A Barking Dog

Breakfast in sunny Spain overlooking the beach at Alicante then jetting to Holland for Mexican dinner in Tilburg. That’s how we roll…

The summer holiday season opened in Europe this weekend. It’s a common practice to take some of most of the month off. The airport was nuts. The Tilburg Centrum was turned into a giant carnival this weekend that’s just wrapping up right now.

As for my wedge adventure, I’d like to thank Jim Sides and Greg Mc Vie (I’m sure I’ve probably spelled that wrong…) at Meyer for getting back to me so fast. Especially on a weekend, overseas. I appreciate it. I didn’t get the docs but I didn’t need them. It appears there was a cabling issue with one pair and another box didn’t sound quite like the others. One of the things when using high performance gear is that even subtle differences between like units is pretty apparent. The boxes were less than a year old and never opened since assembly so it wasn’t likely there was an internal issue, though I would have felt better opening one with a picture. Like the other boxes, they have done a nice job.

I did go through all the boxes and except for one, they all seemed more or less the same and the one that didn’t was close enough to use, though with a bit different eq. The primary issue seemed to be an infrastructure problem with several channels in a multicore that feeds the stage lines. Pepe, Roberto and the men from Conzert hooked us up again. It was a nutty week for gigs in that part of Spain.

Still though, if you are a manufacturer of high performance hardware, I think you should put all the publically available docs online for download. High level touring pros need to have the docs available and might be sharing the same schedule as the factory folks. While this time the issue wasn’t really the product and the support was very quick due to personal relationships cultivated over the years. I don’t want to seem like a prick or that I’m singling out a particular company because the players involved really came through. It’s just a general suggestion for EVERYONE involved in the support of high level pro audio gear.

I just had to fill out a form that looked more like marketing propaganda just to get a bit of support. Mind you, the docs I needed should have been available on the site without my having to email and beg for them. I don’t want to mention them by name because I really don’t want to piss off anyone from Meyer Sound Labs. Apparently I’ve been known to do that at least once or twice before.

My current gig I spec a Digico D5 and 12 UM-1P and a couple of CQs. The powered Meyer stuff is great for this act. Easy to use, sounds really good. Due primarily to budget constraints, I don’t get the D5. Bummer. For me. I do get a Heritage 3k more often than not and that’s good enough for me. Tonight we picked up the package for our Spanish leg. I’ve used these guys before, they’re good. Conzert Sound in Valencia. They’ll do the next few shows with us. They didn’t quite get the package right and as a result I’m using a UP-J for a cue wedge. And that sucks a hog rod.

What sucks more though is I have a few enclosures that don’t sound right at all. I suspect polarity issues. Normally, I plug them in, graphs almost flat and rock with it. Err, I guess jazz with it… The problem child boxes are almost all horn, very little woof. I’m going to troubleshoot it properly tomarrow, but today it didn’t go so good. I’m cutting the hi mid and highs radically and bossting, yes kids, boosting the lows to get it to sound like a voice at lower levels. If I really hammer down on the box, the woof kicks in. At about 105 or 110 dBa or so. The problem is, I need to run the show at more like 95 to 100 dBa peak. Our poor guys are working their asses off in the hot sun all day. I want to jump in and help. I figured that I could just go online and download comprehensive technical docs. Well, you know what they say about ASSuming anything.

Now, the good folks in Berkely have left for the evening. That’s cool, no problem with that. I’m going to need to be using these again before they open tomarrow. Again, no problem. I don’t expect them to keep my Euro schedule, though it would be nice to have a Euro tech available during Euro business hours. My beef is with me having to fill out a form to download something that should be available for public download. I’m going to crack these enclosures open in the morning, about six hours before support gets into the office. It would have been nice to have real tech docs to use before I did that. But my balls are big and I probably won’t damage anything. For the amount of money these things cost the tech docs should be on the Web AND you should get a free reach around. And what’s the deal with all the marketing stuff on the tech support request form? Does it really matter who I am, how I heard about you or what I do? I’ve got broken shit that needs to be fixed and having the resources to do just that will enable me to spec more of your expensive gear.

UPDATE: My pal Swingin’ Jim from the manufacturer in question just emailed regarding the situation. That was quick, less than a half hour. Seems they do have a Euro guy, though it’s not listed on the site. I can understand centralizing the communications but these docs should be online. Just to be clear, my beef is in not having all the data available to anyone that needs to download it. My goal isn’t so much to bust their balls, but to get them to put all the docs they have online.

A few nights ago met Werner Bayer, AKA “4″ of d&b Audiotechnik at a gig in Esslingen at Burg. We were the maiden voyage of the new mid size line array from d&b. The working name is the d&b Blah Blah. That’s what 4 told us anyway. I’d bet the marketing guys make him change it. It’s 12″s, 10″s and 2″s biamped with passive third way. I’ve got a bit of a rant penned regarding the new breed of passive crossovers from the likes of d&b, Nexo and Radian. That’s for another time, though.

The new, yet not really named line array hangs pretty quickly. Has integrated rigging. Sounds great. During the day 4 and I discussed directionality, pattern control and other like theories. This product will launch in January. There is also some work being done on steerable cardiod subwoofers. Basically you stack the bins and steer the individual drivers as needed. Fancy stuff.

A few other tidbits…

New wedges, basically half of what an M2 is. The M2 is big. Too damn big for some acts. The C6 (or 602) is great sounding, but not quite loud enough for mega loud. This new wedge should bridge that gap.

Powered speakers from d&b? Well, 4 says “never”. I would never say never to that. There are some great applications for self powered speakers. If you look at it objectively, d&b stacks are basically self powered as they required the integrated amp and controller card. The only difference is that it’s in a rack, not the speaker box. You’re more than halfway there guys. Might as well stick the amp and controller in the box and get over it.

The new rig is pretty good, excellent in fact. It will give Milo, Kudo and the middle Vertec a run for the money. If not more.

I was wrong, we weren’t flying into Geneve, we were Zurich bound. Good thing I’m not the tour manager. We had what we refer to as a “quality work day” for the first time in several shows. Probably since Umbria.

There were a few heinous dates. Straubing in particular where the FOH tech for the festival PA company decided to check the config with Ramstein on a 24 module X-Line rig at full tilt during line check. We never quite recovered and during the set The Jazz Singer was a bit miffed. It seems that “Straubing Guy” as we now call that particular tech, decided to point the front fills (a couple of those Dynacord self powered boxes from the previous post) basically across the stage, at the downstage foot of the sidefills. The sidefills get Jazz Singer vocal and high hat. Sax during the solos downstage. That’s it. Nothing else. Ever. Or you’ll be sorry. From where The Jazz Singer was standing, it sounded like a full mix was coming from the fills. I was instructed to “take the motherfucking keyboards” out of the fills. There are no keys in the fills, motherfucking or otherwise. I did the gig for two years before this leg, not too much as changed. Particularly nothing in the fills except vocal and hat. Ever.

(more…)

Why do people buy US$80k control surfaces only to hook them together with MI quality infrastructure? Why do they not purchase the proper desk lamps for them? Why do people buy expensive sound systems only to have them exposed to the elements and not properly maintain or clean them? Perhaps more on this later.

As reported elsewhere, rock icon Lemmy was “in hospital” as they say over here. Word from a crew member is that all the summer dates are off and it’s perhaps a bit more serious than simple dehydration. No word of this yet that I’ve read over here but my source is pretty good.

Back up to Switzerland for a couple of days then we’ll pop back down to Spain.

I’ve got a few entries in various stages I may post as soon as I make them into more coherent ramblings. The schedule has been much more compact than I initially thought. On non show days we’re traveling either by day or by air and that’s cutting my on ‘net time quite a bit. For wayward english speaking types (real english, not what those Brits speak) there is a bright side in late night TV viewing land. Daily Show International with Jon Stewart is on CNN International Sunday nights and Leno and Conan are on CNBC Europe nightly as well as US CNBC with the ever lovely “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo. Then the local staples, Everbody Loves Raymond dubbed in German or Full House dubbed in Italian. We did kill some time on the bus through the Austrian Alps by watching the Brit box version of Python, specifically the Holy Grail. The extras are great, location tours with Jones and Palin. Except for The Castle Arrrghh, they used a single castle in Scotland as the set for all the other castles. And made the film for about 150k Brit Pounds at the time, nearly 30 years ago.

Luggage call in a bit, time to rush out and start a four show run and a pretty intense schedule for the rest of the week. Next week I’ll have a couple of days to kill in Haugesound, Norway. If anyone has any ideas on what to do up there, let me know. I sure hope we have broadband or 3G access.

Posting has been slow, there are some issues with my Cingular quad band and getting on Euro GPRS networks. Apparently Cingular has flashed in some software that makes if difficult if not impossible to use non Cingular GPRS networks with other SIMs. Voice and texting work fine, using the phone to moblog pics and check email doesn’t. Bummer. For me.

A bit earlier this evening I was ready to call in a missle strike on Burnsville. I’ve mellowed a bit, perhaps due to the Toprol and Lisinopril, perhaps due to old age, possibly both. The German part of the deal sponsors a high end jazz fest on the Danau (that’s Danube for the Yanks and other heathens). Nice gig for the most part. Great catering (by BMW no less), nice assortment of gear, that is, except for the wedges. Actually, calling the EV Plasma series wedges would be an insult. To real wedges.

Geez, where to start…

Tonality. They need some. Flat with a 58 into a Heritage 3k they sounded like warmed over monkey piss. Lumpy lows and harsh highs. It basically appears to be a rebadged Dynacord self powered box. It was sold to me as a high powered high fidelity self powered wedge. I didn’t think so and for a few hours this evening not only did they make my pityful existance fraught with peril, they probably got my BP back into the danger zone. The equalizers look like the remnants of a 9.0 quake just to get a modicum of tonality and forget about any serious level.

You guys can do a lot better than this. If these are meant to be your high end powered wedges, I’m afraid you’re going to want to start again.