Witness Baby! Witness!

AV Evangalism  - Witness Baby! Witness!

 

My fellow RavePubs blogger and all around dynamo Dawn Meade (aka AV Dawn) just published a great call to arms in evangelism for the AV industry.

Read it here

Evangelism contains within it a need for the delft skill of engaging those who want to learn, resisting the desire to teach those who do not care and, most difficult of all, leading the misinformed to see the folly of their own premises.

AV is a grand wide pleasure dome from the DIY to the toys of a Sultan. You can preach to me the lifelong benefits of a Plasma but if this is not my budget no amount of preaching will help. Now, tell me how to make the best of what I can and I will see that the work to do so, in the end is equal to a step or two up. I may need to go though the process but in the end it is gentle evangelicalism that will ring in my ears.

Can I get a Witness!?

*Originally posted on my Tumblr Blog 

The Unspeakable Seems to Have A Voice

A few days ago I posted a provocative  post, entitled "I say a Dirty Word", on Gary Kayye's  RavePubs blog to the custom install professionals to embrace the DIY community as  best bet toward future growth. 

Well it seems that even the pro stalwart PRO Sound News has some similar thoughts by posting a series of videos from the NYC Makers Faire

 

You can see a bunch more videos from the show here

 

White Spaces - RF beyond the Aesthetics

 

White Spaces,  Sounds like something your Art History professor would use to describe ‘the   power’ of an unpainted space on a Jackson Pollock.  

In fact White Spaces is the name for a contentiously battled over area of RF (Radio Frequency Spectrum) and yes it effects you and your AV business.

Until just a few years ago television stations broadcast their signals via three separate signals, one each for Picture, Color information and Sound. These three signals would be recombined inside the circuitry of your TV  to produce the complete picture.  These three RF spikes, creating mountains and valleys could be clearly seen on an off air oscilloscope.  The valleys and spaces between the channel signals is where many wireless devices would ‘sit’.  In large metropolitan areas where every possible channel was used, such spaces were invaluable.  When it came to wireless microphones, this was doubly so.  

Then came digital television.  This beast, not to be confused with HDTV -(the former can carry the latter but it may not always be the case), generates one signal with all the information.  Great! you might think - with two less signals to worry about there will be more room for other lower powered RF devices, right?

Um, No.  

While there is now only one signal it takes up a wide swath of space in a continuous signal. Bummer no? Yet there is a bright hope here.  The FCC mandated that all analog broadcasts (the three spikes) were to have ceased broadcast by June 26th, 2009. The plan is to sell off all the remaining ‘empty’ space to facilitate new communications technologies and less the RF congestion that now plagues wireless.  

Great, Right?!, Maybe.

Manufactures and audio industry folks have been raising a ruckus to insure that a defined space is available for the use of itinerant wireless devices such as microphones and intercom systems - such as those used at live events.  Sadly it took a small skirmish but it appears things have been finally worked out.

I learned about the true value of the analog television signals on  February 26, 1993, the day the World Trade Center was bombed.  One of my responsibilities as a rental tech was to test and calibrate wireless mic systems going out on jobs.  One of the tools we used ( and actually still have) was an off air oscilloscope or IFR, to insure that the IFR was itself calibrated we would tune it to a TV channel’s Picture RF spike.  Once we knew that the RF spike from. say channel four was reading accurate - we could then be confident that our mic signal was accurate and tune it accordingly.  On that February day I was still only just becoming comfortable with the operation of the IFR.  

As usual I brought up the Television channel to see that the unit was operating  as expected when it happened, the spikes - all three dipped then disappeared.  I checked a few more channels and they too were gone.  “Oh no”, I thought, “i have broken a $10k piece of test gear”.  With a mild sense of panic and depression I told the service manager of my actions.  He was a bit irked with me to say the least and stormed to my test bench.  He found the same thing I did until he brought up NY channel two, he then brought up the audio - which is where we heard the news that the WTC had experienced an explosion that had shut down the transmitter atop tower one. (Channel 2 still used the antenna atop the Empire State Building).  That is when we looked  out the office window which had a direct view of the WTC, to see smoke billowing up. I recall this event every time I look at a oscilloscope and it is the mental image I have of when I think of what the analog transmission shut down must have looked like.

Now that I am back in the event staging / live events world I have an renewed interest in just how the new landscape of RF should be handled and lucky for me the good people at AV Nation have a great podcast special on just this topic. The special broadcast includes Sennheiser's Eric Reese  and Kent Margraves with host Michael Drainer discussing  the FCC laws and tips to get your wireless to work flawlessly.  I highly recommend it to anyone who works with audio for live events, this is great stuff.

 

 

A Truly Useful Engine

Originally posted to Rave Pubs on  August 18, 2011 

Now you're back in line

Going not quite quite as far

But in half the time

 

- Jumping Someone Else's Train, The Cure

 

Perspective can change everything; running straight line the countryside is truly bucolic, but when the train jerks ‘round a turn you find that the rolling hills hide a shanty town.  Which side of thetracks your business is living on can be a fluid line. One month you are in the middle of richly appointed houses with green lawns and blooming gardens, the next morning it is in a freight yard of dinged cars and grimy out buildings.   

 

How could this happen?  Perhaps you rode the line too far without checking; all lines end somewhere and these places look nothing like they do on Sodor.  Anyone who has ‘ridden the rails’ will tell you that the first rules -(after keep away from the bulls)- are to keep an eye on where the train is heading and to be wary of junctions.  

 

Are you still riding the same tracks only because you are unsure of what  throwing the switch yourself will mean? The economy is volatile as all get out and experts predict years more of slow climbs up and lurching dips and stops; it is pretty scary and it is tempting to simply put one’s head down and keep on the current line. 

 

Fear is the initial response of first time riders of the NYC subway system, a peculiar reputation which has persisted.  Contrary to popular belief, the subways are not a caravan of absolute acerbic strangers and look nothing like (well, not since the early 90s) the way they are depicted in the Kurt Russel vehicle ‘Escape From New York’.  If you ride the subway with anything resembling a regular schedule you start to notice familiar faces, a recurring cast.  In many ways these folks come to feel a bit like family, only ten times removed.  Riding on a daily basis begins to become like a micro reality show, one witnesses the rise and fall and rise of peoples lives and situation.  The cycles play out as a change in style, the new loves pressed tight taking the morning train together for the first time or the late night tear smeared mascara. It is a daily one-act play drawn out over the station stops. 

 

Shakespeare à la the third rail.

 

I have recently had the opportunity to ride the subway again after over ten years of commuting with a car over a bridge and through the woods. 

 

I lived and worked in NYC for just under 20 years mostly traveling  the east-side lines of the 4, 5, 6 and for a short stint, the F outta of Park Slope. Even so, as with all things in the city, a week's ride can involve some time on nearly any line.  

 

Muscle memory is a funny thing, while it had been too many years since I last rode, without really thinking about it I made my way to the 42nd street shuttle and across town to catch the Q to Long Island City. What awoke me from the autopilot path I was on was the fact that when I rode the trains (all those years ago), the Q did not exist.  I was lost momentarily and had to check the station map, twice, before I was confident that this was where I got on again.  My body took me there but my brain was still on the old tracks.

 

I found myself looking for a familiar face, a strong desire to bump into an old acquaintance who had been too long living on the Island of Lost Friends. I wanted stability and a known frame of reference. It just felt weird and I had that panic of the unknown and my shoes felt glued to the floor. (I actually let a Q train come and go before finally screwing up my courage). Traveling the first few stops was, admittedly, a bit disquieting - but once we hit 57th and Lex, I found the train’s  rhythm and made its frequency a harmonic of my own. 

 

Sometimes you just gotta throw the switch, move to the new tracks. You never know, you might just find that this is the train you were looking for all along.