It’s a simple process that so many people seem to avoid like the plague. Lately I have been doing some reading on skeptic’s websites and evaluating how I look at the world. Deep down I think I have always been skeptical about what the world presents as truth. I don’t think that everything should be taken at face value just because it comes from a so called “reliable” source. Every thing needs to be evaluated for it’s accuracy and considered carefully before you accept it and make it part of your beliefs.

My pet peeve for critical thinking are audiophiles. I’m a sound engineer and have a desire to replicate audio as well as I possibly can. I have studied the physics and science of audio to understand what each piece of equipment does, how it effects the audio signal as it passes through it and what the end result of any adjustments I make should be. And all of this knowledge can be measured to show it’s effects on the signal.

Audiophiles on the other hand have developed a penchant for believing unsupportable, unscientific and unmeasurable bullshit from unscrupulous salesmen who push snake-oil products at exorbitant prices claiming to improve the audio of an audiophile’s stereo system. Now I know that you might be thinking, “But surely there are products that can make a massive difference to audio and they might well be worth the money.” And I have to agree. There are very expensive speakers that have been so well designed and manufactured that they are capable of reproducing audio almost perfectly. There are amplifier designs that show extremely low levels of distortion. There are even record players that reduce vibration so that those amazingly archaic black discs of vinyl can sound better.

These are not the items that piss me off. No, these items are possibly well worth the money that you pay, if “perfect” sound is what you are chasing. However, there are other products that can, in no way, improve audio in any measurable or quantifiable manner, other than hearsay and personal opinion. Here are a few examples of these products:

The Silver Rock Potentiometer ……..(Wait for it)………. Knob
This fantastic piece of wood is intended for use with the Silver Rock Potentiometers(an expensive volume control). The device itself may have some merit. It could be the most accurate and transparent volume control ever devised by man. (Although, at $6820 USD for the gear I will probably just use the volume controls already built into my gear) But this simple wooden knob claims that -

Good vibrations, Bad vibrations it’s all about vibrations!! RAM would like to introduce a new signature level knob developed for the mighty Silver Rock potentiometer. The standard bakelite knob is certainly the best sounding compromise… but now Audio Consulting has taken this aspect of the Silver Rock much further. The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze where the bronze is used as the insert to mount to the stem of the volume pot. The beech wood is coated several times with C37 lacquer for best sound as pointed out by Dieter Ennemoser. How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!

Yes, that’s right. A knob that reduces bad vibrations and improves your sound. All at the bargain price of $485USD. Oh wait, you need two of them for the Silver Rock Potentiometer, so that makes $970USD. Never mind that there is no physics to back it up. Forget that electrons flowing in electrical circuits are entirely unaffected by vibrations. Does the Space Shuttle vibrate on launch? Hell Yes!! Do the computers stop working or suffer in performance because of those vibrations? No, they work fine.

Why then, do people who buy these products claim that the sound is amazingly improved over it’s previous quality? It’s a combination of the placebo effect and that most terrible of human traits, pride. No one wants to admit to their friends and family and most importantly themselves, that they have spent $6820 on a volume control that may have improved the sound, and then spent a further $970 on pretty knobs that have done absolutely nothing.

This is one of the most extreme cases that I have found. There are others such as the “Brilliant Pebbles” at up to $179 per jar that improve audio just by being in the room, or power cables like the Ultimate Cables starting at $1195. The list gets longer and longer every day. Like P.T Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” People will pay ridiculous amounts for products that do nothing or could be replaced with far cheaper alternatives with absolutely no change in performance.

The thing is though, many people get fed this audio woo-woo sales pitch every single day. Have you ever bought a new stereo, cd player, dvd player from an electronics store? Did you get to the checkout and find a rack of cables conveniently located beside the register? And then did the salesman tell you that the included cables in the box are poor quality and that you should buy these alternative cables at a fairly exorbitant price? These cables are often sold with such comments as, “it’s directional cable that improves electron flow between devices” or “the construction of these cables rejects EMI interference” etc.

Directional cable is pure bullshit. The electrical signals that flow in audio and video cables are alternating current. Wire is made up of atoms that pass electrons between them to carry signal. Atoms cannot be aligned to improve electron flow. It’s snake-oil marketing at it’s best.

So, the next time you go to buy home stereo equipment, or you meet someone who has just spent thousands on power cables, “Brilliant Pebbles” or expensive interconnect cables, tell them they are deluding themselves. Ask them to do a double blind test to test the improvements.

For an awesome example of someone who has gone over the edge when it comes to audio myths, check this thread at the James Randi Educational Foundation and look for posts by a guy calling himself “ExtremeSkeptic”. James Randi has been debunking psychics and paranormal claims for years and this forum is an excellent place to discover the concepts of critical thinking.

Remember, just because someone says it is true doesn’t make it so. Think for yourself and teach others to do the same and the world will be a better place.

It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything on my blog. There are some very good reasons for this, which I will now explain to you.

Work

Work has been stupidly busy over the last few weeks. There are plenty of lowlights. Dance schools, corporate work, and days of paperwork that backs up on my desk while I work on shows. These are just a few of the annoying as shit jobs that have been taking my time.

There was one highlight that became a lowlight. We had Dr Hook, the hit makers from the 70’s at our venue. I was looking forward to that show. It’s not often that I get to mix for honest to goodness legends of Rock and Roll. It’s also not often that I get to really crank up the volume of our PA system and really put on a Rock show.

I received the tech specs from the promoter and it was a big show. Seven sends of foldback monitors, requests for extra subwoofers, the list goes on and on. Unfortunately the promoter didn’t want to pay for any of the additional equipment that was required to meet the spec. I told them that a dedicated monitor engineer was needed to cater for the performers needs during the show, they told me I had to do it from the front of house position.

Now this is fairly normal for smaller shows. On this show however, we were talking about a lead singer who is in his 60’s, has spent the best part of 30 years in front of very loud bands, has two, count them, TWO hearing aids, and requires extremely loud monitor volumes to be heard over the drumkit and band amplifiers that are no more than five feet from him at all times.

Add to that the fact that my console is up three flights of stairs at the very back of the room and there are 800 people between me and the stage and you can start to get a picture of the problems that can occur.

And of course, they did. Part way through the show, Ray Sawyer’s foldback wedges start to cut in and out. He complains to me over the PA, but I can’t fix it. I send my guy on stage to go and figure out the problem. He can’t find it. It seems to be an intermittent issue that he can’t track down easily.

The show went on but it suffered, and I got the blame, even though I said it could happen and said they should have had a monitor engineer on stage to do it. Sometimes it sucks being right.

Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Eve:Online lately. It’s a space based MMORPG and is possibly the most addictive game I have ever had the fortune/misfortune of playing. This game sucks me in for hours at a time, and, although I know I should be writing a post on my blog, I always forget until midnight when I must sleep in preparation for work.

Sleep

The final and possibly most important reason for not writing. Any spare time that I can find between work, Eve, and general personal maintenance (food, bathing, toilet stops) is filled with sleep. That doesn’t mean that there is a lot of it going on, but all spare time is definitely being occupied by it.

And now, the weather.

While the Northern Hemisphere sits wonderfully cool and wintery, we here in Australia are one day away from the official start of summer.  For those of you who have never experienced and Australian summer, here is a brief overview.

By mid spring we have reached daytime temperatures of 30 degrees celsius. Night time temperatures are starting to rise and blankets and heaters have long been traded for a single sheet and a fan or air conditioning. (If only I could afford air con I’d be fine)

By the end of spring, such as today, we here in Ipswich have hit a midday high of 38 degrees celsius. You walk outside and the heat hits you like a giant wall of warm molasses. You sweat. Constantly. The breeze is hot, even in the shade. Tonight it will probably only get down to 22 or 23 degrees.

I’m sitting here on my lounge, with my laptop burning my legs, a fan on high pointed directly at me. I probably won’t move for the next few hours because to do so would mean more sweat.

I can’t wait for my holidays to start in a few weeks so I can go home to Hervey Bay and sit in cool ocean breezes while I drink on the back patio of my Mum’s house. Until then, I actually look forward to going to work, just so that I can sit in the air conditioning.

I had 60’s legends, Herman’s Hermits, at the theatre last night. It was the first time that I was able to use the Digico D1 with a live band. The show we just finished was a musical which let me test the snapshot stuff but it wasn’t really a good test of the full capabilities of the desk.

The Hermits are a 4 piece with drums, bass, guitar and keyboards. 4 sends of foldback were run from front of house. Continue Reading »

This video is the ultimate in sound guy geek fun. You see, I’m a sound guy, and anything to do with audio that combines the following,

1. Great music
2. Principles of Audio demonstrated in an interesting manner
3. and most importantly FIRE

is right up my alley. The video is of a Ruben’s Tube which demonstrates standing waves. I want one of these on my wall at home, or even better, sitting on the meter bridge of my console at work. It might annoy the theatre goers a little, and Workplace Health and Safety may have their issues with it, but I think it would make for the ultimate “Pimp my Sound Console” accessory.

Manly, or Sensitive

Neil at Citizen of the Month wrote a blog called Strong, Silent Type. He said that he was feeling worried about how he wrote and acted and if it was sufficiently manly and not too sensitive.

I ask myself this question every day. In my head of course, never out loud to actual people (not that anyone reading this isn’t an actual person. The Internet anonymity means I can say what I like here).

Continue Reading »

WARNING - Rampant whining content follows this warning!

Yes I’m going to whine and whinge in this post. There may also be a Star Wars related rant in the middle of it. Just remember that you were warned.

Today was supposed to be my day off. I have to work Saturday and Sunday on shows this week which means I can basically choose which other days I need off. This week, the most convenient days happened to be today and next Monday.

Over the weekend I got emails at work that informed me of the need to setup a PA with a radio mic and a lapel mic on Tuesday, had a client coming in for a meeting Tuesday afternoon (That I never booked and the front office never confirmed with me), and had to pull a radio receiver out of the musical rig that is set up currently as it was faulty and needed to go back to the hire company at lunchtime on….that’s right…..TUESDAY!

Fair enough, I figured. It’s all part of the job and at least I will get a sleep in and can have a late start.

WRONG!

Continue Reading »

Earlier this week I took a trip to Melbourne to have a demonstration of a new digital console. Thanks to the guys from Group Technologies for being very hospitable and looking after me for the whirlwind day.

The desk I was demoing is the Digico D1. I know that I said in an earlier post that the Digidesign Venue was an amazing desk, and it still is, but the D1 is in a class of its own. If you want to read my review of the desk, head over to this link - D1 Review.

Here is a very bad picture of the desk. Unfortunately by the time I remembered that I took my camera down with me, we were running out of time to get back to the airport so this rushed and blurry shot is the best I could get. Still, I think it makes it look cool.

Compare that desk to the rigs that I usually mix on

If I needed a piece of hardware for everything available on the D1, I would need 4 of those sound consoles, and easily another 2 or 3 of the stack of rack gear beside it. You can see why I want a new desk

My first ever blog I’ve been meaning to get around to this for months now. We’ll see if I’m able to stick with it, I have a tendency to get bored sometimes.

Anyway, I had a really good show on Thursday night. I’m a sound engineer for a regional theatre near Brisbane, Australia. On Thursday we had Aled Jones, a well known singer from Wales, performing at our theatre. Normally an international act like his would be touring with their own production crew and equipment, but on this tour he is doing whistlestop shows all over the country back to back so he is using in house engineers and gear to save on the logistics involved.

For me, this was a bonus. Most times I set up the PA and mics, assist the touring engineer with anything they need during soundchecks and then I head backstage to watch the show and then pack it all up. I probably get to mix about 10 or 12 decent acts a year and the rest of the time it is community groups/schools and corporate events with 2 lectern microphones and a CD player.

On this show I got to spec all the equipment we would need to hire in, organise the crew we would need and mix front of house sound. To be honest, I had never heard of Aled prior to the show being advertised for the theatre. I didn’t know what his music was like, whether he would be a prima-donna, or if I would hate every minute of it.

To my great joy, Aled and his crew were great to work with. He and his musical director were perfectionists, but that is to be expected in this industry. I guess deep down I am a perfectionist also when it comes to live sound, because I know that when a crowd walks out of a great show they give credit to the performer, when it’s a bad show they credit it to the venue. I’ve always tried to do the absolute best that I can so that my venue keeps a good name. The better the punters think of the venue the more tickets they buy. The better name we have with touring crew and promoters, the more shows that come to our venue. Both things keep me and my crew in work and helps me get new and expensive toys from the Boss

This was the first show on the tour so we had a few hassles getting their gear integrated into our rig and figuring out how the show would run etc. The biggest problem was fitting a 75 person choir onto a stage that already had a harp, a string quartet, a grand piano, Aled, and 11 foldback wedges on it. We eventually added extra risers and stood the choir around the string quartet. The choir director wasn’t overly pleased with the situation but I left it to the Tour manager to solve that problem. Sometimes it’s nice being able to handball the nasty stuff up a level.

We had a really long soundcheck/rehearsal due to the musicians being new to the music, and never having performed with Aled prior to this show. As with most professional classical musicians though, the MD gave them music and they played it as though they had been playing it for the last 10 years. It amazes me to this day that people are that talented. It also makes me wish I’d stuck at it when I started learning guitar instead of getting lazy and playing everything by ear. We started sound check at about 4pm and finished at 7:25pm, just 5 minutes before doors opened for the audience.

That gave me 20 minutes to chain smoke as many cigarettes as I could before I needed to be back at the FOH position. I don’t know why but I always smoke more just before a show than I ever do any other time.

The show started with the choir for 20 mins which was a pretty easy mix. Just 2 shotgun mics on the choir and the piano. Aled came on and the job got interesting. I had originally thought that this was going to be set and forget for most of the show. Instead I found dynamic changes throughout the performance that kept me on my toes, watching the musicians, spotting the person who just started playing the main melody, keeping them all balanced and most importantly making sure that every single member of the audience could hear Aled clearly over the top of it all. In our venue, which for that show was set with seats on the flat auditorium floor and seats in the balcony it becomes an interesting exercise in guesstimation. I was set on the floor at the back of the audience and so I knew what I was hearing was pretty close for the 3-400 people downstairs. The 150 or so in the balcony meant I had to guess how loud it was upstairs, and how loud I could get downstairs without annoying the crowd while still ensuring it was loud and clear in the balcony. At interval I had a few punters come and do the standard, “We can’t hear this, we can’t hear that”, comments. I just didn’t have the heart to tell them that most of the times they couldn’t hear the harp was because she was miming to a backing track and wasn’t actually playing.

At the end of the show I got great reports from my manager, the tour manager, the MD and Aled about the sound. It’s always nice to hear from the people who actually know what it should sound like that you got it right. Even better was the tour manager delivering a 30 pack of beer to our crew for a job well done. Now that’s the way to show your appreciation!

All in all this gig went from one where I expected a standard senior citizens entertainment evening, to a gig where I was challenged at every turn, and even more surprisingly, I enjoyed the music.

So that ends the good gig story. Fear not that bad gig stories will follow, and in fact will be more prevalent than good gigs. But, I figured that this gig was worthy of a first blog because it shows that my job is fun, and reminds me why I keep going back for the 14 hour days