In the Oct. 2008 issue of FOH, I relayed a story about an experience I had at the Umatilla County Fair in Hermiston Ore. The long and short of that story was that while attempting a sound check, the area was hit with a nasty hailstorm and winds upwards of 70 miles per hour. The net result was that the tarp blew off the front-of-house position – including a Yamaha PM4000 – and the bucket of the 4K became a bucket full of water.
I certainly recall that Larry Aitken of North West Staged Events Ltd. made a miraculous recovery to save that desk and the show by removing every module from the 4K's chassis, drying each one as patiently as possible given the circumstances, reassembling the desk and powering up while we held our breath. I vividly remember that the show went off pretty much without a hitch.
Prayers and Soldering Wire
Acts of God notwithstanding, mixing consoles of all varieties are mechanical devices, and mechanical devices ranging from skateboards to rocket ships are susceptible to break down. In the case of the 4K, the ‘breakdown' was caused by unpredictable events, but the net result is still the possibility of failure. In this particular instance, the fix came sans soldering iron and voltmeter, but in the past, we've all had experiences when we are at a gig, under pressure and gear fails. What to do? What we always do: solder it, gaff it, twist it, turn it, rewire it until it works, until we restore our ability to do the gig.
A few years back, a friend of mine was out on tour as a stage tech with a metal band. During the show, some rocket scientist spilled a beer into the (analog) front-of-house desk. Finito! What to do? ‘Gotta finish the show. Send a stereo feed from the monitor desk into the FOH rack, place the FOH engineer in the crowd and use hand signals to cue the monitor engineer, who is now creating the house mix from the monitor desk, based upon mimed instructions from the house engineer.
All is not so simple in the digital realm. We are no longer dealing with modular mixing consoles that can be dismantled and easily reworked by replacement of a channel. Has anyone actually opened up one of these digital beasties and attempted a field repair? I can just see trying to remove and replace a surface mount LSIC while at the rodeo. I don't know what would be worse: the smell of that IC getting torched or the smell of the bull chute.
Catastrophic Failure
Several weeks ago, during a major show in a major market, a major player in the digital console market had a catastrophic failure. Catastrophic as in, "it ain't workin' now, it ain't gonna' work when you reboot it, it ain't gonna work any time today, and chances are that it ain't gonna work tomorrow, either." What to do? Take it apart and fix it? I think not. Replace it? Oh sure – I have a spare one of these 100-Grand desks in the truck because I'd rather carry it with me and not rent it to another sound company and try to recoup my investment.
The ingenuity of the sound company who provided gear at this particular show was nothing short of astounding. It so happened that the show was being simulcast for TV, and they were running a separate desk for a broadcast feed. So they routed a stereo mix from the broadcast desk back into the house racks and stacks, and mixing by proxy (and radio sets) pulled off a house mix from inside the truck. Friggin' brilliant. But what if there was no broadcast feed? No show? Those words can never be strung together in our industry. It is simply not an option.
Plan B in the Digital Age
As we continue our journey through the digital era, this is something that must be addressed. What do you do if (or when) a digital desk fails? You cannot pull a module and replace it, and carrying a spare is only an option for the rich and famous (though I did hear that there is at least one major tour carrying redundant digital consoles for front-of-house as well as two spares for the two digital desks that are already required for monitor world). That's a lot of hardware to be hauling around, not to mention an insurance nightmare. Imagine if that truck gets stolen with six high-ticket digital desks? (of course, that's a bit like stealing the Mona Lisa. What the heck are you going to do with it? Sell it to someone on the corner of 6th Ave. and 48th street?).
Perhaps one option is to carry a spare control surface or maybe encourage the monitor and front-of-house engineers to agree upon the same desk (let me know how that works out). Then you could carry one spare that could be rolled out in case either of those desks fails. Even if the two engineers do agree on the same desk, what is the plan for swapping out the spare? I imagine that a small format digital mixer (perhaps something like a Yamaha LS9) could be carried along with a major tour as an emergency spare. Another possibility would be splitting the output of a digital snake via ADAT optical (a relatively inexpensive format) and simultaneously routing it to two desks. That would give you as close to an "online" backup as could be, yet would not take up major real estate in the truck or over inflate the trucking expenses.
No Easy Fixes
It's rumored that in the early days of digital desks, one major player in the sound reinforcement industry carried Mackie consoles on the road as backup, "just in case" (and used a Mackie on at least one occasion). Certainly this is not a bad idea, and an idea that is eminently affordable by just about any tour. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to the switchover from a digital mixer to an analog backup. Copper is quickly disappearing in lieu of digital snakes, and the last time I checked, you could not connect a fiber optic or CAT5 link to the inputs of an analog desk. There is no easy fix for backing up a digital desk, but it's something we need to think about, because if it's a mechanical device, sooner or later, it's going to fail.
