Tag Archives: Gear

That Fibber, Myself

I was never going to buy wireless gear again. Until…

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

There is a taxonomy of falsehood. For instance, a particularly awful and hurtful falsity might be “a lie from hell.” Slightly less severe versions might be “a fib from heck,” or “a half-truth from West Jordan.” “Tall-tales from Hyrum” never really hurt anyone, as is the case for a “whopper from Utah County.”

In any case, I thought I was telling the truth when I said – to many people, repeatedly and emphatically – that I would never again put my own money into wireless audio. I was adamant. Determined. Resolute now to defend fair honor upon the glorious field of contest, I say to thee, Knights of the West, STAND!

Yeah, well, you can see how that turned out. Maybe what I said was “a fiction from Erda.” I’m not really sure.

Here’s what happened. I subcontract for a local production provider. A New Years Eve show had been on the books for quite a while, only for it to suddenly vanish in a cloud of miscommunication. The provider scrambled (thank you!) to find a show for me to do, so that I’d have a job that night (thank you!). Normally, we’d have time to handle some coordination for the show advance, but this was a situation where haste was demanded. The provider thought that I had a couple of wireless handhelds available. The show was specced, booked, and advanced. About a day and a half before downbeat, I got the input list.

A strict requirement was at least one wireless handheld. Eeeeep!

It was too late to cross-rent from one of our shared connections. My favorite place to buy or rent “right now” items was closed for inventory. I grabbed my credit card and drove to The Geometric Centroid of Strummed Instruments. (Think about it.) I was in and out in a jiffy, carrying with me a Beta58 Shure GLXD system. As much as the 2.4 Ghz band is becoming a minefield, I went with a digital system; If I was going to spend the money, I did NOT want a unit operating in a part of the spectrum that the FCC would end up auctioning or re-apportioning.

I could have gotten something significantly cheaper, but I wouldn’t have been as confident in it. My imperative was to bring good gear to the show. If I brought something from the bargain-bin, and it ended up messing the bed, that would be hard to excuse. If a better unit misbehaved, I could at least say that I did my due diligence.

In any case, the show had to go on. I’m still not a fan of wireless. I still don’t intend to add to my inventory of audio-over-airwaves devices. Even, so, you sometimes have to bend yourself around what a client needs in a short timeframe. It’s just a part of the life. Of course, after the show, my brand-new transmitter had lipstick embedded in the grille, but that’s a whole other topic…


The Pro-Audio Guide For People Who Know Nothing About Pro-Audio, Part 3

Onward to the microphone preamp…or trim.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

“Signals at mic-level may require large, positive gain changes to correctly drive downstream electronics, and so a jack that can be connected to a microphone preamp is needed in that case.”

Read the whole thing, free, at Schwilly Family Musicians.


All I Want For Christmas

Yeah, some of it’s gear, but…

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a good boy this year. Well, sort of good. Marginally good. Good was involved at some point. Good intentions.

Actually, do you have a credit system?

Anyway.

Here’s my list for this Christmas, in no particular order:

1) FOH mid-highs and monitor wedges that peak at or above 130 dB SPL @ 1 meter. I don’t really want to be that loud, but at least I can say that they’re in the inventory.

2) Subwoofers that play flat to 20 Hz, weight 20 lbs. a box, and are no bigger than 18″ cubed. I know that’s physically impossible, but those elves at the North Pole do know some magic, right?

3) A little more room for gear in the transport. Because I’m always running out of room. Because I’m always getting that one more piece of gear.

4) Related to #3, an effective 12 Step program.

5) Please ignore #4.

6) More people that want to do shows! But in a nice, even distribution, please, because I’ve had to turn people down over scheduling conflicts. Why does everybody have to want the same weekend?

7) A gear-hauler with enough interior height that I can stand up normally while working inside. I get nervous when I can still feel a show in my back after a day or two.

8) Venues where I can maneuver and park the aforementioned gear-hauler. (Seriously. The two most important features of a venue might just be adequate electricity and an honest-to-goodness lot for vehicles.)

9) Venues that can answer their email. I’ve let go of the whole “promoter” experiment, but I still want to do the occasional show…and it’s depressing that folks won’t communicate. Especially when it’s a rental; Come on, I’m trying to give you money, and you’re making it difficult!

10) Venues that can follow-up as promised. Six months after being promised a proposal “by the end of the day,” I still haven’t seen anything from that one place I was talking to. Of course, I don’t really care anymore if those specific people get back into contact. It’s the principle of the thing!

Oh, and…

Thanks for everything so far. I get worried sometimes, but I’ve had a lot of opportunities, and I’m trying to have a better sense of gratitude.

Best regards,

Danny


The Turbosound Milan M12

A nice box, but flawed.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

double-hung Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

When I was adding onto my system last year, I chose Turbosound Milan as the product line for FOH. Since putting those boxes into service, my feelings have been mixed. The most mixed of those feelings have been reserved for the mid-highs I chose, designated as “M12” by the manufacturer.

I do like the compact nature of the package. Other powered 12s that I carry are similar in weight, but inefficient in their use of bulk. The Milans chew up less space, and yes, they have a monitor-angle on both sides. You can properly book-match a pair of the little darlings, which is something I appreciate.

I also like the overall fit and finish. Yes, they’re plastic boxes, but it’s the kind of plastic that can take some wear gracefully. The controls and connection points seem to be reasonably well-engineered, with slide switches that clearly indicate where they’re set. (Push-toggles are fine if they unambiguously show their state, but plenty of them don’t – so, kudos to Turbosound on this front.) I often work with other boxes that really are just fine…but feel “cheap” when it comes to XLR connectors and back-panel interaction. The Milans are a definite upgrade there.

M12s do seem to be tuned pleasingly at the factory, which is a big help for throw-n-go gigs where you have to make things work out tonally without a lot of prep time. Your mileage may vary, of course, especially since just about anything can be whipped into shape these days.

Also, let’s be honest: My anti-establishment nature has a special place for brands that are less common. Everybody knows JBL, Peavey, EV, Yamaha, and so on, but Turbosound is a loudspeaker marque that’s a little less trafficked in small-format circles. (Turbo’s big-boy boxes are more well known to the folks who work at that level.)

What do I not like? Well…

Milan M12s are a (tiny) bit expensive for what you get – both in money and weight. When JBL marked their Eon 612s down, they really threw the gauntlet at Turbo. Spend $50 less, get a box that has essentially the same performance, and save about 12 lbs.

…and Turbo, geeze, can we please have a real “thru” on the back? Sometimes I just want to chain two boxes together, and I don’t want to have to volume-match them by ear. Especially if I’ve forgotten to do so before the speakers are eight feet in the air already.

But that’s not the biggest thing.

What really put me off with the M12s was how they will audibly distort before they illuminate their clip indicators. It’s not a horribly nasty sound, but its “too obvious” and a little embarrassing. When somebody addresses the crowd at concert level, using a mic that has some low-mid dialed into it, there’s no reason that a loudspeaker of this type should suddenly give the impression of being underpowered. Sure, these units travel with the crowd that peaks under 130 dB SPL @ 1 meter, but so do my Eons and they don’t seem to misbehave when still running “in the green.” I was so unsettled by this quirk of the Turbos that I retired them to moderate-volume-only use – which they are great at, I should mention.

Someone might point out that the Turbosounds could simply dislike my gain structure. I often run powered loudspeakers with the input controls at full-throttle (when it’s practicable), because full-throttle is an easily repeatable setting. Also, I know I can get maximum SPL at around -20 dBFS on my console outputs. I can’t discount the possibility that the M12s fail to handle that kind of use gracefully at the input side, which means that my dislike is user-error. At the same time, though, I have to go back to my JBL Eons; They tolerate being run wide-open without any marked complaint, which is what I expect from a loudspeaker in this price-range.

Milan M12s are good, but they don’t seem to be good enough to spend “more money” on.


What’s Next?

I don’t know, but we’re probably not going to blow the lid off of audio in general.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

I get extremely suspicious when somebody claims to have solved a fundamental problem in audio. Mostly, this is because all the basic gremlins have been thoroughly killed and dried. It’s also because sonic physics is a system of laws that tolerate zero BS. (When somebody claims that they have a breakthrough technology that sounds great by way of spraying sound like a leaky hose, I know they are full of something brown and stinky.)

Modern audio is what I would definitely call a mature technology. In mature technologies, the bedrock science of the technology’s behavior is very well understood. The apparent breakthroughs, then, come when another technology allows a top-shelf behavior to be made available to the masses, or when it creates an opportunity to make a theoretical idea a reality.

A great example is the two-way, fullrange loudspeaker. They’re better than they have ever been. Anyone who remembers wrestling Peavey SP2 TI boxes is almost tearfully grateful to have small, light, loud enclosures available for a rock-bottom price. Obviously, there have been advances. We’ve figured out how to make loudspeaker drivers more efficient and more reliable. Commercially viable neodymium magnets give us the same field strength for less mass. The constant-directivity horn (and its refined derivatives) have delivered improved pattern control.

These are important developments!

Yet, the unit, as an overall object, would be entirely recognizable to someone magically transported to us from three decades in the past. The rules are the same. You’ve got a cone driver in a box, and a compression driver mated to a horn. The cone driver has certain characteristics which the main box has to be built around. It’s not as though we’ve evolved to exotic, crystalline sound-emitters that work by magic.

The palpable improvements aren’t really to do with audio, in a direct sense. They have to do with miniaturization, computerization, and commoditization. An active loudspeaker in the 21st century is likely to sound better than a 1980s or 1990s unit, not because it’s a completely different technology, but because the manufacturer can design, test, tune, and package the product as a bundle of known (and very carefully controlled) quantities. When a manufacturer ships a passive loudspeaker, there’s a lot that they just can’t know – and can’t even do. Stuff everything into the enclosure, and the situation changes dramatically. You know exactly what the amplifier and the driver are going to do to each other. You know just exactly how much excursion that LF driver will endure, and you can limit the amplifier at exactly the point to get maximum performance without damage. You can use steeper crossover slopes to (maybe) cross that HF driver a little lower, improving linearity in the intelligibility zone. You can precisely line up the drivers in time. You can EQ the whole business within an inch of its life.

Again, that’s not because the basic idea got better. It’s because we can put high-speed computation and high-powered amplification in a small space, for (relatively) cheap. Everything I’ve described above has been possible to do for a long time. It’s just that it wasn’t feasible to package it for the masses. You either had to do it externally and expensively, shipping a large, complicated product package to an educated end user…or just let the customer do whatever, and hope for the best.

I can’t say that I have an angle on what the next big jump will be for audio. I’m even skeptical on whether there will be another major leap. I’m excited for more features to become more affordable, though, so I’ll keep looking for those gear catalogs to arrive in the mail.


The Lessons Of El Ridiculoso

Loudspeaker experiments are very educational.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

El Ridiculoso is an idea that’s been bumping around in my head – conceptualized in various morphologies – for years. With the help of the extravagantly cool Mario Caliguiri, who does custom woodworking out here in the high desert, the idea is now incarnated.

Inwoodnated.

Inwoodnated is a real word, because I made it up. All words are made up.

Anyway…

El Ridiculoso is a quad-amped monstrosity meant to go “pretty loud” (but not insanely loud) with 2300 watts of peak input creating about 131 dB of peak, 1 meter SPL. It is very definitely NOT meant to play down low. The conveniently-sized, sealed box for the 15″ driver starts rolling off somewhere around 75 Hz, and really, El Ridiculoso is supposed to be used with subwoofers carrying everything up to 100 Hz anyway. (Sealed boxes are easier to build, and generally pretty forgiving. You can “fudge” the internal volume a bit and still have the whole driver-and-box system work pretty well.)

A few days ago, I got to hook amplifiers up to the boxes and hear them make noise. I found the experience to be rather educational in a few areas.

If You Tune It By Ear You Will Probably Get It Wrong

I set up an X32 mixing console to act as a four-way crossover: You downmix two channels to the main bus, and then send the main bus to matrices 1-4. (The matrices have crossover filters available to them if you have the right firmware upgrade in place.) Because I wouldn’t be working with subwoofers for the test run, I started off by putting the 15’s high-pass at 75 Hz, with the low-pass at 400 Hz. The 12 handled 400 – 1600, the big horn did 1600 – 6400, and the smaller horn took everything above that.

And, of course, I started out by playing music and pushing the different bandpass levels around.

I ended up with an overall sound that was reasonably pleasing, but somewhat tubby (or resonant) at certain bass frequencies. I wondered if the 15’s box was booming for some reason – maybe it was acting like a drum?

In any case, I decided it was time to do some measuring for a real, honest-to-goodness magnitude line-up of the boxes. As I started running sweeps and making adjustments, one thing became VERY clear: Tuning the system by ear had sent me way off course. In some cases, 10+ dB off course. (!)

A Basic Bandpass Magnitude Alignment Fixes A Lot

When you’ve missed the mark as far as I had, information that should blend nicely with other information…doesn’t. You get things like overpowering bass notes, because the crucial midrange just isn’t there to balance it all out. I was actually pretty stunned at just how much better the stack sounded with all the boxes in basically the right place, volume-wise. The music I was playing suddenly started to have the tonal characteristics I’d grown used to from listening at home.

This was without any corrective EQ, which is what I worked on next.

Going through and getting a fine-detail equalization solution certainly changed things, but the difference was not nearly as pronounced as what had happened before. This surprised me as well. I had expected that applying the “make-em-really-flat” solution would result in a massive change in clarity, but really, we were most of the way there already.

Large Horns Make Large Noise

I discovered rather quickly that sitting with my head right up against the 2″ driver-exit horn was unpleasant. The amount of noise that thing can make is impressive. The matrix feed to that bandpass ended up being 12 dB down from everything else, and I still preferred being across the room. I’ve known for years – at an academic level – that 2″ exit compression drivers are used when you need to tear faces off, but this was the first time that I even got a whiff of what they’re really capable of.

Awesome But Impractical

Playing with El Ridiculoso is a great treat, but I can’t imagine getting three more built for regular gigs. For a start, they’re relatively complicated to set up, because all the bandpasses are in separate enclosures…and there are four bandpasses per speaker system. Big-boy loudspeakers might have three bandpasses, but they package them all into a single cabinet. Plus, you usually get one Speakon connector which you can use to mate all your power channels to all your drivers in one click. El Ridiculoso needs four separate connections to work.

Add to that the need for subwoofers in many cases, and now you’ve got a five-way system. Then you have to add all the amplifiers necessary, and all the crossovers/ system management, which results in a pretty hefty drive rack or two. Then you have to add all the speaker cable. You end up spending a lot of money, and a lot of weight, just to make the things work.

And, the only way to get them up in the air is scaffolding, or stacking them on a big pile of subs.

In the end, a compact, ultra-engineered box from a major manufacturer really has the advantage. El Ridiculoso sure does have a lot of “cool factor” as an exotic idea, but a good, solid, self-powered biamp unit will go just about as loud and require far less care and feeding to be day-to-day useful.

This doesn’t mean I’m sad about the experiment. I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to design a better mousetrap than every speaker manufacturer on the planet. What I wanted is what I got: A different implementation that I could use to get more hands-on understanding of how these things work.


The Pro-Audio Guide For People Who Know Nothing About Pro-Audio, Part 2

The series continues with a discussion on cable.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

From the article:

“The simplest and most robust connection possible is a single cable carrying analog electrical signals. Analog cabling is subject to many problems, of course, including noise induced by electromagnetic interference. However, its simplicity reduces the number of ways that an outright failure can occur, and the connection tends to degrade “gracefully.””

Read the whole thing for free by visiting Schwilly Family Musicians.


It’s Not About The Gear – It’s About Receipts

Sure, it’s a cool toy – but can you make money on it?

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

If you want to hear great wisdom about the business of sound and music, you should seek out Tim McCulloch over at Pro Sound Web. Just recently he was advising another audio human to “get very real” with a band about demanding a certain console for a tour. Having gotten the strong whiff that the choice of mixing desk was basically one of vanity, Mr. McCulloch dropped the proverbial load of bricks: The gear you take on tour is – and should be categorized as – an expense. The merch and tickets you can sell are profit. (So, decide if you want to make a profit and then act accordingly.)

Of course, the application of this to band tour-o-nomics is self explanatory. With just a bit of imagination, though, you can see how this applies everywhere – especially to audio craftspersons who own equipment.

The gear you own is an expense. It’s always an expense. It’s an expense when you make a full or partial payment for purchase. It’s a debit if you’re making leasing payments. It’s a negative ledger entry every second of every day, because its value depreciates forever in an asymptotic slide towards $0. It’s also a constant drain because you are always paying to store, maintain, and replace it (even if you don’t see a bill directly).

The above is a big reason behind why Tim McCulloch will also tell you that “Excess capacity is infinitely expensive.”

Anyway.

Equipment does not represent profit. It’s a tool that can be used to generate profit, but if you want to imagine the audio business as an airplane, gear is a constant contributor to weight and drag. What you need to keep going is lift and propulsion – profit, that is. Receipts. Money coming in. As such, every purchase and upgrade plan has to answer one question: “How will this increase my receipts?”

The harsh truth is that, past a certain point, just being able to get louder probably won’t increase your receipts.

Past a certain point, being able to rattle peoples’ rib cages with bass probably won’t increase your receipts.

Past a certain point, “super-trick,” spendy mics probably won’t increase your receipts.

A nifty new console probably won’t increase your receipts (not by itself).

What many of us (including myself) have a longstanding struggle with understanding is that what we THINK is cool is not necessarily what gets us phone calls. Meeting the demands of the market is what gets the phone calls. For those of us with maverick-esque tendencies (like Yours “Anti Establishment Is Where It’s At” Truly), we have to take care. We have to balance our curiosity and experimental bent with still being functional where it counts.

We CAN be bold. In fact, I think we MUST be bold. We ought to dare to be different, but we can’t be reckless or vain. If we’re in a situation where our clientele encourages our unorthodoxy, we can let ‘er rip! If not, then we have to accept that going down some particular road might just be for our own enjoyment, and that we can’t bet our entire future on it.

By way of example, I can speak of my own career. I’m currently looking at what the next phase might be like. I have a whole host of notions about what upgrade and expansion paths that might entail. I’ve also gotten on the call list of a local audio provider that I really, really enjoy working with – and the provider in question is far, FAR better than I am at scaring up work. With that being the case, some of my pet-project ideas are going to need a hard look. In devising my upgrade path, it’s far smarter for me to talk to the other provider and find out what would dovetail nicely with their future roadmap, rather than to just do whatever I think might be interesting. Fitting in with them means a chance at more receipts. More receipts means I can do more of what I love. Doing more of what I love means that I might just have enough excess capital to do some weird experiments here and there.

I don’t say any of this to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. I say this so that we can all be clear about our choices. There are times when we might declare, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” It’s just that we sometimes say that without realizing that we’ve said it, in terms of business decisions. If we’re going to buy tools to make money with, it’s a very good idea to figure out what tools will actually serve to make money.


Console Questions

A few simple queries can get you going on just about any console.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Back when I was in school, we were introduced to “The Four Console Questions.” The idea behind the questions was that, if you walked up to a strange mixer, you could get answers to the questions and be able to get work done. Mixing desks come in many varieties, but there aren’t very many truly different ways to build them that make sense. In any case, all the basic concepts have to essentially stay the same. If a console can’t take some number “a” of audio inputs, and route those inputs to some number “o” of outputs, you don’t have a mixing console anyway.

With the growing commonality of digital mix systems, I feel that the essential “console questions” need some expansion and tweaking. As such, here’s my take on the material that was presented to me over a decade and a half (GEEZE!) ago.

1. Do I Know What I Want To Do?

You might say that this isn’t a console question at all, but in truth, it’s THE most important one. If you don’t know what you want to do with the console, then knowing a bunch of information about the console’s operation won’t help you one iota. The unfortunate reality is that many people try to engage in this whole exercise backwards; They don’t know what they want to accomplish, but they figure that learning the mixer’s whys and wherefores will help them figure it out.

Certainly, learning about a new feature that you haven’t had access to previously can lead you to new techniques. However, at a bedrock level, you have to have some preconceived notion of what you want to accomplish with the tool. Do you want to get a vocal into the FOH PA? Do you want to get three electric guitars, a kazoo, and a capybara playing Tibetan singing-bowls into 12 different monitor mixes?

You have to know your application.

2. How Do I Correctly Clock The Console?

For an analog console, the answer to this is always: “No clock is required.”

For a digital rig, though, it’s very important. I just recently befuddled myself for an agonizing minute with why a digital console wasn’t showing any input. Whoops! It was because I had set it to receive external clock from a master console a few weeks before, and hadn’t returned it to internal clocking now that it was on its own.

You need to know how to indicate to the console which clock source and sample rate is appropriate for the current situation.

3. How Do I Choose What Inputs Are Available To The Channels?

This is particularly important with consoles that support both on-board input and remote stageboxes. You will very likely have to pick and choose which of those options is available to an individual channel or group of channels. What you need to discover is how those selections are accomplished.

4. How Do I Connect A Particular Input To A Particular Channel?

You might think this was covered in the previous question, but it wasn’t. Your global input options aren’t the end of the story. Many consoles will let you do per-channel “soft-patching,” which is the connection of a certain available signal to a certain channel without having to change a physical connection. Whether on a remote stagebox or directly at the desk, input 1 may NOT necessarily be appearing on channel 1. You have to find out how those connections are chosen.

5. How Do I Insert Channel Processing?

In some situations, this means a physical insert connection that may be automatically enabled…or not. In other cases, this means the enabling and disabling of per-channel dynamics and/ or EQ, and maybe even other DSP processing available onboard in some way. You will need to know how that takes place, and with all the possible variations that might have to do with your particular application, it is CRITICAL that you know what you want to do.

6. How Do I Route A Channel To An Auxiliary, Mix Bus, Or The Main Bus?

Sometimes, this is dead-simple and “locked in.” You might have four auxiliaries and four submix buses implemented in hardware, such that they can only be auxiliary or mix buses, with the same knobs always pushing the same aux and a routing matrix with pan-based bus selection. On the other hand, you might have a pool of buses that can behave in various ways depending on global configuration, per-channel configuration, or both.

So, you’ll need to figure out what you’ve got, and how to connect a given channel to a given bus so that you get the results you want.

7. How Do I Insert Bus Processing?

This might be just like question 5, or wildly different. You will need to sort out which reality is currently in play.

8. How Do I Connect A Given Signal To A Physical Output?

Just because you have a signal running to a bus, there’s no guarantee that the bus is actually going to transfer signal to any other piece of equipment. Especially in the digital world, there may be another layer of patching to assign signals to either digital or analog outputs. Bus 1 might be on output 7, because six matrices might be connected to the first six outputs. Maybe output 16 is a pre-fader direct out from channel 4.

You’ll have to figure out where all that gets specified.

Obviously, there’s more to being a whiz at any particular console than eight basic questions. However, if you can get a given signal into the desk, through some processing, combined with other signals you want to combine, and then off to the next destination, you can at least make some real noise in the room.


The Pro-Audio Guide For People Who Know Nothing About Pro-Audio, Part 1

A series I’m starting on Schwilly Family Musicians.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

From the article:

“The fundamental key to all audio production is that we MUST have sound information in the form of electricity. Certain instruments, like synthesizers and sample players don’t produce any actual sound at all; They go straight to producing electricity.

For actual sound, though, we have to perform a conversion, or “transduction.” Transduction, especially input transduction, is THE most important part of audio production. If the conversion from sound to electricity is poor, nothing happening down the line will be able to fully compensate.”

Read the whole thing here, for free!