Welcome back to the Live Sound 101 video series
I'm BigNate84 I make YouTube videos and this video series happens to be about
live sound and professional audio and you know
I've gotten some great feedback from some of
the live students out there and professionals that are out on the road traveling touring,
live sound techs so I just wanted to give you guys some shout
outs and let you know that Ido read all your comments
and I listen to your feedback and before I get to reading
some of your comments and answering your questions in this video and talking about the
Live Sound 101 community I do have a few announcements
so the first thing I wanted to share with you guys
is the AVShopTalk podcast now since I don't know the summer of 2013
I've been brainstorming and strategizing with my colleague
Jason Griffing from Integrators Academy and we've been getting together with Google
Hangouts and stuff and trying to plan out
you know if we were to get together and do a podcast
what would that be like? and we came up with AVShopTalk
and basically it's a place were we can talk about
emerging technologies and new trends in the industry
and record it and interview subject matter experts
from different corners of the Pro AV industry and put it into a nice neat podcast available
for free from the iTunes store or from
the website AVShopTalk.com in other news the next announcement is Live
Sound 101 I went out and bought the domain LiveSound101.com
so if you go there you can bookmark that it might be easier to follow along
with these videos that way and right now it's just an embedded playlist
but eventually I'll be getting to adding more resources there and it's a work in progress
and the last thing the community before we get to reading your comments
so I started up the Live Sound 101 Google+ Community
and that's a great place to ask questions it's a great place to network
with other live sound professionals and live sound volunteers
so feel free to introduce yourself there's a category called introduce yourself
where you can you know flip through and see other people
in the community and kind of tell your story where you are coming from
and 100+ members and counting right now so it's an active community there
and I'm going to be posting these live sound 101 videos
there in the community so you can follow the series that way
I'll also be posting pro audio news and things related
to Pro AV and live sound but feel free to share pictures from a mix
session or live production or an install or a video
or a project Iv'e had people post links to some projects
that they're working on mixing to get feedback from other folks
so that's kind of a nice little community the nice thing about Google+ is it's free
it's a nice forum to share all kinds of information so without any further ad-due
I will get to some of your comments So I've been getting some good feedback
and wanted to read through some comments here ok this one is from RCCrecording
OMG YES!!!
You finally answered what I needed to know about live sound
awesome, thank you RCCrecording I appreciate the comment
the next one is from Marko Nice vids Nate can you explain to us more
about what exactly is the job of an AV technician?
and what is the equipment that broadcast technicians use?
camcorders, sound, light?
thanks.
Ok this is a very broad question there are many types of
AV technicians it sounds like you're interested in broadcast
um, I don't work in broadcast I know a little bit about broadcast
I've designed some broadcast systems when the time comes I work as an AV designer
um, I'm wondering the best way to answer this so I could go multiple routes with this question
I could go talking about technicians in general or I could talk more about broadcast
but to be honest if you ask one broadcast what type of equipment he uses
if you ask one broadcast company or one broadcast technician what type of equipment he uses
and you ask another one they're going to give you different answers
they might say, they might give you some good industry
baseline standards or some go to pieces of equipment
that you might find in every broadcast house or every studio but that's not something I
can really talk very specifically about
moving right along and the next question is from German
hello German, he says nice video awesome!
thank you very much next we've got Chuck
thanks for posting these Nate very helpful to another guy
that fell into live sound reinforcement by accident
you're very welcome Chuck thanks for watching glad the videos helped you out and all too
often that's how it goes
you just kind of fall into it by accident now I was kind of a little bit different
I kind of fell into it but I kind of sought it out too
when I was 15 I really wanted to learn how to operate a mixer
that was kind of something I really wanted to do
so I sought it out and I got training and started doing it and mixing for my garage
band that I played in and the rest is history
alright, next comment this is is from Kevin Enjoy your vids keep up the good work
thank you Kevin alright next comment is from Vincent
hey dude, I might pick up mixing FOH again as a hobby for a small band
and it was awesome to see that I actually have
in my possession the Live Sound Reinforcement Handbook by Yamaha
bought that one many, many years ago and I can vouch for it being an awesome book
I'll be watching all your posts now well thank you Vincent
I definitely appreciate the sentiment there and
I agree with you 100% the Sound Reinforcement Handbook by Yamaha
is one of the more popular go-to resources for AV technicians and live sound people
guys that really want to understand what's happening
on a deeper level that's a great resource just happen to have a copy of it right here
so we saw this in the intro video went through some different training materials
and stuff Sound Reinforcement Handbook
definitely a good thing alright, next comment, who's up there
Zachary, no I'm sorry, Rick Zachary so I got this one via Facebook
and he said he is a new sound guy he's like 58 years old he's a new sound guy
and he asks, how do I know mics my Alto TS115A speaker can handle efficiently
at one time, example two singers, keyboards,two amps mic'd,
and he's clueless, maybe I can get the answer somewhere
ok so, I"m trying to figure out what you mean to ask
how many, how many mic's can this handle ok so I looked up the spec sheet
so this is a powered speaker meaning it has an amplifier built into it
and I think it can accept two inputs I don't have the spec sheet right in front
of me but I looked it up a couple days ago
and it looked like a powered speaker with two mic inputs
so if you had like an iPod and a microphone maybe for doing Karaoke this would be all
you needed you wouldn't need a mixer you could just plug
into this thing and be off and running
so that's convenient for certain applications but, how many mic's can the speaker handle
efficiently at one time so there is to routes to go here
on route is how many physical inputs can this thing take
and the answer would be two the other route would be
how many different signal can you combine there
so lets say you've got one speaker that is basically trying
to reproduce sound for bass guitar, electric guitar,
keyboard, a couple vocal mics depending on the quality of your speaker
you will have some conflicting things going on there
if you are trying to pump too many sources that are all over the frequency spectrum
through one kind of cheap speaker you'll lose a little bit of clarity there
right because the bass is pumping that speaker at
really low frequencies right it's kind of going really
low meanwhile you've got the higher frequencies
like in female vocal or male vocal or maybe in the keyboard you've got
higher frequencies there and they are moving at
a much faster speed so you've got this one driver
that's trying to do everything all at once and it's just basically a property of physics
the speaker can't be at multiple places at once
so often times that's why you'll break out the
low frequencies into subwoofer so the subwoofer can focus on doing bass
and you will have the high frequencies or you'll have mid drivers to handle mid
and you'll have tweeters to handle the high frequencies
that's why things broken up that way what it does is it provides a lot more clarity
in your signal now systems like that are a lot more expensive
so you know if you're not going to upgrade to a system
like that where you've got a crossover and you send low frequencies to a sub
and the high frequencies to a mid and tweeter if that's not an option, if you're stuck with
this speaker the best thing to do is to just get a mixer
and to actually mix the signals or sum the signals together properly
with a device designed to do that and that is what a mixer is designed to do
it's designed to sum audio signals together and even so that doesn't solve the frequency
problem you're still going to have,
if you have one driver powering your whole system
and you've got, ya know a whole bunch of different sources going through
there depending on how much money you spend on a
speaker there's going to be some muddy-ness
I guess you would say I'm trying to think how I would describe it
but it's basically distortion, you are not going to hear
the sounds for what they actually are but anyway that was kind of a long winded
answer hopefully that helped you there
next question is from tgsquire and this is a comment in the live sound 101
video do the best you can with what you have
and he says, well as a touring sound guy there really is
no other option but to make your peace with this
philosophy, do the best you can with what you have,
the question is how many punches can you roll with
and still get it done a rider is a wish list and nothing more
the office will green light bookings without considering what they've agreed to
and expect you to make it work artists don't really care what reality is
they want it perfect, like that one time at that one place
and the opener ran over set by ten minutes so change over must happen in twenty minutes
but learning to work with what you have is perhaps the only consistency of the touring
sound ritual ok so you've heard it from the horses mouth
this guy is a touring sound guy and he's telling you
the only, the best, the most consistent thing about
your job will be learning to work with what you have
and just to add to that learning to develop critical thinking skills and to think on your
feet and to think quick to solve problems
that's probably the other consistent thing and that only comes with experience
I mean you're only going to learn how to think on your feet
and solve problems by getting out there getting in the trenches, getting dirty and
trying things and doing things and making it work
so I'm definitely glad to hear from you tgsquire glad you're chiming in here and your input
is very valuable actually it would be great to have your input on the Google+ Community
you know the more touring live sound guys we can get
giving their input I think that's a good thing because we can hear more perspectives
than just mine because believe it or not I don't know all the answers and
I run into problems that I'm trying to figure out too
so it's not like you get to a certain point and you're just
a live sound guru that knows it all I guaranty you know matter how long you spend
working in Pro audio or live sound there is going
to be something that comes up that makes you scratch your
head you're like well I've never seen that before
I'm not sure what the solution is so it just goes to show you
you've got to learn how to think on your feet and roll with the punches
so definitely great to hear form you so anyway those are your comments
and questions answered please keep them coming if you have got some more
my name is BigNate84 and please stay tuned for the next live sound 101 video