Dave Rat Blog - Believing Illusions

So coming up on the last show of this leg of tour I start this post 45 minutes before lobby call in Istambul. Beirut show was three days ago and we're heading to Tel Aviv this afternoon. It is truly amazing and intriguing to visit these ancient and historical cities and yet find the common ground of happy and enthusiastic humans gathering to enjoy music. More so than any other travel trip I have done, this tour has highlighted the vast discrepancy between the impression that corporate news media presents and the reality of what to see and expect. So naturally the unfamiliar is blown out of proportion illogical fear levels. Just as Nebraskans can watch aghast with fear over the how unbearable it must be for Californians to live in constant fear of earthquakes, while yet another swirl of tornadoes roll past ripping through local houses and corn fields.

People die of gangland shootings in Los Angeles so common that the news stories rate lower than a traffic jam on the freeway while just a mere mention of visiting Beirut, Tel Aviv or Istambul  is met with wide eyes aghast,"is it safe, those places are all over the news." There was a guy, killed and kidnapped there just yesterday!" I hear someone say. "Really? someone died in a city that is not the city I am going but it is in the same country?, wow!" And what comes to mind is the simple minded logic in reverse. that I occasionally hear "Wow, you are from Los Angeles? Hey, my sister's husband's brother is from Los Angeles, do you know a guy named Joe Smith?" And with the same odds and probability that I know Joe Smith, I will embrace those irrational fear levels as I travel the earth.

Now that is not to say that having an alertness to one's environment whether in the forest, the desert, south central Los Angeles or any other place on the planet earth is not a wise.mindset. And just like going on a camping trip where I neither got lost, died or ran out of water but saw some amazing and interesting things, I get to share a few pictures and memories.

So Lets start with Beirut, oooh look!

And as far away as places seem to be, the simple familiarity of being able to live off of plastic cards holds strong

Loading up the crew bus at the airport to head to the hotel

Our bags are very safe right now

Yay Tour bus!

Ooooh, cool UN vehicles!

Our bags are even safer when we unload at the hotel

Hey look a special conveyer belt to help move the bags a 5 feet closer and save us hauling them a bit plus a walk through metal detector too.

Yummy amazing meals

This was the view out our hotel room window.  Did a bit of asking around and it is the Holiday Inn from the "Battle of the Hotels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hotels

Plus I did a mini Seminar there as well

The Gig

And some wandering

And back to the airport

Next stop Istambul.

and thought of the day:

So wandering around the local Best Buy and Fry's looking at electronics and such as I occasionally like to to do.  I notice the growing popularity of "sound bars"

 https://www.google.com/search?q=sound+bar&sugexp=chrome,mod=17&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

And with these horizontal steerable sound systems each seems to be all about simulating surround sound. I guess not so much surround actually but rather trying to create an enhanced stereo image. In essence inferring that the stereo image is inadequate in the recordings or that there are improvements to be made?  Could they be trying to make the instruments sound like they are coming from different places? Meanwhile, the bulk of live engineers, we have total control and yet most engineers mix on huge complex sound systems what is almost always very close to mono.  Hmmmm

In real life, next stop San Francisco.  In Blog life, next stop Istambul. Meanwhile, 6 days home and 5 days of surfing, huge piles of pretending I am a business man and no where near enough time with my daughters. But hey, it can always be worse and upload it goes without a proof read or edit.

Good night

Dave Rat Blog - Perception and more

It was very cool to be able to get to do sound seminars in Prague, Bucharest, Sofia and today in Athens as well. Meeting sound humans in each city is super cool.

My latest ponder is back on to the deficiencies of the equipment we use to measure audio. It is so tempting to look at frequency response and believe it is an accurate picture of what we are hearing. Yes, I do very much rely on frequency response and tonal balance as a primary factor of the sound being presented. I also try my best to be aware of the fact that frequency response is just a small part of the bigger auditory picture.

Can any measurement gear tell you who manufactured the system you are listening to?



For example, what if I were to EQ an L-Acoustic K1, JBL Vertec and a D&B J rig to look exactly the same on my measurement system? Will they sound the same? What if I space two speakers 4 feet apart horizontally in cube shaped room and measured the sound.  Then I move the speakers to be vertically spaced in the same room, the same distances from the floor and ceiling as they were from the walls before. The same mic position as well. Acoustically the exact same sound would be created and measured, the exact same frequency response. Yet if we listened to the two scenarios would they sound the same? Would we be able to hear that the speakers are placed horizontally versus vertically? If we can not hear the difference then we can start placing our home Hi-Fi speakers vertically spaced and it would sound the same, Right?

So if the measurement system we rely on can not easily differentiate between drastically different speaker positions and systems types, something so easy for us to hear  as vertical versus horizontal speaker placement, what other valuable information is it denying us? Now move those same speakers very close together and compare the sound of horizontal versus vertical placements, can we still hear the difference? Is there comb-filtering?

The theory of line arrays relies somewhat on placing all the issues of speaker interaction vertically where our ears are less likely to hear them. No major manufacturer or any manufacturer that I know of makes a horizontal line array wherein overlapping coverage between adjoining boxes is utilized to increase coverage distance. Horizontal arrays are typically splayed at fixed angles that minimize overlap between boxes.

OK, some adventure pics. Say hey to the Bucharest Romania seminar crew.

And thank you Pipai and Rock Studios for lining it up and hosting.

New Cities

The authority of "Stop" strikes fear into all those attempting to go

Zagreb

Josh has a broken foot so has been playing while seated, soooo... we attached the tilt legs to the MicroWedges to get the right angle

Cool idea, standardized caster plates that attach to cases.

Looking up in the stadium

Show

After show

Between Bucharest and Sofia

Laundry Day

Bulgaria Seminar

Thank you Andrey!

Athens Seminar

At Lizard Sound

And finally, Not a big fan of Apple so when their flaws come to light I like it.

Dave Rat

Dave Rat Blog - Aaargh, intermittant belt packs!

So we switched to a Shure PSM1000 system for Chili Peppers in-ears, which have been working really well. The diversity dual antenna packs helped overcome noise from the LED stage. The internal pack volume control helped get the pack volume knobs where the musicians want to have them. and the sound quality and stereo separation is the best I've heard on a multi frequency tunable pack.

So here we are over 6 months into using them and we are starting to see packs dropping out during the show. After some poking around, we found the intermittent packs were losing battery power.

After digging further, I have found that the cause is loose positive terminals in the belt packs. Sometimes they are very loose and easy to spot, other times it is nearly impossible to tell....

Except if you get a sharp object and try to spin the terminal, the packs that have terminals that spin are also the pack that are intermittent. The packs that are intermittent are also the packs have spinning terminals. So far out of 16 packs, we're are down 5 but bought 2 replacements, which leave us with 13 fully functional.

The issue appears to be that the positive terminals in the packs are most likely crimped and either needs a better crimp or to be soldered.

I have actually seen this issue before, way back when I worked at Mattel Toys. At one point either a vendor switch or change in manufacturing resulted in the 9 volt battery power connectors having the same issue: spinning terminals. The games would work for a while and then while the customer was playing, it would loose power and reset mid game. Then the customer would send them back and I would get t change the power connector.

So, super curious to see how this pans out. Wondering if we are alone with this experience and working on getting things dialed back in.
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Dave Rat - Sooo Slow

I love surprises, and I had the wonderful surprise of hearing the answer to the question I asked Thomas from Highlite Sound "so, how many L-Acoustic boxes do we have out here on this tour?"

 and the breakdown for the gear and placements for Gelsenkirchen are:

Main system Left/Right - 14 K1 + 4 Kara underhung per side

 Outer system L/R- 16 K1 + 6 Kara underhung per side

Outer outer L/R - 6 Kara per side

9 Kara Center cluster

Two Kara per side as deck fillson the lip of the stage

Three delay clusters each with 12 K1

Totaling a whopping and imprssive:

96 K1,  56 SB28 and 45 KARA

Now on to other curiosities....

So we are all set up in Gelsenkirchen at Veltins Arena and wandering about I notice the seats behind the stage are slid back, ooooh, lets go look!

So, the seats roll back on the these rails

Driven by electric motors

 and you can walk underneath

to find a huge grass field outside

 that is also on wheels and tracks and 

the entire gassy football (soccer) field splits in two and rolls outside to get some sunshine and move out of the way for rock shows and other events. So cool and I ask 

"How long does it take to roll the grass out?" 

"What? Fourteen hours? wow!" I'm surprised, "why so long?" so she says 

"Because it is very heavy" Ha! I guess that's pretty obvious and can you imagine having the gig of spending 14 hours watching the grass roll, heck I bet the grass is taller and needs to be mowed as well after moving.

OK, a soccer field is 100 meters or 330 feet. It takes 14 hours for the 2 halves to slide out and they travel maybe an extra 85 feet or so to clear the bleachers. 1/2x330+85=250feet in 14 hours. 17.85 feet per hour, 3.57 inches per minute or about 300 hours to travel a mile.

And how about a look in that little tent three photos up?Ahh, it's Adam's world! Our European pro tools live recorder guy.

 And a straggling pic from last tour leg, Public Image was surprisingly captivating to see

Some new cool graphics have been showing up in the peppers set

So lets give a shout out to Scott and Leif and may as well dig up an older photo of them looking 'cool' as always

Next stop, Prague and will blog an amazingly cool seminar adventure.