Every season has its distinct harbingers or signs of change. Most of us are familiar with the multihued colors of fall leaves, the first snowfall of winter (except in Las Vegas), the flowers of spring and the sizzling heat of summer barbeques. Equally important — if not more so — is the arrival of the sound season, which traditionally kicks off with school graduations.

Definitely one of the hardest working bands in the business, quintessential American rockers Bon Jovi kicked off their 2013 “Because We Can” tour to a long string of packed SRO arenas, starting Feb. 10 at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. Named for the main single pull from the band’s current What About Now CD, “Because We Can” is perhaps Bon Jovi’s most ambitious live undertaking to date. The tour is appearing on five continents, including two early May dates in South Africa, as the band leaps up to a extended series of summer stadium shows, including a brief return to the States for five stadium shows in July before heading to Brazil and Australia later this year.

Over the past two years of FRONT of HOUSE, we have covered substantial ground with respect to subwoofers. Whether on the specifics of setting up a basic cardioid array or on how to design your own vented box, we have presented several nuts and bolts articles on the ever-important bottom-end that keeps sound reinforcement exciting.

This installment is very much in keeping with the previous practical articles on subwoofers. I am suppressing my inner egghead tendencies towards discussing topics like “phaser summation in the far-field,” or “radiation impedance,” and instead will look at a number of subwoofer configurations as they were implemented in the field of real gigs. We will briefly overview each configuration and discuss the implementation, and the goals behind the implementation.

In the early 1980s, there were no real solutions for musicians hearing onstage. With the support of the Who’s Pete Townshend, H.E.A.R.® (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, was instrumental in conducting the first public information campaigns on music hearing conservation throughout North American and worldwide media with MTV, PBS, BBC, Time magazine, Rolling Stone and many others.

Sound Co
Concert Systems Production Group, LLC

Venue
Club La Vela
Panama City Beach, FL

Sound Co
Spider Ranch Productions

Venue
The Concourse
San Francisco, CA

Sound Co
High-Desert-Music

Venue
The Holding Co.,
Los Angeles, CA

Sound Companies
Rat Sound, Briere Production Group

Venue
Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Vancouver, BC

Sound Co
Warbabies Productions

Venue
George and Sharon Mabry Concert Hall
Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN

Sound Co
Gemini Light, Sound, Video

Venue
Landers Center
Southaven, MS

Over the years, headworn microphones have evolved from clunky, low-fi affairs into lightweight, nearly invisible transducers capable of serious audio quality that can equal or best many handheld mics. Once mainly relegated to singing drummers and keyboardists, today’s headworn mics are more frequently becoming the choice of lead vocalists, classical soloists, live theatre performers, as well as for singers and spoken word in houses of worship applications.

To download the May 2013 FOH Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE

FRANKFURT, Germany — Every year, the arrival of spring brings the Musikmesse and companion Prolight + Sound music/pro audio tradeshows to Frankfurt, Germany. For anyone who's never attended, it's a huge affair — sort of like a combined NAMM / AES / InfoComm / LDI / DJ Expo, with 10 exhibition halls (plus outdoor displays) spread out across the city's expansive Messe fairgrounds.

The word is out. At last month’s Musikmesse/Prolight+Sound show in Frankfurt (see report), Solid State Logic, a leading manufacturer of studio consoles and processing tools, has launched “Live” — its first console designed for sound reinforcement applications. This is definitely big news, but hardly the first time a studio-oriented manufacturer has entered the live console market, with notable examples being the Avid VENUE and PreSonus StudioLive series.

One of the more serious issues facing engineers who travel without production is consistency of audio quality — or lack thereof. When your entire audio chain is different every night, it’s tough to maintain a high standard of sound, and that’s not taking into consideration the drastic variations in acoustics from venue to venue. In an ideal world we’d all be able to use our preferred gear every night, but the reality is that when you’re relying upon promoter-provided production, it’s “sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells.”

Last month, I wrote about the role played by using near-field studio monitors during band rehearsals. This month I will concentrate on show applications for these small but very useful speaker systems. During rehearsals, I ran these speakers off the console’s monitor bus as one would in a studio. Once we are out on the road and working, I use a different output configuration to drive the near-fields. Because I don’t want the output signal interrupted whenever I PFL an input channel or AFL a VCA group or output bus, I put the near-fields on their own stereo matrix output, instead of using the console’s Monitor Out. The monitor function is reserved solely for headphones.

Essential Rules Church Volunteers Need to Know

If you go to church regularly, you probably know The Ten Commandments. Even if you don’t know them all in order, you know they exist. With that in mind, I would like to introduce some audio commandments for you. Actually, the word, “commandment,” is a little presumptuous on my part. So I will simply call them “suggestions” or “rules.” The fact of the matter is, there is no one single thing in audio production that is really difficult to learn. And if we break down all the tasks individually, the entire process becomes simple and fun. Okay, let’s get on with it.

The live touring season gets fully underway this month. There’s a lot riding on it because, while the housing market seems to be coming back, recorded music sales sure aren’t. Even with subscription and streaming services accounting for 15 percent of record business revenue in 2012, according to the RIAA, and digital revenue at 59 percent of total recorded music revenue, the big picture was down one percent from the year before.

Onstage strings — meaning a real string section — are nothing new to rock shows, although this addition to the current Rush outing is a definite change. Another change for the continuing Clockwork Angels tour (the second leg of which kicked off on April 23, 2013, with Rush delighting a sold-out house of more than 16,000 fans in Austin’s Frank Erwin Center) was the band’s return to a number of markets not visited during the tour’s first leg, which began last September.

Long a regional player in Western Canada, KiAN Concert Sound Services has stepped up to play ball by investing in a Meyer LEO system. This because nothing other than a Meyer system will do, according to company president Mark Reimann.

Heck, he didn’t even have to listen to LEO system before he bought it.

It is generally understood, by most college students and their parents, that the study of Philosophy should be considered as a minor or — at best — an elective credit or two towards graduation. I would think that the prerequisite for any student graduating from college as a Philosophy major would be ownership of a large trust fund or — if that is not the case — a good knowledge of plumbing, roofing, electric or some other technical profession. Audio engineering happens to be a great technical profession for poets, musicians and truth-seekers, as it seems to lend itself better to the artistic and idealistic type than some of the other technical careers available to emerging philosophers.

Stage Research’s latest update to SFX Audio Playback and Show Control includes a number of new features including support for the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system.

Flare Audio’s X5 line array system, made from aluminum and birch ply, is now available for the touring market. Featuring the company’s proprietary Space enclosure and Vortex porting, among other technologies, the X5 is designed to eliminate speaker resonance and reduce THD levels.

Shure’s SE846 Sound Isolating Earphone features a Quad High-Definition MicroDriver with a three-way system configuration for dedicated low, mid, and high frequency distribution. The SE846’s patent-pending design includes a new low-pass filter and a true subwoofer designed for low-end performance without sacrificing clarity or detail.

Gator Cases’ G-Tour LS9-16 (pictured here) and G-Tour YAMLS9 (32) cases are designed for Yamaha’s LS9-16 and LS9-32 channel consoles. Like Gator’s G-Tour cases designed for Behringer X32 and Presonus Studiolive consoles, these cases are made with heavy-duty plywood construction, a tough laminated PVC exterior and EVA foam padding along with a “doghouse” design to secure the mixer while also allowing for easy cable routing and full rear access while in the case. The G-Tour LS9-16 and G-Tour YAMLS9 (32) cases also feature foam lined break-away lids and heavy duty casters along with Gator’s signature red recessed twist latches, spring loaded handles and plated hardware.

DiGiCo’s SD9T Theatre Upgrade is designed to give users a significant expansion in channel count, dynamic EQs, multiband compressors and matrix, plus the addition of DiGiTuBes, Reorder of Busses and Multichannel inputs (formerly only available on SD7), along with the new Players function, designed to help engineers quickly deal with on-stage changes in the roster of performers.

The RF-Vue T10, a handheld 10-inch touch tablet equipped with a Windows 8 operating system, is the first in a new series of touch tablet RF analyzers to be marketed by Kaltman Creations under its Invisible Waves brand.  It will be introduced at InfoComm in Orlando June 12-14.

QSC has expanded its AcousticDesign loudspeaker series with new models including the S8T, S10T and S12. As with the other models in the AcousticDesign series, the new loudspeakers are designed with eas of installation and durability in mind.

Xilica Audio Design, a manufacturer of digital audio processors, and Audinate, the creators of the patented Dante digital media networking solution, announced Xilica’s new Dante enabled Neutrino and Uno Series Digital Processor models.

Gator Cases announced recently that its Find Your Case tool is available online. The company is calling the online tool an easy way to find the exact Gator Case match for a wide variety of  instruments and AV gear.

Ashly’s nX family of Class D amplifiers promise up to 12,000W of clean power while drawing less than 1W in sleep mode. The nX amplifiers are offered in four- or two-channel versions with selectable high-Z (70/100V) or low-Z output on each channel.

Allen & Heath has released an interim firmware update for its iLive range of digital mixing systems, v1.91, containing a series of presets created by well known sound engineer and regular iLive user, Ben Booker. Pictured here is a screen shot of the Dyn EQ.