A Barking Dog

We’re here out on the US part of the gig continuing with a Jazzapolooza, if you will. Starting yesterday, with a fresh production, no rehearsal, minimal prep we set sail (so to speak) in San Diego. Day off today in Hollywood, staying at the world famous “Riot House” in the heart of The Strip though Travelocity lists it as the West Hollywood Hyatt. Same place, save for a makeover and visit to IKEA for hotels. I’m no stranger to these parts as I lived some of the 80’s a scant few blocks from here. They say that Hollywood is for the shallow and vapid. That’s not entirely true. There is some arrogance in play as well. Sounds like the perfect place for me.

I manage to make it here a few times a year sometimes for a week or better at a time. I try to do the usual things. Breakfast at Duke’s (though Canter’s is good as well), hit Book Soup for an hour or so, hang on the strip reading The Times drinking lattes overlooking Holloway and Sunset and make the nightlife of the various sushi joints and perhaps the Rainbow. As per normal, I was able to hit one of the many arthouses in the area and check out the latest Jarmusch picture “Broken Flowers”. Been a big Jarmusch fan since Merril took me to see “Down by Law” many lifetimes ago. Ghost Dog was probably his biggest commercial success, (and a personal fav) but he has many other great films as well. Murray’s character in both “Broken Flowers” and “Lost in Translation” hits close to home. I can relate. The “Broken Flowers” soundtrack is great. I hadn’t heard anything from Holly Golightly in years, though the tracks he used were from 1999.

CK and I put away a fair amount of bait this evening at TA-KE Sushi on Sunset. Normally, I might troll the bars until last call like most of the others on the strip though tomarrow we have a big gig. Or so I’m told. I think it’s at some bowling alley, though I don’t know. I’ll need the sleep. We have a single truck production, backline, mons and control. We don’t have a production manager or stage manager. We have three crew guys. Me on mons, my pal Mikey at FOH (who gets all the PM questions) and Don Juan on audio utility and backline. This is a package that hires the artists and provides production. The bummer is they only take parts of each artists crew. There have been several hicups. Would be nice to see someone in charge on deck at least once in the day or possibly be told that we were starting the show. Most tours ask if I’m ready to go and if I’m busy linking the libs on the PM5D as the artist walks onstage, might want to make sure I’m ready to go. Most of the other tours I’ve done have been able to do that. But then they have stage managers and production managers.

It’s going to be a rough two weeks.

If Dan Daley kisses Harman Pro’s ass any harder, he’ll likely suck out a turd. After returning from the lastest Euro jaunt, I slept soundly in my own bed and awoke in the morning refreshed, ready to get on with the first day back tasks. Visit the PO box. Cash the checks, pay some bills, run some errands. This season I now also catch up on my pro audio trade rag reading. Last Jan, for the first time in more than five years, I started subscribing to pro audio trade mags again. Trade rags are fine, they serve a purpose but they are anything but objective with regards to the current crop of pro audio gear. They are vehicles for sponsor ads, punctuated by some light commentary, occasional humor and stories of gigs commissioned by advertisers of the gear used at said gigs. I’ve got no problem with that per se, I can take if for what I think it’s worth. I have no axe to grind. I get a fair amount of readers here and have on more than one occasion declined to pen a monthly column for a couple of trade mags. I’m not able to write as I would here and it’s not worth the paltry amount I’d get for the submissions to change what I’m saying.

Daley writes “The Biz” column in FOH Online. In the current issue there is a bit about Harman Pro’s not really so new but rebadged and expanded HiQNet. It’s the latest version of Crown’s more than decade and a half old IQ control protocol, expanded (and updated quite a bit) to include other devices among the Harman Pro brand. Daley goes on to say the HiQNet is “as much a perceptual coup as much as a technical one.”

Well, in a word, no. Audio control networking has been around for quite sometime and has made pretty good inroads in the install side, but for portable apps it’s not yet offering any advantage compared to the price of implementing it. I expect this to change soon, though keep in mind in 1995 I was saying by the year 2k EVERY portable audio system would use some sort of network. I kinda missed the mark on that one…

The HiQnet technology is pretty cool as I saw a bit of it at NAMM and Infocomm this year. It’s transport independent, can wrap Cobranet audio, works with WiFi, supports auto discovery of devices, lot’s of cool stuff. It’s IQ all grown up. The problem is that it ONLY is available for Harman branded gear. That’s locking you into one brand, for everything. How about interfacing my Soundcraft surface with some dbx digital eqs and JBL selfpowered mons? Sounds good except there is no Soundcraft surface (though I remember the Broadway some years back), dbx digital graphic or JBL self powered mon. That’s my point, one brand or family of brands can not provide all the options for every application. There may be other things that work, but restricting the designer or operator to a single brand or badging only serves the shareholders, not the users of the application. Were HiQnet freely licensed and openly available, you would find no greater proponent than myself.

I was going to let Daley’s comment pass attributing it to a columnist perhaps swayed by a nifty demo at some trade show. Then I got to the next mag in my stack. Harman Pro. Hmm, don’t recall ever subscribing to that one. The mailing sticker info has my trade show signup info. At least they didn’t send it to me as a 20MB email attachment. There was a piece regarding HiQnet and as a self proclaimed audio geek, I eagerly checked it out. I was hoping for more technical data. How it works within the ISO layer model, the particulars of the protocol, any available APIs for third party developers. I didn’t get that. What I did get was a fluff piece, proclaiming all sorts of “we’ll save pro audio” BS. So, it’s more or less a brochure, no biggie but then I noticed the name on the byline. None other than Dan Daley.

So Dano is opining in his column in FOH about the product, while being paid for the contribution to what is basically a brochure disguised as a mag. Although I suppose the same could be said for Pro Sound News (producers of the Harman mag), Mix, FOH and Live Sound. Their main purpose is to sell advertising and I’m OK with that. But don’t have some supposed commentary piece fluff something up while the writer is being paid by the manufacturer for marketing propaganda fluff. At least tell me.

Keep it real gang, keep it real…