[LAU] Anyone have any anecdotal experiences like this to share (horrible singers in the studio)

[Thomas Vecchione]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org> wrote:

>
> I guess that everyone who has worked for some time in broadcasting,
> film, theater or similar environments has at least one horror story
> to tell...
>
>
Heh one of my favorites involved the lead up before a band ever took stage,
when their tour manager (Also their A2) started talking to me about their
setup....

By the end of the conversations the stage crew offered to have him
'dissappear' the moment he stepped off the bus for me.  It was very
tempting.

Then one of my more recent gigs, a small gig that was supposed to be a
couple of zones of speakers on sticks and me mixing a small 5 person cast
for about 15 minutes outside in the city.  High-er levels, as I knew the
producer and knew what he would want, but nothing to terrible and sounds
pretty average, till I show up and am told that I can't use any speaker
stands, not because they are worried about them falling on people but
because the venue didn't want them falling on the _boxwood_ _hedges_.
Frustrated doesn't begin to describe me at that point.

Suddenly the gig became theater in the round, with the mains pointed into
the round with the performers(As they were blocked to move amongst the
audience all night), and resting on the ground.  Feedback was a slight
issue to put it mildly.

And of course you have the venue I went to when working a tour across the
country over here, that I walked in and the 'sound engineer' for the venue
hands me AC ground lifts and tells me to lift the ground on all my
equipment or I can't tie into their system.  He says it is the only way to
avoid buz and that he won't risk his system for my sound.  I calmly try to
explain that what he was describing was a ground loop and is easily fixed
by other methods that don't involve endangering the lives of people near my
equipment, but he refuses to hear me and insists they have tried everything
possible and this is the only thing that worked.  Needless to say I
conveniently 'forgot' to life the AC grounds on my equipment and instead
properly isolated the audio grounds fixing the problem.  He comes up to me
after the gig and complains that I didn't use it, my response... "Did you
hear a buzz?"  I then stepped outside after load-out and called the
production company to tell them enver to book that venue again, this was
only one of the problems I had with it(Enough slack in the fly system to
wrap a dead body in comes to mind as well).

Yep, this list goes on for quite a while. ;)

           Seablade

PS For those unaware, NEVER lift an AC ground on a piece of equipment.
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