On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I guess that everyone who has worked for some time in broadcasting,
film, theater or similar environments has at least one horror story
to tell...
Heh one of my favorites involved the lead up before a band ever took stage, when their tour manager (Also their A2) started talking to me about their setup....
By the end of the conversations the stage crew offered to have him 'dissappear' the moment he stepped off the bus for me. It was very tempting.
By the end of the conversations the stage crew offered to have him 'dissappear' the moment he stepped off the bus for me. It was very tempting.
Then one of my more recent gigs, a small gig that was supposed to be a couple of zones of speakers on sticks and me mixing a small 5 person cast for about 15 minutes outside in the city. High-er levels, as I knew the producer and knew what he would want, but nothing to terrible and sounds pretty average, till I show up and am told that I can't use any speaker stands, not because they are worried about them falling on people but because the venue didn't want them falling on the _boxwood_ _hedges_. Frustrated doesn't begin to describe me at that point.
Suddenly the gig became theater in the round, with the mains pointed into the round with the performers(As they were blocked to move amongst the audience all night), and resting on the ground. Feedback was a slight issue to put it mildly.
And of course you have the venue I went to when working a tour across the country over here, that I walked in and the 'sound engineer' for the venue hands me AC ground lifts and tells me to lift the ground on all my equipment or I can't tie into their system. He says it is the only way to avoid buz and that he won't risk his system for my sound. I calmly try to explain that what he was describing was a ground loop and is easily fixed by other methods that don't involve endangering the lives of people near my equipment, but he refuses to hear me and insists they have tried everything possible and this is the only thing that worked. Needless to say I conveniently 'forgot' to life the AC grounds on my equipment and instead properly isolated the audio grounds fixing the problem. He comes up to me after the gig and complains that I didn't use it, my response... "Did you hear a buzz?" I then stepped outside after load-out and called the production company to tell them enver to book that venue again, this was only one of the problems I had with it(Enough slack in the fly system to wrap a dead body in comes to mind as well).
Yep, this list goes on for quite a while. ;)
Seablade
PS For those unaware, NEVER lift an AC ground on a piece of equipment.
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