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March 2018

Illustration by Andy Au

Big Ears

There are various videos floating around the internet of a young boy named Dylan Beato demonstrating his uncanny ability to identify piano notes and chords while his back is turned toward the piano. Dylan’s father, Rick, sits at the piano and plays each note, interval, chord and cluster while Dylan listens and identifies each played note, which is then verified by his father.

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Fig. 1: Routing front fills from a console matrix output is just one option to consider. This also shows optional under-balcony fills, which are typically a delayed version of the main P.A. feed.

Using Front Fills

This may seem counterintuitive, but the front few rows at church are often the worst places to sit, at least for good sound. Seasoned sound engineers instinctively know that if they go to a concert, they want to sit as close to FOH as possible. The front row is cool to be close to your favorite artist (or pastor in this case), but the sound is often lacking.

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FOH Magazine Theory and Practice - Passive and Active Crossovers

Crossing Over

We hear the term crossover all the time in pro audio, and crossovers play an extremely important role in our P.A. systems. A crossover (sometimes called a “crossover network” or “frequency dividing network”) is an audio circuit that divides the full frequency range into high- and low-frequency bands, and sometimes also mid-frequency bands.

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CMA Touring Awards logo

Nashville’s Road Warriors Have Their Own Awards Event

There’s touring, and then there’s touring Nashville style. Country artists are the hardcore frequent flyers of the music business, even if the “flying” is being done aboard a 1993 Golden Eagle with 350,000 miles on it. If you’ve ever been to Nashville on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening during the season, just about every Kroger and Walmart parking lot has several buses idling their engines there, the drivers in the store stocking up on beer and Skittles while waiting for band members and tour techs to assemble at these ad hoc staging areas before the three- and four-day short-run tours.

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The DiGiCo SD5 console with Waves Soundgrid integration.

Touring: It Really Does Take Planning

Although our touring schedule does not resume until later this spring, there are always off-the-road research tasks to be accomplished and proposed modifications to be discussed in preparation for the next run of shows. This year’s itinerary will include several gear transitions outside the U.S. Reproducing our extensive gear spec overseas will require detailed advance planning. That process begins with publishing a precise description of the sound system elements that will be provided by Clair Global for the spring and summer U.S. shows.

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d&b audiotechnik’s new GSL line array comes in 80- and 120-degree dispersion versions.

d&b audiotechnik SL-Series Large- Format Line Array

Twelve years after debuting its J series, d&b audiotechnik introduces its new SL-Series flagship line array, which builds upon J’s strengths and propels the company into the future. In January, I traveled to Germany for a close-up, hands-on look at this next-generation, large-format speaker system. And with the company’s new Soundscape object-based immersive audio system, 2018 is shaping up to be an impressive year for d&b.

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