"Sector overlap" is the somewhat clinical term for what happens when technology creates a convergence between areas of expertise. For instance, going back a few decades for a more dramatic instance, what happened when you converged a pilot and a physicist is you got an astronaut.
An area of nascent convergence at the moment is in the domains of live event audio and fixed installation media. The taxonomy would seem to place them on one side of the aisle or the other: live sound moves around a lot and installed sound doesn't. But definitions can be deceiving. In fact, the overlap between the skill sets, both technical and business, in live touring sound and installed sound have more in common now than a decade ago, and in the process have actually diverged from music recording. "One of the main things that have joined the two sectors is that they are both computer- controlled," says Ken Porter, owner of Spectrum Sound in Nashville, which plays in both arenas. He adds, "Music isn't so much computer-controlled as it is computer-dominated. It's an interesting distinction."
It is. Music recording, by contrast, has gone down a very different evolutionary path than live sound or installed audio. The "democratization" of music is a synonym for an increasingly diluted gene pool that understands its own black box-encased technology less than it did 10 years ago. Live sound and installed sound, on the other hand, share an upwardly mobile technology curve.
This is why companies like Sound Image, Clair and PRG, with core businesses in live sound, have put substantial efforts into establishing contracting divisions in recent years, and not into constructing recording studios. (John McBride, the Clair Bros. franchise in Nashville and owner of the Hearst Castle-like Blackbird Studios there, is, I contend, the exception that proves the rule.)
The technology and technical expertise overlaps are pretty straightforward. Spaces are no longer looked at solely as singular entities; the concept of multiple zones is pervasive in both disciplines. It might be because live sound also attracts the kind of mind that one finds often in installed media. "I'd say that in my experience, I've seen more people with academic electrical engineering backgrounds in both live sound and installation," says Al Siniscal, a sound designer and electrical engineer at A1 Entertainment Services, and who still does stints as a live sound mixer now and then. "Everyone who gets into audio usually loves music, but the ones who go into live sound and installation work tend, I think, to have the more engineering-oriented mentality and better business chops."
Siniscal suggests that "what feels good in a theatre will probably feel good in an office," meaning that the ability to translate the technology into the real world takes place closer to that real world than, say, making a record in a more insulated environment like a recording studio. "Today's fixed installation situations encompass a lot more music than they used to, and people have higher expectations of how that music should sound, even if it's just background music," he adds. "When you think about it, the parallels between live sound and installed sound are pretty apparent."
The same goes for the economics of both businesses. Both have become capital- intensive in a way music recording once was but no longer is. That and the fact that both live sound and installation are businesses where as much revenue is made from follow-on work as from the original project means that a more evolved business sense is necessary.
"I apply the same old adage to audio as they do to cars: what races on Sunday sells on Monday," says Porter. The NASCAR analogy is apt, he asserts, when you think of live sound companies as racers and installation companies as dealerships. "End users will see how sound companies solve issues over the weekend at shows, and on Monday they'll come to the installation company and say, that's what I want for my house or my office. So it makes perfect sense that you'd see more live sound operators getting into installed sound and, to a lesser extent perhaps, vice versa."
In fact, the largest players in each of their respective domains have achieved a certain level of market saturation and have to look across the fence for growth opportunities. Live sound underwent significant consolidation over the last two decades, the Clair Bros./Showco deal being the leading example. Today, due to a number of factors, not least of which is a sizable slowdown in new building construction, installation contractors are beginning to see similar consolidation taking place. (The consumer market is a useful bellwether here: the acquisition of installer Magnolia by Best Buy and the launch of Circuit City's Firedog and Best Buy's Geek Squad services indicate that large forces can bring a lot of pressure to bear on the install side.)
Look for other synergies to develop between live sound and installed sound sectors in the near future. Both are growth sectors in and of themselves (recall recent columns on AEG and Live Nation). But combined they can be more than the sum of their parts.
E-mail Dan at ddaley@fohonline.com
