Category: Sound

SciFi Conventions / Sound / Video

Hybrid Conventions

When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, all of the Sci-Fi conventions I volunteer with had to cancel or switch to an online format. Since the Pandemic has stabilized, it is not over, we have just learned more or less how to live with it, conventions have gone back to in-person events. But, we realized that there is a demand for online Sci-Fi convention activities. There are people who cannot attend in-person for a variety of very good reasons, from health and age related to cost and time. There is a market for online Sci-Fi convention activities. A couple notes on terminology...

June 24, 2023
Electronics / Sound

Weird Tape Deck Problem

I have been working on a long term project to convert my (and my Father’s) old reel-to-reel tapes to digital. As part of that I have been working on a Teac X3mkii deck. Skipping all the mechanical fun, at this point it is pulling tape very nicely (for a consumer deck) and I was impressed with the 8 KHz stability coming off of the MRL alignment tape. The purpose of this post to search for an answer to an electrical problem with the deck. The problem is ion both channels, but much more pronounced in the right. There is an...

June 16, 2020
Sound

When is Ground not Ground?

A while back I was working entertainment tech for a small convention, I was the Sound Designer and had inherited the Power Design (usually done by the Lighting department, but we did not find a Lighting Designer until very late). The event was held at a hotel with a 4-section ballroom, call the sections 1, 2, 3, and 4. The stage was set in section 4 and we had a social event in sections 1 and 2 on Friday night with the airwall between 2 and 3 in place. After the social event the airwall between 2 and 3 was...

November 5, 2019
Sound / Theatre

Sound Cue Playback Tools

When I asked on the Theatre-Sound List  for suggestions of software tools that permit playback of sound cues for Theatre, I received lots of suggestions. I was asking specifically about tools that work under Windows. My primary laptop runs Mac OS and I use QLab from Figure 53, but I have a secondary laptop that runs Windows and I wanted to put it into service for playback as well. I occasionally run into situations where I need my primary system, but also have a gig needing playback. So I gathered together all the suggested products (and a couple comments from...

February 18, 2016
SLOC / Sound / Theatre

Loudspeaker Death ?

A local community theater I volunteer at is having trouble with the main speaker cluster. I am one of two Sound Coordinators for this company, so I get called for problems. Some background, the main sound system consists of a flown cluster of four speaker cabinets: a Main covering the bulk of the audience, a Front Fill (FF) covering the first 4 or 5 rows, a Subwoofer (Sub), and a Stage Monitor (SM) covering the vast majority of the stage. All are ElectroVoice EVF series speakers. The Main is a 15″ 2-way, the FF is a 12″ 2-way as is...

December 8, 2015
Broadcasting / Computers / Geek / Personal / Sound

Who am I

When meeting someone new, an introduction is in order, so here is my introduction. I am a “Geek” and I mean that in the sense that I seek to understand how everything works. Not just what buttons to push, but what the buttons do and why I might want to push them. I went to a major technical institute in the early 1980’s and failed out after 2.5 years as a Physics major. I then leveraged my experience at the school’s student run radio station into a string of jobs in Broadcasting on the engineering side of the house. UHF TV...

July 1, 2014
May 2025
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