I just flew in from the InfoComm 2015 — and boy, are my arms tired. You can read all the highlights and hot product picks starting on page 22. But I’m not much of a fan of the show. Actually, I really like InfoComm and I even like Orlando, but the combination of both in mid-June is a recipe for disaster. The weather is bad. Sure, Las Vegas (where the show alternates) is also hot, but at least it’s not humid, and when the humidity rises, it rains.
This is no problem unless all air traffic shuts down due to Orlando’s frequent thunderstorms. That happened to me and thousands of fellow travelers (seemingly half of the InfoComm attendees) who endured a three-hour departure delay after the show, many stuck on the tarmac for hours. The bad part? As Orlando isn’t a hub to anywhere, with few non-stop flights, many passengers wound up stranded as a result of the rain delays.
We can’t entirely blame Orlando for that. Yet with nearly every hotel, restaurant and summer flight packed with screaming kids headed to/from a Disney vacation and traffic jams that make L.A. seem uncrowded, the town gets on your nerves after a few days.
If you overlook the logistical malaise of mid-June Orlando, the show was great. However, within the convention center, there were some ironic hitches, especially for an organization representing information communications industries. At the last Orlando show, signage pointing to the audio demo rooms in the lower level labyrinth was severely lacking, and it was equally bad this time around. And after queries to onsite personnel and searching the show’s iPhone app, printed Show Guide and InfoComm website, I could not ascertain the location of the airport shuttles. The secret was finally revealed to me by a baggage check worker, who was surprised that she seemed to be the only person entrusted with such knowledge.
The Good Live
However, once within the audio section of the show (it’s set off by red carpeting that warns digital signage attendees to stay clear of the area), it’s evident that the sound reinforcement/install industries are doing fine. On the audio side, there were 300+ exhibitors and more than 20 demo rooms. I ran into a friend who’s a representative of the AES, and he was impressed by the scope of the exhibit floor. Certainly, there were days in the not-too-distant past when AES had that kind of support. While AES has made some inroads towards regaining the participation it once had from the live community, it truly pales in comparison to the scale of this exhibition focused solely on live/installed audio.
Live? Yes. Vintage? No.
One major reason for the health of the live market comes from this simple truth: “There is no such thing as vintage live.” While many in the recording community recording pine for the gear of yesteryear, no one working in live dreams of doing a gig on a PM1000, a couple DC300’s and a stack of Altec A-7’s. That reality is reflected in the large-format console market, where a glut of used studio consoles exist, with many at bargain prices. Consequently, the market for new recording boards has shrunk considerably, while nearly 20 large live sound consoles have come out in the past couple years.
It’s a Hard-Knock Live
There’s nothing easy about the live environment. Consider a recording mic. The studio engineer gently removes it from a velvet-lined box in the vault, carefully places it during the session and later, it’s tucked back to bed for the night. Its life span could be 30 years or more. Not so for a mic on a live date. These are used, abused, slammed, dropped and chopped, and the chance they’ll succumb to old-age (rather than some freakish accident) is about zero. These go out, get destroyed and then replaced. In fact, with wireless system rentals, most suppliers will not even rent miniature headworn mics — these are simply treated as purchased expendables.
That hard-knock/short-lived approach also applies to speakers, amps, racks, stands, cables and anything else in the signal chain, especially consoles. Live mixers — both the gear and the operator — get a lot more use and abuse than their recording counterparts, where night after night, nearly every knob on that board is given a workout, while less than a dozen console controls may even be used on a typical studio overdub session. And once the word “forklift” is combined with any piece of gear (this rarely applies in the studio), all long-term longevity bets are off.
The Secret of Live
There you have it: “The Secret of Live” — revealed to the world. So it is that same principle fuels the health of the industry and is reflected in other aspects as well. For example, a typical house of worship installation from a couple decades back could get by with a couple old-school line radiator columns, either Shure Vocal-Masters, or some vinyl-clad, walnut-finished boxes with a Realistic logo (or knockoffs of either) — driven by a four-input Bogen mixer/amp. These days, that rig ain’t gonna cut it, as more and more installations — both sacred or secular — want a system capable of delivering high SPL’s, lots of inputs and sophisticated monitoring.
So on all fronts, the live industry is hale, hearty and offers optimistic prospects well into the future, whether in terms of product development, equipment sales, installations and opportunities for those who operate, support and make all this technology happen. Besides, I’m already looking forward to InfoComm 2016, which just happens to be in Las Vegas — my kinda town.
Catch George’s introduction to the July 2015 issue of FRONT of HOUSE Magazine at:
