Dave Rat Blog - Wander and Ponder

Wander and Ponder

Big Day Out show 2 done and missing doing our own shows a bit.  Festivals can be fun but I prefer doing our own tours at this point. That said, being in Australia easily makes up for it.

So after a show and three full days off in the Gold Coast, it is now time to rock Adelaide today. There was much healthy fun to be had in the Australian sun, but first something I google stumbled on when doing a search for spokeless wheels

Now here is a concept I don't see back home, giant tubes of dog food yum!

Off to adventure south a bit down the wild and wonderful Australia coast.

Oh what will we find

Perhaps exotic critters

and such perfect place for a swim, and of course I did!

Shhhh, he's sleeping

Watch out for speeding Koala's

Super cool $20 a day board rentals

Hey look, a board from my home town Oxnard!

Darn it, the waves look fun but there are so few people to share them with.

Oh well, at least its not stunning here

And  not just fun in the sun, I did a seminar with a great group of soundies at BSG, thank you Rosh and all for taking such great care of us!

Hey, I put up syllabus of the Waves to Wires seminar on the daverat.com site links/downloads page

On the Soundtools front, the new Senn to Shure adapters are done and ready to ship:

with more on the way with a DMX version of the  XLR Sniffer/Sender and Polar Pointer soon to come.

I did another seminar in Adelaide straight off the plane flight and kept everyone up to near 1 am  Really digging this go-go-go nonstop thing.  Thank you Andrew and Luke! I am so looking forward to trying to line up a worldwide seminar tour adventure.

Thought of the day:

Consistent work in a positive direction will bring positive results over time.

Or conversely, 

If you are not seeing desirable results then there must be flaws in the direction, consistency or persistence.

Bummer of the Day

A small handbag with cash and a very sentimental ring belonging to Kim has gone missing from her suitcase at the Marriott in Gold Coast. Super sucks but ya never know, if by some magic reason it turns up or anyone sees it somewhere, it would make a great story of happiness to see it unvanish

Ok, off to the Big Day Out gig in Adelaide and see if I can find and unravel some mysteries.

Dave Rat Blog - Hot and Fast

 Okey dokey Sydney was super fun but way too short of a stay. We all stayed out near Circle Quay which I never have before, kinda cool being near the Ferry terminal and got to see the Opera house up close too. Kim and I took a ferry ride to Manly Beach for a swim and a wander about

Then next stop was Sydney Seminar, thank you Simon, Tony and all. 

 Dinner with my super good friends Cat, Ady and new shorties, as time warp steps in. Tour life is like living a series of short movies all jumbled and spaced apart on a random playlist. And "oh, I so forgot how much I love this" keeps coming round.

Happy Birthday Kim!

And after few too many beers and fun night out how about we do

 a rock show in an oven!

Stupid hot and crazy humid, its all about moving in slow motion

Oh, and while wandering, I spotted these ants.  Check out how fast they are! It's just crazy and they were non stop sprinting in every direction

Speaking of fast, they should always have toys at gigs backstage!

Some sort of weird cool plywood I have not seen before being used as utility decking.  I'm guesing its a down under version of chipboard

Checked out the Yeah Yeah Yeah's

Hey, no overheads looks cool!

A robot band plays between sets

And the Peppers were super fun!

And when all is said an done, we're off to Goldcoast

Oh, and does the water really spin the other way south of the equator? 

Well, not sure, I forgot to videotape which way it spins before I left but here is what the water does down here.

And off to breakfast and hello Goldcoast

Dave Rat Blog - Boats and Rubberbands

Show #2 Auckland, Vector Arena tonight.  Ah yes, it all comes back to me and I remember the place well now. I will say it does sound much more manageable than when we were here in '07 and the first full blown gig in the venue. Looks like they removed quite a bit of glass and added a bunch of sound absorbing layers. Still has the super slick floor and I am a bit ashamed to say I find myself smiling as I watch multiple beer slipping punters drop over the course of the eve. Long as they don't get hurt,its really funny!

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

May as well start out with a bit of sound nerdery.  Today's topic is room resonance. Properly dealing with room resonance is critical and is one of the most important aspects sound engineers must master in order to deal with larger venues. When mixing clubs and smaller venues, the room resonance tends to be fairly high, over 200 hz, and tends not to linger for long periods of time. As the venue size increases, the venues resonate at a lower frequency. As a rough estimate, 5000 to 8000 capacity venues are up in the 160 to 200hz range.  8000 to 15000 tend to be in the 125 to 160hz range and over 15000 tend to be in the 125hz and below range.

Room resonance is a non linearity in the "what goes in, comes out" equation. If we reproduce from the loud speaker system music that is tonally balanced, room resonance will accentuate certain frequencies. Put another way, at room resonance, a little bit of sound makes a lot of noise.  Since the sound is bouncing around at the resonant frequency, it is not only louder in that range but also the quality of the sound in that range tends to be blurry, poor quality and low intelligibility.

So, the rule of thumb with room resonance, get rid of it.  Kill it, EQ the crap out of it, make it go away, it is your sonic enemy. You may find that you need 15 or 20 db of cut in a particularly resonant venue, dont be shy, say bye bye to sending frequency that set off the room resonance.  It is better to have a hole in that frequency range than to have a pile of crappy sound at the proper tonally balanced volume in that range.

I wont go into all the causes but will say that a curved roof and concrete flat floor do set up a pretty good scenario for resonance.

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

More adventures! So a road trip out to Piha, no surfing though, will have to try and do that when we get to Australia. So dreamy pretty though!

Hey hey Auckland Seminar crew! great to meet you all and hang out! Cathal, Me, Olli, Ben, Johnny, David and Ben, rockin!

Found a new drink holder

And a pic on the wall from last time Peppers were here. If ya look close you can see the mix tigers!

So Peppers crew went on an Americas Cup sail boat adventure, sooo fun and highly recommend it!

Some sail boat rides go better than others.

Next stop, Bungy Jumping off the Harbor Bridge, YAY! And look, it aint that far, just a tiny hop.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Thank you Devon and Leighton and all at AJ Hackett Bunjy Soooo fun!



And very important info - Do not ride bike without front tire!

And now, off to mix a rock show!

Dave Rat Blog - New Year and Down Under

Happy New Year and hello New Zealand!  

And here goes on a super fast power update and intentions on staying on top of blogging for the down under adventure. 

So I got to spend New Years with Kim doing gig at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas.  Small venue and fun show.

And now it has been nearly 6 years and we are back for a gig at the Vector Arena, Auckland.

Ha, well last time I was here Peppers got a particularly unpleasant show review mentioning sound 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/concerts/news/article.cfm?c_id=161&objectid=10435571

Well, though the reviewer seemed to be of the minority opinion

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/concerts/news/article.cfm?c_id=161&objectid=10435693

After a few emails from friends and such feeling there was an injustice, I came up with the brilliant? idea responding:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10436271

And it turns out, I was not alone in my opinions of the venue sound:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10458268

Here is a run down at the time on my old blog.

http://ratsound.com/cblog/archives/255-Day-333-April-23st-Far-Away-to-Home-Today-and-Oh-No!.html

Anyway, I just went for a wander through the Vector and it seems they have made some efforts to clean up the acoustics and am looking forward to a rocking show.

Oh, and how cool is it to see some Rat Sound amp racks that live here now!

Where Rat bought the L-Acoustics K1 rig back in 2008/2009 we sold a nice turn key V-Dosc rig to our friends at Oceana, New Zealand

Speaking of friends in New Zealand, here is pic of getting ready to Bungy jump last time here

Oh, the break time at home was great, thank you Kim for the cool Jacket!

Rat Sound has picked up a few Digico desks adding an SD10 and SD7 to our inventory.  Yah, I dont mix on digi boards unless I have to but Rat's philosophy is to offer the tools that the engineers need to do their gig and Digico does make some powerful consoles that are were liked. 

Some gigs are better than others....

So I come up with this great idea to buy inversion boots to hang upside down to stretch my back.  Yep, it worked great until I went to get down.  Turns out my back hurt so much that I did not have the strength to get back down. After a precarious bumble, and some help from Kim, thankfully I am not still hanging there.  Need to figure out a plan B.

Hey, if you are ever up in Ventura, ya got to check out Tony's Pizzaria. Just one of those places that have been there forever and makes amazing food.

On the SoundTools front, we are now making a Sennheiser to Shure adapter that lets you put a Senn dynamic cap on a Shure wireless handheld

And while digging through pics of things to share, on my way home from surfing

I stopped at a estate sale and found a pile of old cool home HiFi gear which of course I 'needed'

So now I have a super cool Pioneer RT-707, an old Sony Reciever and a yes, an 8-track recorder too. Plus a box of old tapes and such so I fixed it all and wired it in.

Speaking of  buying sound gear, Rat went big on year end purchases and stockpiled pallets of L-Acoustics, Shure, Sennheiser, Audix, Radial and more.  

It's our first real jump into stocking inventory and since we bought big at year end, we got some great pricing which we are all about passing on. Give Daniella or John Karr a shout by phone or email.

Say hey to my gals, gosh I am so crazy proud of them!

And back to now and hey look, the Rainbow Warrior is parked out back of the crew hotel!

 It is so darn beautiful here! Rented a can and out adventuring after a 14 hour flight and 8 am arrival

Oh boy! I have always wanted to see real quicksand!

So back to New Zealand and got to run in a few  as I have Seminar coming up shortly. 

How can you not love New Zealand!