Features

Entitled “Maximum Audio,” the 143^rd Audio Engineering Society Convention returned to New York City from Oct. 18-21. FRONT of HOUSE’s “Sound Sanctuary” contributor, Vince Lepore, was able to attend, along with thousands of fellow audio engineers who flocked to the Javits Center in Manhattan to demo the latest audio products and take part in an extensive education program. Here’s his report.

How Our Industry Helps Others Weather the Storm

The worst of times can bring out the best in the human spirit. The world witnessed this with people helping people during Hurricane Harvey’s flooding in Texas and Louisiana. Before the waters subsided, Hurricane Irma pounded islands in the Caribbean, Cuba and Florida, and not long after that, Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Meanwhile, major earthquakes crumbled buildings and lives in Mexico.

Providing Audio for Walton Arena and 100,000+ Simulcast Web Viewers

The Walmart Shareholders Meeting, held annually since 1994 at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, AR, combines elements of traditional corporate meetings with a glitzy awards show and rock concert, all for the biggest company in the world, in a venue designed primarily for basketball games.

The New Owners of the FCC’s Auctioned Frequencies Aren’t Waiting Until 2020; The Time to Switch is Now

Earlier this year — April 13, to be precise — the FCC triggered a 39-month phase-in period for their one-time reallocation of what is commonly referred to as the 600MHz band of wireless spectrum by publishing their Channel Reallocation Public Notice (CRPN). Users of wireless devices, it seemed, had until 2020 before they would need to finally phase out their use of gear in the no-longer-legal 600MHz frequencies.

Sound designer and composer Elisheba Ittoop is always working to maintain a good balance between various aspects in her life. She balances her theater design career with other sound design work. She balances her work life and her family life. She balances maintaining professional footholds in multiple American cities. Every designer must find their own balance, and Ittoop works every day to constantly adjust hers, taking advantage of her background and skillsets to craft a life that has the right balance for her and responding to changes in her life to adjust her professional activity.

Heavy rain put a damper on the opening day of Summerfest 2017, but Milwaukee’s mammoth “Big Gig,” which turned 50 this year, has shaken off bigger obstacles to success in the past. First-decade challenges included including significant losses for the festival’s second year (1969), six-figure crowds and a near-riot for Sly and the Family Stone (1970), comedian George Carlin’s arrest for profanity (1972) and an actual riot with 300 arrests during Humble Pie’s performance (1973).

It’s 2:30 p.m. on a Friday, a show day at the 750-person capacity concert venue known as Delmar Hall in St. Louis, MO, and the girls and young women are properly dressed in roadie black. It is their last day of a camp that had them run the gauntlet of everything it takes to make a concert happen.

France once again celebrated its national holiday, Bastille Day, with festivities in the vicinity of the iconic Eiffel Tower. The concerts and other events drew close to 500,000 to the area. For the third consecutive year, Lawo provided IP-networked audio consoles to support the live and televised events.

For Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ big 40th Anniversary tour, with shows running from April through September this year, FOH engineer Robert Scovill has specified an Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) ADAPTive sound reinforcement system supplied by Escondido, CA-based Sound Image. Along with the system, which includes Anya array and Otto subwoofer modules supplemented with Anna delay towers for stadium shows, Sound Image is supporting the tour with crew.

InfoComm (infocomm.com), North America’s largest audiovisual trade show, welcomed more than 40,000 visitors for the first time in its history at the 2017 event, held in Orlando, FL from June 14-16. By the time the doors closed for the week, InfoComm 2017 had logged 44,077 registered attendees from 50 states and 117 countries.

Clearly, the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention, held April 22-27, 2017 in Las Vegas, is not a sound reinforcement show. There wasn’t a line array or power amplifier in sight anywhere among the 1,806 exhibitors spanning more than a million square feet of exhibit space. But there was a whole lot of technology on display, under NAB’s M.E.T. (Media. Entertainment. Technology.) theme, and a certain proportion of that — especially in terms of consoles and wireless gear — were aimed specifically at the live audio user. Given that premise, we waded through the masses of 103,443 or so registered attendees and uncovered some real gems for sound reinforcement pros.

A month ago, FRONT of HOUSE conducted an extensive reader survey looking for options and (pardon the pun) input on mixing consoles used in live audio applications. We did an emailing to nearly 24,000 readers and received an impressive response with some 4,675 replies. This equates to a return rate of approximately 20%, which in the science of statistical analysis is well above the average for such surveys, where a “good response” is generally defined as being in the 10% to 15% range. Equally telling is the fact despite this being a fairly long survey (nearly two dozen questions), more than 70% of the respondents (3,301) stayed throughout the entire questionnaire.