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In this episode of Sound Design Live I’m joined by FOH sound engineer Sean Sullivan who has spent 26 years mixing some of the biggest bands on tour world wide. We discuss the importance of having a solid backup plan for every link in the signal chain and using virtual playback for sound system calibration.

I ask about Have a solid backup plan when using Digital consoles

• Worst case: Tell me a story of how things have gone wrong when you didn’t have a backup plan.
• Best case: Tell me a story of how thing have gone right when you do have a backup plan.

Then some questions from FB:

• Pooch
  • What is his take on the future of Avid as a company? Lots of people are complaining about the product support including tech support for live products for example. It would be nice to get a non-employee perspective.
  • You use D&B products almost exclusively? What do you love about them?
  • Most of your career was spent with eighth day. What’s your take on the Clair purchase. How has it affected you?
• Marcel Cacdac: Which festival has the best catering?
• Michel Perez: I love Sean’s FB posts from the shows he’s working on. Can I ask about the sub arrays? I have seen some photos where it looks like he is both spreading the subs out and using a delay arc. I’m confused. Doesn’t spreading the subs out make the line longer and narrow coverage? Doesn’t the arc widen the coverage? Seems like opposing design strategies, one fighting the other. Can you ask him to walk us through the decision making process there?
• Kenny Mathetha: Ask Him what motivates him to keep going and pursuing live sound on difficult days or days when he gets discouraged
• Devon James Lee: Ask him about gig prep. He had posts about his process getting ready for a gig where he would bring in a small version of the system at his home he would use at the event and get the live show files and run them through prior to the gig. I’m interested in what approaches he takes and what he works on at home as opposed to what he leaves for the day of the show.
• Peter Lago: Ask him if he remembers the flashlight I got got him and geno for the Sheryl crow show on maui. It’s actually a great story.I almost got fired 
• Greg McVeigh: Ask him about his time mixing a very loud show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Johann Holzer: How is he using virtual playback in his daily workflow?
• Ryan: With 28 years of experience, what are the biggest challenges you still face? How has that changed from when you had 18 and 8 years of experience?

Notes

1. Quotes
   1. Don’t spec a piece of gear you don’t know.
   2. People complain about the cost and the space until the shit hits the fan.
   3. I’m sure someone might argue with me about it, but I’ll fight you to the death. That’s the way to do it well.
   4. Nobody likes pink noise. You might as well point a laser in my eyeball.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

[00:00:32.490]
Welcome to Sound Design Live, the home of the world’s best online training and sound system tuning that you can do at your own pace from anywhere in the world. I’m Nathan Lively, and today I’m joined by front of house sound engineer who spent 26 years mixing some of the biggest bands on tour worldwide. Sean Sullivan. Welcome to Sound Design live.

[00:00:51.580]
Nice. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:53.140]
I forgot to ask you, do you prefer Sean Sullivan? Do you prefer Sully? What do you like?

[00:00:57.430]
I grew up in a long line of Irish Sullivan, so we all go by Sully. It’s been a family nickname. I have three brothers. They all go by Sully. Like, really? Yeah. My dad was a fireman. Long line of firemen and firemen all go by their last name or a shortened version of their last name. Sean. You call me sell. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

[00:01:16.590]
It’s coming for you and your brother. This is the first time I’ve heard it outside of my grandfather. Apparently his friends used to call him that. And when he passed away, he left some money for the YMCA in Estes Park in the Rockies. And so they actually built a cabin and has his name on it. So if you ever go to ESTA’s Park and you go to the YMCA, there’s a cabin you can rent that’s called Sully.

[00:01:40.410]
Nice. Lots of Sullies out there in the world, that’s for sure.

[00:01:43.730]
Okay, Shaun, I definitely want to talk to you about having a solid backup plan, subwoofer arrays and gig prep. But before I do that, after you get a sound system set up, what’s one of your gain favorite pieces of music to play through it, to get familiar with it?

[00:01:57.370]
For a long time, I would just play stuff that I knew very well and could remember the snare sound the way it should and got away from that a lot lately, only because that stuff is so perfect and so polished and mastered within an inch of its life. If the PA doesn’t sound good with that stuff on, then you’re a big trouble because of virtual sound checking now. And I know that my mix is dialed up in near fields, and to be sounding the way it should be and huge on something that’s neutral, I just typically use the show that I’m working on. I put on a song I use the same song every day. That the Carpenters and the backline guys, they all hate me and they’re like, God, this guy in that same we’re going to hear this again tonight. We’re going to hear a sound check and this song and we put it on loop in my system and you and I will put a chunk of the song in loop and so that it’s very similar everywhere we go. Walk in the room and we hear the same piece over and over gain just to make sure the rigs the way we want it to sound and with something relevant to what we’re doing tonight.

[00:02:57.010]
Because I’m not playing back pre recorded music tonight. I’m playing my less than average mix. And I only say that because live is nothing like a studio. The way we throw everything on stage and we pointed all at each other and there’s no isolation and the vocals are full of bleed and PA mess and obnoxious sounding rooms, that stuff is all detrimental to how it sounds. So to use something that’s nothing like that to listen to a PA now, I’m not saying you can’t get a PA to sound right with pre recorded material. I just stopped doing it. I was just like, I’m just going to use something that’s relevant and that way I know this rig works with what I’m going to put through it tonight.

[00:03:34.260]
Yeah, that makes sense. And in your own defense, those Carpenters aren’t switching up their hammers every day so they can make it sound different for you.

[00:03:40.500]
No, not at all. I get it that it’s painful to listen to and it’s just part of the job. Just like when they’re putting the stage, rolling stage together and I’m out of front of house waiting to build front house and they’re banging on stuff with dead blow hammers, that’s annoying too. We all have annoying parts of putting a show together. So sorry, guys. Sorry, everybody out there that has to do with it. I don’t like it either, but I got to do it.

[00:04:00.650]
So we had a lot of great questions that people sent in, but I want to start a little bit talking about career advice because I know there’s a lot of people who are struggling to find work right now. We’re either still in the pandemic, depending where you are in the world and when you’re listening to this, or we’re coming out of it. But looking back on how things have played out for you in your career and now a deeper understanding of how the priority industry works, what advice do you have for me and other people who might be looking for gigs right now to help find more of the work that they really love?

[00:04:35.280]
I feel like looking for gigs is like the toughest way to do it in this business because I didn’t do it that way. I started with a vendor. I started young at eight day sound. I was 20 years old and I got in there like in stages and tech and monitor rigs and fly to PA doing the beginning phases of this touring industry. You start at the bottom and anytime someone needed a front of house or a monitor opening axe don’t have any money, they always need somebody. I was always the first one to put my hand up. And nowadays I see young kids techs, the first thing they do is say, how much are you going to pay me? And I didn’t do that back then. Like I was working for the vendor. I was making my measly money working for the vendor, which to me back then was good money because it was better paying than the car stereo shop that I worked at when I stopped working there. But it’s all about the desire to be better than anybody else that’s done this and to not worry about the monetary side of it because that will come if you get good at this.

[00:05:32.810]
That will come because it has for me without worrying about that aspect. All I cared about was getting people to know who I am and they realized that I wanted this more than anybody else and I desired to be better at it than anybody else. I feel like nowadays with the movie The Matrix, when she needs to be a helicopter pilot, she just says hey Tank, load me up. And that’s kind of how it is nowadays. People just demand this really fast, like boom, YouTube knowledge and watch a video and you know how to do that and the instantaneous gratification just doesn’t exist. That’s social media life. It doesn’t really work that way in real life. Earning things and getting better at things. So you do earn those things. Meaning jobs is hard work. It takes a lot to get where I’ve got doing it. And it started with the desire to be better than anybody and did not care if I made any extra money on top of the money I was already making to do it. So just show the desire and once you get put in that position, be capable of doing the job that you are about to do.

[00:06:35.580]
I see guys, young kids are how much can you pay me? And the first thing I say to them is like, how much are you worth? Because if you just started out and you’re a monitor guy for the first time, as far as I’m concerned, you’re not worth anything, so why are you asking for money? And that’s how it was for me. I wasn’t an established monitor guy, I wasn’t an established front of house guy. So I didn’t see myself worth anything. But I was on the path to be proving that I was worth something. And that’s what it took was just to be like, hey, I don’t care. And if you are good at it, you’re better than in my case, I was out shining the monitor guy from the band or the front of house guy for the band, and people start recognizing that next year they go, what’s your phone number? And then you’re busy and you’re not looking for work. The works looking for you. Good way to do it. I know it sounds easier than it is, but way easier than going, I wish someone would call me for a gig without them knowing who you are.

[00:07:26.030]
It’s a quote that I’m probably going to miss. Quote that is something like, nobody cares what you know until they know how much you care.

[00:07:33.070]
Yeah, something like that.

[00:07:35.030]
Okay, before I get into other people’s questions, I want to give you the floor for a little bit. You work with a lot of other engineers, you’ve been around a lot of other techs, and so I’m curious if you could just take a look at all these people you’ve been around and the questions that you get. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to front of house mixing?

[00:07:58.680]
A lot of times I’ll have opening acts where guys, they assume that me as the headliner is doing something to the rig to make their night worse than it actually is. Oh, really? Yeah. I’ve had it in the past where guys can’t get the same SPL without blowing drivers up in the PA or the limiters are all flickering. I use a rig that’s got limiters that are built for the driver protection. It’s not something you adjust. It’s just like a safety limiter that’s built into a rig that’s designed to keep you from destroying the rig. And I got guys that IEM mixing it, let’s just say 102 A weighted for a ten minute average. And I’m not lighting one limiter, not even flickering, a single one. And they’re lighting them all at 99, and they can’t get overnight, and they’re like, oh, we’re adjusting the rig on me. And no, it’s about measuring transients, having your mix be huge sounding instead of just being loud by turning it up. So I feel like even myself at the level I’m at and the gigs I’m getting, I feel like I’m a horrible engineer compared to, like, studio engineers that really know what the hell they are doing.

[00:09:03.700]
Even engineers that you’ve never even heard their name before that are just amazingly talented and good at making things massive and huge without using all the headroom. That’s a fine art that IEM still trying to master every day in this business. And when you do that, you can mix quieter and give the perception of big and massive without blowing your own hearing out, which you have to be able to do this job every night. And that can be hard on your hearing if you’re trying to mix. If you’re only not to mix loud, you’re killing yourself as well as the people that are there to see the show, learning how to mix and massive. Anybody think about your favorite big rock records, like even in your car going down the road at 85 DB, they still sound big, they still sound massive. And that’s a fine art, something that not a lot of people have. It like I said. IEM. Still trying to figure it out. I may be better at it than some guys, but I see a lot of young mixers do that where they automatically want to start blaming stuff and gear and instead of realizing it’s them.

[00:10:03.770]
Always believe in yourself, but always believe that you can be better than you are. Because I got a lot of time in this and I still try to learn every day. And so that’s probably a big one. Another big one would be standing in this position, this hot seat of being the front of house guy and not understanding anything about it, including the console and the mix in front of you. Like I’m a system engineer. I try to know everything there is to know about the PA and the design of the PA and putting it up in the room and understanding the decisions that we’ve made with the rig, how they affect how it’s going to go later. And I feel like all that stuff is crucial to being good at this job. And there’s a lot of guys that just don’t get it and don’t and think I’m crazy for showing up at Rigging Call. They’re like, I’ve had people ask me all the time, they’re like, you’re at the gig all day. And I’m like, what else am I going to do? That’s what I’m here for. I’m here being paid to guarantee this goes well tonight.

[00:10:56.880]
So if I’m out golfing during the day or sitting in the bus watching the news, whatever, anything besides the gig, then that’s not what I’m getting paid to do. And so I take this stuff really serious and back to getting gigs kind of thing. Like, you got to want the desire to be good at this better than anybody else and put in the time and effort. That’s what you’re there for, your own tour, to make a show sound good. So whatever it takes, don’t speck a piece of gear you don’t know and hope the system engineer knows because it may be his first time seeing it too. Or don’t expect him to tune the PA the way you need done because he may not know how to tune it the way you need done. So know all of it and be good at it and take it all serious and you’ll be better at it every day because of it.

[00:11:37.600]
I remember starting out early in my career. I found this idea really overwhelming. I felt, oh, I have to know everything. I have to understand on a deep level every link in the signal chain. Like, that’s impossible. This is terrifying. Later on. And now it’s fun. Like, I get to learn new things, IEM going out on this tomorrow. Oh, I don’t know. This and this. Let me dive into this and learn more about it. And so I just wanted to say that for people who may be listening, feeling like that’s really overwhelming. None of us understood all this immediately, right?

[00:12:06.760]
Yeah.

[00:12:07.550]
You took years to get into it, and you had a hunger to learn all this stuff. And so it happens, like, over years of experience and training. It’s not something overnight.

[00:12:18.460]
The claim is that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything. Think about 10,000 hours. That’s a lot of time. That’s a massive studying process to do 10,000 hours to get something really locked down. And if you give up, if you go home from tour and you’re done, and you never touch anything, you never listen anything, you never do anything with audio or sound or books or anything until you go back on the road. Then you’re falling behind as far as IEM concerned, because I never stopped. I know I’m not getting paid, but I don’t care. I want to be better, so whatever it takes.

[00:12:50.250]
Yeah. And I’ve heard you mentioned in other interviews that if it sounds good on your near field monitors, then it’s probably only just going to sound better on a bigger, more powerful PA. You look at something smaller, and then you just turn it up.

[00:13:03.560]
Yeah. Think of the cone surface in a PA, in a concert PA, as opposed to near fields. So the ability to excite air molecules with the PA as opposed to near phillips if your mix slaps in these little tiny speakers and you can make a PA be neutral, that’s also an art, too, because a lot of Pas are fairly hyped up in the bottom end in this huge haystack. And for me, managing that, I love acoustics PA, but I got to undo the obnoxiousness and the tuning of their rigs, K One rig to make it work with how my mix sounds. And if you’re a basic mixer and I don’t want to call people out that K One, that they’re not good mixers because there are plenty of them. I feel like any time I use that rick, I got to undo the hype in it to make my mix that’s hyped work.

[00:13:52.270]
The secret zoom feature.

[00:13:54.150]
Yes, zoom and LFC are your best friend with any line of range, especially when you start hanging them 20 deep in antennas. Like, the low end just goes through the roof. And I think a lot of guys are always, I can’t turn anything down. That sacrifice, that turns stuff down. But you’d be surprised, like, how many times you go into a show where it’s just this muddy mess. It’s a ton of everything. And never in my career has anybody ever asked me for more 80 to 200 Hz frequencies that are obnoxiously overused and abused. So managing that stuff is a big deal, and don’t be afraid to turn it down. Okay?

[00:14:28.580]
I’m going to read you a tiny section from this article from Pitchfork from April 15, 2017. Radiohead took the stage tonight to perform their headlining set at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. Three songs into their show, the band were met with a sudden slew of technical problems, including a complete sound dropout and several bursts of violent feedback. The glitches affected not only the main stage speakers, but also the live sound audio. Fucking aliens again, Tom York said to the crowd. And then the article goes on to describe the technical problems and the drop outs, but the whole thing for me is terrifying. So at last year’s lifetime summit, you gave a great presentation called have a Solid backup plan when using digital consoles. So help us understand what the stakes are here, Sean. So if you could talk about maybe. Like a worst case scenario. How things have gone wrong for you when you didn’t have a backup plan. And then maybe best case scenario when things have gone smoothly. At least in terms of the audience and the artist. When you did have a Backup plan.

[00:15:35.370]
That thing I did for Sound Design Live should have been called have a Solid Backup Plan for any Live show. Whether you use analog or digital. I said digital because that’s typically what we lean on nowadays. But take an analog board out and things can go wrong there, too. So having a backup plan is crucial no matter what. I grew up, my father was a fireman. You can’t go save lives without everything being doubled and triple checked and backups for everything, and not to compare what we do to saving lives, but the money that’s at stake, and the ticket holders who come to enjoy a show and not stand around while you try to figure out how to get your show working, that’s not what they’re there for. And so it just shouldn’t exist in any live show. And of course, at Radiohead, at Coachella level, how massive of a screw up is that? Whether it’s nobody’s fault a console screwed up, whatever, but I’m just never going to be that guy standing there wishing it was not going on when it happens. Look at behind you, the lighting guys. There’s always two consoles sitting there.

[00:16:33.690]
They never not do a show without two consoles sitting there, so why should we be any different? And I know nobody wants to pay. Production managers are always bickering about the space PA and everything takes, but nobody cares until the shit hits the fan. And then you’re standing there without a show, and they’re all like, oh, I wish this guy would have a backup plan. Like at that cello incident, I’m sure everybody was like, and how much would it cost us for this? And that happened. Even if it was all year, every year, spending money for backup consult you never need. It’s worth it any time it goes down, even if it’s as minuscule as a stereo mix from the monitor console. I’m not even saying like, a full duplicate of your rig, but anything just to keep the show going is important. It could take three minutes for you to get your stuff back online, and it may not screw up the rest of the night. So you had some average sounding monitor mix that you dialed up once at the beginning of the tour, playing through the PA for three minutes. No big deal.

[00:17:29.540]
Way better than dead airtime. So any way that you can have a backup plan, even as something as minuscule as a crappy left right from the monitor console, it was a big deal because it’s way easier nowadays to have more than that then that’s what I do. I have a whole separate council, and I don’t carry a duplicate to what I’m touring with because that is expensive. It does take more space. Production managers and bands like to take their money home and not give it all to the vendors. I found a smaller, lighter way to do it with a Waves LV One console, which is extremely lightweight and can be just as good sounding as what you’re using now. Of course, why wouldn’t you just use an LV One for your real console? But LV One is not there’s no redundancy built in. I don’t want to bag on LV One because I love it and it’s great. My main consoles and SSL, and it works pretty religiously. Have I never had a problem with it? Of course I have. Not too long ago, you talk about having a backup plan in place on the Atlantis More set tour.

[00:18:27.370]
Last year, towards the end of the tour was, like, beginning of October, the system engineer calls me and text me. I was in the bus hanging out between dinner and showtime. And he says, hey, the console just restarted. And I’m like, and it was before the opening act. I was like, okay, keep an eye on it. I don’t know why I would do that, because it just was random. And then as I’m sitting there trying to think of what could this be causing this, I remembered about five days prior to this, I had put version 13 Waves plugging in on accident and didn’t take it out. Like, when it didn’t work and said it was the wrong version, I just went about my business. Instead of going, oh, let me remove that. I didn’t take it out. And when the desk actually crashed on me during the show that night, and I spun night at Grease, my backup console and pushed the stereo fade, and the show is back on. While my system guy restarted the desk, the PA was down for 150 milliseconds. Basically, as long as it took me to turn and push the stereo fader of my LV one, because the way I wrote it into my rig, it’s ready to go.

[00:19:27.420]
It’s just turn the stereo fader up. And I don’t build snapshots, and I don’t have it nearly as well dialed as my main console is. It’s close, and it’s better than nothing, and I can turn it on and go, okay, well, I need to eat you my vocal. I need to do this, and I can do that because it’s a console with a surface and everything. I need to make it work. The production manager came, right? I was like, did the PH stop? I was like, yeah, for about eight of a second. And I’m standing there mixing at the backup brick, and my guy’s restarting. He’s like, the main console is back on, and we trade places, and he pulls that cereal bus while I push the main, and we’re back in business. And the punters don’t even know.

[00:20:03.600]
They have no idea how bad it could have been.

[00:20:06.430]
And when the PA dip, luckily for me, it was like in a call and answer kind of part of the show where we don’t mute the PA, but it just worked. Like, it just happened to be like, in that. So they really didn’t know it was that seamless. And the production manager, after we’re back on the main desk, he splits and goes back to his office, and we mixed the rest of the night and the counseling and shut down. And the next morning, I found the version 13 plugin and got rid of it, and it never happened again. That could have been horrible. The guy could have been restarting the main console, and I had no backup plan, and it could have went on for 510 minutes. The band’s leaving the stage, and like, coachella with radiohead, they left stage twice when that happened. And you got, I don’t know, 150,000 people stand there going, wish we were watching radiohead right now. I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. And here they are.

[00:20:52.670]
They’re not just saying they’re twinning their phones. They are tweeting, like, crazy about how angry they are.

[00:20:58.500]
Yeah, and that’s the worst part. Like, it’s not a reputation killer. I know Jim Warren really well. They’re front of house guy. He’s an amazing, talented, front of house guy. It didn’t have any detriment to his career. Now, I do know from a house guys that used to console that happened on, and the band was like, okay, you can’t use that desk ever again. But if you had a backup plan and that desk crashed, they wouldn’t know. They would still be on stage performing, and they wouldn’t even know, and they would have anything to say. So now this guy is forcing using a desk when he’s on tour with that band, different from the desk that he uses when he’s with every other band. I don’t want that to happen to me. The punters aren’t paying. It’s like feedback, right? Nobody’s paying for feedback. There’s no added ticket value that says with free feedback when you go see the show. So that stuff is unacceptable. Every part of that is unacceptable. Console crashes, feedback, anything that’s not part of the show should not be part of the show. It’s not something punters won’t pay for.

[00:21:50.120]
People expect it because it’s like cliche in movies. Anytime someone steps up to a mic, it feeds back. Like, sound designers that do movies for a living just do that. But that stuff under my watch. It’s all unacceptable, and I’m not having any part of it.

[00:22:03.100]
I do pause the movie anytime that happens when I’m watching a movie at home to explain to my wife how it is so detrimental that they continue to stereotype.

[00:22:12.410]
Yeah, exactly. But it doesn’t help that some guys are out there picking their own microphones and pointing PA at the stages. And there’s a lot of reasons why the stereotype continues, IEM. Avoiding it at all costs.

[00:22:24.190]
All right, are you ready to answer some questions from some humans?

[00:22:26.970]
Sure.

[00:22:27.820]
So, this guy Pooch says, what is his take on the future of Added as a company? Lots of people are complaining about the product support, including tech support for live products. For example, it would be nice to get a non employee perspective.

[00:22:40.460]
First of all, what a Pooch? Pooch is a buddy of mine. I love them dearly. I agree with him every bit about people complaining about average tech support, because if you call Waves bam, they’re on the phone. There’s somebody taking over your system with Team Viewer and fixing your problems. And they do it so fast sometimes you’re like, oh, slow down so I can tell what you’re doing so I don’t have to call you next time. So I know what you did. And Avid has a lot of ways to make up in the tech support as the future of Avid as a lifestyle vendor. They’re not stopping. It’s a niche market, right? If you think about the amount of consoles we sell in the live touring industry is teeny tiny. So as far as shareholders are concerned, with a public company like Avid, they’re like, your video department over here is making billions, and your live sound division over here is making millions. What are we doing over here? And I’m shocked that they still do it because it isn’t a ton of money for them. But it’s also shocking the amount of effort that they put into it.

[00:23:34.620]
And it’s still great. The products are great. And having a mixing platform that talks to a recording platform, that’s like the world standard Pro Tools, there’s so many things about it that are amazing, and the tech support is not part of that. That’s amazing. And I get that that’s a sore spot for a lot of people. When you’re standing there and the gear isn’t working well and you need. Someone to help you out, and the company you call doesn’t answer the phone, or they go, we’ll get back to you, and it’s tomorrow. I get it. But that kind of goes back to my point about don’t spec gear that you don’t know anything about, like the console I use, which is an Avid SXL. I’m a beta tester for them. So there’s not a single thing about the thing that I don’t know. Now, of course, I have questions here and there, and luckily, I have people that I can call directly and ask about things, and I wish everybody had it how I had it. Also, a lot of the problems that I know a ton of guys because I run an Avid SSL page online that I don’t get paid for.

[00:24:34.910]
That’s free. And it’s just me trying to help. And I know a lot of guys that submit posts to be approved. And then I talked to my guys that have it. I’m like, Why is this guy having so many problems? Like, oh yeah, that old Knucklehead is trying to use every plug in on the world that isn’t approved and is not supposed to be installed on the desk. And these guys are causing their own problems. So it’s just use the product as it’s designed, and don’t try to do stupid things that you shouldn’t be doing. You’ll have a good time and know how it works so that when it doesn’t go well, you’re not a fix it. So I feel like Avid gets a little bit more of a bad rap for their products because people try to abuse the use of them and not use them as their design. And Abbott’s probably not as good to get the point across to not do those kinds of things when it goes wrong or when someone installs like I did, I put a version 13 ways, plugin in it. Four days later, the engine restarted on its own for no reason.

[00:25:30.210]
Version 13 plugins are not approved for the system. And somehow, some way, a line of code went, not today, buddy, or whatever. And that was my fault. It wasn’t a despot of the product’s fault. It wasn’t sure how it was a customer supports fault. I get it, though. I agree with 100%. Get the customer support, spend the money to get customer support better so people have a good time with it when they do have an issue, because there are Knuckleheads that misuse the product and your benefit. Even though you shouldn’t have to cover their asses, you have to. Waves do it. When people don’t do something right or don’t know how to use the product, they’ll answer the phone and they’ll fix your problem right away. So if Waves can do it, average can do it. I don’t know why they don’t spend the money. They should. I do know it’s a tiny little market, not a lot of cash flow in it. So that’s probably the biggest reason. Avid is a small company. If you think about it, they’re not that massive of a company. None of these live sound vendors are that massive companies.

[00:26:23.980]
When you think of Tesla or Apple, billion dollar corporations that their quarterly earnings are more than Avids made in their lives on division since it’s inception. So you have to realize as a user that’s what we’re up against, we’re a tiny little market that gets what it gets. We get scraps from Avid and all the lifestyle vendors are like that. Now, I’m sure the Ditch Coast got a lot bigger umbrella of consulting with all the other different brands that they’ve acquired and their support is probably better because of it. We’re average just like this tiny little thing. So I agree.

[00:26:56.320]
Pooch, you use a lot of DM products almost exclusively. Why do you love them? Now in other interviews you’ve talked about how you just feel like it’s a great product and you can get what you need from it really quickly compared to some other products. Do you still feel that way and is there any way you want to expand on that?

[00:27:12.590]
I do still use it. It’s like using apple products. I have an Apple Computer. I have an iPhone. I have an Apple Watch. The walled garden effect that these certain vendors have, makes their products better. The App Store from Apple, we think about how all that works together seamlessly. It makes it a smoother product to use as an end user is concerned. And DB is like that for me when it comes to the PA, the amplifier, the design software, the control software, like all four of those things work so seamlessly, so effortlessly. Now, I’m not saying that other vendors don’t have the acoustics, have a great design software and a control software, just don’t get along with that product as easily as I do. And it could be because of experience with using DB. I do like a system that I can put in the air and quickly have sounding the way I want with the least amount of effort because of the amount of tours I do, the type of tours I do. Front of house is sitting in the corner, in the back of the floor while the stage is in the spot where I should be building front of house and that is there till 01:00 in the day, sometimes 02:00, 03:00 in the day.

[00:28:26.990]
These giant pop tumors with 4 million lighting products and video walls everywhere. We get the PA working at 04:00 in the afternoon and the production manager, state manager like hey, can we put the ban on at 05:00? Stores are in half hour. So having products that are easy to get working quickly is crucial in that scenario. It’s like the last thing I want to do is have to walk the room longer than I have to and listen to that same obnoxious section of a song more than I have to, and with J or GSL, KSL and array calc and array processing and R One to control it. I just did stadium shows with system of a down. And me and my system engineer, we stayed late on the loading day because we wanted to tune the PA when the show was going to happen. As far as atmosphere was concerned, at 09:00 to 11:00, same temperature, humidity, kind of the next two days are going to be. So we stayed late to do that. It was cold in La at night, we were outdoors and the last thing we want to do is be there longer than we have to be.

[00:29:28.860]
I’m like, let’s get this done quickly and get out of here and get back to the hotel because it’s cold and let’s do this. And having a rig that makes that easy to go about is crucial to me. I don’t want to be there any longer than I have to, I don’t want it to take any longer than it should. And I don’t know what you know about a rate processing that DB have. The way the air affects mids and high frequencies over distance is massive to any PA. Doesn’t matter what PA you are, linear rates, point source, it doesn’t matter. Anything you’re trying to shoot 100 meters through a venue is going to be drastically affected by the atmospheric conditions. And DB have done massive amounts of research into the effects of the atmospheric conditions on the array over distance. And array processing was one of the earliest to counteract what atmospheric conditions do to align array over distance. I’m not one of those front house engineers. It just lets my system engineer deal with everything. And I stay at front house and hope it’s good back there. I’m back there listening to I’m at the top of the arena in the very back row of the seats during the day going it’s not cutting it back here.

[00:30:34.240]
And until a rate processing came around, we did other things and we boosted the top boxes and we put CD horn EQS on shelves on the top of things to try to but that was archaic compared to array processing. It’s just massive algorithm to deal with the distance and the temperature, humidity effect on sound and it works very well. Now, of course, you can abuse that too. There’s adjustability and array processing and I’ve seen it abused and it could make it worse and sound overly excessively bright and those kinds of things. But once again, don’t choose products and use them without knowing how to use them. And I know how to use them. Me and my system engineer worked hand in hand together for years now to develop a method to getting it to work on our behalf. And those things about that PA make me pick it every time over any other PA, because I know when I go back and I’ve toured with other PA. I have buddies that work for other vendors that are like, oh, I use our stuff all the time because when I go to the back back there and I listen, it doesn’t do what I expected to do.

[00:31:37.380]
And the intelligibility is off. Now I got to take more time to manually try to make this PA work back there where array processing, if set and configured correctly, just does it for me. When I walk back there, I make a sweep through the arena and I’m like, yeah, it’s doing what I expect. Let’s go back to getting the band on stage, the sound checking, and keeping the production manager in the day going smoothly and fast because they don’t care. They’ll put a show on whether you’re ready or not. They do not care. They were like, hey, it’s time. F you. We’re out of time. And I didn’t do anything to cause the time to be out. You know what I mean? The lighting rig and the stage and the carpenters and everybody in the show being designed by these designers who don’t give a shit about sound, those are what I’m up against. So when it comes to a rig that can help me in that situation, I’m picking it every time. And this stuff sounds great, you know what I mean? The timber of a DB PA is something that I’m cool with, and I agree with the other other line of Rays.

[00:32:34.130]
Everybody makes great sounding line of race, but they all have their own kind of timber to them. And me having a big massive mix that needs a neutral sounding PA, the DB rig is the closest for me and the quickest amount of time. So that’s what I’m picking and I get results. And people keep calling me, asking me to do their tour. So that’s what I’m doing. Awesome.

[00:32:55.100]
Most of your career was spent with Eight Days. So what’s your take on the Claire purchase? How has it affected you? In another interview I heard you say that you feel like it’s positive and it just benefits everyone. Do you still feel that way?

[00:33:07.620]
Yeah, absolutely. And eight day. And I have a long history. That’s where I got my start in this business. They were a local vendor to me in Cleveland, and so I grew up there. It’s like when you’re a kid and your dad drives Ford pickup trucks, you probably end up driving Ford pickup trucks yourself. It’s just the way it goes. And Eight Day was that for me as a young kid. They gave me my start. They put me on tour flying PA. I have history with them. And Eight Day always bought the products that I liked and agreed with. He started early with Vedas, which was amazing, still amazing PA and then Turbo Salon and that kind of thing, where they just always had good products. So I love them and have got amazing results with them. And I’ve toured with Claire for many years as well, with their Pas and their rigs and that kind of stuff. But as far as them buying Eight Day, both companies have amazing things they can learn from each other and are learning from each other. Claire, admittedly bought Eight Days for things that they do well that Claire probably didn’t do as well.

[00:34:02.870]
Not that they did anything poorly or not that Eight Day did anything poorly. They both are amazing companies, but it’s a learning experience for both of them. So it’s beneficial, I think, for them to take them over and for me, is it benefiting me in any way? Absolutely. Hire Giant, like, how could it not benefit me when I’m specifically an eight day guy and use Eight day? I don’t work for eight days, but I hire them on a lot of tours. It shows a lot of people clarify, f, that guy, he won’t use us. And I hate that. I want to be friends with every vendor. If you only own the products that I typically don’t use, and they own all the products that I typically do use, and the bands are hiring me to bring my agame and get them the best results, that’s who I work for. That’s what I’m doing. Now that Claire owns Eight Day, and Eight Day goes, hey, you can have anything they have, and you can have anything we have. And Claire, you can hire them. And now it’s just whatever you want. If you hire a Claire gig, it’s whatever you want box wise.

[00:34:58.190]
Instead of just their manufactured stuff, which is great products, you make amazing PA Cohesion and their CP products, they make the powered supplements, all amazing products. A little behind in the software side of, like, DB have. So not my go to when it comes to picking things, but I think it’s beneficial no matter what. Now I’m hoping the guys at Claire Brothers can’t avoid me when they get asked for about an engineer that they command. I hope my name is the top of their list or close to the top of their list. So I think it’s beneficial no matter what.

[00:35:30.950]
All right. Marcel says which festival has the best catering?

[00:35:34.000]
Oceanaga Fest, Canada. Probably the best, like, craft pizza ovens and just like anything you can imagine. Oceanaga Festival. He knows that when I got there, he knows that.

[00:35:45.880]
Michelle says, I love Sean’s Facebook posts from the shows that he’s working on. Can I ask about sub arrays? I’ve seen some photos where it looks like he’s both spreading out the subs and creating a delay arc. Doesn’t spreading out the subs make the line longer, a narrow coverage? And doesn’t the arc widen the coverage? Seems like opposing design strategies. Can you ask him to walk us through the decision making?

[00:36:09.280]
There is no decision making. I know what he’s talking about. The post he’s talking about, there is no decision making there. It’s the logistics of the building that you’re dealing with, and you put the rig up wherever you can get it. In deployed that day, we typically do a flat line and we put some time on the subs to get them widened. In that case, it was spread out over space, but it was an arc as well, so we ended up having to lay the middle subwoofers to try to take a little bit of the arc out of it. It’s counter what it looks like, what we’re actually doing in the processing to make it work the way we’ve deployed it. And the deployment was strictly based on the size and shape of the building. And we do what we got to do. Some days you get what you get and you got to make it work and you got to get the best out of it, whatever it takes. And from a viewer standpoint, looking at a photo, you might go, what the hell? This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. But guess what?

[00:36:56.870]
I’m just doing whatever it took that day, so that’s all there is to it. And we made adjustments to invert the arc so that it didn’t affect our line to do how we would normally do it. So it still worked and behaved the way we wanted it to because we manipulated it. Cool.

[00:37:11.150]
Kenny says ask him what motivates him to keep going and pursuing live sound on difficult days or days when he gets discouraged.

[00:37:19.790]
I love the stuff I’m putting concerts on for a living. I’m mixing live sound for a living. So even on the worst crappiest day when you wish you weren’t there and you got a family member at home that’s wishing you were home, or worse, your father’s sick and getting old, there’s those days that suck. But I love what I do so much and would do anything to not have to do any other jobs. And there’s this video I show a lot of Rhodey’s that like to complain on tour about how bad the day sucked, where it’s five year old and ten year old Cambodian boy and girl that are out hunting snakes for a living at ten and five years old to put snake soup on the dinner table that night for their family and their mom’s. Price selling snakeskins for $8 that month or whatever. Go see what truly shitty jobs are and realize how good we have it, even on the worst days, and you’ll never have a bad day on tour again. Or did you work a crappy job when you came up? I’ve delivered newspapers as the 1314 year old boy at six in the morning.

[00:38:26.500]
That sucked. Not something I want to do again. I washed dishes at a restaurant at 15 and a half years old. That sucked. That’s something I don’t want to do. A crappy day on tour is still amazing no matter what. And being a poor sport about it, and crying there’s pets on the bus again is just ludicrous to me. Come on, man, get over. Yeah, you don’t have to be excited about it because it is to have a shitty day and to be, like, complaining about it. It’s just not nowhere in the day. There’s too much energy to be devoted to other things to make your day go well, to devote any of it to being a poor sport about anything. So I just avoid it. And don’t get me wrong, I can be a crab apple on tour. I’m sure people watch this and be like, I’ve seen that guy being an asshole before. And, yeah, there are those days, but you just got to get through them and know tomorrow will be better. Your day, even when it sucked, was better than the kid sticking his arm in a hole in a hill to pull a snake out.

[00:39:21.570]
So get over it.

[00:39:23.750]
All right? Devon says ask him about gig prep. He had posts about his process, getting ready for a gig where he would bring in a small version of the system at his home he would use at the event and get the live show files and run them through prior to the gig. I’m interested in what approaches he takes and what he works on at home as opposed to what he leaves for the day of the show.

[00:39:46.350]
The picture he’s probably talking about was the small system was not in my home. It was at a rehearsal facility at home when my gear is home, which isn’t very often, but when it is, I have Tanoi DMT 215, two S, which are a double 15 with a compression driver, co centric compression driver tobacco. One of the 15s are big, massive, like, really high, inexpensive, studio far fields that sit on top of w a team. Like, I have a PA my studio as well as my near fields, just so I can go back and forth to be like, okay, here’s what my PA sounds like in some general. X 80 40 is what I normally use and here’s what it sounds like in a massive cone surface PA simulation. As far as the prep is concerned, it’s mostly done on Earth because you’re going to send the mix no matter what you do. You’re going to do a festival and the band is going to go, you’re mixing our show. We don’t want some guy who’s never heard us before taking 60 inputs and trying to dial it up on the day off. So you’re giving off your left right now, it could be left right band and left.

[00:40:46.550]
It could be just a mix, but you’re going to send it to a stream somewhere or you’re going to record it and the band is going to ask for it or something. So it better sound good in that scenario, but it has to because someone’s going to hear it in that scenario and you’d be surprised how well a mix will sound like we were talking about earlier. Once you get it in this massive, like, overblown PA, you’ll be surprised how good it just gets better, it doesn’t get worse. If it’s crappy in the near fields and you hope that the PA brings it to the level you want it at, you’re missing the point. So the big PA thing at home for me is just to like, okay, yeah, cool. It works in that massive environment, but the work was really done in your fields. And even at rehearsal when I post those pictures of a small DB V rig on top of infras and J subs, it’s really just a confidence thing to go, yeah, cool. It’s going to translate in the PA once I’m done with it in your fields. And the general 80 my go to for that because they’re strong, robust metal cabinets and you can abuse them and throw them in a drawer of a workbox and know that they’re going to work again tomorrow and that kind of thing and they translate well.

[00:41:58.310]
You dial them up in there and you can pretty much guarantee that laptop speakers or someone watching it on their phone from a stream or it’s going to work. So the big stuff is just kind of because I can and confidence booster to make sure it translates. Sure.

[00:42:12.380]
All right. Peter says ask him if he remembers the flashlight I got him and Gino for the Cheryl Crow Show Maui. It’s actually a great story. I almost got fired.

[00:42:20.440]
I do remember that back in the day. Gino, anybody knows me. I used to be a heavy pot smoker. I don’t anymore. I’m old now, I gave it up. But back in the day we were for pot. We were in Maui for a gig and Peter was one of the local guys who did everything on the gig. He was like in the lifts to hang the PA and he was a stage hand and he was driving the runner van he was doing. He was one of those guys who just did everything and we were like, hey, get us some weed. And because he didn’t want to get in trouble and get caught for it, he stashed it in some cheesy gas station Led flashlights that they have left on the counter. It was like giving him giving us a gift and it was a couple of grams of weed stuffed in the flashlight. I didn’t know that he almost got fired for it. So I’m glad he didn’t.

[00:43:01.290]
Yeah, we’ll have to find out his side.

[00:43:03.290]
I would have felt bad.

[00:43:04.700]
Okay. Greg says, ask him about his time mixing a very loud show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I said, oh, Greg, were you there? Can you tell us about it? And he said no.

[00:43:14.040]
No. Greg does the one question highlevel sound things. And he asked me what’s one of the craziest gigs you’ve ever done? And my answer happened to be about mixing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Met Gala or whatever it is for everybody shows up in million dollar outfits and gowns. And Rihanna happened to be the artist out here that I was mixing. There was people standing around with Geiger counters and next to these 4000 year old artifacts, and they’re like, you can’t destroy any of this stuff. If you do, we don’t even know what to tell you because you just can’t, like, SPL meters around. All the we’re talking about Egyptian artifacts. There’s a lot of, like the stakes are high. Yeah, the stakes are high. And I got a manager who doesn’t care, even though he knows that the stakes are high. We’re talking about a guy who’s got a Ferrari and every town he spends a night in. So he doesn’t care. Like, he just wants his artists to be represented, away their artists to be represented. It’s a fine line of pleasing to be trying to be all day quarterback and keeping the Met happy that you’re not.

[00:44:16.520]
And in my mind, IEM. Like, why is this stuff still here? Why don’t you guys, like, take it, really remove it if you know there’s going to be abandoned here. We’re bringing a PA in. It’s a tough stance, that one, but we got through it and we made everybody happy and we didn’t break any four and 5000 year old Egyptian artifacts. Sure, fun times.

[00:44:37.090]
You break it, you bought it, or.

[00:44:39.860]
You can’t afford it, but somebody is going to pay for it even though we can’t replace it.

[00:44:45.650]
So Johann says how is he using virtual playback on his daily workflow? And at the beginning, you already talked about how that basically is the first thing you play. So do you want to say anything else about virtual playback in your workflow?

[00:44:58.150]
Yeah, I’ll start with assign sweep to time align things and check my alignment and check SPL between zones and that kind of thing. And then immediately go to the loop of the song, of the annoying song that we’re going to play, which my system engineer and I, it’s always like, one of the earliest things we do during rehearsal, we’re like, okay, which one of these are we going to pick for tuning the PA every day? Is it going to be something that we know is going to be the big crowd played the Early Show? Or is it going to be something that we enjoy listening to more in the set than the next thing? And that’s the most important, crucial part of tuning the PA is listening to relevant material with relevant musicianship. The sound checks are never what you need them to be if you even get them. A lot of the bands I work with are so big and massive, they don’t come in. They’re like, we’re paying you guys to get this crap together. We’re not coming for that. So you either get Rody Rock, we get the backline guys who know a song and it’s nothing like them, even though it sounds like it is not played like them.

[00:45:53.380]
And so the virtual playback, which is from the last venue, we did that’s just like this one. If you’re doing Arena Tour, it’s yesterday, but if you’re doing sheds and arenas, yesterday might have been indoors and today you’re outdoors. So I’ll go back and I’ll find the outdoor show or find something that’s very similar to what we’re doing that night so that it’s relevant and I’ll listen to it, but I’ll play it and I’ll walk. And my console tablet and my system in here takes the PA tuning tablet, we get it the way we want and the SPL that we want in front of the house and we check that SPL and then we mute it. And then we walk to the front fills and we unmute it and we check the SPL that’s similar, maybe a little louder because you’re closer and that’s the way it goes in nature. When you get closer, it gets louder and brighter and then we’re like, cool, that’s the way you want. And we’ll mute it all and we’ll walk to the next zone because we know it’s annoying and we know people don’t want to listen to it.

[00:46:43.800]
We know they hate us for doing it, so we try to be as cool about it as possible and it’s only as loud as it has to be for as long as it has to be. And we’ll walk to the lower side of the side hangs and we’ll go in those side seats and we’ll listen there and we’ll go in a couple of sections of that seat there and make sure the PA, the way we designed it in the software, covers it physically like it should, and if it doesn’t, then we’ll go ahead. We need to add a front seat box or something here to try to get these three corner seats here that we missed that the simulation software looked like it was going to cover. But after going here and listening to it’s not get on the radio. Hey. Tell the PA guys.

[00:47:19.200]
Hey.

[00:47:19.340]
Can you get a box out and put it up here and point it up for us? And then we’ll go higher up in the side or 270 hangs on mute and listen and go around a couple of sections, same exact piece of material over and over and over again. That way it’s no question like it sounds the same or similar. There’s a range, obviously not going for exactly the same thing, but a range depending on your near far and brighter and louder and lower and darker as you get farther away just because naturally that’s how it works and you need.

[00:47:46.920]
A controlling in the test.

[00:47:48.640]
Yeah, I’m not trying to undo nature with a. PA. I’m trying to keep it how it normally works. And that virtual sound check, it was a game changer when it came out. That’s one thing that started me down the Avid console path was when I first heard that we were going to be able to record and play back with Pro Tools in the live scenario. I was just like, are you kidding me? Really? This is going to happen? We’re going to do this? Because I had a studio background and I know what Study and Tracks was about to make things sound the way they should. We don’t ever go into the studio and do a sound check and then send the band packing and go, hey, we’re done like we do in live sound. And so when that came, it was just a game changer and I’ve just never looked back because it’s changed my game. It’s made me a better mixer, made me a better system engineer even though I have a system engineer that’s amazing and does a great job. It’s made us both better because we can truly study the work in all scenarios without the pressure of the lights being off and the crowd screaming and all that part of it.

[00:48:45.320]
We’re like a controlled environment where we can do what we need to do. And the virtual soundtrack, I feel like nowadays is the only way to do that. If you’re touring with a live digital console that can record and you’re not recording, then come on, get with it because that stuff is the only way to do it. Well IEM. Sure, somebody might argue with me about it, but I’ll fight it to the death. That’s the way to do it well and be good at it. So don’t sleep. That’s the way to do it.

[00:49:12.920]
So you mentioned sign sweeps and I’ve heard you mentioned this in other interviews as well and I know you are a smart user, so I just wanted to confirm. When you’re saying sign sweep, does that mean you’re using the Impulse response module to compare rival times? That’s what the signsuite is, yeah.

[00:49:28.560]
And in general, coherence is always an issue, right? It’s one of the hardest things about using an FFT to tune the system is coherence. If there is no coherence, you’re pointless, there’s no reason to do it. And with continuous pink noise on constantly exciting every surface in the room, coherence is typically always bad. Even with everything in your favor, the mic placement and one system of the rig on and everything in your favor. And pink noise is just a continuous equal level source, exaggerates everything and bounces constantly where a sign sweep is all frequencies equal, but just one at a time, spread out over distance. And the coherence better. It’s not great either. Like they’ll always find some anomalies and coherence because of reflections. It’s just the way it is. We’re not in this analytic chamber that would give you this perfect phase response no matter what. But the sign suite, because it’s not continuously blasting, bombarding everything with noise. You just get this quick, you get a better coherence trace with it, and it’s also easier to listen to than pink noise. At the end of the day, it’s equivalent to pig noise. It’s just spread out one frequency at a time over how long the blip takes, which is what, a second or something like that.

[00:50:42.670]
It might not even be a second. It may be a half a second or whatever it takes, but I just like to be as accurate and as the least annoying as possible in doing this stuff because I hate it too upset. It a million times. Nobody likes gain noise, including me. You might as well put a laser in my eyeballs. It’s not fun.

[00:51:02.290]
All right, ryan says, with 28 years of experience, what are the biggest challenges you still face, and how has that changed from when you had 18 and eight years of experience?

[00:51:12.190]
Biggest challenges I face are protecting my hearing and not blowing my brains out every night, because who doesn’t want a big, crazy, loud rock show? That’s what the people are there for. But you, as the purveyor of that and the one who’s got to give that to the people every night, you got to take the steps to protect yourself and not blow your hair out, or you won’t be very good at this very long. I won’t say you won’t be very good at it. You’ll have a premature end to your career if you’re just out there blowing your brains out every night, because the punters only got to come one night during the week, and you’re there three or four nights a week that I would say would be my biggest challenge, because I’ve locked down how I set my shows up. That’s not a challenge for me to lay out my console and have my ways. And the gear that I pick is works well and is reliable, and those challenges don’t exist anymore. So the real challenge is to do this well, give the people what they pay for, but not kill yourself in the process.

[00:52:04.960]
Yeah.

[00:52:05.280]
Is there anything specific you’ve figured out? Is it like placement up front?

[00:52:10.330]
This right here? I get a song sounded the Way I Want, the Way I Think It Should be, and then I’ll put these in and listen with my bus, my queue bus aligned to the PA so that I’m in time with the sound coming at me, how far IEM away? And because he’s isolated me from the PA, I can still make critical mixed decisions because I do this. I listen to the PA, I’m like, cool, I know what that sounds. And I immediately put these in and I know what these sound in relation to that, and so I can go. And so now I’m 20 DB less. So if I’m mixing at 100 DBA over ten minute average or 102, a over ten minute average, which can be quite loud for ten minutes. If I take myself out of that environment with 25 DB less of production. So now, IEM. At 78 DB, where I can listen to these at or let’s say 85, 85 is like the studio norm. That’s what typically try to mix it in studios, is 85 because you can do it all day without killing yourself. And so if I can get this 102 DB weighted show down to 85 in here and still be able to make critical mixed decisions, take them out, confirm what I did, put them back, it’s a constant flow of these in, these out.

[00:53:23.980]
And I only went to in ears because they isolate better than headphones, too. And you can’t tell them where even though mine are black with silver logos on them, nobody even knows I’m doing it. The show sounds great. That’s all they care about. Managers or bands, girlfriends or whatever. As long as you’re still getting your point across, then who cares how you do it, as long as you can get the point across and do it safely for yourself and limit the exposure. Because if you look at the ocean thing, of course that’s based on like machines hitting steel products into the ground all day long. So it’s like 100% duty cycle where music is not that it’s a short. It’s like 15 minutes, you can listen to 100 DB before you’re starting to cause damage. And if you’re mixing the show an hour and a half and you sound checked for an hour and a half and you tune the PA for an hour, there’s 5 hours of you at 100 DB like you’re hurting yourself. You’re going to go to your bunk with your ears ringing, you’re going to wake up with your ears ringing and expect that to be detrimental over time because it will be.

[00:54:25.160]
At year eight, I didn’t think about that. At year 18, I considered it, but at year 26, it’s all I think about and it’s something I take very serious. I think we all should. I know I just mixed the metal band. It’s just mixed system of a down. And of course, that show is expected to be this big rock show, this big metal show, to do it safely once again, back to mixing huge sounding instead of loud sounding. Because if you’re mixing that show at 110 all night long, you’re not only killing the people that paid for it, they’re going to go home and get in their car and they’re like, oh, what that? They’re not going to hear their girlfriend say that was fun tonight. And you got to do it multiple nights a week. So you have to think about those things. You got to protect yourself and do what it takes. And for me, this is the way.

[00:55:07.000]
This is the way, this is the.

[00:55:08.600]
Way, this is the way. This is the way. Yeah.

[00:55:11.630]
So, Sean, I know you also do some teaching and private training yourself, so where is the best place for people to keep up with your work online, and what’s the best way for them to reach out to you if they’re interested in asking you about that?

[00:55:26.020]
All my social media is at Sound by selling. So if it’s Twitter, it’s at soundicelli. If it’s Facebook, it’s at soundbaselli. Instagram, same thing. My email is Soundmicelli at Gmail, so it’s pretty easy. You can type in Sammicelli in any one of the platforms you’ll find me and reach out. Even if you don’t want to spend any money, if you got a question and you’ll be like, hey, I’m going to ask this guy, because he seems like he’ll help me out. Hit me up. IEM not like, oh, until you give me some money, I’m not talking to you. I don’t do that. I love this shit. So hit me up. Let’s talk about it, whatever. And if you want to go deep, then, yeah, spend some money, and I’ll help you along the way. Because I would have killed for someone like me to offer this kind of stuff to get my skillset advanced to where I wanted to be. When I started 26, 27 years ago, it was like the Yamaha Pro Sound Reinforcement Handbook, was it? That was it. And so, between YouTube and guys like me that I know, pooch has got a great online thing that you can buy, and there are some guys that want to help.

[00:56:24.220]
I know guys are like, oh, you’re crazy. I’m not sharing what I know with anybody. IEM not intimidated by these guys. I’m not worried that these guys are going to take my job, because I know for a fact every day I’m trying to get better at this, and I know I want to be better at this every day, so I welcome it. I’m tired of going to shows that sound bad, so I’ll do whatever it takes to help people as a public service there. Yeah, to get your act together. Some bands only have so much money, so they only want to pay for a house guy. This, you got to get an experience level of this as opposed to this, and that’s the way it goes. But desire to be good at it and hit guys like me up to help, and I’ll help. IEM not afraid to help. I don’t claim to know everything, but I have learned a bit along the way, and the gigs I get in my resume obviously confirmed that. Not to be bigheaded or egotistical about it, but I’ve gotten where I’ve gotten because I took it seriously, and I learned as much as I could along the way, and I’ve studied from people greater than me along the way, and I’ve done what I’m offering to do for people to help me get better at it.

[00:57:24.180]
So don’t be afraid to hit me up, alright?

[00:57:27.230]
Sean Sullivan, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

[00:57:30.400]
Yeah, thanks for having me. Great. Good fun.