249. Sam Kusnetz Of QLab & Founder Of Team Sound

In Episode 249, Sean and Andy gather around the microphones with Sam Kusnetz, education and training manager for Figure 53’s QLab and founder of Team Sound, maker of MIDI hardware and testers specifically designed for live audio playback users. Sam talks about growing up and falling into theatre in New York, working on smaller tours and regional theatres across the country, and then eventually settling into a dual role as a NY-based associate sound designer and, for the last decade and change, a core member of the QLab support and development team.

Sam and the hosts focus on using QLab across all aspects of live sound, from theatre to corporate audio, and even employing it for more exotic things like calling followspot cues in concerts. Sam also discusses some lesser known features and tips and tricks that QLab 5 allows, shares the power of the free and daily rental licenses for QLab as well as the more standard perpetual licenses, and talks about QLab’s free sibling iPhone/iPad app, Go Button.

They also spend some time talking about some of the biggest changes that came in QLab 5, such as fully chasing timecode, multi-computer client/server collaboration functions, and much more, and get a brief overview of Team Sound’s hardware, which is showing up in more and more sound engineers’ tool boxes every day!

Episode Links:
Figure 53
QLab App
Go Button App
Team Sound
Episode 249 Transcript

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Transcript

Signal To Noise, Episode 249: Sam Kusnetz Of QLab & Founder Of Team Sound

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

Andy Leviss: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and of course, uh, over on the other microphone is my unindicted co conspirator, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: What's up dude? How are you? 

Andy Leviss: You know, I'm good, just hanging in there, uh, enjoying I mean, we'll say it's a day off, although we're recording a couple episodes today, so it's only a day off from being out of the house. 

Uh, haha. But yeah, it's, it's, it's been a, it's been a busy couple of weeks and glad to have a little bit of breathing room.  

Sean Walker: Nice. That's awesome. We're getting our nerd on here in the shop today with some Dante stuff. We're building some Dante switch racks. And then, uh, Monday I got a like keynote speaking thing I got to do at a college. Here locally to some kids learning to record and they were we're doing drum microphone placement and nerdery So it'll be super fun kind of weekend thing 

Andy Leviss: Keep some notes on the Dante stuff as you go, because we'll tease the listeners coming up in a few episodes. We've got a senior technical engineer from Audinate coming on to talk Dante 

Sean Walker: Perfect. I can make the racks. He can tell me how I fucked it up. We can fix it. It'll be great. They'll be flawless 

Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah, no, we got some, we got some, we got, we got a whole wide range of, of guests coming up. 

I think folks are gonna enjoy. And why don't we dive right in and introduce this one. Uh, this is a longtime friend of mine, a former coworker of mine, Sam Kusnetz , alternately of Figure 53, the makers of QLab and Team Sound makers of gadgets to help control QLab and related things. Uh, how you doing, Sam? 

Sam Kusnetz: Hey Andy, thanks very much for having me. Sean, nice to meet you at last. I've heard your, uh, you know, your very calm presence on the podcast for several episodes and, um, uh, really been enjoying listening to you all talk to such a variety of people 

Sean Walker: You know, man, I have been called many things in my life, but Calm has never been one of them. 

More like, you son of a bitch...never calm!  

Andy Leviss: He's like I'm doing something wrong if I'm calm. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, well, you know, if I can just, you know, try to mess with your head as much as possible 

Sean Walker: Yeah, thanks. I'm going to just be crying in the corner over here while you guys have an  

Andy Leviss: I'm gonna say that I thought that was my job as his co host. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, I'm just, I'm just trying to follow your lead,  

Sean Walker: love it. 

Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, why don't, why don't we do the, we'll do the rewind and, and as, um, as Rodgers and Hammerstein said, start at the very beginning and kind of give a quick version of your journey to where you are today and then we can talk a little bit about what exactly it is you do at Figure 53. 

Sam Kusnetz: Totally. Well, I started off with a great birth on the lower west side of Manhattan. Um, but I didn't do any theater. I did not even know one thing about a microphone. Um, no, I got started in theater when I was actually in, um, in elementary school. We had a temporary guest teacher come into my class, uh, uh, in, at public school three on the lower west side. And she sort of introduced the idea of doing a play and I was intrigued. I didn't really understand what it was. Um, but I got involved and was the stage manager, which is to say the person with a list of what furniture went where, um, and just sort of looked after that list and that, that was pretty appealing. Um, and then I switched schools and throughout middle school and high school, I got more involved, um, in, uh, in this new schools theater program, which was much more robust, uh, which was St. Anne's School in Brooklyn Heights. And, um, and there they had like a robust technical theater program. Uh, although it wasn't really. Like class oriented, it was doing shows oriented. And it was the beginning for me of this understanding of like, when you're in school, there's the stuff that happens in class and then there's the other stuff. And, um, my teachers in the theater really helped me grasp the idea that that other stuff, even though it wasn't class was important, if it was important to me and it could become an important part of. Learning and growing as an individual, just as much as being in class could. And I really sunk my teeth into that. And, um, that's when I discovered backstage work and realized that as an actor, uh, I, you know, I was perfectly happy to be involved as an actor, but backstage, I felt like I could really apply the whole of my mind to it. And the whole of my capability to the show and help push the show across the finish line. Um, and that's what I did all through high school, all through college. Uh, I arrived at, at college, uh, to discover that it was only one other student who self identified as a sound designer and I thought, okay, great. 

I thought I was coming here to learn how to do sound design. I guess I'm coming here to just figure out how to do sound design, which is what I did throughout  

Andy Leviss: very familiar.  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Uh, and again, I was, I was, um, very fortunate to have teachers who were like, Oh, sound great. Here's the keys to the sound cabinet. Don't steal anything. I'll see you at tech rehearsal. Um, and you know, a professor like sending me like ripping gear out of the booth to send me home to my dorm room with the mini disc recorder so that I could make cues, uh, and, and arrive prepared for 

Sean Walker: You're dating us that we know what a mini disc recorder is. Easy killer. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Well, you know, we all are where we are, right? My first design, uh, uh, was on open reel on quarter inch two track open reel. And, um, so I went from Open Reel, Cassette, Burned CD Rs, MiniDisc, uh, and then I entered, um, you know, the, the light and started using computerized playback, um, which is, you know, as God intended. 

Sean Walker: You weren't  

Reeling tape back and forth all the time? 

Sam Kusnetz: that was a pain in the neck, man. And I know a lot of people have great nostalgia for that. What I have nostalgia for was the feeling of success when you finally got all that nonsense 

working. Like, yes, I am an invincible monster of audio. I can do anything. What  

Andy Leviss: Hey, Sam, the, the tape is stretching. The tape is stretching. 

Sam Kusnetz: Okay. Well then, all 

right, I'll  

Sean Walker: like, I'm a golden god moment when the whole thing works? Yeah. 

Sam Kusnetz: right. I successfully played two sounds at the same time. No one can stop me. Um, I miss that feeling certainly, but I don't miss the idea that the most basic achievement was a major victory. That like, I'm ready. I was ready to be done with that. Um, and so I'm happy to be where we are. 

I don't miss hand drafting. Literally. I miss hand drafting emotionally. I like using 

Sean Walker: A thousand percent. I feel the same way about tape in the recording studio. Like, I have a little nostalgia for the drum sound, I have zero nostalgia for literally slicing reels of tape apart to hack together people's performances. Like I'm good, I'm good with ProTools, you know what I mean? 

Sam Kusnetz: I keep my mother's, uh, uh, diagonal edit block on my desk here to remind me. She was a sound editor for cinema before I was born. Um, I keep it on my desk. It reminds me of, of where I came from and, um, and it also reminds me that I came from there. It's, it's in the past and that's okay. 

Sean Walker: then every time you start getting nostalgic, you're like, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, just kidding. I remember what that was like, going right back to what I was doing. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. I've been editing for hours and none of my fingers are 

bleeding. That's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, designing. And then, um, got out of college, was, I moved out to Portland, Oregon. I was working as a freelance sound designer. I was touring with a show as a, as a technical supervisor and stage manager. Um, and then I got hired as the A1 at Portland Center Stage, uh, which is the regional theater in Portland, Oregon. Really loved that job. Uh, it had some challenges which were exciting and it had some, you know, it had some cool plays that I got to work on. I had one of the best bosses I've ever had. It was just a cool experience getting to sort of feel like, well, in this little, in this microcosm, in this corner of the world, I'm at this sort of fairly high level doing the thing I like doing, proving to myself that all that self education that happened throughout high school and college actually led me to successfully do the gig. Um, And then I sort of went through a big life change, moved back home to New York City, uh, and two things happened at once. One is that I sort of rebooted my design career within the New York City paradigm of theatrical design, which is, um, has a way of doing things. Um, and I now work mostly as an associate designer, uh, in large off Broadway and smaller Broadway and regional shows. Um, and that's one little piece of my professional life.  

But I was also Right at the time that I moved back east, hired by Figure 53, who makes QLab, to work in the support team. They were, um, um, they, we, we were right about to have a lot more support email needs. And so, um, I was hired on to help answer questions, because I was doing it casually on my own on the, uh, online listserv. And they, um, contacted me and Chris Ashworth said, listen, that thing that you're doing, will you keep doing that? But only now I will give you money. And I said, yes, which is the first rule 

of  

Sean Walker: like money. Yes. Yes,  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, yes. The answer is yes, I will accept currency in exchange for services. 

Um, Yes, Uh, and then because figure 53 is like it is, um, uh, which is to say, hierarchically very flat and very sort of touchy feely about how we work. So, um, because it is that way, I grew from the support role into the role that I have today, which is a mixture of jobs. The first one is I write the QLab manual. Uh, the second is I am the head of education and training. So I teach QLab classes, which we call Q classes. Uh, I edit the QLab Cookbook, which is, um, a set of online articles, um, describing how to do weird things with QLab that are kind of off label, um, maybe just for fun or maybe for doing, uh, doing cool stuff, uh, in an actual show.  

And, um, and then I work with the development team. To help implement QLab features, uh, and help understand the mindset of working designers out in the world, because I am one. And so the, you know, an email may come in from someone saying, listen, I wish QLab did this thing. And the developers read it and say, this guy seems like he knows what he's talking about, but I don't understand what this thing is or why people want it. And then I help explain, okay, so picture you're in the theater and this is the kind of show you're doing, and these are the situations you find yourselves in. Here's how this thing, if we implemented it, would enable the designer. to address those situations in an actual theatrical context. Um, and I work with them to develop those features and I test them and we talk back and forth and then, um, and then when the features developed, then I write about it in the manual. 

It's all one big circle. 

Sean Walker: Cool, dude, that's awesome. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, it's a good gig. It is not the professional life I expected I would have. It is not, you know, if I, if I took my, if I described my current working life to 12 year old Sam, he would be like, uh uh, don't think so. That doesn't make any sense to me. 

Um,  

Sean Walker: us, man. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I guess we all have to realize that on our own, 

though.  

Sean Walker: if we all wanted something super straightforward, we'd just go drive for UPS or something like hop in truck, deliver packages, get out of truck, go home. You know what I mean?  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, yeah,  

Sean Walker: always, you're always Santa Claus bringing presents. Everybody's happy to see you, you know, 

Sam Kusnetz: I mean, that sounds like a 

pretty good gig.  

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Sam Kusnetz: Um, 

not for me,  

Sean Walker: but we're all bananas. So we go do this, right? 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, exactly. 

Andy Leviss: There's a bunch of stuff we can kind of peel apart. And I know a chunk of our listeners are involved in the theater world and a chunk are involved in the corporate world. Um, and I mean, at this point, like, gone are the days of instant replay and stuff like thank God for from the corporate 

world  

Tell me all the  

Sean Walker: corporate  

Andy Leviss: combination of Yeah, I was going to say, like, with QLab and QCart I feel like that's definitely something I think we should dig in a little bit, because, like, we were talking to some listeners in the Discord about questions they had for you, and there were fewer specific questions and more a lot of, we don't come from the theater world and don't necessarily know QLab well, we know the basics, like, what are, like, are there things that you see commonly that People on that side of life don't know about that you think they should that would make their lives easier. 

Sam Kusnetz: Totally. Totally. There's two main sort of feature sets in QLab 5 that I think corporate folks would benefit from understanding. Um, not necessarily, I'm not trying to push it as a tool, right? Cause, uh, the, the very small amount of corporate work that I've done has made me sort of understand that you don't want a tool pushed on you if it's not the right fit, you just, you You don't have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of opportunity to evaluate something on the show. You got to go do what you know, please the client, get on with your life, 

Sean Walker: and it must work  

Sam Kusnetz: So I'm certain and it must work. Exactly. So, so I'm not trying to push anything on anyone, but I do think, um, my experience in the theater, uh, has led me to believe that a, um, Macs are reliable. In short, as computers go, uh, when you put a Mac, um, together, you don't install all kinds of nonsense. 

You keep Adobe products far, far away. Um, you can rely upon this Mac to treat you right, to not crash and not be weird. And I think that's even more true today than it was when I first developed this opinion. So that's thing A. Since QLab is a Mac program, I think that You know, that's a good starting point. Um, B, um, QLab itself, the design of QLab is, um, well, I, I made fun of Adobe, but here's one thing that Adobe does that I really love. Photoshop is a giant monster, right? But you don't need to learn every piece of Photoshop. If you're just making a flyer, you only need to learn the six things you want to do, and then all the other features in Photoshop, you can just completely ignore them. If they're not relevant to what you're doing. So you can learn Photoshop one feature at a time over the course of a lifetime and then eventually discover how much money you gave to Adobe. Um, but that's a separate thing. QLab's like that. Everything QLab does is one piece of a puzzle, but you don't need to build the whole puzzle if you do not want to. If all you're interested in doing is playing sound effects and fading them out, then you learn the audio cue, and the fade cue, and you learn sort of what we call the, the, like, imagine the back end, as you, as it were, the, the settings pertaining to audio, but then you can forget every other thing CueLab does and just get on with your life. So, um, in that spirit, there's, These two features that I think corporate folks are particularly, um, uh, two features that are particularly relevant for corporate folks, the playlist cue type and cue carts. So, in Cuelab, there's a kind of cue called a group cue, and the group cue's job is to contain other cues. And in Five, we added a feature called, um, Playlist Mode to the group cue. When you drop a bunch of, uh, audio files from the Finder into Cuelab, they automatically make Audio cues. And if you take all those audio cues and you put them inside a group cue in playlist mode, and then you select the group cue and hit go, QLab will play each of those files one at a time in sequence, just like it's iTunes. So for corporate people doing like, um, using QLab for basic video playback, as an example, what happens? Nine times out of 10 is it's 90 seconds to doors. And then some guy in an expensive suit shows up with a flash drive and says, here's the slides for the opening slideshow. Can you just flip through these real quick? And, um, by the time he's finished saying that now it's 60 seconds to doors and he hands you the thing and you stick it in and it's a thousand JPEGs in random. Resolution. And, um, that's not something that you can easily make into a slideshow in, in 30 seconds. Right. But drop them into QLab. They become. Video cues, select them all and give them a duration. So you select them all and then say, all right, you're all going to last for 10 seconds, drop them in a playlist group, tell the playlist group loop and crossfade. And then that's it. You have a slideshow. So we've just programmed walk in music and slideshow in, in, uh, in about 40 seconds. 

Andy Leviss: And I, I just learned, I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but I just learned or, or the, the gear click that the crossfade on that works on videos too, which of course makes sense that it should. But yeah, I thought of playing the scripts for audio. I hadn't really thought about them for, for video and 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. It's, it's, you know, it's a blood pressure reducer, which for me is something I value 

very  

Sean Walker: for us audio guys, that makes those like random video things you run into once in a while palatable where you're like, no, no, this thing I already know. I'm just going to video this thing. I already know that's an audio thing. Moving on with my life. Here you go. 

Sam Kusnetz: Exactly right. If all you have to do is walk in slides. Like that's a little value add you can provide as an audio guy. Like if your video needs are basic, don't bother hiring a video team. I've got you. I just need a projector...  

Sean Walker: Please give me the TD's day rate. 

Sam Kusnetz: Right. Right. Ah, yes. Now you notice I do 

Sean Walker: That's right. You'll notice that this is now your second job and I would like their day rate because their day rate is typically higher than my day rate. 

Sam Kusnetz: Right. Right. Um, so that's, that's playlist. First thing that I think, and we designed it-- as we designed it, we were actually proactively thinking about corporate users, um, because we've gotten a lot of feedback from corporate guys, because there are those Mac heads out there in the corporate world who are like, everyone around me is crazy, but I know the truth and I'm not going to touch windows if I don't have to, and help me, help me convince my colleagues. And they're very nice with us. Actually. They're like, here are all the things we need. Um, so we developed. We developed the playlist, uh, mode really thinking about corporate users.  

The other thing is cue carts. By default, QLab displays cues in a list, linear ordered from top to bottom. But you can also make carts in QLab, which is a grid of buttons. Um, QLab 5 lets you choose a grid anywhere from a single button all the way up to 10x10. And in the next revision or the one in a soon revision to QLab, we're going up to 15x15. Someone made an argument about 15x15 being a better upper limit. I don't remember the argument, but we were like, whatever, sure, 15x15, take it.  

Um, so Uh, this, this grid lets you drop in any type of cue, except a group cue, and gives you just sort of a, a non linear panel. So your instant replay is right there. If you want to just have a walk in stinger, bing, it's right there. If you want to have, um, you know, the time running out Jeopardy thing, de de deet, alright, now you can stop talking and get off the stage. You know, just something to touch. If you have a touch screen. You can actually reach out and poke, uh, the cue cart cues. They're nice big targets for that reason. And if you have an iPad connected over the local network, QLab Remote lets you run the cart like a, again, a multi touch screen. It's a very nice interface for that. 

Andy Leviss: And I was going to call out while we're on carts, the other place I've seen more folks particularly in theater use, or in corporate rather, use it lately that pleasantly surprised me is for shows where they do want to run sequentially, but have like, cause a lot of the good corporate A1s have this whole toolbox of here's a bunch of music I have, here's a bunch of stingers, here's generic VOs. I've seen people using carts as palettes now to cut and paste from into the actual show cue list. 

Sam Kusnetz: Oh, cute. I like that. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so 

like I know like in, in like some of the theater, like I know in like, uh, like Rich Walsh's theater template, like he'll have like a color palette in a card and that sort of thing. And I've seen folks either reinventing that or repurpose or learning it from there and repurposing it into the corporate world for that. 

And I, I feel like that's a useful thing to, to flag for folks. 

Sam Kusnetz: Well, right. Like any QLab workspace, like any work you do in a QLab workspace. If you like your work, just save that and copy paste it into your next show. Very, very little adjustment is necessary to move things between shows, especially if your show configurations tend to be the same or similar, you know, if you're always using QLab with Dante, then all your programming of sound cues in this show to Dante will take seconds to adapt to that show. With Dante. So, you know, keep your work forward, your work along. My toolbox in my default QLab workspace has been developed slowly over about 15 years now, and just every year something changes, something gets tweaked, something gets improved, and it carries forward on every show. 

Andy Leviss: Uh, so another thing that I've actually, I feel like it's once every three months or so, I'll get a text from a friend or a call from a friend saying, Hey, I've been Do you know of something that kind of does what QLab does, but, but like free or cheaper? And usually my answer is, in fact, QLab. So I think it's worth both pointing that out for folks and maybe do you want to talk a little bit about both the philosophy there and what options folks have on that side for either free or inexpensive, uh, options for rather than, you know, dropping a few hundred up front on, on a license. 

Sam Kusnetz: Absolutely. So I think the cheapest way to use QLab is actually to use our companion or our sibling app, GoButton, on an iOS device, an iPhone, an iPod touch or an iPad. Because GoButton, while it looks entirely different and it behaves slightly differently, GoButton is actually the QLab engine with a different skin. And GoButton is free. All features of GoButton are completely free, with the exception of storing more than one show on the device at a time. But we make no secret about the fact that you can just airdrop the show off of GoButton. Your device onto your Mac for storage, airdrop on a different show and get on with that. So, uh, the, the, the only thing you need to spend money on in GoButton is if you want to store multiple shows at the same time on the device and easily jump between them. So that's... 

Sean Walker: and what does that cost? 

Sam Kusnetz: ...the cheapest way. It's 99 bucks. 

Sean Walker: A bargain. 

Sam Kusnetz: And, um, you know, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, you don't need the latest and greatest. So if you have a device that's been, uh, demoted from your main device, then it can become a great go button device. 

Sean Walker: Or like me, all my iOS devices are demoted devices, still rocking like 2012 MacBook Pros over here. 

Sam Kusnetz: Listen, 

Sean Walker: Right. Right. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Well, I will throw out that bonus tip that I'm surprised how many folks don't know this, but if you've got an, I mean, it's not going to be an old iPhone since only the newest ones are USB C, but the USB C, uh, or even with the camera connection kit to lightning to USB for iPads, a Dante Avio will work on most iOS devices. 

So you can actually get Dante straight out of an iPad from GoButton or any other app. 

Sam Kusnetz: Because Avios are class compliant devices. 

And, uh, even the, the first, the first lightning iPhone, which I think was the five or even the, or maybe the four S, um, the, uh, lightning includes USB 2. And like, not like kinda USB 2, actual USB 2, it's just on different pins. So anything that USB does, lightning does. 

Including class compliant audio, class compliant MIDI, support for mice, um, and keyboards and trackpads and so forth. So yeah, a Dante Avio box works really nicely with an iOS device. 

Andy Leviss: So, and then going back, we want to graduate up, uh, whether we just feel more comfortable with the keyboard or we want the keyboard interface. Uh, so what are we talking about in like QLab free or, or rental licenses or that situation? You want to give folks a quick rundown? 

Sam Kusnetz: So, stepping up from GoButton to QLab opens up a larger toolbox and, of course, the Mac hardware which is, um, you know, different physical form factor, more power, blah, blah, blah. Um, the free version of QLab is just QLab, but with no license installed. We don't have a separate version, uh, QLab is QLab. And when you run QLab without a license installed, um, from an audio perspective, there are really only two, like, Major limitations. 

And the first one is you're limited to stereo output. You can't do multi channel output. And the second is you can't use audio effects live within CueLab. So, with a license, any audio unit that's installed on your Mac, any, you know, any of, any of your plugins that are effects, like reverbs or EQs or so forth, can be used live on an audio cue or a mic cue in CueLab at any time. But without a license, you can't do that. With a license, CueLab can output up to 128 channels. Without a license, it can output two channels. So, uh, if you're just using stereo out, you know, through the headphone jack or a Dante, uh, Aveo box, or, uh, you know, a little USB DI or radial, whatever. Um, then. No license, no problem. And critically, uh, our support team responds to support email requests from people using QLab without a license, the exact same way we respond to people using a license or having paid for many licenses, we do not treat support any differently based upon what you've spent with us. 

Andy Leviss: And if only your support had a better reputation for how, how terrible it is. That's, I don't know if it's still the official policy, I know for a long time the, the, at least unofficial motto of Figure 53 was support is sales, support is advertising. And I tease because the, the team there and my former teammates and the new folks are some of the best, most helpful bend over backwards support folks I've ever encountered. 

Sam Kusnetz: Thank you very much for that. We do still talk about support being, um, being sort of the main way to, um, sell QLab and the main way to market QLab. Um, and we do say that, um, between 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday on a non holiday, we will typically reply within an hour. But the truth is we will typically reply much faster than that. Um, we only do support over email. Um, we take that pretty seriously. Telephone support is difficult to track long term. It's difficult for people to keep track of what's happened so far. It's difficult to learn from. Um, so we offer email support, but we're very fast about it and we take it very seriously. And of course, support is completely free. 

Sean Walker: Well, that's a  

Sam Kusnetz: Um, so there's free QLab.  

Sean Walker: that support is completely free. You don't have to wait in line with a  

support code and do other things. Even though you got thousands  

Sam Kusnetz: of dollars  

You know, I think  

Sean Walker: worth of hardware on a show site that you can't get somebody to call you back for. 

Sam Kusnetz: Everyone's entitled to their own business model, even if they're inferior. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Totally. 

Sam Kusnetz: Um, you know, there's a, I mean, I am not, you know, I don't want to be just like an Apple fanboy, okay? But, um, they do something policy wise that I think is important for us all to learn from, which is that they understand that eliminating customer frustration is more valuable than Um, whatever loss you take dealing with a return. So if you walk in with an Apple product that's recently purchased and you want to return it, they take it. They don't fuss with you. They don't give you a hard time if you, if you don't have the exact right receipt or whatever, that if you don't have any receipt at all, you just say like, Hey, I bought it on my credit card, here's my credit card. 

Whatever. If they can, if they can easily find out that you actually did buy the thing and you want to return it, they take it and you walk away and it's over. You're refunded. I think that's really important. I know it's easy for them to say, well, we've got a. Just over a trillion dollars in the bank. So we don't really care about, you know, whether we're being nickled and dimed out of, you know, someone's trying to fleece us for a hundred bucks in their return to iPod or whatever. I know it's easy for them to say that, but the truth is that even if you don't have a lot of money in the bank, it's worth it because you want the customer to not feel like you were unnecessarily punitive to them after they've already had a bad experience and want to return the product. So for us, for us, if you're using QLab and you're writing to us, You know, like, please, all the sound people out there who work professionally and really like telling people that they don't know what's going on and they need help, raise your hand, right? 

Like, that's not, that's not the most predominant culture. People generally, especially when they're already on the job, don't like having to say like, Hey, something's screwed up and it's probably my fault and I don't understand and I need help. I need help from a stranger. Uh, that's, that doesn't feel good to a lot of people. 

So we don't want people to then feel like once they've made the emotional commitment to asking for help, that there's any form of punishment that comes with that. Instead, we want to reward that and say like, Yes, you wrote in, we're going to help you out. We're going to hook you up. You have got a weird Apple script problem. 

Lucky Dave's going to write you a crazy long script. It's going to take them a couple of days, but you, you wait and you're going to get a 10, 000 line script that solves your problem because Lucky Dave is an Apple script maniac. Or, oh, you've got a Dante problem. Like just hang on one second. When Charles comes on in an hour, like Charles will happily talk you through. Your show, which sounds a little bit like the enormous Dante install that he just did for insert name of fancy Broadway show here, or whatever, you know, um, or like, oh, you're in a high school, right? Well, Patrick works in high schools a lot. So like Patrick knows your situation. Patrick's going to help you out here or whatever. Um, uh, actually, when I think about that, I realize listening back later, uh, Patrick, if you're out there, uh, I think it's possible that I've, You don't actually work in high schools all the time, but you might. Um, and if it's not you, it's some other support member that I've conflated, and my apologies  

there. Yes, yes, 

always,  

Sean Walker: Espresso, sparkly water, let's go. 

Sam Kusnetz: yep, hit me, hit me. Sparkly water. That's, that's,  

Andy Leviss: I thought it was Manishevitz.  

Sam Kusnetz: the, the, the water of my people, 

as I say, uh, is seltzer. 

Um, yeah. Ah, well, indeed. One or the other, depending on the holiday and the portion of the holiday. Dayenu. Um, so we were talking about price though, right? 

So support is free, QLab itself is free. But if you need to unlock the more powerful licenses, let's start with a rental license. An audio only rental license is five bucks a day. It's not a subscription, it's just a day rate. So you pay QLab's day rate. Uh, when you buy it, you enter a start date and an end date, and then you pay for those dates and the license gets installed in your account. When you install the license from your account onto a Mac, the license will automatically wake itself up and put itself back to bed on its start date and end date. So someone who's doing a show on three successive weekends, while they're planning, they could buy three weekends worth of licenses. Okay. 

I'm doing this weekend, the next weekend, the weekend after, buy them all at once. So there's your 45, install them all at once. And then. Not to think about it again, on Friday, the license wakes up, on Sunday, the license goes to bed, and that happens three weekends in a row, and then you get on with it, and every dollar you spend on a license, that is a rental license, becomes a, uh, credit of one dollar in your account, so if you want to later buy a permanent license, you can use all the cash you spent on your rental licenses to get a discount on the permanent license. 

Sean Walker: that  

Sam Kusnetz: Um, essentially,  

Sean Walker: That is awesome. 

Sam Kusnetz: we take that really seriously. We think that, you know, there's a lot of people out there who want to own QLab, but for whom a large purchase up front is just not feasible. And so rent to own is our method. Um, you can use rent to own credit  

Andy Leviss: Dammit, there goes my scheme to rent today and then use that rental credit to rent again to  

Sam Kusnetz: be paid for with cash. Um, yes, devious, but we thought you out. We outfoxed you, Andy. Um, so you got your 5 a day rental. Uh, if you want to buy the whole feature set outright, it's 499. That gives you two installations, you can put them on two computers, and we no longer care what you do with those two computers. We used to have a policy, The new policy is 4. 99, one license, install twice, get on with your life. If you want to put it on the main stage and the second stage. If you want to put it on your two shows that you send out. Maybe you have a shop and you have enough gear to run two shows simultaneously. Fine, great, one license for you. Um, and that's 4. 99 and that license is perpetual. And you will be able to use that license for as long as you're able to use QLab 5. Now, someday we will release QLAB 6. Your QLAB 5 license will not be able to be used in QLAB 6. There will be some upgrade price. You will be able to surrender your QLAB 5 license and get some credit to discount a QLAB 6 purchase. But you could also keep using QLAB 5. And you can keep using QLab 5 as long as you want. Our general trend has been, we support the current version of QLab and the previous version of QLab. And then anything older than that, we'll kind of support if we're not busy, but we can't promise anything. So right now, when people write in with QLab 2 or 3 questions, those go to the bottom of our priority list. And sometimes we answer like, can't help you. You're trying to run QLab 2 on a  

Andy Leviss: we're not, we're not talking like a Mac, you know, like OS release cycle where it's like, there's a new version every year. Like what's, what's the life cycle for like QLab 4 or QLab 5? 

Yeah, so we're talking like potentially eight years back of versions of support at least, and then you'll try and work another four to eight on top of 

that.  

Sean Walker: You got to be out of your mind to think somebody's going to support an  

Andy Leviss: Clearly Sean has never done software support for a living.  

Sean Walker: new versions or whatever it is right now. Like, come on guys, don't 

No. 

Sam Kusnetz: while Sean, I don't disagree with you, I think what I will say  

Andy Leviss: to be fair, I, I get small shoestring budgets and stuff, like I understand some of where it  

Sean Walker: not alarming because you  

Andy Leviss: And we also 

tend to be an industry, both in audio in general, and I think particularly in the theater sub, subset of that, that is very resistant to change in certain things. Which is always odd, because we're so very, like, new toy on so many other 

things.  

Sean Walker: Having to upgrade your software package once a decade is not crazy pants. You know what I mean? 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, and I agree with that, and I think like, I don't know, on the one hand it's like, I bought this SM57 in 1968 and it's still working fine, damn it. Like, great, good for you. Good. Keep using that mic. And And like, wherever I can help be like that, I will help be like that, right? We offer free support. We offer free tutorial materials, downloads, we'll write scripts for you. 

We'll do all kinds of things. Everything that we can do, we will do. And the pace of technology is such that it's actually very challenging and it becomes Really expensive to support software that's older than about 10 years. And since we can't do it, then we won't do it. And it's not about like a policy. 

It's not about wanting to screw you. It's not about trying to milk you for money. We try very hard to signal in as many ways as possible that it's not about those things. And in fact, we'll also overtly say it. If someone comes up to us, you know, um, a little hot, Headed about it. Um, I'm happy to talk about it in detail. 

Anytime we have someone on, on our Google group saying like, I really feel like you should support, you know, you should provide upgrade pricing from QLab2 to QLab5. And our answer is, well, if you bought QLab2 and then you're trying to upgrade to QLab5, you're asking for a discount. Over a period of time where you spent no money with us for over a decade. And that's fine. We don't begrudge you at all. Rock out with QLab2 for the rest of your life. Absolutely. But meanwhile, we have bills, you know, we've got to keep the lights on. We've got to support everybody. We've got to pay the support staff. We've got to run the infrastructure that provides the downloads for QLab, like hosting costs. 

It's not zero. And. We do as much as we can to keep the price as low as we can. And then there's a line below which we can't go without threatening the business. And this is where it is. And if that makes you unhappy, then I'm sorry, but we can't change that without compromising our ability to succeed, not just for  

Andy Leviss: And hey, you haven't got a subscription, so there's that. 

Sam Kusnetz: Subscription pricing, I think, in a theatrical context, in a freelance context, subscription pricing is challenging, right? On the one hand, you could say like, okay, subscription pricing for the freelancer is something that they can pass on to their client, but Like who, in a, in a theater, is it the sound designer who's supposed to own the subscription and somehow bill as part of their kit fee to the producer at the Lort Theater? No. Is it the Lort producer that should own the subscription? Okay. Well, that's okay. But what if they rent all their equipment? Well, then should the rental house have the subscription pricing, but then the rental house is paying for the days when the Mac is on the shelf. Just as equally as the days that the Mac is on the show. So it creates, I feel this is me personally, not figure 53. I think it creates a misalignment of incentives. And, um, I think subscription pricing in a professional context is actually. Only suitable for high margin, high dollar businesses and actually really unfair for low margin or more,  

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I mean, not to, not to shit  

Sam Kusnetz: know, more  

Andy Leviss: altogether, like, there's, there's a very valid case from a developer standpoint for subscriptions in situations it's appropriate in, which, to, like, the capsule version, as I'm sure, Sam, you know, is, is basically, if we've got constant income coming in and we're not trying to sell upgrades, we can come up with cool features Push it out now and not have to worry about not, we're not banking enough features to make a major release to make an upgrade. And that's one of the things I want to call out that, that y'all do at Figure 53 that's really cool, is while to a certain extent you do that because you have to by the nature of eventually four years from down the road needing to sell an upgrade, the major features y'all put out as free updates in between are not. are bonkers. Like, you, you guys really thread a balance of that. That, like, I was proud to be a part of when I worked with y'all, and, you know, I'm glad to see continuing now. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Well, you know, when we dropped KeyLab 5. There were some people  

Andy Leviss: You sunk  

Sam Kusnetz: longtime QLab users who upgraded on that day. We got a nice bump on that day. It felt good emotionally and also in the bank account, but there are plenty of people out there who were really circumspect and said, actually, there's nothing in there for me. 

I'm not upgrading today. And. I don't have any problem with that person. I'm, I, I am that person sometimes. I am that person often. Um, so, for me, the big feature set that will drop in QLab 5. 5, say, maybe entices the upgrader that didn't upgrade on day one, but would upgrade in general, right? So that, that person is out there, ready to spend the money once the feature set appeals. And so, We can't achieve everything on day one, right? It would take twice as long to develop the whole feature set of QLab5 on day one and release on day one. Instead, we release what we think is a worthy set of features for day one. And then we continue our development plan basically through to. About two thirds of the life cycle, right? It usually works that way, like, about two thirds of the way through the development cycle of KeyLab 5 is when we really will start shifting gears and working on 6, and the features will start trickling rather than gushing. Um, but, um, without speaking too much to our development plans, I will say, I firmly believe That QLab 5. 

5 has, um, has a big incentive for a lot of users and I'm excited and proud to be able to like, like drop that bomb halfway through the life cycle  

Andy Leviss: John and I are both baking that giddy, like, oh my god, what is it, what is it, what  

Sam Kusnetz: and entice the people who haven't yet. You know, I don't, I don't like to tease, um,  

Andy Leviss: Um, I mean, we talked, why don't we, while we're talking about that, Yeah, well, while we're talking about, uh, 5 and like what you've added so far, I know we touched on playlist, uh, mode, which is new for 5. Um, I think maybe, do you want to give us a quick, um, for folks who maybe haven't upgraded, haven't kept up what, what some of the other big tentpole things in 5 were? Both for our theater listeners and our, and our corporate and concert listeners. 

Sam Kusnetz: absolutely. So, I would say that, um, the major change in QLab 5 over QLab 4 is what we call collaboration. So, QLab 5, um, is now, uh, now a client server product. QLab works on one Mac. Just the way it ever has, but you can also connect to a QLAB workspace from another Mac on the local network and That remote Mac as we call it can be a remote editor or a full on remote control with full access to every feature Which means in the simplest case you can leave your production Mac in the rack hooked up to all the gear that it needs to Be hooked up to but then go and sit with a laptop out in the house And RemoteIn, as though you're using screen sharing, but without using screen sharing, because screen sharing is a demon. TeamViewer is a monster that sucks power out of your computer and spits it out without any regard for who you are or what you're doing. Uh, KVM comes in only two flavors. There's XDip and Terrible. And so, I don't want to use it. Right? I'm not interested. I hate all KVMs. The best KVM, the XDip, is like, holorable to me. But I don't want it. I'd rather have another Mac using QLab Collaboration. The other thing that's nice about Collaboration is that it supports essentially an infinite number of users. I've never used more than 35 people, but with 35 people on a good Wi Fi  

Andy Leviss: fair.  

Sam Kusnetz: worked fine. 

Andy Leviss: I was going to say  

Sam Kusnetz: It was in a class 

and it was not an actual production  

environment. Um, um, that, that would be, I think, a little much, but you can imagine an environment where a lot of collaborators could be useful, right? So let's say, uh, again, I'll picture a sort of a corporate or a presentational environment, um, an industrial environment. The show Mac is a Mac studio in the rack. It's got a Burley, um, uh, you know, Dante based sound system behind it. And it's got a multi video projector system behind it. Okay. That's in the rack backstage hooked up to all the gear. Out front, the A1's position. A1 has maybe a MacBook Air. And they've got a collaboration client hooked up in control mode. So they can start cues, stop cues, move the playhead position, but they can't edit cues or reorder them. That way the A1 doesn't have to worry about accidentally fucking something up while they're, you know, doing the trained octopus thing of touching every button at the same time, right? Let them focus on what they do. Then, meanwhile, over there is the designer. The designer has, uh, edit privileges but not control privileges. So the designer can't accidentally run a queue but can edit everything, can add queues, delete queues, reorder queues. Maybe they've got an assistant who's working with them and they have their own internal human level rules about who's gonna touch what and when. When you're doing a massive collaboration um, software, you basically can, Adopt one of two philosophies in terms of, um, access control. One is make machine rules and say, two people can't edit the same cue at the same time, or two people can't edit the same cue list at the same time or whatever, or you can make human rules, which is the old joke, doctor, it hurts when I do this. 

Okay, well don't do this. So we use the doctor, it hurts when I do this methodology, which is the same thing that Google Docs does. If you and I are editing the same paragraph at the same time, It will be difficult. We will step on each other. So we make a human agreement. You edit this paragraph, I'll edit that paragraph. And then no one hurts anybody. So that's the way QLab works. Um, I may have another designer over there who's doing just the video work. So they have edit control, edit powers, and they're working on a completely different cue list than the audio designer. And so forth. So it doesn't, doesn't seem to me all that difficult to imagine six to eight people collaborating on a workspace in a, in a. 

in a busy way is as like, I like to think about it as a force multiplier, right? I'm just trying to get the show up faster. I've got these people here, so let's be able to apply all of their energy to the QLab workspace at once and develop it faster. In a school setting, it can be really powerful because you've got Schools where you've always got extra humans and in fact, sometimes trying to find out things, find things for them to do, right? Okay. Enthusiastic ninth grader, uh, you are not ready to mix this show, but I would like your involvement. So why don't I get you in as a QLab collaborator and I get you working ahead and like stubbing out. Cues before we get to the scene in tech rehearsal. So you're going to build the structure of the cues that we will later come and fill in, uh, you, other enthusiastic ninth grader, maybe you are, um, taking, making notes as we work with the stage manager, figuring out which cue number needs to be adjusted or what cue lines can get filled in or anything like that. Um, so collaboration is just a way of getting a lot more people together to work on it. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's  

Sam Kusnetz: Um, so that's the first big thing that's new in 

five. Yeah. You like that? 

Sean Walker: Now Andy can fix all my boo boos and all I have to do is hit go. 

Sam Kusnetz: right. I like, I like, wherever possible, unburdening the A1 from having, not to do a thing, A1s are very good at doing a thing, but I want to unburden  

Andy Leviss: that I've had mixing theater more and more where they're like, you know, do you want us to just have  

Sam Kusnetz: trigger the...  

Worry that spoils  

Andy Leviss: playback cues for you? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. That's I know. Like there's that instinct to like almost be like a little hurt by it and be like, Oh, I can take my cues. Fine. It's like, you know what? It's fine. It's one less thing I have to focus on. And frankly, if my cue is going to be screwed up, I'd rather you be the one who screwed it up. 

Sam Kusnetz: You know what, Andy? I, there is only, there's, I am a patient guy. I have no patience for tribalism in professional theater. I just have no patience for that shit. What is this world where a certain kind of electrician feels like I must defend the electrics department against invasions from the rest of the production? No, you mustn't. We are working on a show together. Have you noticed that? There is a crew. A design team. There are not separate crews and separate design teams. I mean, there are separate crews, but only because there's a contracts  

Andy Leviss: how I say it  

Sam Kusnetz: right? It doesn't actually. So will you please settle the fuck  

down 

Andy Leviss: a sound operator  

Sam Kusnetz: me plug this thing into that outlet without everyone having a  

Andy Leviss: up to one of those conversations was the lighting up came over and said, Hey, look, all our cues need to be in sync. So they want to tie us together. I would prefer to run them because if my cues are going to be messed up, I want to be the one who messes them up. 

And I looked her straight in the eye and said, Great, because if my cues are going to be messed up, I want you to be the one who messes them up. Sounds like a deal. 

Sam Kusnetz: It turns out that setting your ego down, um, often is, uh, it's easy to justify it from a purely selfish perspective. And, and. I'm not encouraging selfishness, but I'm saying that once you realize that, then all the reasons that you might not want to do that dissolve pretty quickly. Hang on, if I agree to let that person do whatever it is they want, they do it. And I can get on with my life over here doing what I want. Fine. 

Sean Walker: Which I've already got enough stuff to do today. It's not like I need something else to do and I'm just sitting here bored at front of house. 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Exactly. 

Sean Walker: the ninth fricking medical convention. Then you're like, nope, nevermind. I'm bored. Somebody give me something to do, but in general, like, yeah, I got enough to do in front of house. 

I don't need one more thing to be doing. 

Sam Kusnetz: I was hired to work a corporate gig in which it was like, Show up at 7am, wear a good suit, sit there, and when that man  

says so, press this button 800 day rate. no, it was great, but like, 

Andy Leviss: the day rate.  

Sam Kusnetz: After six hours I was like, I don't feel like I'm being used to my full 

potential 

here. I took it, I took it, I took it, I'm just saying there's, there's those shows where I'm like, I could at any time  

Andy Leviss: Yeah.  

Sam Kusnetz: help. And they're like, no, no, no, we have, we have help for that. Okay, man, whatever.  

I'm just saying, I 

understand  

Sean Walker: no, totally dude. Totally. I, I got, I got hired one time to be the RF coordinator for a, for a corporate  

show that had no RF on it.  

Andy Leviss: And it. was the best job you ever did.  

Sean Walker: I got to the show. I was like, all  

right, guys. ready to rip. Like, where's the RF package? And they were like, Oh, there's, there's actually no RF on this. Um, I guess you can just hang out. 

And I was like, yo man, I'm pretty sure that day rate is not going to just like be swept under the rug,  

you know what I mean? And they're like.  

Sam Kusnetz: You didn't do a site  

Andy Leviss: There's nothing  

Sean Walker: fine. No, I, there was no RF on this show. So I just went  

and helped him fly PA and design systems and then hung out and ran my company from backstage for somebody paying my day rate. 

It was awesome. 

Sam Kusnetz: Open up the laptop, look at Wireless Workbench very carefully and say, 

yep, yep, no  

Sean Walker: percent. If this RF scan  

looks wonderful, I think this is going to be a  

successful show. 

Andy Leviss: So, so, Sam, we were, we were starting to talk about like some of the newer stuff in five and we were talking about some collaboration stuff. Um, talking to me about timecode, cause I know that. That, if I'm not misremembering, is kind of dramatically and powerfully changed between 4 and 

5,  

Sam Kusnetz: Yes, absolutely. And thank you for dragging me back on subject. Um, timecode, um, in QLab 5 has been completely revamped. Um, first of all, Siobhan, genius that she is, rewrote timecode handling. Um, entirely. So it's all gotten, um, you know, just a complete, a complete once over everything that we were doing, we're doing in a considered modern way. 

Andy Leviss: as  

Sam Kusnetz: uh, you know, it's under the hood stuff is all, is  

all refreshed. Yeah. And I like all of this is with the huge caveat now taking off my figure 53 hat of saying, I believe that time code is only good for what it was invented for, which is making sure that an audio recorder and a film camera are in sync on set. Making a major motion picture. I think the reason we use time  

code in live performance  

is because there's nothing better. 

And I think it's awful.  

Andy Leviss: gonna pause us here for a second to tell a story that, back when I worked with Sam there, we had a  

company retreat years ago, and Siobhan, who is the timecode goddess of, um, and video goddess of, Figure 53, uh, teaches film scoring. And so as part of this company retreat, late one night, and we scheduled it late one night, we got a version of the Crash Course of the History and Practices of Time Code. And we decided we would turn it into a drinking game, during which any time anyone in the room said, Why the fuck would you do that? We had to take a drink. Most of us, I don't think, remember the second half of that  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, there's something about partial frames 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we dropped  

many more things than frames by  

the end of the night.  

Sam Kusnetz: Um, so, so with that caveat that I personally think time code is, is, is bad, like morally bad, uh, to use in live performance,  

um, uh, that's a joke. I don't think, you know what you use the tool, whatever, get the show done. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we don't talk religion on this show...

Sam Kusnetz: Um, I'm easy, but, um, we don't, we don't, we don't, and we shouldn't. Um, QLab5, uh, now chases timecode, uh, which was an update. 

QLab4 could trigger off of timecode, right? So you could ask an individual queue, listen, when. Hour, one minute zero, second 12 frame eight comes in, start this queue. But now QLab five will chase the time code. Any queue that's triggered off of time code that has a duration will watch for incoming time code over its full duration. And if you start time code in the middle of the queue, the queue will start in the middle.  

If you start time code after the queue, the queue is smart  

enough to this inclusive of like, If there's a series of fades and stuff  

Andy Leviss: in a timeline group, and the timeline queue is what's triggered off time code, will that catch up? 

Sam Kusnetz: Yes, if the group is what's triggered off time code, then everything within the group. Follows along, um, there are some edge cases which we're still learning to work out. Um, we just encountered a, a bug in, um, a recent, like the last three revisions of QLab, a little bug involving timecode, uh, which we're addressing in the next minor release. Um, so it's not, you know, it's And anyone who tells you their software is bug free is either NASA or lying. So, we're not NASA, so we have bugs, of course we do, but we're addressing them. Um, but there are a bunch of little settings that you can apply to for deciding, um, how to behave. So like, uh, you can set QLAB when timecode comes in. QLAB will look back at any QLAB queues that are supposed to trigger within the last minute. and start those cues, or it can look back to the last hour, or it can look back a number of seconds that you specify, or it can not look back at all. So for an example, if you have a show that's structured with songs and scenes in between them, and each song starts at an hour, so we have our first song at one hour, our second song at two hours, our next song at three hours, and you tell CueLab to, um, look back. within the last minute. That means that the video department could send us timecodes starting right at hour three, but all of my setup cues that bring the right scene up on the console, or set my reverb outboard to the right preset, or send whatever nonsense to the drummer, all those setup cues could be timed as timecode triggers within the minute leading up to hour three, and they would all automatically get fired. Because QLab is looking back the previous minute. Um, it now QLab also now freewheels. So you can set your own FreeWheel time from zero to two seconds. If time code drops. QLab will wait for the FreeWheel time before stopping time. Code triggered cues and you can set Qab to either stop time, code triggered cues, pause time code, trigger cues, or leave them running. When timecode drops, um, this is prompted by the folks who use QLab, um, following timecode sent from the video department in big concerts where they're in rehearsal and the video guy hits stop and we would really like everything in QLab to please pause so that we can see what's going on in QLab at the moment that the video guy pressed pause, which was the moment that the talent said, wait, I Because you want to see like, why did she say wait? Uh, oh, I see. Okay, this is a bad fade. This is a blah blah blah. I'm going to change it around. Fix that. Now we can go back and try it again. If they say wait again, we have that same moment frozen in time in QLab, so we can see what we're working with and make adjustments as necessary. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome.  

Andy Leviss: Yeah, sorry. 

Yeah, and I I thought Sean had a  

Sam Kusnetz: I see thinking face. No, I see,  

I, 

Sean Walker: Nope. Nope. I was, I was just sitting there beach balling. I was just  

Sam Kusnetz: and meanwhile, I'm like, I'm watching.  

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. 

Sam Kusnetz: I'm watching the load indicator 

over Andy's head like, hang on, hang on. And the outgoing time code from QLab is not revised dramatically. We have a time code queue that can generate LTC or MTC LTC,  

if you're a reasonable person, MTC if  

Andy Leviss: And L, LTC, LTC for the, for the folks who, who are not precision nerds about  

their terminology is what everybody else calls SMPTE, which I think either Sam 

or I could probably do a long rant on. 

Sam Kusnetz: Right. Yeah, the short rant is SMPTE is the name of the organization that is in charge of timecode. So you know, we don't call all of our microphones in the locker Sennheiser. We don't call them all Shure. We call them what they're called. So you should call things what they're called. LTC is linear  

timecode. 

It's audio timecode. And SMPTE are the 

Andy Leviss: that you're likely to run into it, but SMPTE also has VITC, which could also by the same token be called SMPTE timecode. I couldn't even tell you where to find it, I just know it exists because that's how I hang on to useless knowledge. 

Sam Kusnetz: Very interesting timecode. Uh, no, vertically integrated, I think. Okay. Otherwise known as, no one uses this. Um, uh, what's, um, a little bit of difference though, you can now set timecode queues to have a specific duration, right? So if you know, you only want to roll 38 seconds of timecode, you don't have to program that yourself. 

You just set an end time and that's that. Um, and then QLab has this new timecode status window that just sort of serves as a clearinghouse for all timecode coming and going to or from QLab. Lets you see everything in one place, monitor timecode streams so you can know what you're getting, um, it'll tell you if the level's too low or too hot, um,  

And so forth. So that's all the timecode refinements  

Andy Leviss: other thing I want to flag is I know  

we're running short on time, and there's a couple other things I want to I want to make sure we hit one of which 

that again, I more theater folks are aware of incognizant of, although I still feel less so. And that every time I've mentioned to a corporate folks, light bulbs come on and and minds blow, which is multi channel audio, like multi channel 

audio files. So, 

maybe if you want to talk about both how that works, how that's useful, and how to make that happen when you only have mono or stereo files. 

Sam Kusnetz: Sure. Sure. So, QLab supports audio files up to 24 channels. Um, so, WAV and AIFF and CAF files are uncompressed file formats that support, uh, N number of channels. QLab supports 24 channels. So, if you have a piece of music, um, Uh, you know, mixed down to stereo, you hear a stereo image of all of the instruments, uh, and vocalists in that music. But if you can persuade the composer to give you the stems, as a multitrack file, you can bring it into Cuelab and have one track for the bass, one track for the kit, one track for the piano, one track for each vocalist, one track for each brass instrument, whatever. Each of those channels can play back in QLab. 

It will be locked in perfect sync because they're all coming from one file, but they can each be individually routed. So you can route different levels of each of those channels to each of your different outputs. Which means, for example, if you're using a multi output system, you could send everything at Unity to left and right, Presupposes that the stems have been pre balanced level wise. Um, or you could say, no, you know what, composer, don't mix anything. I'll mix it in situ and say, okay, we want this much piano, this much bass, this much drums, this much vocal, and create the mix in the room, which allows the artistic director, the director, the composer, the MD, whoever Sits above you in the, in the pay scale to turn to you and say like, Hey, can we get a little less tenor sax in this? 

And you can be like, no problem. And it's over. But also it means that you can send a different mix to the monitors, send a different mix to the backstage, send a different mix to the in ear, send a different mix to the broadcast truck, 

Sean Walker: So very much like a DAW  

Sam Kusnetz: no problem, right? And you can't. Uh, you can't turn a multi, like, you can't change the time relationship between the tracks, right? So in a DAW, someone could be like, Hey, can actually we bump that, like, the bassist was a, you know, a quarter note early for three measures. Bump it back a quarter note. That's not possible, because the tracks in a multitrack audio file are locked in time. Like a DAW, in which at least the 

timing  

Sean Walker: route it  

Sam Kusnetz: you can then do the post hoc  

Sean Walker: you 

can't affect it and slide it around like a DAW. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and that's where you get a little bit into the difference between  

having five stems as individual files grouped together to start simultaneously versus a five track file. And there's pluses and minus to each of those workflows. 

Sam Kusnetz: Totally. I could take five different mono tracks, piano, bass, drums, guitar, vocals, and drop them all into a timeline group queue. Since they're all routed to the same audio device, they will all play in perfect sync. And they will stay in perfect sync, and then each one of those cues can be treated completely differently with its own audio effects, its own routing, and if timing needs to be adjusted, its own timing. But, if I've got them all bunched up into a multitrack, then,  

uh, I can view them all at once, edit them all at once in one  

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and if you need to get into 

Sam Kusnetz: and it works a 

little bit and that sort of, uh, that sort of  

Andy Leviss: thing that's a  

lot easier to do on one multitrack file than trying to 

do it across five.  

Sean Walker: okay, new guy question. So then  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah,  

Sean Walker: if we've got QLab running multi track audio, like we would for playback in a concert situation, right? Can I then marry the teleprompter or lyrics to that that the artist is watching so we can trigger one thing that has the lyrics for the artist on their monitor and also the playback all tied together? 

Nice! 

Sam Kusnetz: well, 

Sean Walker: Nice!  

Sam Kusnetz: we can do that. So the timeline mode of the group queue, um, is a, is a group queue mode in which everything inside that group is started simultaneously. And as an added bonus, you have, uh, a bit of UI for the timeline. Group queue that lets you view all the queues within it in a graphical fashion on your screen look in a way that looks a lot like a DAW But it doesn't have to be only one type of queue, right? 

So you could put text queues, video queues, MIDI queues, audio queues Everything can go in there and all get timed out and it will all play back precisely 

timed the same way every  

time 

Sean Walker: That would have really simplified And, and in fact, QLab 

Andy Leviss: has text cues, so if you don't have the Titles  

generated as a video file, you can build that in QLab as well. 

Sean Walker: So if they just hand me playback, I can literally just type out the lyrics against this file and create that for them. And it doesn't have to be video. It can just be like, here's this text queue with an HDMI out of this Mac to the screen that they got on front of them. Good talk. Why you make it so easy? 

Why you make it so easy? 

Sam Kusnetz: if you give me about, give me about, give me about half an hour and I can make a QLab machine for you, I'm sorry,  

a  

QLab machine into a  

karaoke I, and I believe there's even some scripts in the cookbook that'll let you like take a text file with like each line of lyrics on a line and, and build all the base cues for you so you just have to 

Andy Leviss: tweak timing a little bit.  

Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. Cause you know, Some of the, some, uh, legacy artists memories aren't working like they did years ago. And so having a little like quick, Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. Totally. You know what I mean? You got 50 years of catalog remembering every single word at every single point is, is tricky. 

You know? 

Sam Kusnetz: of course it's tricky. I did a, um, uh, uh, I did a sound design for a play that was essentially a, it was a standup act, right? It was a, it was a well known standup comic doing his thing, but it was sort of dressed as a play. It was interesting, um, but it was just a stand up act. But because we had a theatrical director, and because we had a preview period, we were kind of tweaking the set list, as it were, um, and then locking it, which is not What stand ups are used to. 

Some stand ups hone their act and they do it exactly the same way, but other stand ups are a little fast and loose and they're like, oh, you know what, this joke is not landing. I'm going to skip this next joke and move on. But this show, it had to be exactly what it was every night because it was cued and because it was, that was the expectation. And in previews, I went from being just the sound designer to also supplying slides that prompted the comic about which was the next section of the show. Because we were editing it too fast for him to adapt. It's not his fault. He's a very bright guy and a very hard worker. It was changing fast and he had just, you know, an hour and a quarter of text that he was just working as hard as he could to not improvise against, and instead just do honestly. And, We had, just all of a sudden, I had a million text cues, and I would just write the name of each section, and those text cues would get rearranged in order every night, and they just flashed up on a big monitor we put on the balcony rail, 

and that was that, piece of cake for him. Um, but it was something that, like, yeah, I just, like, jumped into it, not because it didn't take a major, you know, of my system. 

All I needed to do was basically co opt the balcony rail camera, uh, monitor that's, you know, we use for the musical director when we're doing a musical and turn it into 

an output from  

Sean Walker: now I can sneak those little like 99 Amazon screens on people, like against people's wedges and just fuck with them. Like, Hey, your mom called. She wants her hairdo back. You know what I mean? Like  

just no problem. just texting people on stage. 

Sam Kusnetz: Left shoes  

Andy Leviss: my left or house left? 

Sean Walker: You're  

Andy Leviss: Uh, and, and I was thinking, I'm thinking about like  

clients, like we talked to you like back like years ago when I was there. And I think the other, the other use, I feel like we can flag out for the concert folks is I've seen particularly on larger running like residency shows or just really busy shows, uh, stage managers kind of tying out their show calling or spot operators, pre recording all their show calls as audio cues in QLab and triggering off time code from the video department. And then just kind of stand, 

stand by to deal with  

emergencies and, but  

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Yeah. Or I guess you could  

do it. for you.  

I know someone who does text cues, um, for spot ops where there's like a monitor in the eyeline for the spot op, and they just get a big text notice like, you know, standby, pick up Susie,  

Susie go,  

and so forth. And that's all just timed 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. There's like lots of clever ways to use this stuff off  

label when you start, when you start thinking about what if  

Sam Kusnetz: And in general, that's, that's part of our guiding philosophy. We want to build QLab in a way that makes using it off label really easy. We don't want it to feel like you have to fight the tool ever. The tool is there for you, right? You, like, a hammer does not tell you, like, exactly how to use it. It says, look. There's a best side to hit with, but don't let us stop you hitting with the other side of the hammer if that really makes you happy, and, uh, and QLab, I want to be as much like that as possible. Yeah, cue lists are linear, but I'm not gonna stop you jumping around, and you should feel free to jump around, and if that makes you, uh, you know, that makes you feel good, or if you're a 90s hip hop 

Sean Walker: Jump up, jump up and get down.  

Okay. 

Sam Kusnetz: precisely.  

Andy Leviss: I'm trying, I'm trying to think if there's anything else QLab we should really touch on, otherwise I do want to very briefly talk about the other side of your life with Team Sound, just cause I think it's,  

Sean Walker: I was going to say, I want to know about the other stuff.  

Andy Leviss: this is also an area where 

Sam and I have some Yeah, great. Happy to do it. this is, uh, Sam is doing a much better job at doing a thing that I used to do and I am so ecstatic to be able to just point folks towards 

Sam now. 

Sean Walker: So you make stuff that controls QLab and other things. 

Sam Kusnetz: Uh, that's right. So, um, I, uh, so now, uh, in the interest of, you know, conflict avoidance, I am now taking off my figure 53 hat and I'm now speaking not on behalf of figure 53. Um, um, I, uh, yeah, I work for, um, figure 53 part time. I work as a designer part time, but then there's this other thing that happens, which is, um, I saw. Uh, a thing that needed to exist in the world. And when Andy, uh, stopped making it, it no longer existed in the world. And I wanted that to change. So I created, uh, a company called Team Sound to make. Uh, what we call the GoBox, and it comes in two forms, the GoBox Mini and the GoBox Prime. And it's a small, um, a small button control box built into a guitar pedal enclosure that, uh, has two USB connections and it just sends MIDI notes when you press buttons, uh, to both those USB outputs. So the Mini has six buttons and it sends MIDI note 1, 6 with velocity 127 when you press and velocity 0 when you release. And it sends it to both. USB outputs. So you can plug it into a primary and a backup computer and people use it to control QLab because QLab has robust MIDI control built in. People also use it to control Ableton Live. I know some people use it to control ProTools. I don't know anything about ProTools but I know some people do it and at least one customer really, really likes it for ProTools. Um, uh, the GoBox Prime has 11 buttons and, uh, an eighth inch TRS jack. for adding one or two footswitch buttons or external buttons, um, for a total of 13 controls on the Prime. And the idea is just, um, mouse, mice and keyboards are nice for doing all kinds of things, but if you are running a show, it's nicer to have a dedicated button that only ever does what you think it does. And that maybe can be velcroed or gaff taped to your console in easy reach. Or placed in a position that's convenient for you, not convenient for the computer. Um, and so that's where we started. We started with, uh, the GoBox 4 and 6. Those got retired in favor of the Mini and the Prime. And then my colleague, Mike Dio, came on board. Um, he has a product, he was developing a product that he, that we end, that we, and ended up naming the MIDI Scout. The MIDI Scout is also a guitar pedal enclosure. It's got a little screen, and it's got both USB and 5 pin MIDI input, and it's got 5 pin MIDI output. And you can insert it in between the MIDI Scout. Um, a MIDI sending and a MIDI receiving device, and it'll just show you whatever messages go by. Uh, you can plug it into a device that sends USB output, and it will receive, it'll act as a host, and receive that MIDI for you so you can see what a device is spitting out. It'll follow MIDI timecode, it'll show you the exact timecode as it comes in, and it has one button that lets you send a MIDI note just as a test signal.  

So it's sort of an all purpose MIDI toolbox,  

Andy Leviss: And for 

Sam Kusnetz: of it as like the cue box or the sound 

Andy Leviss: MIDI enough, the, at least  

the input  

and testing  

side of it is sort of, think of like the Studio Master MIDI or the Mask MIDI snoop. Uh, Tester, just with a lot more useful information. Um, for those who don't, I've actually got one of the mask ones over there, but I can't show y'all because we're an audio podcast. But it would basically light up an LED telling you what type of message was coming in, and it was sometimes enough information to be useful, but often just enough to not. Um, so yeah, having a tool out there that literally tells you exactly what is coming in. It's great, even if it didn't do any of the output side of things. 

Sam Kusnetz: And if you have two MIDI scouts and put them on either end of a MIDI cable, you can play Pong. Uh, so those are the products we've got, uh, for sale now. We are currently in development, uh, on A QLab centric but general purpose motorized fader mixing surface. So this box is gonna have nine faders and four encoder wheels and a large touchscreen. It's about the size, it's got about the footprint of a MacBook Pro, a little deeper. Um, And our aim is to be, um, uh, it, uh, it's a fully, it's a fully configurable MIDI and OSC centric device. So it sends USB MIDI, but it also sends OSC over the network and it will have built in support for sending messages to QLab, um, to a Yamaha console, to an ETC EOS, to a couple of other devices. So you can configure. Each fader on each layer of the device, however you want. So say this is my selected cue master level, uh,  

main level. This one is, um, gonna, you know, remote control a specific DCA on my RIVAGE or on my  

Andy Leviss: to, oh shit, how many of these do I need? So this episode is Dammit Sam, not Dammit Andy. 

Sam Kusnetz: This and this device, again, it was, this device was inspired by my, um, exhaustive research on the subject of motorized fader control surfaces and the discovery that there is exactly one that costs less than a thousand dollars and is any good at all, 

and it's made by Behringer and I can't support that. I just, I can't abide. Behringer ever being the right answer. Um, 

so  

Sean Walker: start making mixing consoles then? Cause, uh, we need like a 5, 000 console that kicks ass. Can you make one of those for us, please? 

Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, I think, I think, I don't, I'm not actually sure that 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I'm starting to think about it's actually just costs more  

work with certain software to approximate that. And I think that's the cheapest 

way.  

Sam Kusnetz: That is my hope. I believe. Yeah, I believe that it's possible though. It's not definite cause we have to finish building it before we can say, but I believe it's possible that you could put two. of this device on the network with something like live, Ableton Live, and actually have a pretty solid console, sort of in the Yamaha CL series 

scope of complexity. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I don't know that to be true. I just think that to be true, and I don't want to promise that. I can promise that it is going to be a dope QLab controller. 

Sean Walker: All right. 

Sam Kusnetz: Um, so we're really enthused about that. And I'm hoping, I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that we're going to be able to, um, start, uh, really ramping up production, um, in the next couple of months and have it on sale by the autumn. But I can't promise. I don't know. You know, we're letting the timeline be what it has to be rather than try to adhere to a 

schedule, um, you know, blindly. 

Yeah. Yes. Lessons. Lessons are good. Lessons are good to learn from your own life and  

even better to learn from someone  

Andy Leviss: theater stuff, but there's lots of like concert and corporate stuff where I can see having just a couple extra faders and knobs be handy, or I'm trying to think if the RIVAGE protocols give enough control to allow it to just become like an effects controller. 

I don't, I don't think they do, which is kind of a bummer, but 

Sam Kusnetz: Well, no, the RIVAGE OSC library is. Alarming, uh, in its depth,  

you know, like, like all of the things Yamaha does, they sort of like  

Andy Leviss: all right, so I'll hold the  

Sam Kusnetz: and weird,  

but thoroughly. Yeah. So I think I'm, unless I'm completely mistaken, you do have full OSC access to any parameter you might imagine wanting  

in terms of effects routing on a  

Ravage, and you may even have thorough access to  

actual effects  

Andy Leviss: age a little bit, to have the equivalent of a lark.  

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Totally. 

Sam Kusnetz: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be cool. And like. Again, I will, I will go to great lengths to avoid saying nice things about Behringer, but the  

OSC spec for the X32 and M32 consoles is incredibly  

impressive. You, you literally, anything that can be done on the console can be done remotely. And I find that, um, remarkable and their manual, um, if they wrote one would be very thick, the, they are unsurprisingly shooting themselves in the foot by not documenting this OSC library. So what do we have? We have one guy out there. Who made his own reverse engineered OSC document showing what you can do. And so like QLab has a template for OSC control of many devices, among them, the X32M32. The template is probably accurate, but we'll never know because Behringer doesn't have a manual to say so. But in this homemade one that this other guy had, it's like, Oh, you're using this version of that plate reverb on this particular device. 

That effect  

bus? Great. Here are all the controls to control  

every knob on that It's veering into a tangent there, but I'll say folks who like, I know I edit the podcast in Reaper, and folks who use Reaper, there is, I think it's that same guy has an OSC plugin for Reaper for the X32 or M32 that turns those consoles into possibly the most well integrated DAW controller outside of an Avid Surface. To the point that, like, he actually maps Channel EQ to the standard Reaper EQ plugin and Channel Dynamics to the standard Reaper Dynamics. So you can select a channel on the console, dial your EQ on the console screen, and it'll match it in Reaper, 

Sean Walker: Dude. 

Sam Kusnetz: Outstanding. 

Sean Walker: enough for me to go buy a Reaper license just to fuck with it.  

Andy Leviss: right? And, and, and there's templates and plugins you can put in to make it look and 

respond like Pro Tools, if you need to.  

Sean Walker: I do need to, because Pro Tools is the only DAW  

that I know how to use, because I'm old, bro,  

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and, yeah, Reaper is flexible enough that they've given, see, I keep joking that, like, one of  

these days when we, like, run out of guests and episodes for a We'll do a deep dive. Like let's go behind the scenes of how we edit the podcast, 

which will basically be Sean sipping a cup of coffee somewhere. 

Sam Kusnetz: I mean, I mean, I think there's a lot of folks out there who either have just  

started making a podcast or are thinking about making a podcast who  

Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's the, the reason  

I've hesitated to do it so far  

Sam Kusnetz: I think that would be a useful  

thing to do. 

Sean Walker: Actually, I'll just say, for anybody that wants to do a podcast, editing a podcast is actually super easy. You show up, You say some stupid shit in a microphone and you have your co host do all the work behind the scenes that makes it look simple and easy, and it's just a piece of cake, man. It really is awesome. 

Thanks, Andy, for doing all the work. 

Sam Kusnetz: I didn't  

Andy Leviss: like, God, I wish he did all the work when we worked together.  

Sean Walker: Yeah, right, totally.  

Andy Leviss: was Sam and I used to co teach the QLab  

classes and we. Quickly figured out that the best vibe there was Sam is, as those of you listening for the last hour and change have figured out, Sam is a fantastic explainer and teacher. And so it basically became my role. 80 percent of the day, I would watch out for like when people look lost and pause or reframe things in other ways. When people started getting bored, I would start cracking bad jokes with Sam and just break the tension. And then there were like the two really nerdy deep dives that were my area of specialty that I would go. And the rest of the day, I just would kind of let Sam do his thing and just help out where I could. 

Sam Kusnetz: It worked well.  

I have some real time follow up. The RIVAGE OSC spec does not provide full access to all effects.  

It does provide full access to everything on a channel copy. So  

completely control  

Andy Leviss: onto my list of stuff I need to send to Yamaha that I would love to see in version 7.  

Sean Walker: So what you just said, if I'm hearing you correctly, is that an X32 is  

better than a RIVAGE. Okay, got it. All right. 

Andy Leviss: With, with certain footnotes. certain very large footnotes. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right, totally. Footnote one, " 

No,  

Sam Kusnetz: Footnote one, I  

completely disagree. 

Andy Leviss: I'm trying to, I don't know, Sean, is there, is there anything we haven't got to do that you think we should as we, as we round close to the hour and a half mark? I don't want to keep too much more of Sam's time or stretch the, uh, the, graciousness of our listeners...  

Sean Walker: No I got all my dumb questions in. Thanks for being a good sport, dude. It was nice to meet you and thanks for hanging out. 

Sam Kusnetz: Ah, it's a pleasure. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Alright, well, thanks for hanging out with us. We want to thank Allen and Heath and RCF for sponsoring it. And that's the pod, y'all. See you next week.  

Sam Kusnetz: Bye!

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green