News flash: I actually went to a show recently and PAID for tickets. They were really crappy seats. And I bought them from a ticket broker. I did it for my lovely wife, who is a big Eagles fan and had never seen the band (not even this postmodern version). I, on the other hand, saw them at the Fabulous Forum on the Hotel California tour, which means that, yes, I am officially old. Not really. That was in, what, 1977? So I must have been about two years old at the time. I wasn't 17. Really. Anyway, the reason for this admission that will no doubt make me the object of ridicule amongst my peers is this: I got a "fan in the cheap seats" experience with a modern sound system, and guess what? Line arrays really work! At least, it worked in this venue and for this show.
I had what could be kindly described as lousy seats both from both visual and sonic perspectives–straight back from the stage at the back of the arena (the MGM Grand Garden) in the second to the last row. That means I was about 40 feet above the stage with a concrete wall about four feet behind my head with exactly one human body between my ears and the cement. It should have been a mess. I remember having seats like that at other shows growing up and the sound was just…bad. Not just because the technology of the '70s and '80s was not as advanced as it is today, but because the sound was hitting my ears, then the wall and then bouncing back. It was a muffled, incoherent mess.
But in 2005, the sound in those crappy seats was pretty damn good. In fact, it was better than pretty good. It was coherent. You could hear all of the words and distinguish between instruments and even pick out individual voices from the signature five-part Eagles harmonies.
No real point here except that most of us tend to hear shows from backstage or the FOH position, and it was a nice break to get a punter's ear view (is that a word?) for the first time in a while, and to be pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
Can We All Just Get Along?
At the AES show, I was struck by how screwed up the pro audio world is when it comes to adhering to a common standard. In this case, I am referring to the plethora of competing systems for the digital distribution and control of audio. Just to make sure that my sudden insight was not the delayed result of youthful drug use, I asked a whole bunch of people at the show–key people in the manufacturing and soundco sectors–about the whole mess. I put my theory to one noted sound guy who will remain nameless, but whose views are valued by a lot of audio manufacturers. The theory is that the proliferation of competing systems for doing the same thing is the live event audio industry's version of the Betamax vs. VHS debate, in which Sony's admittedly superior technology died because they were looking for a system that they owned and could charge for anytime someone else wanted to use it. They did the same thing with MiniDiscs, and look how popular those became.
Anyway, I said to my nameless sound guru that I thought that the competing standards were the manufacturers' way of making sure that only their gear could be used throughout a P.A. because only their gear could be controlled by their system. And I said that I didn't think it would work. He replied, "Yes and no." I looked at him with that confused look so many know me for, and he said, "I am agreeing with you. Yes, that is what they are trying to do and no, it's not going to work."
I understand that the various control systems are different and each has their pros and cons. But I can't help but think about a time in the early '80s when a couple of guys from Yamaha and Roland got together and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if our stuff could talk to each other?" And from that, MIDI was born, and it fueled a huge increase in the use of electronic music-making products. If it had a MIDI jack on it, I knew it would work with the other stuff in my system that had the same jack. (A quick aside: It is telling that Yamaha was one of the companies that made MIDI possible and is also leading the charge in supporting multiple digital formats with add-on cards for their digital consoles. This is called moving in the right direction.)
Methinks there is something to learn here. It's time to take a bunch of industry engineers and lock them all in a room somewhere until they come up with a standard that we can all live with. I guarantee you that a single standard would increase sales across the board as the great mass of working sound guys who want nothing to do with these systems would then gain the confidence that the gear they buy today will interface with the piece they buy tomorrow, no matter who makes it.
But don't hold your breath. We asked a dozen companies who make and develop this kind of stuff if they foresaw a time in the near future when we would have a single standard, and all but one of them answered, "No."
This is called moving in the wrong direction.
