Month: May 2019

Another Playback Show

Another Playback Show

Ahh, dance season. These shows are playback-only and thus far too easy to screw up by zoning out. As Keeper of the Playback Timer, audio calls the cues for lighting, so you have to focus even with you have nothing else to do except hit the spacebar in Qlab. It’s also very hard to judge …

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What is the analyzer telling you?

What is the analyzer telling you?

Many of the bad optimization decisions I have seen were made because folks didn’t correctly understand what the analyzer was telling them. Here we have a collection of data from Smaart along with context for each one. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out what the analyzer data is indicating, …

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Will Subwoofer EQ ruin the phase alignment with the mains?

Will Subwoofer EQ ruin the phase alignment with the mains?

Often, folks are concerned about using parametric EQ filters to fix low-frequency repsonse issues in the subwoofers, for fear that the phase shift from the PEQ filters will throw off the alignment with the mains. In most cases, this isn’t something to be concerned about.  Here is a matched pair of 4th order Linkwitz-Riley filters. …

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What System Optimization Means To Me

What System Optimization Means To Me

A colleague of mine owns a production company and had a gig yesterday for a government accounting agency. The setup is simple: a podium mic and a couple of RF handhelds that everybody needs to be able to hear and understand. The trick is that the event is inside a literal aircraft hangar, probably the most acoustically …

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Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

A colleague’s upcoming gig posed an interesting set of constraints for the subwoofer subsystem design. It’s a diamond-shaped stage and due to the nature of the event, all the boxes must be located against the stage, not spaced out in a more typical broadside or L/R configuration. (Seeing as there’s a drape/video line about midstage, …

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Two Common Confusions about Console EQ

Two Common Confusions about Console EQ

I’ve seen a couple things lately related to console EQ that I wanted to shed some light on and hopefully get a good dialogue going. But we’re gonna keep it short and sweet. “Air Band” EQ A couple consoles running at at 96 kHz will allow tuning EQ bands out past 20 kHz. (Some call …

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