I tour well. Perhaps naturally nomadic or maybe just that I have spent much of my adult life traveling between hotel rooms. Either was, landing myself down in one place for more than a few months is an incredibly challenging process. First there was the hazy shock of solid ground, the realities of washing my own clothes and figuring out the proper food purchase to consumption ratio. The glory of a full fridge followed by the dread of tossing away piles of rotted food only to be followed by scouring the kitchen for something edible. Then sets in the dreaded weight of repetitive patterns. Drive to work, wash car, clean house, being at various places at certain times. All the while fighting the sensation of collapsing freedoms. I tell myself it will be ok once I get used to, I tell myself that tour looks so shiny from a stationary standpoint and try and keep the downsides in focus so I do not slip away into "grass is greener on the other side" envy.

As I navigate the doldrums and desirable aspects of the non roadie lifestyle, the bright spots of my days pull me like magnets past the trenches. One of those magnets is surfing so I would like to introduce you to a few friends that form the core crew. Meet Randy, John, Mac and Ray with whom I spend the crack of dawn surveying the waves before diving into the icy waters. I would like to thank John for the loaner of the rattle snake skin hat for the photo op.

And No Wave Dave who's ability to focus right in on what I call "poking the bear" is a constant source of smiles.

And Gene whom I hold I hold personally responsible for getting me hooked on surfing and spending my mornings hanging out with this motley crew.

Gene and Dave are not part of what they term the "goofy hat wearers." Clearly, I have no issue with it. Speaking of snakes, snaking is a term used to refer to the act of taking off on a wave in front of someone which you can see occurring to Gene in the photo below. You may also notice Gene entering "the bear pose," a clear indication that he is less than pleased with the maneuver.

And to better enjoy the adventure in wave, hey, why not make something a bit different and fun? Hmmmm, how about a custom Surfboard? Well, upon searching through my computer I seemed to have an abundance of a certain logo so.....

I sent out the graphics to Ray and had some silk printed and the Blinky (William Dennis) at Ventura Surf Shop made it up for me. Thank You, the board rocks!

Moving on to another source of smiles, here is a picture of a speaker I made with my mom on Christmas day. Together we worked in my garage just hanging out and though I am not a celebrator of corporate holidays, this was one the best Christmases ever. It is a 6 feet long polished aluminum tube with progressively dense filler and an open back. The tweeter is a bundle of 6 microphone capsules. The sound is amazingly clear and open.

Oh, and I have another way cool aluminum tube speaker coming. Just thinking about that zone and rhythm of building creations in the garage makes me happy.

First in line of the source of "making home being worth while though is being soccer coach for AYSO U12 girls team and going to softball games to watch shorty #1 and #2 rock out on their sports skills.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

MicroWedge 12 is out and about and in bloggery modern networking tradition, I even persuaded EAW to embrace an "Official MicroWedge Myspace Page."

http://www.myspace.com/microwedge

How many wedge's have their very own myspace site? Ha ha! Al in good fun and I made a little slide show as well.

Also the official EAW MicroWedge site is up as well.

http://www.eaw.com/products/microwedge

So I head out to EAW about once a month for all kinds of secret designing and such. The all new EAW MicroWedge 15 that is smaller and sexier than the old one, an EAW MicroWedge 8 and Shhhhh.... rumor has it, if I was to spread rumors, that a speaker box like you have never seen of the ultra cool EAW MicroSub 15 could very well be in the pipeline. I so wish I could share the MicroSub 15 prototype pics as it is a design I have been working on for a long long time and finally unraveled the answer to what I believe to be is the most useful and versatile stage sub ever. And it looks cool too!

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

Ok, I will try and pick up my bloggery pace a bit from once a month but no guarantees other than I will be back.

Rock On!

Dave Rat

Well, it has been a bloggery while since my last post and not for forgetting, as I truly have been intending. Being in the sound company business is not for the faint hearted and winter time is the toughest of all when you depend on touring bands as your primary income.

Way back in 1980 I started Rat Sound with my friend Brian when we both worked at Hughes Aircraft. Prior to that I was recording bands and though we did not adopt the pet name Rat for a few more years, 1980 is really when it began. I had started at Hughes in Radar Systems Group testing components for jet planes like the F/A 18, F15 and F14 fighters. Got bored and worked it out so I was loaned to Space and Communications Group doing a similar but less monotonous gig for Telstar and Telsat satellites. Still bored I applied for a transfer and was picked up by the engineering department of Electo-Optical Group working on TOW Missile systems. Youngest guy in the department and the only one without a college degree, it was actually pretty darn fun, for while. Military government paperwork sucks! Meanwhile, nights and weekends I did rock shows, punk rock shows mainly with big band and 60 piece orchestras scattered amongst the sundays.

Every cent I had went to PA gear, I had no savings. Mid Reagan era military expansion filled my non-gig weekends with overtime at my day job. In November of 1980 a giant fork appeared in the road ahead. My vacation and sick leave time had been consumed by friday load-ins, rumors and memo's regarding various departments enacting mandatory overtime were abound and I was making as much money doing rock shows in two days as 5 days of my 7am to 3:30pm "real job" landed.

Career, medical benefits, retirement plan and some semblance of parental respect versus late nights, loading trucks, loud music and freedom. December 12th I gave 30 days notice. January 12th I was free. February 12th I was broke, hungry and selling off sound gear to buy food and gas. That was when I learned, the first time and then proceeded to learn every year there after. With a few exceptions, winter means starvation for furry little critters and touring sound companies. It is never a surprise, at least not anymore, but that does not change the fact that it is a challenge.

Now a days, it is different than it used to be. Now the threat of not eating is long gone while what remains is the necessary time, care and focus to navigate the ship through the low tide. So in short or in long, that is what has grabbed my focus and what I have been up to.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

MicroWedge update. First the official stuff. The new EAW MicroWedge 12's are done and the first delivery will be at Rat any day now (read "tomorrow"). Processor settings are done and super cool! There are three settings and they will be coded as colors.

White - The Flat Setting. I don't have the final spec yet but it was plus or minus a couple db throughout it's frequency range. This is a industry standard starting point so engineers can tailor the EQ to suit a wide variety of applications.

Gray - A 1 db per octave slope rolling off as frequency increases. A warmer setting that sounds more natural and requires less EQ to dial in.

Blue - We took several industry standard microphones, plotter their real world response and created a curve that counteracts the inherent peaks. It was surprising how similar the Neumann, Sennheiser, Shure and Audix responses were. The Blue setting is tailored to get very loud, not feedback and sound amazing with no external EQ and reproduces both music and live mics extremely well. True plug and play usability.

Now for the rumors. If I was to say, I would say that a new sleeker, smaller, louder MicroWedge 15 and more is hot the tails of the 12", though the Micro 12 was developed to go lower and get louder than the best 15" monitors out there already. I would also say that cool new tilt legs (The MicroLeg) are being developed and they allow the MicroWedge's to be utilized at various angles. Say bye bye audio blocks, say hello to optimum wedge angles!

Oh, and I wish I could show you the latest MicroSub prototype but that would ruin all the fun and anticipation. I will say that if it makes it through the maze to market, it is useful in ways unlike anything else out there and is something that the few monitor engineers I've shown it to already have all said they could use them right now.

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

Speaking of useful, I was at the NAMM show and stumbled across a few items that I can not imagine how I have managed to live my life without. First we have what appears to be the ultimate PA speaker.

Not sure if it is a 5 way or a 7 way stack but wow, that is a high concentration of Piezo speakers.

Next in line, I find myself wondering "am I the last know?" and "how come everyone does not have one?" when I spotted this beauty:

That's right, a 7 string bass! Clearly marking the end of the 4 string era.

But wait, what do we have here? Is it? Yes! A guitarasurus!

So handy yet so eloquent. And if one is to rock a guitarasurus, one had better get an adequate guitar rig. Hence I present:

The ultimate rockers dream and sound guy's nightmare. "Yes, of course they are all plugged in, why else would I have brought what I need?"

And so it was and off till next time.

Dave Rat

Hours fill up faster than new ones can appear and I scribble little hieroglyphic notes of future events I wish to remember in places I hope not to forget. This is either the best time of my life or just another meandering plugging away in some pipe dream direction. I guess both are true and unlike the thrill of exhilarating adventures, at least the' right now' I live in wont have the hangover that follows overload fun excursions.

Challenge is the foundation of motivation. The knife that divides the complacent from the relentless. My sour reactions of being caught off guard catalyze into that desire smile of harnessing the energy to overcome the annoying. To try and stop time is to become lifeless. Growth or deterioration take your pick. Stagnation is celebration turned rancid. On some levels I could not be happier as my dreams unfold and my stumbles remind me that I am as disoriented, lost and confused as I have always been. It is amazing how chaos is just one phone ring away from from bliss. Yet in the slightly bigger picture, everything remains amazing. I hop out of bed for a while each day and try to remember to eat before my vision blurs and I wander about my night thought balancing life between shoring up the sand-castle walls against relentless waves and adding drip towers to the delicate city within. Speaking of shoring up walls, occasionally a rethink is in order and an open mind realizes that a new direction is better so back down away the walls need to go. Say bye bye wall!

And since we are at the beach building castles, let's have a Halloween party! Meet my niece Jessy, don't be scared, she is not a real lion:

And a few more of the various family and friend critters. Food attracts critters.

**** Sound Joke of the Day ****

Kevin Glendening sent me this:

What do you call a dog barking at the bottom of a swimming pool?

A Sub woofer.

Ha ha!!! If you found that funny, please instantly elevate yourself to super sound nerd status.

**** End Sound Joke of the Day ****

Easily the most sobering aspect of being home is the reality that behind the veil of the shiny lights, rock shows and music that makes us smile in our headphones. The music business is a ruthless cut throat industry peppered with wolves in sheep's clothing, poisonous ego's and finger pointing incompetence teetering on back room money deals and good 'ol boys patting each other on the back. Put another way, no real shocker here as the music business is just like churches, corporations, governments and just about any other organized human endeavor. Oh those silly humans, what do ya do about it? Cry? Ha ha! No way! Going to muscle it up, hang tight with the ones I trust and build up those sand castle walls with a smile fully knowing that it is just a matter of time before they are washed away someday, anyway.

Clearing my thoughts for more enjoyable train of though, let's go visit Gwen! A success story with a smile and 'way back when' I remember the day she pulls a cassette copy of the new and first No Doubt album out of her purse with an ear to ear smile. "We got signed and here is rough mixes of our album!" The excitement and a get to hear a quick listen. I just love how you never know what will happen next.

And next up.... Story and recommended reading of the day is do a Google search for "Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Harvard."

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Do you Have the Time?

Ok, here is something that seems to perplex or be a bit of confusion with some of us sound nerds. There seems to be a bit of confusion floating around regarding whether sound signals travel faster in in snake cables or fiber optic cables and where the true and relevant sources of time lag lay in an audio system.

The sound signals travel at differing speeds depending on whether it is in the form of electricity, in the form of sound waves in air or passing through various commonly used bits of audio gear. To make things simple, I will just approximate a bit.

In 1.2 milliseconds of time:

#1 In air, sound will travel about 16 inches.

#2 Under water sound travel near 5 times faster and would cruise about 70 inches.

#3 In 1.2 milliseconds sound will just barely make it from the input XLR to the output XLR of a Yamaha PM5D digital console and you can make it a bit more than half way through a Digico D5 because it takes 2 milliseconds for a signal to escape a D5 once you put it in.

#3 Perhaps surprisingly though, your audio signal will travel about 650,000 feet (124 miles) down a regular copper mic cable or snake because in copper electric signals travel about 2/3's the speed of light.

#4 Even faster, your audio will travel about a million feet (186 miles) down fiber optic cable but it can take over 630 micro seconds which is over 1/2 of the 1.2 milliseconds to convert from analog to digital for light at each end so you would not quite make it out of a fiber cable even an inch long but if you already started with a digital signal, figure the conversion to only takes about 10 microseconds from electric digital to light.

#5 You could probably put every piece of analog gear you have ever owned or own in series and run a hundred miles of mic cable and still have some extra time left over because most analog gear has almost on time lag..

So, where is time lost and how important is it? Mainly after it leaves the speakers is the big issue and secondly, before it hits the mic. From there it flies through analog gear so fast that it can be considered instantaneous for most purposes. It gets a bit more confusing with digital gear because the sound signal makes little 'pit stops' whenever it encounters a a 'digital to analog' or 'analog to digital' conversion. Also, unlike analog gear, once the signal is inside a piece of digital gear, the signal can slide behind in time further as you add processing to the signal, unless the manufacturer has implemented compensating delays that lock the delay time at the max processing time.

What does this mean, well, for the most part, the time delays we are talking about are so short that they can be discarded as irrelevant but... if you electrically are recombining signals, it is critical that they are not shifted in time unless you desire a phase shifter effect.

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

OK, enough for now and soon some more.

Dave Rat

Well, how about an update on the way of world of being home. I went for a visit to say hello to the Foo Fighters and crew at their rehearsal prepping for the Europe tour. They are one of the greatest bands all the way around. They rock, they are all super cool people, they have fun and their music is awesome, all good.

They have a pretty cool tour setup planned out and if you have not seen Foo Fighters live, I highly recommend you do. Next stop for me is AFI. I am trying not to tour and steering clear of mixing shows as best I can to stay focused on other things but when the call comes in to cover a gig, and it is just three shows and not far away, well, I could not help but say yes. Rat has been supply sound gear to AFI for several years now and this was my first real chance to meet and get to know them a bit better and it was all good.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Next stop in my travels is EAW for some more design work on the new MicroWedge.

Every single detail is addressed and I absolutely love it, it is a dream come true as I have always envisioned the way that the product should be and finally I am surrounded by an infrastructure that not only "gets it" but also has the capability of implementing it. The reflectivity and hardness and texture of the external coating, the exact round over radius of every edge, the shape, feel and depth of the handle. The center of gravity, grill material, mounting and coating. The switch placement, fly hardware, feet material, shape, logo design and dimensions. Oh, and the sound aspects are even more detailed. Tune, test, refine, repeat. Even after dialing in the optimum coax component frame, come and driver, it was time to address the speaker dome (dust cap), material and shape and cone coatings, glue thickness, the internal damping material type, thickness and mounting. Tune, test, refine, repeat. Exciting stuff and all the while I refer back to stable reference points so I do not get lost in the sonic direction headed. And I carry my notes and refer back to the overall concept of the Micro Series. Non-processor dependant designs that naturally sound good without electronic enhancement. Electronic processing then can be added to further optimize the designs. Though the Micro's do have passive crossovers in them, in both old and new Micro's, the biamp switch completely removes the passive crossover from the circuit and allows direct connection from the amp to the drivers.

Oh, and as I have been asked to many times here in bloggery world, I have been approached about maybe teaching a seminar on sound subjects. Actually I have been approached several times from various entities and when things settle down a bit more for me I plan on speaking at a few colleges that and sound schools, but most recently was one that is a bit more open format. So let me ask you all this, if I was to teach a sound seminar, is there anyone that would be interested in coming to a sound seminar and if so, what topics or concepts would you be interested in?

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

What else? Well, there was an article on sound humans blogging http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/prosound_200709/index.php?startpage=0

If you are a subscriber to PLSN or FOH Magazine you can now vote for the awards. http://www.parnelliawards.com/vote.php

Though the whole concept of awards shows does not sit too well with me. I always get this feeling that the same insiders just gather round to pat each other on the back once a year. Oh boy look! The same people won 10 years in a row again! Hurray! Yet I also know that when do actually vote, I often find that I am not that familiar with the various categories and contenders and there is a temptation to vote for the one I have heard of, hence and most likely the reason that the outcomes are typically less than exciting. All that said, I do like the exceptions to the rule and in a way, it makes it all the more enjoyable when an outsider to the "good ol' boys" takes the prize.

Anyway, I will be headed out to Florida for LDI. You know that saying, "what comes around, goes around?" Well, back 2005 I wrote an article for FOH Magazine http://www.daverat.com/ldi.htm and the trimmed version is up online at http://fohonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=443&Itemid=1. As the twists of the world would have it, EAW is going to be one of the stages at SoundHenge also know as ET Live. Oh jees. Not only did ET Live they quote my article to promote the event (yes, they did ask first) as fate would have it, guess who they asked to mix on their stage this year? Most importantly, check out my hair cut in the quote photo.

http://www.ldishow.com/LDI07/public/Content.aspx?ID=739

Clearly that of a seasoned professional businessman I am trying so hard to present.

So if any of y'all are there in Orlando, come say hello.

To leave you with a smile, here is a picture of my little Sammy holding her cat Holly wearing her Rat Sound pet shirt.

Rock on! and till next time in a week or so.

Dave Rat

**** Dormant Roadie Babble ****

So sorting through some pics and since Leeds was the last show I was pretty pre occupied with wrapping up odds and ends so not a lot of photos. I did find these. The magnetic attraction fire does seem to go quite well with music. Add in some food and it somehow highlights the human-ness of it all.

Oh and found this from Glasgow I think. Wow, this is one heck of a facility! "Man and woman make baby in shower." And even the slippery floor warning, so be careful.

So I am hanging out and a critter cruises by in the night in the back yard. The combination of curiosity and hunter instinct sets in and so I decide to trap whatever it is and wake up to find this little guy.

Cute little baby possum and very stinky as well. Well, I don't mind 'em running around so I did what any considerate person would do, I let him go in my neighbors yard.

Been getting a bunch o requests to take a look round the home I occupy so here are a few. I while back I bought some old recording studio sound baffles and combined them with some excess shirts from past tours and gigs I have done. This would be in the dining room. That purple shirt with the satan on it says Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Pearl Jam." Imagine if that tour happened now how big it would be!!

My home office.

And as we head to the Rat Shop I find Ben de-prepping the Peppers FOH console as it re enters the rental inventory. All those wires were in the back of my board, yikes!

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Dynamic vs. Compressed.

So a while back I was pondering mixing live shows, as I strangely so often do, and I started analyze the varying aspects of dynamics in live reverberant fields. Is there something more legitimate than personal preference that would add credibility to using compression? The studio humans and mastering labs use a tom of it, but comparatively us live engineers use fairly little. I know it works well to control the variations in the band's playing and helps with smoothing the sound but there is yet another advantage of compression that is not so readily apparent.

On the surface it is quite obvious that compression can be used on bass to reduce the differential between the louder and softer notes resulting in a more consistent sound. Same with vocals and I put comps on guitars as well. I even take it further and run kick and snare into a subgroup that has a bit of compression on it to keep the two locked in a bit more volume-wise to each other.

So what got me started again on this train of thought was not long ago I was listening to a super punchy horn loaded rig. Boom, crack, boom, crack, as the drums jump out at me and they do sound cool. But I also know from experience that the reverb decay time from the loud 'on top' super punchy sounds blurs the intelligibility of everything else. If an uncompressed snare is 10 db 'on-top' of the mix, then the correspondingly loud roar of the room-reverb-decay-level from that snare would hurt overall intelligibility long after the original snare hit has been heard and ended. Conversely, that means that if the instruments are all compressed to a fairly narrow volume range, they then would stay at an even level consistently above the room reverberation rather than the loud sounds setting off room reverberations louder than the following softer sounds.

What I am getting at here is that controlling the differential between the loudest and softest sounds not only improves intelligibility by reducing volume inconsistencies, it is also helpful in dealing with reverberant room acoustics. The sacrifice? Well, you loose some of that slam- hit eye-blinking impact. But hey, the upside is your mix will sound a bit more like an album, the audience will be able to hear the various instruments and vocals better especially in reverberant rooms, and you will be able to get more overall volume from the PA with less clip lights flashing.

If you like the Sound Nerd Speak section, try this link to see them all!

http://www.ratsound.com/cblog/categories/1-Sound-Nerd-Speak

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

Dave Rat

**** Issue of the Day ****

Look at that magnificent stage, look how open so bold. What could possibly be amiss? As I sit on the bus basking in the illusion of nothing to do for the moment, a PIN message comes through from Dave Lee "Need some help on stage." Grounding, buzz and humm issues can be some of the most illusive of the technical problems we encounter. So seemingly mysterious when everything is exactly the same and from nowhere, what was quite every day for a year, now sounds like a 40 foot mosquito somehow got inside. The issue today was real "stumper."

**** Imbedded Sound Nerd Speak ****

BRAAAAAAAAAAH! Really loud, near full guitar rig volume blares from JF's cabs with differing choices of worse available as the guitar is moved around the stage. Danny our tour electrician, has already checked all the stage and system grounding and using different power and metered everything. What is different? It effects the mainly the guitar rig while the bass rig only a little bit and the PA is quite. What is different, something must have changed. Each buzz, humm or rizz sounds unique in some way and there are two basic ways it infiltrates the audio, by wire or by air. I won't go into depth on it but as a rule of thumb, the best way to tell the difference is "if you physically move things around and it smoothly changes, it is in the air or more accurately, it is some sort of RF radiation. If the issue comes and goes as various things are plugged and unplugged, the issue is some sort of ground loop. Be sure to add the words "usually somewhat or probably."

Perhaps those mischievous lampi's have added a little monster to their rig? I asked that all the lighting and video power be shut down to eliminate it as a possible culprit, no change. I rechecked all the grounding and found that Danny the electric roadie, sure enough had everything is perfect in his world. Grounding stake to the stage, grounding stake at the generator as well as at the distro boxes, also grounding the stage there. AC neutral is bussed to ground at the generator, all good. Dave Lee, let me hear it again, click, BRAAAAAAAAAAH! Have you checked with the other bands to see if they have it?" Yes, they do too but not as loud, everyone has it a bit.

It is not the pedal board as it has been bypassed, it is not backline AC power and it makes no difference whether the guitar is wired or wireless,the noise it changes with the volume on the guitar. So I have Dave Lee walk the stage yet again, as the minutes till the first band tick away and doors have long since opened. It gets louder near the metal arch, so we add another ground stake to the stage and hear no change. "Can you set the guitar down and put a towel over the strings to stop it from the feeding back,? The small various and sounds of a Dave Lee roadie touching the guitar, masks any small change that may be useful to hear. BRAAAAAAAAAAH!

Set it down over there on the stage, and over there, and over there. Finally, good news and I have given you bloggery readers all the info you need to know the cause, have you figured it out? Go back to the first picture, what do you see?

Look - a stage, some seats, some sort of space needle thing that also just happens to broadcast all of the TV stations for the city. Hmmmm, well nothing suspicious here. Wait a minute, you are telling me that that is a high power RF broadcasting antenna just a block away, yikes, we don't want to be near that thing! Uh oh! Sit and think. Is the RF going straight from tower to the guitar pickups or is there another factor, the buzz drops when we it is farther from the stage metal. Sit and think. It has to be the stage itself, the stage is radiating RF and lots of it, massive amounts.

Perhaps the stage is acting like an antenna itself, resonating, re-radiating as it is immersed in the RF field. Well, the good news is I am pretty sure I know what the issue is. The bad news is that solving it may pose a bit of a problem. So the options appear to be:

A) Move the stage far away from the space needle of audio hate.

B) Persuade them to shut off TV for the city or

C) Figure out a way to ground the shit out of the stage in as many places as possible.

Ground the stage, lets take a look.

All wood pads, metal scaffold on wood pads, dry day. The stage is grounded but RF is a differing beast than 50/60hz AC. We need lots of grounds, 20, 30 or more would be good and that may, just may reduce the RF in their general area.

OK, I got it or at least an idea to keep us busy and and feel like an attempt was made and all I need is two cases of liter bottles of water and a big bag of salt. It is a long shot, never tried it before but it theoretically makes sense. We are going to use salt water to ground the stage.

On the second trip under the stage, I noticed that the whole front edge of the stage is sitting on wood pads atop huge aluminum plates atop what I am sure is nice damp grass. The aluminum plates should form a wonderful ground, all we need to do is establish a connection around the wood pad, salt water. I know I am going to take some heat for this request, none more deserving than I. "

"Production, um, this is Dave Rat and I am looking for...."

When it finally did show up in the hands of Roadie John, we headed down under and tossed little piles of salt on the legs and followed up with good splash of water. Ok, try it now, "mini-braaahhh"

Dave Lee smiles and says, I can live with that.

It appears to have worked but I am not fully convinced. Perhaps there were other factors. We did not do an immediate 'before and after' and an opening band and played between when we sought the salt and when we got it. Maybe the TV transmitter drops power at night, maybe the air temperature or some other seemingly unrelated factor changed or maybe the conclusion that it was the radio tower was wrong? Regardless, it works, it is better and the the next band plays.

"Dave Rat, they need you on stage." Aaargh. Way the heck over there, 15 mins till Peppers start and I can hear it already from front of house, BRAAAAAAAH! "It is not as bad as it was earlier but it is coming back." I asked Roadie George for a hand and we dragged a huge tub of water down front of the stage splashing water on the now dried salt as the water had evaporated But wait, the salt piles got bigger! Turns out roadie John had found more salt and re-piled all the legs, that was cool!

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

"Hey Dave Lee, how is it now?"

"It's good again, thank you!"

**** End Issue of the Day ****

I listened to the guitar rig a few times during the show and the noise stayed low. I just wish I had the time to test it a few more times and be more sure that there were not other factors. If you are curious about the effectiveness of salt water as a conductor, here are a few links.

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/saltwater-circuit-project.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=conductivity+salt+water&btnG=Google+Search

Dave Rat

First order of business today is a bit of back repair and the promoter has arranged so graciously an acupuncture/acupressure specialist to swing by my room and fix me up. While I am waiting, I head over to the mini bar drawer and find a coffee which both impresses and depresses me. Japan's creativity and creations are amazing and some of the things they come up with boggle the mind. So there is a coffee cup and a mini filter and little filter holder and cream and sugar and a stir stick and a top all in a neat little package.

Dump in hot water and poof, a perfect cup of drip coffee. While this is interesting and somewhat useful, it also highlights the reality that a many Japanese products are beyond belief wasteful in their packaging to the point where the amount of trash created often outweighs the consumable product itself, do you remember the plastic bottles full of ice when I was here before? Which in my opinion cancels out the cool factor. True beauty in design occurs when a harmonious balance between function, aesthetics and efficiency is reached while minimizing any negative impact that resides in the surrounding world from both manufacture and post consumption.

The massage /acupressure does a great job of lining me back up and reducing the ouch factor and it is time to head to the gig and a good sized gig it is. The moment I walk in through the revolving doors the instant air pressure surge hits me. "Ah, an air filled dome." It is one of those venues where they have a soft flexible roof and giant blower fans some where that pumps in enough air to keep the roof up, sort of like a giant version of those air filled things kids jump around in at the fair. All doors the are revolving and the trucks enter through multi-stage air locks to unload and it gives me a headache if I go in and out of the pressurized room too many times.

The air supported ceilings are surprisingly strong and as you can see in the picture below, you can hang lights and stuff from the flexible roof. Our touring production is too heavy for it though so we have everything supported by the stage we had brought in for us. Occasionally while touring I have come across and air filled arena where we have hung the sound system from the floating roof and it is really strange to see the chain motors running and the gear not lifting till the roof sufficiently sags to to hold the load. And then when audience leaves at the end of the show, the PA drops down a bit due to the air pressure dropping/escaping.

The double hung mains and 15 deep side hangs with 3dV-Dosc under all clusters plus 6 dV-Dosc in top of the side hangs and for center cluster totaling a whopping 90 V-dosc and 36 dV-Dosc not including delay clusters and that is one bad ass PA!

Down below is a modified sub cannon setup with 4 side stacks using a 2 foot spacing and an 8 sub center cluster.

Here is a graphic of the sub layout that roadie Lee put together, Lee rocks!!

Having this much clean sound power is really fun. Hello Homare, Tukiji and Raymond and thank you for the awesome fish market adventure and coming over to my office for a rock show adventure! Sashimi and Soju for all!

Speaking of rock show, hey look, there it is!

Now that was fun!

Dave Rat

Paris

**** Ponderings ****

Day Breathing, eating and sleeping are choices deeply intertwined with the survival of an individual

**** End Ponderings ****

**** A Toast to Us Friends ****

A pause for a moment with a smile and I want to thank all of my bloggery friends from the depths of my heart for bringing me that that smile to my day, everyday. Who would have ever knew that a wandering soundie could be embraced so warmly by so many amazing and unique friends that span the globe. The whole thing is as absurd as it it is heartwarming. Even the thought that a person can have job purpose of controlling sound is an oddity unto itself and it exceeds any dreams I could have imagined my future to be. To be able to share this sensation of motion and feel \ so many interesting and amazing people are joining in, is beyond words I can express. I looked at the web site statistics today and they say that over 5000 unique visitors are viewing the blog daily, mind bending, mysterious multitudes. Yet I have come to know through comments and emails perhaps 100 and I read every one. I apologize for being slow to respond and at times I feel I have I have bitten off more than I can chew. I do plan on catching up on answering question perhaps not for a bit though as just trying to catch up on posts alone is a challenge in itself. So here is to all of you and to us and to never knowing what will happen next and to the curious and to opening each new day like birthday present.

**** End Toast to Us Friends ****

Last night I ovenighted with the band and 9:30 am sees me at the venue a full 36 hours before the show, this is not a normal day.

**** Issue of the Day ****

Everything. Things are amiss. We have been cycling through various stage setups and nothing is stable. Something is not right. The sound on stage is all over the place. Daniel is in spirally hell and no matter what he does he is helpless to get it under stable control. My job is to find and fix the issue. There are several potential culprits I found:

1) The PA is behind the band. Typically this is a bad thing but not the end of the world. IT makes my job tough as everything I do is heard by them and can screw them up so I have to mix with care, but we have done it before and not had an issue.

2) The video screens in front of the PA are new. Though they let most of the sound through and do effect the sound, I can compensate for it. More relevant is that there is "splash from the video rags that reflects onto stage kind of like shooting a hose through a screen door.

3) There is a curved roof over the band. Curved surfaces act as sound reflectors and like a curve mirror, reflect the sound to a center point. That point is AK's mic.

4) that stage is resonant. If you jump on the stage it makes a boomy sound, though the issue is mainly described as a high frequency wash that makes it hard to hear each other, it is possible that low end is overloading the in ear units.

So here I sit with Manny the Aussie rigger doing all we can to address the issues and what we did is 5 things. First we had 4 feet removed from the front of the stage which pushed the band back relative to the PA. Next we moved the video screens out from in from of the PA. Third we draped theatrical black cloth on the inside of the curved roof to reduce reflections. Then locating more stage tops, we double layered the stage to increase the sturdiness of the stage. Finally we crossed our fingers because there was nothing else to done, if this does not work, I am at a loss. It must. And tomorrow we hope for a day that is:

**** hopefully End Issue of the Day ****

And off to find an adventurous night out as a group of bloggery friends who have self proclaimed themselves "The Ratketeers" are in town. Cheers and beers and many bottles of wine deep, a most memorable adventure indeed.

Dave Rat

Though at times life is stressful, so many things are sweet.

And of all the things we commonly eat, how strange is it that we avoid consuming anything that has anything to do with insects except honey. Our only insect created food.