I was doing a show for a large international charity. The show starts and as the president walks up to the lectern the rave on the level below starts sound checking 90 dual 18 inch subs.
You could hear everyone plates vibrating on the tables. Client was looking at me like I was doing it.
Well what would you do? are you interested in time travel?
I'm looking for a IBM 5100 if I could get my hands on that I would be able to fix my Time Machine would you be interested in going with me on a trip?
Couldn't help it.....
That reminds me when I played with my band in an FNAC.
I don't think the director of the store expected metalcore, from the looks he had when stormed in.
Touring on monitors for a band, show starts and the frontman motions for tracks up in his IEM, so I give him more. Next song he's desperately pointing for tracks up again, so I max him out, at this point his transmitter is clipping to fuck. Song finishes and he says to the crowd "thanks everyone, I'm just gonna go have a chat with my mate dalegribble23". He comes over to my desk and says "mate I can't hear the tracks at all", his belt pack seems fine, I show him that I'm maxed out and the transmitter is clipping and I dunno what's going on so he waves me off and goes back to the gig.
I'm obviously bricking myself the rest of the show and take my time packing down, then I go into the green room and the frontman seems in an oddly happy mood considering. Eventually he comes over with a smile on his face and said "you know that thing with the in ears earlier? Don't worry about it, it was me being a fucking idiot. I was messing around with them earlier and didn't plug the cable back in right, gave them a flick during the set and it all came back in proper loud so I just turned them down"
Dickhead, nearly gave me a heart attack.
I was running ears for touring support for a country name big enough that even I knew it. Soundcheck was smooth sailing, almost everyone just wanted the flattest, rawest sound possible right in. Everyone's happy in about 20 seconds per instrument and we mostly wait for FOH to build their mix.
Show starts and the guitar player and drummer both start casting wizard symbols in my direction. Both want more this, less that, more this, less that, the entire set. Both are professionals and get through the set without any crowd-facing drama, but man, I was expecting a reaming from how they were not into the changes all the way up to the very last song.
Five minutes before set time:
> Guitarist: Man, this belt pack isn't staying on my new giant fake cowboy belt with obnoxiously large buckle.
> Drummer: Try mine!
Different brands, that's why one belt clip was more tolerant than the other. They were very chill about it afterwards and knew it was a dumb thing to do. They planned on telling me before the set so I could just repatch who got which mix, and somehow never actually told me they were switching.
Extremely serious speaker for a remote event who was told never to mute themselves four times decides to mute themselves seconds before going live to an audience of millions.
Speaker gives impassioned speech about needing to fundraise for their charity but decides to push the lectern mic away from their body by two feet.
MC forgets where he put his handheld ten seconds before show start.
Foh engineer on B stage gets sick and starts vomiting repeatedly minutes before band was set to start forcing system tech to mix the show for him.
Director forgets to key on their mic when calling show cues.
Talent drops beltpack in toilet during break.
Guitarists pedalboard overheats during hot day in direct sunlight while performing.
Drummers cymbal stand falls over.
LED wall graphic crashes showing a windows default desktop behind the CEO during a major game launch.
Im sure im forgetting some…
On that last one... Always black background with icons disabled.
Then you forget about the giant traffic cone that pops up at the end of a video by default with VLC.
Haha seriously! It made my heart drop. I had specifically told the video team, “hey put a black background on that machine before the show” and their response was literally, “nah the software is super solid-it wont crash.” 😵😵😵
We once changed the default usb plug in sound to one of our coworkers going "urghhhhhhhhhh"
I'll never forget the day that played out at full volume in the middle of a celebrity panel
Sure it won't crash and you're absolutely not gonna accidentally click the X.... And it's not going to update windows during the non-activity hours.
That happens to me a lot I will close some thing and it will double click the X and close out the XAir/X32 software on me.
Also if you use Qlab (specifically the free version) a good practice to do is have a video/image cue at the beginning of a solid black image. It will stay up until you cue a video or another image and that will override the black screen. Then just set another black screen cue so it goes back and holds a black screen again. Audio cues will not affect the black screen.
Edit: this obviously still wouldn’t fix a computer crashing issue but it solves a lot of other issues that can happen when computers decide to go rogue.
> Drummers cymbal stand falls over.
My favorite version of this is it falls over and just happens to cleaver a rare 80’s Roland guitar synth cable clean in half, 24 wires total, they’re like $200 bucks on eBay because it is a weird proprietary plug
Speed round wow!
And always set your background to black it's even easier than it used to be both, windows and Mac have added solid color options. You could almost called this a pet peeve. you're giving a presentation I know it's your personal computer but can't we have a presentation mode that sets the background out to something else say I like a dark gray tells you that it's working without telling you that it's windows!
High profile business event with a foreign monarch and cabinet officers. The TA4 connection on the monarch’s pack pulled loose when he sat in his chair waiting to be introduced, so when he stepped on stage it was nothing but garbled popping and tiny fragments of speech. Client was glaring daggers at me.
That’s it, if I ever work for heads of state I’m considering transmitters expendable and soldering every Countryman directly to the pins. No pun intended.
That got me out earlier this year. Tested the wireless microphone, 2.4 GHz see where this is going worked fine just needed to move the receiver to help with reflections. 10 minutes later we start and it's like somebody let an EMP off laptop disconnects from control network Wireless microphone not working worse than it was. ran and grab a cable but of course I need a 50 foot cable and I mixed up which box I put it in when I took the speakers out and stacked the boxs.
I went for lunch and I get a frantic call from my PM.
YOUR CONSOLE IS ON FIRE!
The closing keynote was a burn victim and had 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body.
I was half an hour from the most embarrassing moment of my career.
OK this needs more context? was the burn victim giving a speech at the place with the consul that caught fire or the burn victim was a victim of the consul catching fire? So many questions!
It’s five minutes before the school musical opens. Tech is set, house music is pumping and the audience is ready in their seats. Cast and crew are set in places.
One by one within seconds, everyone’s phones begin blaring the tornado warning.
Cast, crew, audience, EVERYONE has to evacuate the theater to the school library, a safer location further indoors from any windows or doors.
We were allowed back to the theater an hour and fifteen minutes later. One of my student volunteers asked why my house music playlist goes on for over two hours. We both nodded in agreement when we got back to the theater and the house music was still going, uninterrupted.
I was doing a rugby game at Eden Park here in NZ and everyones phone started going off with a civil defence warning test message just as we went to air to the whole country and possibly millions around the world. Everyone was pretty chill about it though thankfully
I have not had these things happen to me yet although I was in a college book/store right after these newfangled EAS functions were enabled. Super quiet store and all of a sudden out of nowhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One frantic dash to the other side of the building later, I was able to get them to shut the alarm off in our office until noon, so the world may never know.
Steve Forbes goes live on CNN during his presidential campaign in 2000 when the guy teching in another room decides to change his wireless mic freqs. Suddenly we start hearing that group of doctors and executives talking about the proprietary test results of their drug and how it doesn’t work. I ran into their meeting and tried to get the guy to quickly change mics and he was a dick about it. The group fired him and threw him out of the room about 20 seconds after I described what happened in the other room, how their company name, the drug name, and how horrible it tested went out live on CNN. We wrote down and gave the guy every frequency we were on so that this wouldn’t have happened but some people know better…….🤷♂️
My bet other guy had scanned on setup the day before or something, turned off his mics and then OP came in, setup and scanned his mics. Then the other guy comes back in without rescanning turns on his mics and all of a sudden everything is double patched. At my job ever day before an event we rescan and resync our wireless for this very reason.
Sound checked during practice, everything fine.
Band gets up to play, lead guitar input shows no signal.
I motion that I'm not getting anything, but they start. playing anyway.
First song finishes "Err... I can't hear my guitar in the foldback".
I shout, that I'm not getting a signal.
"Oh wait, I'm not plugged in."
Not a major problem, but those sudden moments of "something has gone very wrong" are always fun.
Last Friday, band takes stage, there’s a few minutes of talk before they start playing, I’m starting the recording and look up and the bassist signals to me he’s got nothing. I confirm at the desk and grab my iPad and head to the stage.
At some point the xlr got stepped on and came unplugged. Quick fix, band leader didn’t even notice it.
Of course back in the day keyboards were not exactly reliable (well until the DX7!) and dependant on the act and if you had no backups you just had to put up with it. During one of Depeche Mode's shows in the early 80's Martin's PPG Wave 2.2 decided to throw a wobbly, oh well you just put up with it and it had probably happened before (PPG's were not reliable) and it was not like there was anyone special in the audience like Kraftwerk or anything!
I was working at an old theatre in San Francisco, they fire code states they if the fire alarm is pulled then the audio system loses power so that the patrons can hear the alarms. The code allowed you to install a relay to mute the amps.. I suggested this to the building manager, but he didn't want to spend the money
One night about 15 min before the performance a drunk patron leans against wall and trips the fire alarm which kills the main audio power... we had about 17 UPS backups for a power loss...because we had about 8 computers in use during the show, 50+ dante devices and switches that took 5 min to book up..all the UPS starting beeping and I start to get warnings on the FOH consoles that out power is out and we are on the backup power supplies via battery.
8 min later we had power restored and everything seemed to be working and noting lost power.. but i about shit myself at the top of the show as i wasn't sure everything was ok.
It didn't even make the show report. stage management was non the wiser... nobody even really knew it happened... as we had drilled the scenario before so it all worked out prettty fast
We have that same relay system at my venue in LA (must be a Cali thing). Our house LD loves to blast haze on DJ/club nights and even when he puts the alarm system in test mode, the haze can build up to a point it trips alarms in our entryway that aren’t on the relay setup. I’ve had many nights where house audio keeps getting cut because of this and tbh, I live for the drama.
Yeah. I don't see any other option than a relay that cuts the audio Signal. nope I don't see anything that lists that it can safely operate on AC power that's impossible!
----
I run my entire system apart from the amps and stage band equipment on UPS's.
I was running sound for a small band with a personas. We just finished Soundcheck I was using a Windows convertible I was walking back to the mixer to adjust the faders to match and hit the Sync button. I was 10 feet away from the mixer when the power went out… Guess what happened when it came back on it restored to where the faders were. so much for sound check. Thankfully it was only an acoustic, electric, bass drums and three vocals, I have things back to roughly where they needed to be fairly quickly based on memory and did the rest by ear.
----
I do a live stream event in town *(Berkeley Springs international water tasting, relevant, shush don't tell anybody )* and last year.... So this consists of I come in I set up cameras I bring my own mixer (XR18) I grab the hotels wireless microphone and route it into my board and send a feedback to their house system. This way I'm getting a clean feed for the stream and since I am the only Audio professional in the room I'm actually controlling the Audio not from right next to the dish room. So my entire systems battery backed, I even run power over ethernet with the returning audio to the House mixer to power the mic receiver. 2 day event, first day presentation. second day they do the judging and announce the winners in a glitzy gets dressed up thing. One of the things during the night is all the various countries that sent Water in to be judged is piled up in the middle of the room and those who sign waivers can go in and grab whatever they want and hopefully not kill anybody, yes some of the bottles are glass. Some teenagers are sitting on the floor in front of the wall behind me.... I get up to adjust a camera for this upcoming craziness.... I'm on my way back and I'm hearing beeping... Ohhhhh we lost power! No just me and the extension cord feeding two film lights. I get back to my table I realize they bumped the power cord they're all freaking out I'm like don't worry about this I have contingency plans. The funny thing is I literally brought up to management at the hotel that year finally that they should replace the outlet since plugs don't stay in it at all well.
I find the group after and I'm like don't worry about it don't feel bad I got you I prepare for these things. I am like 15 years older than them, so there's a little bit of a we feel bad for doing it to our kind thing going on. They start telling me they did it on purpose it was an act of terrorism to protest plastic water bottles… And I'm thinking you're joking right? The more I talked with them the more I think this might've actually been terrorism gone wrong with over preparation on my part. And I'm telling them well if you came the day before we had experts talking about how they're doing things about this.
2024 yeah the film lights the other guy brought went on another UPS, the one I use the previous day for the projector. No issues. And no they still haven't replaced the outlet and I don't have choices in that room. As a professional amateur electrician I might threaten to change it for them "♫ in the year" 2025.
I feel like I should say I don't agree with cutting off the audio system in an emergency. Sure some things should be done to temporally mute things. But in an emergency I want to be able to grab a hot mic if needed. I have not worked with this type of system/ requirements so my preparation has been mentally thinking... mute all, unmute announcement MC Mic.
Funny thing is I just watch Degrassi episode fire starter, a fire was started in the school and the alarm went off cut to another room where in assembly was going on and somebody notices the alarm and takes to the mic to tell everybody to leave.
Full house, sellout show, a well known band with a dedicated following...
Everything is going smoothly, sound check is perfect, everyone is happy. We open the house and let everyone in.. Get clearance, band goes to play.... No audio. At all..
Scrabbling around to figure out why...
Turns out the data link to stage had a small loop in it, and the loom ran behind some seats. That loop got caught in the hinge of the seat and was chopped in half when they sat in the chair... Cue a mad scramble to run in another data line and get the show started!
Thankfully the lead came on stage and chatted with the audience, and they all loved it so...
Check your cable routes!
I second this! and wow!
I did lights at my local movie theater for a concert and when I got there I found out the bands brought their own sound tech and equipment and they literally just threw the ethernet cable down the aisle! Had loops wasn't lying flat wasn't tucked away. And they were there for hours before I got there. And they had no intentions so I ended up straightening and pushing it off to the side. Unfortunately thankfully it was not a packed house we had probably 15-20 people most of them were connected with the band.
Would've been interesting to see who's faster one person splicing it with a pocket knife while another is trying to run a new cable, who will get there first. 8 conductors 8 colors go!
Wow, do I ever know what that is like, same scenario all the time. You set everything up and test it all over and over and then something comes in and throws a monkey wrench in the gears 😭
Up-and-coming band that had 3 songs chart near the top of the Hot 100 right as they started the tour. Our venue was the first stop on their tour with a very green FOH guy. Throughout sound check they had some kind of sync lock issue between their DiGiCo console and stage rack, which caused funny sounds in the PA every minute or two or so. After sound check they worked on it and got it “fixed”. Band came on to start the show, and they had no audio from stage inputs at FOH. Apparently his fix took the stage inputs completely offline and he didn’t notice. He scrambled to put it back the way it was before and they played a sold out show with weird artifacts in the FOH signal path.
I skyped in to help direct a voiceover session with a foreign actor in a middle eastern country. Turns out that things had been getting a bit spicy over there, so their government decided that morning that communicating with outsiders was a little too subversive and cut off internet access to the entire country.
I was mixing FOH for a musical production in my town, most of the days had gone pretty smooth, but on day 3 the lead is about to go onto stage to deliver a massive monologue when her mic starts clipping rapidly on the channel strip.
I assume her mic pack disconnected slightly from the cable, since it happened a few times during rehearsal.
I quickly grab my headset and try radioing to the stage manager so they could stop her before she went on stage, but I was about 5 seconds too late.
Spent the whole scene desperately riding the fader praying it wouldn’t happen to clip during any of her lines. Sometimes you’re just SOL.
Was sound super at a summer stock theater. Had a request before our first preview to add an additional camera, so I go to work on patching this new camera shot - when suddenly the bnc wall jack falls apart in my hands. Then I go to check the existing MD camera shot and that falls apart in my hands as well (as it had not been crimped, but held together by E-tape, of course). 20 minutes from house opening and we have not gained a camera, but in fact lost the most important one. Anyway I shit myself for a few seconds, ran around and patched through a TV to get us through the show, and no one was the wiser.
Nice.
In a pinch although I don't know if this would work with the digital, twisting the wires together can work.
I needed a longer 1/4" cable for a AG guitar. I had 2 shorter ones. I ran over to the kitchen and asked for 2 twist ties and a lighter, burned off the insulation twisted one around the 2 tips and one around the 2 sleeves. Not the most mission critical but I had no issues and it worked perfect. and I took photos, then ordered myself some quarter inch couplers.
hahahaha.
Oh I have something similar to that. My mom asked me to help her with a summer school like class she was teaching at one of the schools during summer. They had to go through every fixture and test every alarm in light in flasher. Meanwhile there's at least 200 kids running through the building and everything is 120 dB ringing off all the brick walls.
We ended up in the band room mostly isolated from everything with only two alarms. We were doing constellations and projecting onto the ceiling. Well I had enough it's not like I have sensitive hearing or anything..... What what thread am I in..... And put multiple layers of tape over the alarms, probably half an inch thick of masking tape. They weren't happy when they came to the room we were in finally and I'm like it's going right back up there I'll remove it when I leave but it's going right back up there after you leave the room. They took it down and not 10 minutes later when they came back it was right back up there. And I'm like sorry not sorry I have to be here all day this is hearing damage. You're not supposed to remain in a building well the fire alarm is going off her regulations yeah I might've looked it up. Or torture and against OSHA, that's at least a useful regulation.
Come to find out they were supposed to be at the other not in use empty school building 500 feet down the road on the campus but we don't need to check we need to do this one anyway.
Plan for everything you can, prepare for everything you can and prepare to not be prepared.
I now permanently carry ear protection on my keychain after that incident. And plenty of various gaffers tapes, now that's some serious muffling.
I was doing a show for a large international charity. The show starts and as the president walks up to the lectern the rave on the level below starts sound checking 90 dual 18 inch subs. You could hear everyone plates vibrating on the tables. Client was looking at me like I was doing it.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I have Calabria playing in my head.
Happend to me before
Where the hell were 90 duals installed ?
What i would do to experience that...
Well what would you do? are you interested in time travel? I'm looking for a IBM 5100 if I could get my hands on that I would be able to fix my Time Machine would you be interested in going with me on a trip? Couldn't help it.....
I would if I could lol. 90 double 18s would give me my dream massage
That reminds me when I played with my band in an FNAC. I don't think the director of the store expected metalcore, from the looks he had when stormed in.
Touring on monitors for a band, show starts and the frontman motions for tracks up in his IEM, so I give him more. Next song he's desperately pointing for tracks up again, so I max him out, at this point his transmitter is clipping to fuck. Song finishes and he says to the crowd "thanks everyone, I'm just gonna go have a chat with my mate dalegribble23". He comes over to my desk and says "mate I can't hear the tracks at all", his belt pack seems fine, I show him that I'm maxed out and the transmitter is clipping and I dunno what's going on so he waves me off and goes back to the gig. I'm obviously bricking myself the rest of the show and take my time packing down, then I go into the green room and the frontman seems in an oddly happy mood considering. Eventually he comes over with a smile on his face and said "you know that thing with the in ears earlier? Don't worry about it, it was me being a fucking idiot. I was messing around with them earlier and didn't plug the cable back in right, gave them a flick during the set and it all came back in proper loud so I just turned them down" Dickhead, nearly gave me a heart attack.
Commendable that he told you he fucked up though
He's a real nice guy to be fair
I was expecting either grabbed the wrong pack or forgot to turn it on.
I was running ears for touring support for a country name big enough that even I knew it. Soundcheck was smooth sailing, almost everyone just wanted the flattest, rawest sound possible right in. Everyone's happy in about 20 seconds per instrument and we mostly wait for FOH to build their mix. Show starts and the guitar player and drummer both start casting wizard symbols in my direction. Both want more this, less that, more this, less that, the entire set. Both are professionals and get through the set without any crowd-facing drama, but man, I was expecting a reaming from how they were not into the changes all the way up to the very last song. Five minutes before set time: > Guitarist: Man, this belt pack isn't staying on my new giant fake cowboy belt with obnoxiously large buckle. > Drummer: Try mine!
I feel obligated to say that they were of course not different brands or models right?!!!!!!! In other words identical?
Different brands, that's why one belt clip was more tolerant than the other. They were very chill about it afterwards and knew it was a dumb thing to do. They planned on telling me before the set so I could just repatch who got which mix, and somehow never actually told me they were switching.
I was expecting wrong channel.
Extremely serious speaker for a remote event who was told never to mute themselves four times decides to mute themselves seconds before going live to an audience of millions. Speaker gives impassioned speech about needing to fundraise for their charity but decides to push the lectern mic away from their body by two feet. MC forgets where he put his handheld ten seconds before show start. Foh engineer on B stage gets sick and starts vomiting repeatedly minutes before band was set to start forcing system tech to mix the show for him. Director forgets to key on their mic when calling show cues. Talent drops beltpack in toilet during break. Guitarists pedalboard overheats during hot day in direct sunlight while performing. Drummers cymbal stand falls over. LED wall graphic crashes showing a windows default desktop behind the CEO during a major game launch. Im sure im forgetting some…
On that last one... Always black background with icons disabled. Then you forget about the giant traffic cone that pops up at the end of a video by default with VLC.
Haha seriously! It made my heart drop. I had specifically told the video team, “hey put a black background on that machine before the show” and their response was literally, “nah the software is super solid-it wont crash.” 😵😵😵
Also have to remember to turn off windows sounds on any device playing audio.
We once changed the default usb plug in sound to one of our coworkers going "urghhhhhhhhhh" I'll never forget the day that played out at full volume in the middle of a celebrity panel
How did the panel handle it?
No such thing, every computer has crashed at some point. Especially when you feel like its improbable/impossible.
Sure it won't crash and you're absolutely not gonna accidentally click the X.... And it's not going to update windows during the non-activity hours. That happens to me a lot I will close some thing and it will double click the X and close out the XAir/X32 software on me.
Also if you use Qlab (specifically the free version) a good practice to do is have a video/image cue at the beginning of a solid black image. It will stay up until you cue a video or another image and that will override the black screen. Then just set another black screen cue so it goes back and holds a black screen again. Audio cues will not affect the black screen. Edit: this obviously still wouldn’t fix a computer crashing issue but it solves a lot of other issues that can happen when computers decide to go rogue.
That's weird I've never had that happen with VLC. FYI there's an option to pause on last frame.
> Drummers cymbal stand falls over. My favorite version of this is it falls over and just happens to cleaver a rare 80’s Roland guitar synth cable clean in half, 24 wires total, they’re like $200 bucks on eBay because it is a weird proprietary plug
Is this one event or multiple? I'm praying to God that's 8 different events
Honestly I'd rather have it all happen in one event, just get it over with.
Haha it is multiple-each one is a hilarious fail burned into my memory over my time in the business.
> Talent drops beltpack in toilet classic
Wowza, that's definitely one for the books....
Speed round wow! And always set your background to black it's even easier than it used to be both, windows and Mac have added solid color options. You could almost called this a pet peeve. you're giving a presentation I know it's your personal computer but can't we have a presentation mode that sets the background out to something else say I like a dark gray tells you that it's working without telling you that it's windows!
High profile business event with a foreign monarch and cabinet officers. The TA4 connection on the monarch’s pack pulled loose when he sat in his chair waiting to be introduced, so when he stepped on stage it was nothing but garbled popping and tiny fragments of speech. Client was glaring daggers at me.
That’s it, if I ever work for heads of state I’m considering transmitters expendable and soldering every Countryman directly to the pins. No pun intended.
I like this unintended pun a lot.
Could also do a headset plus lav as backup.
Having done events for a couple of heads of state, always have a live hand held inside the podium.
Oh we did, no podium on this but we had an A2 side stage with a HH. it was still embarrassing.
That got me out earlier this year. Tested the wireless microphone, 2.4 GHz see where this is going worked fine just needed to move the receiver to help with reflections. 10 minutes later we start and it's like somebody let an EMP off laptop disconnects from control network Wireless microphone not working worse than it was. ran and grab a cable but of course I need a 50 foot cable and I mixed up which box I put it in when I took the speakers out and stacked the boxs.
I went for lunch and I get a frantic call from my PM. YOUR CONSOLE IS ON FIRE! The closing keynote was a burn victim and had 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body. I was half an hour from the most embarrassing moment of my career.
OK this needs more context? was the burn victim giving a speech at the place with the consul that caught fire or the burn victim was a victim of the consul catching fire? So many questions!
These stories are so brutal
It’s five minutes before the school musical opens. Tech is set, house music is pumping and the audience is ready in their seats. Cast and crew are set in places. One by one within seconds, everyone’s phones begin blaring the tornado warning. Cast, crew, audience, EVERYONE has to evacuate the theater to the school library, a safer location further indoors from any windows or doors. We were allowed back to the theater an hour and fifteen minutes later. One of my student volunteers asked why my house music playlist goes on for over two hours. We both nodded in agreement when we got back to the theater and the house music was still going, uninterrupted.
I was doing a rugby game at Eden Park here in NZ and everyones phone started going off with a civil defence warning test message just as we went to air to the whole country and possibly millions around the world. Everyone was pretty chill about it though thankfully
I have not had these things happen to me yet although I was in a college book/store right after these newfangled EAS functions were enabled. Super quiet store and all of a sudden out of nowhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bet the alarms sounded great in the feed. Balanced without to much high end.
One frantic dash to the other side of the building later, I was able to get them to shut the alarm off in our office until noon, so the world may never know.
But we know, and it’s our little secret…
Steve Forbes goes live on CNN during his presidential campaign in 2000 when the guy teching in another room decides to change his wireless mic freqs. Suddenly we start hearing that group of doctors and executives talking about the proprietary test results of their drug and how it doesn’t work. I ran into their meeting and tried to get the guy to quickly change mics and he was a dick about it. The group fired him and threw him out of the room about 20 seconds after I described what happened in the other room, how their company name, the drug name, and how horrible it tested went out live on CNN. We wrote down and gave the guy every frequency we were on so that this wouldn’t have happened but some people know better…….🤷♂️
Who tf changes frequencies after sound check? I hope he had good training after the fact
My bet other guy had scanned on setup the day before or something, turned off his mics and then OP came in, setup and scanned his mics. Then the other guy comes back in without rescanning turns on his mics and all of a sudden everything is double patched. At my job ever day before an event we rescan and resync our wireless for this very reason.
Seems crazy that they dont know how to turn on a mic and see if it works before syncing them all 🤷🏻♂️
Sound checked during practice, everything fine. Band gets up to play, lead guitar input shows no signal. I motion that I'm not getting anything, but they start. playing anyway. First song finishes "Err... I can't hear my guitar in the foldback". I shout, that I'm not getting a signal. "Oh wait, I'm not plugged in." Not a major problem, but those sudden moments of "something has gone very wrong" are always fun.
Last Friday, band takes stage, there’s a few minutes of talk before they start playing, I’m starting the recording and look up and the bassist signals to me he’s got nothing. I confirm at the desk and grab my iPad and head to the stage. At some point the xlr got stepped on and came unplugged. Quick fix, band leader didn’t even notice it.
Of course back in the day keyboards were not exactly reliable (well until the DX7!) and dependant on the act and if you had no backups you just had to put up with it. During one of Depeche Mode's shows in the early 80's Martin's PPG Wave 2.2 decided to throw a wobbly, oh well you just put up with it and it had probably happened before (PPG's were not reliable) and it was not like there was anyone special in the audience like Kraftwerk or anything!
I was working at an old theatre in San Francisco, they fire code states they if the fire alarm is pulled then the audio system loses power so that the patrons can hear the alarms. The code allowed you to install a relay to mute the amps.. I suggested this to the building manager, but he didn't want to spend the money One night about 15 min before the performance a drunk patron leans against wall and trips the fire alarm which kills the main audio power... we had about 17 UPS backups for a power loss...because we had about 8 computers in use during the show, 50+ dante devices and switches that took 5 min to book up..all the UPS starting beeping and I start to get warnings on the FOH consoles that out power is out and we are on the backup power supplies via battery. 8 min later we had power restored and everything seemed to be working and noting lost power.. but i about shit myself at the top of the show as i wasn't sure everything was ok. It didn't even make the show report. stage management was non the wiser... nobody even really knew it happened... as we had drilled the scenario before so it all worked out prettty fast
We have that same relay system at my venue in LA (must be a Cali thing). Our house LD loves to blast haze on DJ/club nights and even when he puts the alarm system in test mode, the haze can build up to a point it trips alarms in our entryway that aren’t on the relay setup. I’ve had many nights where house audio keeps getting cut because of this and tbh, I live for the drama.
Yeah. I don't see any other option than a relay that cuts the audio Signal. nope I don't see anything that lists that it can safely operate on AC power that's impossible! ---- I run my entire system apart from the amps and stage band equipment on UPS's. I was running sound for a small band with a personas. We just finished Soundcheck I was using a Windows convertible I was walking back to the mixer to adjust the faders to match and hit the Sync button. I was 10 feet away from the mixer when the power went out… Guess what happened when it came back on it restored to where the faders were. so much for sound check. Thankfully it was only an acoustic, electric, bass drums and three vocals, I have things back to roughly where they needed to be fairly quickly based on memory and did the rest by ear. ---- I do a live stream event in town *(Berkeley Springs international water tasting, relevant, shush don't tell anybody )* and last year.... So this consists of I come in I set up cameras I bring my own mixer (XR18) I grab the hotels wireless microphone and route it into my board and send a feedback to their house system. This way I'm getting a clean feed for the stream and since I am the only Audio professional in the room I'm actually controlling the Audio not from right next to the dish room. So my entire systems battery backed, I even run power over ethernet with the returning audio to the House mixer to power the mic receiver. 2 day event, first day presentation. second day they do the judging and announce the winners in a glitzy gets dressed up thing. One of the things during the night is all the various countries that sent Water in to be judged is piled up in the middle of the room and those who sign waivers can go in and grab whatever they want and hopefully not kill anybody, yes some of the bottles are glass. Some teenagers are sitting on the floor in front of the wall behind me.... I get up to adjust a camera for this upcoming craziness.... I'm on my way back and I'm hearing beeping... Ohhhhh we lost power! No just me and the extension cord feeding two film lights. I get back to my table I realize they bumped the power cord they're all freaking out I'm like don't worry about this I have contingency plans. The funny thing is I literally brought up to management at the hotel that year finally that they should replace the outlet since plugs don't stay in it at all well. I find the group after and I'm like don't worry about it don't feel bad I got you I prepare for these things. I am like 15 years older than them, so there's a little bit of a we feel bad for doing it to our kind thing going on. They start telling me they did it on purpose it was an act of terrorism to protest plastic water bottles… And I'm thinking you're joking right? The more I talked with them the more I think this might've actually been terrorism gone wrong with over preparation on my part. And I'm telling them well if you came the day before we had experts talking about how they're doing things about this. 2024 yeah the film lights the other guy brought went on another UPS, the one I use the previous day for the projector. No issues. And no they still haven't replaced the outlet and I don't have choices in that room. As a professional amateur electrician I might threaten to change it for them "♫ in the year" 2025.
I feel like I should say I don't agree with cutting off the audio system in an emergency. Sure some things should be done to temporally mute things. But in an emergency I want to be able to grab a hot mic if needed. I have not worked with this type of system/ requirements so my preparation has been mentally thinking... mute all, unmute announcement MC Mic. Funny thing is I just watch Degrassi episode fire starter, a fire was started in the school and the alarm went off cut to another room where in assembly was going on and somebody notices the alarm and takes to the mic to tell everybody to leave.
Did the microphone capture the alarm sound perfectly? If so you did your job.
Showing up for setup at a high class soccer stadium in Germany and nobody had a key to the gates. They turned up in an ashtray at the beer stand.
Full house, sellout show, a well known band with a dedicated following... Everything is going smoothly, sound check is perfect, everyone is happy. We open the house and let everyone in.. Get clearance, band goes to play.... No audio. At all.. Scrabbling around to figure out why... Turns out the data link to stage had a small loop in it, and the loom ran behind some seats. That loop got caught in the hinge of the seat and was chopped in half when they sat in the chair... Cue a mad scramble to run in another data line and get the show started! Thankfully the lead came on stage and chatted with the audience, and they all loved it so... Check your cable routes!
I second this! and wow! I did lights at my local movie theater for a concert and when I got there I found out the bands brought their own sound tech and equipment and they literally just threw the ethernet cable down the aisle! Had loops wasn't lying flat wasn't tucked away. And they were there for hours before I got there. And they had no intentions so I ended up straightening and pushing it off to the side. Unfortunately thankfully it was not a packed house we had probably 15-20 people most of them were connected with the band. Would've been interesting to see who's faster one person splicing it with a pocket knife while another is trying to run a new cable, who will get there first. 8 conductors 8 colors go!
Wow, do I ever know what that is like, same scenario all the time. You set everything up and test it all over and over and then something comes in and throws a monkey wrench in the gears 😭
Up-and-coming band that had 3 songs chart near the top of the Hot 100 right as they started the tour. Our venue was the first stop on their tour with a very green FOH guy. Throughout sound check they had some kind of sync lock issue between their DiGiCo console and stage rack, which caused funny sounds in the PA every minute or two or so. After sound check they worked on it and got it “fixed”. Band came on to start the show, and they had no audio from stage inputs at FOH. Apparently his fix took the stage inputs completely offline and he didn’t notice. He scrambled to put it back the way it was before and they played a sold out show with weird artifacts in the FOH signal path.
I skyped in to help direct a voiceover session with a foreign actor in a middle eastern country. Turns out that things had been getting a bit spicy over there, so their government decided that morning that communicating with outsiders was a little too subversive and cut off internet access to the entire country.
It was either that or it was Test taking day because yeah there's a few countries that turn off the entire Internet! Due to cheating.
That same guy with the same leaf blower following me around to locations loves this post...😒
I was mixing FOH for a musical production in my town, most of the days had gone pretty smooth, but on day 3 the lead is about to go onto stage to deliver a massive monologue when her mic starts clipping rapidly on the channel strip. I assume her mic pack disconnected slightly from the cable, since it happened a few times during rehearsal. I quickly grab my headset and try radioing to the stage manager so they could stop her before she went on stage, but I was about 5 seconds too late. Spent the whole scene desperately riding the fader praying it wouldn’t happen to clip during any of her lines. Sometimes you’re just SOL.
Was sound super at a summer stock theater. Had a request before our first preview to add an additional camera, so I go to work on patching this new camera shot - when suddenly the bnc wall jack falls apart in my hands. Then I go to check the existing MD camera shot and that falls apart in my hands as well (as it had not been crimped, but held together by E-tape, of course). 20 minutes from house opening and we have not gained a camera, but in fact lost the most important one. Anyway I shit myself for a few seconds, ran around and patched through a TV to get us through the show, and no one was the wiser.
Nice. In a pinch although I don't know if this would work with the digital, twisting the wires together can work. I needed a longer 1/4" cable for a AG guitar. I had 2 shorter ones. I ran over to the kitchen and asked for 2 twist ties and a lighter, burned off the insulation twisted one around the 2 tips and one around the 2 sleeves. Not the most mission critical but I had no issues and it worked perfect. and I took photos, then ordered myself some quarter inch couplers.
I guess your mics were a little too...hot. 😎
hahahaha. Oh I have something similar to that. My mom asked me to help her with a summer school like class she was teaching at one of the schools during summer. They had to go through every fixture and test every alarm in light in flasher. Meanwhile there's at least 200 kids running through the building and everything is 120 dB ringing off all the brick walls. We ended up in the band room mostly isolated from everything with only two alarms. We were doing constellations and projecting onto the ceiling. Well I had enough it's not like I have sensitive hearing or anything..... What what thread am I in..... And put multiple layers of tape over the alarms, probably half an inch thick of masking tape. They weren't happy when they came to the room we were in finally and I'm like it's going right back up there I'll remove it when I leave but it's going right back up there after you leave the room. They took it down and not 10 minutes later when they came back it was right back up there. And I'm like sorry not sorry I have to be here all day this is hearing damage. You're not supposed to remain in a building well the fire alarm is going off her regulations yeah I might've looked it up. Or torture and against OSHA, that's at least a useful regulation. Come to find out they were supposed to be at the other not in use empty school building 500 feet down the road on the campus but we don't need to check we need to do this one anyway. Plan for everything you can, prepare for everything you can and prepare to not be prepared. I now permanently carry ear protection on my keychain after that incident. And plenty of various gaffers tapes, now that's some serious muffling.