You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right? Am I wrong?”
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”
Letting the days go by (same as it ever was, same as it ever was)….
—From Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”
It’s been over a year since the world has reopened and rebounded from the Covid-19 shutdown, and while many things have reclaimed a sense of normalcy, it’s difficult to escape the feeling that we have slipped into an alternate reality. The way we do business has changed, supply chains have been interrupted, prices have increased, a line has been drawn in the sand and attitudes have hardened on either side of the line. Discussions have deteriorated into screaming matches; what we call debating is, well, debatable with indignation and a profound sensitivity having all but destroyed humor. A middle ground seems to have gone missing, with color and nuance reduced to lighter and darker shades of grey.
Ch-Ch-Changes
Obviously, this change, if it is a change, didn’t happen overnight. It took years of silent seething, bickering and intolerance to get where we are now and, as is often the case, it’s difficult to see the outcome of our actions as we go through the daily motions of our lives. This shift is a culmination of a day-to-day assault on our collective reality until one day we open our eyes and the transition is complete. Since we have gone through the change in a linear fashion, everything might seem normal, but if one were to wake up into this reality from a three of four-year sleep it would probably feel like the earth shifted on its axis.
Recently a friend of mine told me that he was asked to bring in a sound system for a rally/fundraiser. It was a rather large space and he stood to make a decent payday for his efforts, but he told me he declined the offer because he didn’t agree with the views of the rally and refused to help them amplify that which he found to be distasteful. I told him that I thought it was a bit over the top on his part since providing audio for the group was just a payday and didn’t mean he was in solidarity with them, but he would not be swayed and stuck to his principals. He didn’t make his refusal into a public statement; he just quietly declined the proposition saying he was too busy. The organizers, of course, found another vendor who either agreed with their platform or didn’t let their personal views interfere with the job, and the rally took place as scheduled. This could be construed as a type of censorship and discrimination, but similar to a publisher who refuses to distribute a book that disturbs their sensibilities, it is a personal choice.
The “C” Word
When a government bans a book, it is censorship. Books embody ideas and are made to take the reader on a journey and make then think outside their own thoughts and reality. If a parent, community or library doesn’t agree that a book is age appropriate or politically correct, they can remove it from their homes or their shelves, but to ban it universally because someone has been offended is, to me, offensive. What one person finds offensive another person might find enlightening, and as we all know, there is no accounting for taste. What if an overly zealous person decided that The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook should be banned for inappropriate content? “How could that be?” you ask. Let’s look at some of the sections.
On page 227, Chapter 13.7.3.5: “Biamp or Triamp vs. Conventional.” Need we go any further? The title alone is inflammatory, but if we start to read, it states, “Bi- or triamplified systems offer a number of performance advantages, such as increased headroom.” Okay, that’s enough for me, not to mention that “headroom” has its own section on page 165 — “2.5.4 Headroom.” Okay, I didn’t really read that section, but I get the picture. This is a book that teaches graphic material, and on page 68, even has pictures under the title “Graphic Equalizer Block Diagram!”
Apparently, nothing is too depraved for this book, but it gets worse, with chapters on methods of transformers, transduction, transducers and polarity testing. Bidirectional mics should definitely be forbidden — and don’t even speak to me about Aural Exciters and active crossovers. It’s pretty obvious there is a hidden message being conveyed in this ostensibly technical handbook.
The Ins and Outs!
Page 64 in the handbook talks about connectors, TRS, TS phone plugs and RCA plugs. There are even pictures, but the most provocative has to be the male and female XLRs. As audio engineers, we all know the importance of following the signal flow. This means we need to know what is sending and what is receiving. Considering that the send is typically male and the receptor is female, it means the microphone’s XLR output is male and the cable connector that receives signal from the microphone is female. This cable then terminates in a male connector that inserts into the receiving female input on the console. We all know that a male connector cannot plug into another male connector and neither can a female plug into another female connector, but if one needs the male XLR cable to terminate as a female XLR, they just have to turn it around. These turnarounds are either male-to-male or female-to-female and will easily change the gender of the connector from a send into a receive and vice-versa.
The Not-So-Hidden Agenda
Do not be deceived, for as innocuous as this audio handbook appears to be, it is full of descriptive deviant practices such as the use of inserts and plug-ins. Nowadays, with digital consoles and digital outboard gear, every channel can have an inserted plug-in. Many of these plug-ins are toys known as compressors, limiters and gates, and they have thresholds, range and makeup output; not to mention the insidious attack and release times!
To illustrate the problem, just turn to page 72 under section 14.3.3: Setup Adjustments that states: “Too fast a release results in pumping or breathing as the gain changes rapidly.” Really? Other than all this veiled obscenity, this book also contains math and formulas to determine loads and resistance as well as discussions of frequency response. Pretty dicey material, since the last thing anyone needs to know is how many times one might respond. Don’t even get me started on input and output impedance; the word alone sounds like filth, and I don’t have to read much more than that to know that this book should be banned before it lands in impressionable young hands and distorts them for life.
Contact Baker Lee at blee@fohonline.com or at New York’s Kings Park Psychiatric Center, where visiting hours are from 2 to 4 p.m. on alternate Thursdays.
