Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

To start with, check this out. Let's say you were wondering "Hey, I wonder how I could find a Youtube of Dave Rat and Scott the Lampi venture to a Japanese bath house" So you then decide to ask Dave Rat "Dave Rat, where would I find a Youtube of Dave Rat and Scott the Lampi venture to a Japanese bath house?"

"Hmmm," I say, "Funny you should ask that question because I can help with that!, here let me help you"

http://tinyurl.com/cryf62

Ha! Thank you Jon for that! Next in the agenda of notes to share, lets all give a shout out to Greg Cameron for helping with the Rat Message board. I have known Greg since the Black Flag days when he was the drummer for a band called SWA. Oh and also to Erock for his help with Roadiepedia. I really appreciate and am honored by the assists.

Next up, just a snippet of the press releases about the new K1 system

http://tinyurl.com/d7wmv6

And while we are giving shout outs, I would like to send a huge thank you to all the Rat Coachella crew that made it all happen. This is a huge and complex festival with some real heavyweight bands that need precision on every stage on every day

Coachella
1 Main Stage FOH Roz
2 Main Stage FOH Greg Nelson
3 Main Stage System Scott Sugden
4 Main Stage Mon Derek Van Ord
5 Main Stage Mon George
6 Main Stage Patch Master Mike Arnold
7 Main Stage Patch Matt Fox
8 Main Stage Wedges/Power Tyler Arnold
9 Main Stage Stripper Manny Perez (cable stripper that is)

10 Outdoor Theater Stage FOH Nick Brisbois
11 Outdoor Theater Stage FOH Jamie
12 Outdoor Theater Stage Mon Billy Flores
13 Outdoor Theater Stage Mon Jared
14 Outdoor Theater Stage Crew Chief/Patch Master Jim Jorgenson
15 Outdoor Theater Stage Patch Taka
16 Outdoor Theater Stage Patch Jason

17 Sahara Tent FOH Jim Lockyer
18 Sahara Tent Mon Chris Rymarz
19 Sahara Tent Crew Chief Ronnie
20 Sahara Tent Patch Kyle Rogan

21 Mojave Tent FOH Bryan Worthen
22 Mojave Tent Mon Steve Walsh
23 Mojave Tent Chief Neal
24 Mojave Tent Patch Phil Reynolds
25 Mojave Tent Patch Sara

26 Gobi Tent FOH Andy Turner
27 Gobi Tent Mon Johnny B
28 Gobi Tent Crew Chief LBC

29 Rat Sound Systems Coordinator - All Stages, Jon Monson
30 Festival Audio Consultant - Dave Rat

Once again an all star crew comes to join us. The crew is a collection top engineers, 'A' class techs, key Rat personnel and loaners from other companies that all come together. Truly wonderful to see all our friend for a few weeks in the desert.

Now, I have a bunch of pictures I will try and chew through bit by by before I get distracted or forget. So lets meet the crew!

Nothing like an arm stretch photo series, Meet Andy Turner who rocked the old school Rat Trap system in the Gobi tent. The toughest part about hanging with Andy is trying to stop laughing.

Bryan Worthen AKA Brian Rat Jr. setting up FOH for the Mojave and a Rat from way back.

The legendary DVO patching Main Stage(who also has a you tube video you can check out if you can find it).

If you look carefully you may be able to see Grandpa getting ready for some dancing in the Sahara Tent, though he is well hidden.

Daniella, who heads up Rat Sound Sales department, was working in the main Goldenvoice office.

Jamie is our awesome Rat Shop Manager and y'all know Nick the Fly

Jim, pulling cable. Hey, go see Chad Smith playing with Chikenfoot and say hey to Jim who is doing monitors. Also down below is George, another old school Rat, and the very hard to capture on film Jon Monson, the head of Rat Sound Rentals and ochestrator of all Coachella sound equipment and crew.

Ha! Lee, also known as Happi-Lee who you should recognize. Lee has an amazing ability to blink with a camera flash and have every pic show up with his eyes closed. Though I foiled that by using the red eye reduction setting. I have like 50 pics of closed eye Lee!

Matt Fox, a newer part time Rat that we are honored to have join us.

Neal, our in house Tequila expert.

Taka is awesome, and you should see him with his new mohawk!

Ronnie to the left who comes joins the Rats when not on tour with Bad Religion. It is good to have Ronnie around if you spill something. Rico is one of the newest Rats and helping us in the tout account aquisition area.

We had a Rat dinner with all that could attend right before Stage Coach. The crew Rats we have not met yet today are Scott Sugden is super brain L'Acoustics human and was the key to getting us dialed on the K1. Jared who I ended up having a great time hanging with way to late that eve slurring stories, is back there standing behind Daniella. Steve Walsh a top notch mon eng and super cool is sitting between Jon and Jim. Milk whom has ventured west and just told me the other day he has wanted to join us Rats for years, welcome Milk we are honored to have you! Finally Paul is more concerned with food than the picture but we love him anyway. He came to join us from L'Acoustics as well and we hold him personally responsible for Rat being broke and having this big new toy. Well, we hold Christian Heil responsible as well for designing the magnificent PA beast.

I should have more crew pics and wish I had been more vigilant in capturing everyone. But hey, there is always next time.

I feel kind of bad for not sharing some technical sound nerdery avalanche upon you so how about I cheat and send you to a thread on Pro Sound Web I feel is important reading for those interested in cardioid sub setups.

http://tinyurl.com/dmbdqa

And with that bye bye for now. Oh, and I am excited to say that in order to keep my mixing skills, happiness and sanity intact, I have taken a short tour with Juliette Lewis and the Romantiques and will be in doing some club and festival gigs in Spain and the UK starting next week. So if your around, come say hello at a rock show!

Dave Rat

I sometimes wonder if perhaps my bloggery ramblings would be better packaged in more compact media-friendly snippets. I realize that compared to the progressively twittery word and the popular one-shot-youtube-jellybeans of the internet, these meandering posts must be trudgingly long to many in this exceedingly e-speedy world. Yet, each time set out to write I find myself less than satisfied with an offering that lacks some substance and diversity and I realize that I truly am writing mainly because I enjoy it and because I enjoy capturing and remembering a snapshot from the scavenger hunt of a world I reside.

So today lets start with with something very important. We are discussing some new Rat artwork, logo's and even the creation of some Rat Sound skateboards. So, I thought I would run the design by y'all to get your opinion. I am not sure if you will catch the difference right away but if you look closely, you may notice that I changed the jaw line and a few other minor details.

Just for reference, here is the normal tail straight rat logo.

And just for good measure, here is an interesting article on our furry little friends:

http://www.ratbehavior.org/testicles.htm

Next on the agenda, I would like to cover something overwhelmingly technical and trite to all but a few.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

In the human sound world landscape so ripe with snake oil salesmen and curious minds unassumingly open to seemingly logical and feasible revelations, the opportunity for those less than truthful or those less than knowledgeable to sway finance via false complexity one way or the other is inevitable. The unraveling of those deceptions and misbeliefs is both fun and hopefully welcomed. I guess it could be an audio version of Myth Busters except I will avoid falling prey to using false logic to create the illusion of a definitive truth. But hey, I am not under media pressure to do so for ratings so I have an advantage.

There is a concept floating around the audio world that "if you connect an Apogee Big Ben digital clock to a Yamaha PM5D console, it will sound amazingly and near magically better." What is really interesting about this is that the proponents often come off as borderline mystical in their descriptions, yet the 'why' is always clouded in an ethereal haze of fuzzy-speak. So when this issue came to Rat in the form of supplying Ben Ben clocks for rentals to clients, Jon Monson, the main man at Rat that runs our system rentals, arranged some testing. Yes we will give the clients what they desire and yes, we must know what (if anything) drives those requests. We are all good with ergonomics and personal preferences but when it comes to just adding more hardware to keep other hardware in line and the addition creates more complexity and it offers the engineer no joy or fluidity, perhaps it 'just money to waste and truck space to burn.'

So Jon arranges an Apogee Big Ben and since our PM5D's were all on tour, we grabbed a Yamaha MC7L and with a mic and some tunes we gave a listen to discern a difference, to no avail. Sounds the same on headphones and perhaps a slight variation between Big Ben clocked and not but hey, that's all very subjective so even if we did find a difference, without a repeatable provable measurable difference, nothing changes. Next we grabbed some other gear from the shop, an oscilloscope and and some wires and hey, lets take a look.

I must admit, I expected maybe something slight but no. The top trace is the Big Ben and the bottom is the MC7L internal clock, both at 48K. Looks like a capacitance issue to me. Ideally, they would both be clean square waves. So that peaked our interest and we decided to check some other digi clocks.

Here the top is the Big Ben and the bottom is a generic clock signal from a Digi Design word clock. Hmmm, I wonder. So we pull out the oldest 'least likely to have a decent word clock' piece of gear we can find at the shop, a Tascam DA98 digital recorder

And we slow down the scope a bit an look! the signal shows a bit of ringing but still a fairly clean square wave.

Why the Yamaha console would have such a crappy square wave generator clock baffles me but that said, we have proved nothing because we were not able to prove that the ugly Yamaha MC7L clock signal actually changes the sound for the worse. Plus we are not sure yet that the Yamaha PM5D clock is as odd looking as the MC7L.

What we do feel confident about is that just about any clock is better than the internal clock in an MC7L. So food for thought and maybe adding any external word clock to a Yamaha will help or maybe someone at Apogee saw a marketing opportunity based on a crappy looking square wave and the Yamaha internal clock with spikes and all actually times the board just fine, don't know and if nothing else, don't the o-scope signals always look kind of cool!

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

Finally, I would like to say

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH!

and double AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH!

My laptop has finally reached the end of it's life span, hence my near vanishing to all internet related adventures. Crippled and sad, I finally have a new one coming and will enter the data swap hell soon.

Come join me in my next bloggery post, till then do not forget to turn it up and rock out!

Dave Rat

The economy and its financial implosion thereof dominates the news and as with every self fulfilling prophesy, each news report just seems to fuel the flames to torch some more. What better way to put out a fire than to throw money at it? To be realistic, my humble small company and humanly wandering perspective does not adequately position me into a position of experience and credibility to tackle the complexities of the spiral I hear so much about. That said, I have done some pondering about the matter and what I came up with is this:

Imagine three humans, one who cuts lumber, one who builds things and one who grows food. And lets say the food grower has $100. He hires the builder to build him a shed, and the builder buys lumber who in turn buys food who in turn builds a barn and round and round the $100 goes from hand to hand. In fact, in theory, that single $100 could go around so many times that at the end of the year, each human shows that they made $500 a week, $26,000 per human totaling an annual combined income for the three humans of $78,000, from a single $100 bill.

It is not the amount of money that matters, rather it is the speed at which money travels that determines how much each person makes acquires and has. By years end, they all could have more of everything than they know what to do with.

Now lets add in taxes and put a big tax on every transaction and within a fairly short period of time that $100 will dwindle to near nothing. Spending with caution becomes imperative and the three humans will live impoverished unless they switch to an illegal barter system to circumvent the taxes.

Now lets add in deception wherein value is falsely represented. The farmer sells inedible food, the builder never builds on time and the lumber is rotted or perhaps the $100 bill is fake or worth only a fraction. Regardless of the deception, the fundamental is that the product or service is misrepresented and worth less than the amount it is sold for and therefore does not perform as expected. Deception has a similar effect as taxes but is perhaps time delayed. The ripple effect of the faulty construction of the shed allows the crop seeds to be eaten by critters impacting the next harvest and so on.

Taxes and deception both have the impact of adding friction to the flow of money and slowing it down. So from this simple perspective, the key to economic management is to keep money flowing at a reasonable pace. Too fast and things grow out of control, too slow and things grind to a halt.

Hence this is where we find ourselves now. Houses falsely represented in value, perhaps due to the excessive speed of money leading up to the collapse or perhaps due to deceptive loans extended to people lacking the financial position to repay. Regardless, there is no less money here on this planet today than last year, it is the velocity that money travels from one hand to the next that has changed. The speed of money has significantly slowed.

So how does on fix a financial engine bogging down with so much friction? Well, there seem to be two trains of thought:

1) Step on the gas and dump more fuel into the system, as in 'huge influx of cash' to overpower the friction

2) Take our foot off the brakes to reduce friction by holding those responsible for misrepresentation accountable while lowering taxation.

What do I think is the best way to get the economy back up to speed? Well, I think a focus on reducing payroll and sales taxes would be the first thing I would do. Clean, simple and immediate. No sales tax, nationwide and cut all payroll withholdings in half for both personal and businesses, effective immediately. This temporary nitro boost to the economy means more money in the pockets and/or everything just got cheaper, depending on where you live. Instantly and easily reducing the friction to the financial system in a way that is controllable. Then, as this money gets spent or saved and things ramp up, just scale the sales taxes and payroll taxes back up. Sure the governments and states take a financial hit in the short term but when the money flows again, it will all be made back up.

Oh, and as far as the huge cash dump into the banks that screwed us? Take that $ and loan it to the states and to cover budget shortfalls from the reduce tax income. At least that way the fed will be able to get paid back at some point.

Anyway, I have been rocking the old records at home and the first Run-DMC album has been making me smile with the old school beats. I find it particularly interesting that this 1984 song so perfectly seems to describe today as well.

 

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And while on the topic of the gov, may as well add your # to the do nat call registryhttps://www.donotcall.gov/

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While continuing the financial fun, take a peek at one of the coolest and funniest album marketing strategies I have ever heard of from the super cool guy and awesome drummer, Josh Freese and his new album 'Since 1972'. He is offering some pretty fun deals if you have some extra cash

$7

* Digital download of Since 1972, including 3 videos

$15

* CD/DVD double-disc set
* Digital download

$50

* CD/DVD double-disc set
* T-shirt
* “Thank you” phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like “Is Maynard really THAT weird?” or “Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?” or “Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?” or “Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?” It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$250 (limited edition of 25)

* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed drum head and drumsticks
* Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you’re into)

$500 (limited edition of 15)

* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal and sticks
* Meet Josh in Venice, Calif., and go floating together in a sensory-deprivation tank (to be filmed and posted on YouTube)
* Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 steak and “all you can eat” shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)

* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal, drum head and drumsticks
* Josh washes your car OR does your laundry … or you can wash his car
* Have dinner with Josh aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.
* Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5)

* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* Get a private drum lesson with Josh, or for all you non-drummers, have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
* Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or Devo (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the Spearmint Rhino
* Signed DW snare drum
* Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
* Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3)

* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Josh writes a song about you and makes it available on iTunes
* Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the YouTubes
* Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
* Get drunk together. If you don’t drink, we can go to my dad’s place and hang out under the “Tuba tree”
* Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on Since 1972

And to see the rest of them, check out:

http://soundcheck.freedomblogging.com/2009/02/20/want-josh-freese-to-join-your-band-got-75000/4962/

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And a tidbit about out rat brethren from other parts of the world:

http://www.asylum.com/2009/02/20/unbelievably-massive-rat-caught-in-china/?icid=200100125x1218513062x1201316048

  **** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Okey dokey, here is a bit more on the L'Acoustics K-1 rig:

New fly bars that are the same dimensions as the boxes. Those beams on top rotate 90 degrees pin into the bars and offer plenty of leverage for up and down tilt.

Ohh, the sexy delta plate for side to side focus of the arrays

Nifty rigging allows you to pin your angles before you lift the box and click click click, the boxes open up and grab the proper positions as you lift with rigid locked angles. Say bye bye to tension straps.

Four channels of 1800 watts in two rack spaces fully processed, this little lightweight amp powers two K-1, 4 K-1SB, 4 SB28's or any other L'Acoustics gear you may have laying around.

So we had a gathering of Rat's and friends for the first K-1 training seminar ever. And well, we may as well get some surfing in. That would be myself, Manny, Tony Luna, Ronnie Kimball, and Brian Rat

Ok, and off I go to try and figure out the rest of the world.

DR

Cool Shit

With the exciting delivery of the new PA system to Rat and the significant advantages and innovations over anything else I have ever heard or mixed on, I though maybe a peek at some other cool and exciting ideas outside the pro audio world, is in order.

Check out these new Michelin wheels known as the Tweel. Thank you Maija for the heads up on this one.

Even cooler, take a look at the video below:

Slipping over into some sound nerd speak, check out this speaker technology:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/woody_norris_invents_amazing_things.html is an interesting video and if you are curious enough search out more on ted.com like the Wii hacks. Thank you Grier.

Like everything in life, for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, so to prevent my blog from becoming a black hole and consuming the universe, I have included a web page sent to me be the illustrious Dan Hadley:

http://www.nathanmarciniak.com/elemental/

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Hey! MicroWedge 15 has been released and is now available. These are not much bigger han the MicroWedge 12's, louder and sound every bit as great and have considerably more low end capabilities.

I am heading off to EAW tomorrow to work on some new and exciting MicroWedge products as there are 3 more in the pipeline.

As for a tidbit of info on the K1 system, the LA-8 amps have limited but very specific internal EQ. Unlike trying to EQ a line array with a standard parametric, graphic or digital processor version thereof, the controllable parameters of the K1 EQ are linear phase, locked latency filters. This means you can EQ some elements in a line array without causing interference issues due to phase and time-error interactions between adjoining boxes.

In other words, do you know all that "frequency shading" that so many vendors have been implement without giving it a serious thought about ramifications? Like adding some high frequency EQ to the upper boxes or turning up down the horns in the bottom? Well, depending on the processor, adding that eq causes a phase shift, time shift or both in the HF. Most processors only cause a phase shift while a few cause a time shift as well. This phase shift is so drastic that it can easily be heard with a simple test.

Take a mono music signal and input it into your digi processor of choice. Bypass all EQ and all crossovers so you just get a full range signal. Using headphones, route output 1 to the left ear and output 2 to the right ear. Ok, both ears should sound identical. Now put a 30HZ high pass on one output but not the other. You should hear a shift in the centering of the sound. Almost as if the sound now has a diagonal center. Now try putting tiny amounts of delay on one ear or the other. You will be stunned by how accurately your ears can hear the even 1 millisecond.

OK, so what does this all mean? Well, just as your ears hear those subtle phase and time issues, adjoining line array boxes "hear" them as well and any differential in the time or phase will deteriorate the summation of adjacent boxes, cause unpredictability and reduce the consistency of coverage.

Ok, enough for now, I will try and offer a bit more insight into K1 system with each blog post.

Rock on!

Dave Rat

If only amongst the turmoil I stole the free moments to document the unbelievable flurry of last month's ride. So that leaves me with looking back in retrospect to share the hazy highlights. The glee of Obama victory waning yet the momentum lingers. I don't care much for 'hope' and 'faith' as they are to me is just versions of self deception, so in my life I have chosen to replace those lazy crutches with a vector of positive momentum. I don't hope, but rather I push pressure in the desired direction to do my best to unravel a desired outcome. Though I can not foresee the how it will unfold, my experience leads me to believe that I can increase the probability of ending up in the vicinity of where I desire. At least that is what seems to happen except when it doesn't.

As tempted as I am to say times are hard, they equally challenging in a wonderful way. Home prices collapse as gas skyrockets only to plummet, the banks dissolve the lines of credit that fuel and support business and productivity trying to bankrupt the unprepared and over exposed. Batten down the hatches as we are deep in the storm.

Last month the one of our banks pulled Rat Sound's credit line with 4 days notice. Not good news indeed as we head into the winter slow down. Fair enough, we were wise to use more than one bank and we have other resources. Off to find a new one and a bit of time and a brand new credit line. Then same thing happens to me personally, a letter saying I used to have access to a home equity that is now near zero. Aaargh and a few days and some phone calls later, I get that lined back up. The banks are trying to bankrupt a successful business. So dumb. It brings back the memories of battling financial institutions in the early days and reminds me once again that to rely on an outside entity is weakness. Always have a backup plan and let no one hold the reins of my future.

Anyway, on the more fun side of things, in perfect punk rock rebellion, what better way to celebrate economic hard times than to do the exact opposite? Come on, lets go shopping and if you are going to do something, no reason to bother unless you are going to do it right, right? So then what shall we buy?  Oh, I know!  How about the hottest new super cool best sounding bad-ass PA system ever made! We at Rat have spent the last two months lining up a purchase of a full stadium-sized L'Acoustics K1 sound system. It's only a bit more than a cool million and the largest equipment expansion in Rat Sound's 28 year history.

Oh, and so a few pics of parts of the sexy new system:

Here you can see 24 SB28's, 24, K1's 8 K1 subs, 200,000 watts of LA8 power, fly bars, amp racks and all kinds of other goodies that make up the best sounding PA I have heard yet and this is only the first delivery.

Silly annoying banks and the beauty of this whole adventure is how much I have learned in the business world, nothing like a challenge keep things interesting and I felt this video clip eloquently shares my feelings toward those financial institutions:

Stay tuned for Rat Holiday Party, my run in with planet earth and aargh, I lost yet another camera!

Dave Rat

I would so love to share some in depth observation or revelation of usefulness that would leave all that read these words with a smile. Hopefully by the time time I finish writing this entry, I will stumble upon something down those lines but in the mean time I will offer a brief update on my wanderings.

Though no one like a quitter, I did take a small break from my break from mixing bands. Actually, it does not really count because I'm not against mixing, just trying to see if I can both survive and not tour at the same time. Anyway, off to Santa Monica to fill in for my good friend Craig Overbay who mixes Weezer.

The morning radio shoot was not a major enough of an event to fly Craig down from Seattle so I got the honors to fill in and actually quite enjoyed it. Here is a live video from the radio show:

Cool how the Rat made it in, not so cool that the camera has trouble finding a focus. For those of you who may not be familiar with Weezer's actual Pork and Beans video, it is really cool! They went and found the people that did the most popular YouTube videos, flew them all out to the same place and filmed a Weezer video based on the YouTube videos. This site has a link to the Weezer video and then links to the original video from which Weezer built it. It is worth a watch as some of them are really funny!

http://valleywag.com/392972/weezer-undestands-how-to-work-youtube

And while roaming the world of web, check this out:

http://www.metafilter.com/74482/Rat-Sound-the-original-punk-rock-sound-company

I received an email asking Rat was ok with a post on MetaFilter and to be honest, I had not heard of it before. Anyway, I guess I am in the minority there cause after the post went up, I got a bunch of emails from people who saw it.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

What else, oh! I went to see Radiohead at the Santa Barbara Bowl and they were touring with the new L'Acoustics K1 system.

Here you can see 4 K1 subs per side at the top of the array, 8 K1's per side, 3 dV-Dosc per side and 3 clusters four SB 28's configured 3 forward and 1 facing backward in each. Also there are some assorted deck fills. As expected, the system was clean, clear and impressive, nothing surprising other than how darn great it sounded! I want one! This is destined to be the sound system by which all others will be judged.

While in the sound side of things and in web cruising video mode, check out this video EAW made covering the MicroWedge features. Love to hear comments on it.

On a less cheery note Dolby has announced that their state of the art processors http://www.dolby.com/professional/live_sound/Products/lake_processor.html

will be discontinued and users have less than 30 days to place all orders for any units that they will ever need for ever and ever.

Since its introduction, the Dolby Lake Processor has helped the world’s top touring sound companies and performing arts centers to improve the performance of their systems and has been widely recognized as the state of the art:

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As Dolby looked to the future, we observed an accelerating shift toward integrated speaker processing, equalization, and digital audio networking into amplifiers and powered speakers. As a result of these observations, Dolby and Lab.gruppen developed a program to take advantage of this trend by creating an amplifier that integrated DLP technology. So the Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q Powered Loudspeaker Management system with “DLP inside” was launched to great success—and we understand that more models will be introduced soon.

With the success of the Lab.gruppen project, and to align Dolby with our future corporate strategies, we have decided to exit the Live Sound business. As a result, we are announcing the final production run of the DLP, after which we will discontinue its manufacture. We have allowed the next 30 days (through September 30, 2008) for you to calculate your needs and to place final orders. This final production run will be set to fill the open orders we have as of the close of business on that date. Delivery schedules may vary from our previous norms, so please plan accordingly.

Dolby is committed to supporting both the DLP and Lab.gruppen’s efforts for the future. We will provide our standard warranty coverage and one-year of software maintenance on this last run of DLPs (see the attached Warranty Statement and End User License Agreement for these details). Dolby is no longer developing new features for DLP or Lake Controller software after release 5.1.

We would like to thank you for your support and hard work as we built this business. Your dedication and enthusiasm for the Dolby and Lake brands was a key component of the success we achieved. We are gratified to know that DLP technology will live on through our partnership with Lab.gruppen and we wish each of you much success in the future.

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All I can say is Yikes! So glad that Rat Sound went with XTA processors, and my heart goes out to the companies that are mind crunching the decision of whether to stock up or liquidate their DLP inventory.

Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, as drastic as this notice seems, it does highlight something interesting. Just as the Line Array caused a monumental shift in pro audio, I believe we are at the doorstep of another massive shift and the days of the "dumb amp" in cutting edge audio is over. These new generation of smart amps are incredible. Things like being able to sense the impedance profile of the speakers connected to it and tell you if the system is wired wrong and what type and how many of each speaker type is connected to the amp is just the beginning! Exciting stuff so perhaps rather than loose too much sleep over last years processor, may as well start diving into next years Procamplifier.

And for the smaller companies? Well, expect a lot of cool used amps and processors to show up over the next few years as we audiots make this painfully expensive step forward into yet another new realm.

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

Other news and such, I had the pleasure of seeing Jack Johnson

and Bob Dylan as well, as I got out and about and I really need to figure out a new system to remind me to bring my camera. The whole "attach it to the Peppers laminate plan just does not work well anymore.

 

Seven months home and the rhythms of tour are as clear in my recollection as the food I ate 7 weeks ago tuesday and even if I mind-smunch my brain deep enough to retrace my steps, I could not possibly recall more than rudimentary guesses as the sensations and aromas have long ago drifted into oblivion. Where does my time go? And why do I let running around in daily circles sponge my life away into gas receipts. How is that important? Yet the desire to get there or here can seem so desirable and crucial and looking back all I see are tail lights and patches and broken things and a few smiles at the moments when I broke free of the pattern. Oh to look forward to a magnetic future that pulls happiness from the monotony. A single phone call holds the power to shift drudgery into closed-eye bliss or to obliterate euphoria into a slap-stinging reality of the past haunts I've created. Run away! but I wont as I have chosen to stay. I have stepped off the moving ship that allowed me to live in the disconnected reality of motion. Sir Isaac Newton, the falling apple on the head guy, once said "an object in motion will stay in motion till acted upon by an outside force and an object at rest is bored." Or something like that. Do we watch the movie or do we strive to be actors? Ooooh! The beauty of disconnected observation. And ooooh, the temptation of jumping into the limelight of celebrity attention. Each with their downfalls both so alluring depending on the moment. Claps and cheers for those who ramp up and are willing to crawl out of their defeats on the way to success. Boos and hisses for those that crawl shifty behind deception to force their greedy goals. Am I wrong to remember gas was $1.50 a gallon when "we" (in the soft and broad unfortunate form) elected that slurring annoyance? Ah, but is it so wrong that the spiraling bumblefuck around us is reinforcing we humans into getting our shit together and bumping up our minimization of crapping on the earth about us? Ah the "Barney Syndrome," the purple dinosaur so bent on happy-cheery and perfect it invigorates resentment in even the most kind hearted observer. A peon propped into power so bent on ass kissing his indebtedness away to the string-pullers that all he touches begins to decay, creates the Barney syndrome in reverse. Here we sit at a hopefully a zero crossing upward as the natural oscillation from dark to light, fight to fun and falling to climbing enters the next stage. Speaking of the cycles and competitions of life, check this out. I would like to say nothing makes me cry but I have spent too many plane flights with sunglasses on watching sappy movies to say that with any integrity, anyway, this video made me smile with watery eyes so I figured I would subject you 'all to it as well:

And out of the ramble and into midst lets go for a wander to see what we can find in the world of France. Meet Christian Heil, the big kahuna creator of the modern line-array sound system configuration. For those of you outside the audio realm and maybe some within, in the mid to late 90's a PA created by a French company called L' Acoustics began gaining considerable traction on large tours with a system called V-Dosc. Immediately all the major players in the speaker building industry started coming up with reasons the line-array systems do not work and are inferior. Then they realized that there profits were in jeopardy so they all copied it. Today, with only three manufacturers that I know of,

Continue reading "Time Sponges and Mind Sparkles"

I am back before gone and what better way to keep friends around than to give them free stuff! So, if you are interested and send a letter with a "Self addressed stamped envelope" inside to:

Rat Sound - Stickers
321 Bernoulli Circle
Oxnard, CA 93030
USA

We will drop in 3 Rat stickers and post it back to ya!

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So who woulda knew that diving into blogging about roadies would be so read? So read that somehow the Spike TV show "ManSwers" found me and sent a crew out to interview me on some roadie-ish stuff. Don't know when it will be on or whether I will end up on the digital parallel to the cutting room floor, but I must admit that it was really fun and I had a blast. Especially the part where I felt very manly while getting my face powdered

The ManSwers crew was super cool and I realized that in a way, they are a special breed of TV roadies that travel in a small herd of 4 in a minivan. And what do roadies love? Yep, you got it, SWAG!!! So to test whether they were truly roadies, I offered swag which they seemed to be quite happy with.

Rock on Sacha and crew!

**** Not Sound but just the same, Nerd Speak ****

What else,,,,, Oh, a special treat for our bloggery friends that use the somewhat awkward combination of Blackberry phone and Macintosh computer. There is now and finally a way to tether your computer to your phone. For those unfamiliar, tethering is where you connect your phone to your laptop via cable or Bluetooth and utilize your cell phone's internet connection to access the internet on your laptop. This is super cool, though a bit slow, as you can surf the web for free from anywhere you have cell service. (assuming you have the unlimited data plan on your cell phone that is). Anyway, tethering with a PC laptop into a Blackberry or similar phone is pretty common and fairly simple. Tethering with a Mac is a bit more illusive as Apple likes to block those kinds of things. But finally the puzzle has been unraveled and Mac users can now enjoy that wonderful internet connectivity freedom that I have come to depend on.

http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/07/19/005156/

**** End Not Sound but just the same, Nerd Speak ****

Into a fleeting gap in the onslaught of projects streaming by, I wedged in enough time to capture a snapshot of roadie adventure past. Rewinding back to Ireland we find our roadie friends fearlessly braving frigid rain at the base of the majestic Slane Castle. Yes, the Peppers made a DVD and too did the Foo. Puzzling at it is, I realized that in their haste and exuberance of filming the sliver of time occupied by the evening of "rock", both somehow have overlooked what occurred behind the scenes during the bulk of the day preceding. Alas, all is not lost for by sheer luck and a clear sense of the impending obvious, I had spent that August day wandering the roadie encampment with a tiny video camera documenting those roadie creatures frolicking in their natural habitat.

Without further ado, here are three 5 minute shorts of:

Roadies in the Midst - Slane Castle Unplugged

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm0USJt5ZdM

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1XPpC2Hve0

Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWrXvR4ejwE

And finally, a parting shot for the day, on a whim I decided that I need some tunes in my office so I headed back into shop world, grabbed a few bits and set myself up a little sound system to enjoy while I work and make phone calls.

Two double 18 cable and two EAW MicroWedge's, a couple thousand watts of power and an MP3 player and I am ready to rock!

See you all soon and would love to hear how ya like the Slane video. I have several more old video tapes from tours past that I can put up if people are into the Rat Roadie Films.

Dave Rat