Category: Blog

New Orleans show was fun and eventful as well. Not only is Trombone Shorty opening but the Rebirth Brass Band joined peppers for an awesome  encore

Encore

Good fun stuff. Jack Irons is also an opener and wow is it great to see him, known Jack for over 30 years, will shoot some pics of him jamming soon, for now just enjoying the watch

So the big news on my front is I will be moving on from mixing peppers. It’s been a long time coming and actually when I first started blogging Roadies in the Midst , I intended that to be my last real tour and had set out to document my last real tour through bloggery posts.

roadies in the midst

If you have been following my posts and interviews for any time now you already know that I never set out to be a sound engineer. I sort of fell into the gig by owning a sound company as well as wanting to test my speaker designs. Never would have dreamed I would end up mixing huge bands in huge places. 

Mixing Peppers has been a wonderful adventure spanning nearly 26 years and now the time has come for me to follow my true passion of designing sound gear and dedicating my life to what started as a tiny punk rock sound company but has also grown beyond my wildest imagination. Who would have ever guessed us little Rats would become an internationally recognized touring sound company with manufacturing, sales and installation divisions, numerous employees. Ha, and now is time to have some fun bumping it up a notch!

So though no one ever knows what the far future will bring, what I do know is my last show mixing Peppers will be Minneapolis on Jan 22nd. 

I truly love Flea, Anthony, Chad, Josh and all my dear and close friends I consider family both on the road now and those that have moved on to other adventures over the years. I am pretty happy to say that I have dedicated significant time documenting touring with Peppers in journals but also have thousands of amazing photos spanning decades of smiles and challenges.

The sound engineer that is coming to replace me I have also known for many years and is of the highest caliber and I look forward to him taking Peppers sound to new and lofty levels. 

So cheers to good times and the excitement of new adventures to come. As tough as it is to say goodbye to the people I love, saying hello to creating my own itineraries supersedes 

And so the countdown begins:

Oh, on the subwoofer front, here is a pic of the SuperSub 30 array under the stage left top plates that extend the stage.

I did some more eq on them during system tuning yesterday and am making further progress on getting them dialed in. One thing we are noticing is that we are seeing better Rejection in the off axis zones than previous array setups of have implemented. Primarily it seems to be related to the reduced resonance at the tuning frequency. There is still much to be learned about them as they are based on the Powersoft M-Force and M-Drive products.

M-Force

These transducers are literally a new technology unlike any other transducer. They are not moving coil in a magnetic field like most loudspeakers. They are not rotary woofers using a fan

 rotary woofer

And they are not ServoDrive subwoofer that use a rotary motor to drive belts attached to opposing cones. 

servodrive

What these are is a flat composite paddle like structure with 4 embedded magmets surrounded by fixed coils such that the paddle moves linearly inward and outward guided by precision bearings. The protruding threaded bolt is them attached to a 30″ diameter cone. 

Being that this is a completely new technology, and though the product has been through 10’s of thousands of hours of rigorous testing it remains unlike traditional designs.

When I leave the tour, the subs may or may not come home with me. That should all get sorted in the next week or and Rat as vendor with open arms will support the clients preferences.

In the mean time, say hello to George, Tyler and Nick, ok, off to find some BBQ in Memphis try and catch up with the sound crew.

DR

It’s been a while maybe 3 years or so since Ibe done a US bus ride.roony and open. More social space than the Euro micro lounges. No real hanging for me though. Off to the bunk for some phone work and a bit o blog. 

So another show on the new subs was getting my head around them feeling more free to push a bit. My main concern is maintaining a good sound out front without any side effects that could mess with the band’s performance. Sub bleed on stage can really be an issue and make it hard for them to hear if I’m not careful

As far as mixing, everything came up well, the mains were pretty straight forward with the biggest challenge being that it’s freezing cold outside. The trick of shutting off venue air unfortunately barely warms the room when it’s so cold so the sound tends to be edgy till people get moving . You can just feel the cold air falling from the roof and it makes things a bit unwieldy requiring extra attention to the changing tonality.

Check out the 12 supersub rolling array strapped to the template

Mixing on the SuperSubs is fascinating. The bass sound has less hot spots that swoop through the room on certain notes. I did add a bit of EQ today with a single cut around 50hz..

On the band front, 2nd show had even more momentum than the first, it’s amazing how well they hit the ground running with the high standards themselves and others have established. 

A quick look from when I was home

DR

Well it sure was nice to be home for the holidays, too nice in fact. Leaving home gets harder each time and so very soon all my travels will be purely in my control rather than an emailed itinerary.

In the mean time, the new SDS30 SuperSubs did their first show. A 16 box set up with 8 on each side in cardioid arrays. I kept them very tame for the show as the last thing I want is to overwhelm or distract from the primary goal of connecting the artist with audience.

Over the course of this leg I will slowly open them up in both level and bandwidth doing my best to only make forward steps.

A few aspects of the sound were readily apparent. First is that these subs go low, really low, in fact so low that I had to high pass them as not to overwhelm with frequencies below 30hz. Definitely will need to develop some techniques to manage and harness the extra energy.

Secondly, they are fast, like hard hitting punchy fast. At first this punchy fast sound threw me off and I will need to refine managing that as well. The kick jumps out in ways I have not heard since mixing on horn loaded subs yet without the low frequency limitations and pesky sound peaks that plague those horn designs.  Also the box resonance is so low that either I high-passed above it or its so subdued that it’s a non issue. Beyond messing with the high and low pass filters, I used no external EQ. Typically dialing in sub EQ is one of the more challenging aspects I face in tuning a system.

All that said I wisdom of years of building and testing new systems tells me that initial impressions rarely tell the whole story for better or worse.

It was a busy day and had a lot going on and spaced grabbing pics of the arrays but here they are coming off the truck.

Specs and more details soon. If you want us to email you info as it comes out, he is a link to give us your info.

SDS30 SuperSubs More Info Signup

Cool cool and fun with big loud toys!

Well hello my little comrade. Happy little guy found a present.

Many years ago I had a pet squirrel named Tibet. She wod follow me around the house, if I tapped my chest she clamor up my leg and hop on my shoulder. Sometimes if I sat on the floor she would run circles around me and roll on her back showing her long scary teeth Acting like she would bite me, but just ever so gentle play bites before leaping in the air and circling again.

Show 2 at o2 London arena went well as well. Second shows always have a bit of an advantage sound wise from the fine tuning of the first night. We actually return for a 3rd night  days and three cities later

My bus avoidance adventures continue and after the gig I stayed back in London for the day off with Kim and up early for a 4 hour show day train ride to Glasgow. 

Since I did not spend my life traveling the world in order to embrace a lack of experiences, guess what I chose for dinner tonight?

Once again the the Brompton makes a spare hour unwasted.

I try and offer a sonic tidbit of advice with each blog post so for for today I will share some insight into getting and maintaining gigs. 

What we are selling as sound sound engineers is not really a perfect show, npr is it technical complexity. The shows will never be perfect, they will only be at most, the best that can be done with the given challenges at hand. Ultimately whether you have a crazy complicated setup that requires tons of work or a simple one that is nearly auto pilot, makes no difference to the audience, the band, management or show reciewers.

What we sell is confidence. Confidence that when the band walks on stage that they do not need to worry that their sound will be delivered. Confidence that best will be done to connect the artists with the audience and to the listener what matters is that they have an experience they can feel. That for those few hours, the world fades away and they can immerse in the moment.

Confidence is built on trust and and held by delivering consistently over time.

And now we are mid set change so it’s time to refocus on mixing a rock show.

DR

Back on tour after an amazing 10 days at home. Surfed nearly every other day between catching up on Rat stuff and remembering there is more to life than go go go.

So I am mixing the Peppers’ o2 show, I come out hot, at 108 and slowly fade down to the 103 A weighted I usually mix at by slowly fading over the first two songs. London, Los Angeles and New York are high pressure gigs. Not so much for me directly but the audiences tend to be more discerning combined with management, band friends and all the heavyweights hovering filled with more angst than I feel. The mix comes up as it has most every show for quite a while now. The instruments are all there and I am focused on tonally compensating for room temp. A few songs in.I turn around and this guy in the FOH mix area looks like he has to tell me the secret of the universe. I walk over and he says, “what’s up with the high hat?” 
I am thinking, “The high hat?” We are doing the O2, the vocals are right on top, the subs are clear, the guitar is on fire, Flea is defined and strong. All the drums churning out with power and this guy is stressing on the high hat like it’s the end of the world. Kashisst Kashisst, the high is crisp, defined and if anything a bit bright. WTF? It’s like the reincarnation of cowbell guy. I figure he is a band friend but damn,  I ask him if his hearing is flawed, how can he not hear? Kind of a bummer, two songs of being a bit self conscience and right back into an awesome show.

After the show I went and hunted down high hat guy, turns out he was nice enough, I guess he got a bit excited with having an opinion of perceived importance. To bad it wasn’t more cowbell he wanted..

And while we are at the rock show, we have BabyMetal opening and it is delightful. White faced demons and toy doll pony tails in catering can’t help but make everyone smile. This is the way like should always be.

The tour bike adventures continue with a refreshing 13 miles after the gig through the streets of London  such a wonderful contrast to loud music and the thrill of the gig to fly down dark streets icy cool air and the feeling of freedom.

As far as sound tidbit of the day, I guess I will finish off my 3 key pieces of gear. I covered the Dorrough 1200B and the PCM60.

Edit
So let’s cover the eventide H3500. I like this unit because it not only can cover all my dedicated effect patches but also because I can punch the programs in directly on the keypad.  I the 3500 for the vocal delays on Sir Psycho and Higher Ground, the guitar pan for Blood Sugar, the phaser effect on Dani California, some vocal flange for Under the Bridge, vocal reverb flange for Could Have Lied and a few other patches I can’t think of at the moment.

By using just one unit for all the non PCM60 effects, it keeps the mix clean and defined and prevents piling a bunch of messy crap on to the band. I pretty muc focus on being an absolute minimalist. My job is to connect the artist with the audience.  Not to distract.

Cool cool and now I must mix London o2 #2

DR

It’s been nearly 2 years in development, from the four prototype versions I hand built in my garage, transferring my handcrafted designs to 3D data to bringing the contract manufacturer up to speed. The environmental tests, cosmetics, covers, caster plate designs and finally the first batch is enroute. 

Soon will have spec sheets and more info.

I actually have been developing this specific subwoofer design concept for over 12 years now and here is a picture of a 15″ version that I use as my home stereo subwoofer.

They have come a long way and when we release more info it should explain why this specific design offers some distinct advantages

Happy Thanksgiving and I am so happy the be home for 10 days.

Yay C-street surfing, yay family, yay pups yay Rat family, yay friends.  Not necessarily in that exact order but yay all!

DR

So the initial shock and disgust of facing the election results is slowly fading into accepting what I already knew about human nature. And not unlike nature nature, Trump is reminiscent of an invasive species like kudzu for which our political system has not yet developed a defence mechanism. 

Personally to help me sleep and do my part, I have arranged monthly donations to the ACLU to help fend off Trump’s stated attacks on civil liberties as well as other organizations that he states his policies intend to undermine. Join me, let’s try and minimize the collateral damage and reverse the process into a better direction.

Moving over to sound world, let’s take a look at the RTA I use to see the sound that the audience hears during the show.

So for me, this photo from the show in Hannover is pretty darn close to what I am looking for. What I seek is a very smooth falling response losing 3 to 5 db per octave as you go up in frequency.

In smaller rooms, the slope is more gentle and in big rooms when I am far away from the PA I look for a steeper slope.

Please note that this is not the response using pink noise. The is the response of the actual band playing measured from a mic at FOH and the RTA is set to “infinity” time averaging.  I then allow it to average over the course of half a song or even several songs.

My goal is to look at the averaged frequency response of the sonic energy that I am exposing the audience to, over time. I really want to avoid exposure to narrow band peaks over any thing beyond short time frames.

There is a bit of a bump in the 1k to 5k region, this is not ideal but since it happens smoothly over several octaves and is just a few db, it is not a major concern.

One of the challenges is that this curve will constantly change with venue temperature, audience size and location. so if you ever watch me mix, you will see me trying to lock in the curve as the show starts and then chase EQ gremlins as they show up throughout the night.

Doing winter shows means we can experience some pretty drastic temp changes, very quickly depending on the roof design and entry and exit door usage.

Did my first and second bus ride of this tour leg getting in and out of Herning Denmark. The train schedules were just too cumbersome. 

I’ve been train to take candidate shots of everyone on the tour and at some point put some posts on each department. What seemed a reasonable plan is proving quite the challenge though.

And some pics while biking around.

Ok, sleep and show tomorrow Frankfurt

DR