 

the rapidly changing marketplace, how 

does one decide which product will sustain 

the test of time?” 

It is truly an amazing experience to 

wander the isles of the AES convention, 

and I am excited at the prospect of overindulging 

myself in an orgy of new gear 

and accessories that may or may not enhance 

my mixes, my sales and my inventory. 

I can’t wait to be milling around with 

thousand of my peers as some salesman is 

selling me on a new microphone that is so 

sensitive it can pick up my thoughts…even 

before I think them. 

Speaking of innovative products: As 

the new owner of Midas, Bosch might think 

about releasing a new item for consumption 

that will allow me to mix a show while riding 

around my yard on one of those tractor lawn 

mowers. I’m sure it will be great, although I 

may want to wait until next year to buy it 

since the upgrade might be able to do my 

taxes as well. 

E-mail Baker at his shark tank : blee@fo - 

honline.com.

Harman Buyout Dead - FOH Online

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