New Toy

Posted by Dave Rat on Saturday, January 31. 2009

Awake is not Sleeping

"My favorite thing is sleeping, when I am not awake." I said it jokingly but when I heard the words I began to ponder laying in bed hitting the five minute snooze on my phone alarm. Just a bit more time in a warm bed with too many blankets until finally giving in to haul my humanly body out and start my day.

This aint right. I must be broken. And as I pondered it more it becomes so clear that the reluctance toward entering the new day means something is amiss. Not sure what I will change but need to flip something over and find a way to jumping out of bed something I look forward to.

Perhaps a holiday is in order and I need to embrace some travel and adventure. Any suggestions?

Anyway, back to last month and well, I must admit that I am not much of a holiday human. I get overwhelmed by the lemming masses crowding into streets and stores and I enjoy Christmas music about as much as being late while stuck in traffic on a hot day with no air conditioning. Oh, I sure love that feeling of doing exactly the same thing as everyone else at the same time. That said, the Rat Sound holiday party is always a good time and for the first time in quite a while the three original founders of Rat Sound were all in the same place at the same time. Say hey to Brian and Tommy Rat!

As with any good get together, the story of fun is often told what is left behind.

Perhaps I should also mention that there is a house policy in my home:

"If a human inside the house or on the property inadvertently drops their drink AND the container is made of glass AND the glass breaks, all other humans holding glass containers are required to immediately also drop or throw their glasses causing them to break."

This is a very important rule as it prevents the initial glass dropper from having any bad feelings and helps maintain the positive momentum of the gathering.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

It did not hit me fully until the party, nor did it hit me as hard as the planet earth in my surf crash. But it did hit me sure enough as I stood amongst a gathering of so many people I hold in such high regard who joined us for the Rat/L'Acoustics K1 listening party. Little ol' punk rock Rat Sound a huge, 'top of the line' PA system from the worlds most prestigious and respected manufacturer. I feel the same, the world feels the same, from the inside of Rat world, taking on the K1 system was the next natural step, there was no other option that made any sense. It feels exactly the same as when Rat bought the V-Dosc system a decade ago. What hit me was the view point from outside world. The reality that Rat has made such a huge decision, the timing versus the economy and the realization that people are truly excited but me in a bit of a stunned daze. And it dawns upon me that I have been so wrapped up in the inner workings of orchestrating all the business side, the I forgot to remember the most important part, that "ha! we just just got big giant huge awesome new quarter million watt toy!"

The K1 training course was a jam packed three day adventure Headed up by Flo and Steve who were awesome. Day one was theory covering the concepts behind V-Dosc and the new dimensions added into the K1 rig. Day two was software and learning the 3d sonic modeling and capabilities of Soundvision and the control of the LA Network manager software that con troll the processors in the amplifiers. Day three was hardware and flying the rig followed by a party with lots of friends and industry humans coming down to give a listen.

Meet Flo and Scott that headed up the training class: