254. An End-Of-Spring Check-In On A Variety Of Recent Sonic Adventures

It’s time for an end-of-spring check-in, as Andy and Sean sit down at the microphones in Episode 254 to catch up on everything they’ve been up to the last month. Sean talks about his trip to Texas to help with a loudspeaker demo for RCF and gives Andy and the listeners a follow-up on his adventures in freewire DSP from a couple episodes ago. Meanwhile, Andy shares some stories and thoughts from a busy month of out-of-town jobs, including a massive multi-city corporate event, a major show mishap that made an online “AV Rigging Disasters” page, and mixing monitors for a huge concert at the Kennedy Center. Some of the tech tips that come up this week include using Unity Connect for passing Dante audio over the internet, and the power of the latest generation of noise reduction processors. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Andy and Sean also spend a bit of time talking about finding gigs and evaluating resumes — specifically when being an audio “Renaissance person”/jack of all trades is a good thing, and when it’s not.

Be sure to check out the Signal To Noise Facebook Group and Discord Server. Both are spaces for listeners to create to generate conversations around the people and topics covered in the podcast — we want your questions and comments!

Also please check out and support The Roadie Clinic, Their mission is simple. “We exist to empower & heal roadies and their families by providing resources & services tailored to the struggles of the touring lifestyle.”

The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.

Want to be a part of the show? If you have a quick tip to share, or a question for the hosts, past or future guests, or listeners at home, we’d love to include it in a future episode. You can send it to us one of two ways:

1) If you want to send it in as text and have us read it, or record your own short audio file, send it to signal2noise@prosoundweb.com with the subject “Tips” or “Questions”

2) If you want a quick easy way to do a short (90s or less) audio recording, go to https://www.speakpipe.com/S2N and leave us a voicemail there

Episode 254 Transcript

Transcript

Episode 254 - Spring Check-in

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 with me is the, with me, wow, okay, rewind. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me, as always, is the Swiss to my roll, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: What's up, dude? What's up, y'all? How 

Andy Leviss: know, I almost said, like, three other ones that I realized were not only really offensive, but meant things we should not talk about, and that Swiss roll is what came out this time. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, don't, don't be stealing my thunder. I'm the one that says inappropriate shit, bro. You're the guy that's 

Andy Leviss: I know, that's why. 

Sean Walker: correct shit. Come on. 

Andy Leviss: Right, I'm supposed to be the good kid. 

Sean Walker: That's right, dude. Gun cop, bag cop, bro. You, you know how that goes. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, it's wow, I feel like I haven't seen you in forever, cause like, everybody else hears this every week, but you know, the secret is, is we sometimes record them in batches and then, you know, take breaks from each other, 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Right. Totally. That's fine. It, you know, it helps me miss you, bro. It helps me 

Andy Leviss: right? 

Sean Walker: too much of each other and you're like, you know what? This son of a gun. 

Andy Leviss: I'm an acquired taste, 

Sean Walker: Totally. We all, we all are dude, we all are. Just ask my wife, she's like, can you go back to work for a while? That'd be sweet. And then I'll, I'll love you again in a, you know, in a 

Andy Leviss: That's, we'll see, I'm on the back, I've been, I've been traveling a lot of the last couple weeks, so we're on the backswing of that, and actually we kind of figured we'd just hang, hang this week with the, with y'all virtually, just catch up and talk about a grab bag of whatever shit comes to our minds, so uh, but yeah, what have you been up to? 

Cause it's, like I said, everybody else started us like last, or not last week, but the week before that, and the week before that, but we haven't actually sat down for like, close to a month. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Totally. Um, what did I do last week? I flew to Texas to Round Rock just outside of Austin and flew r cfs new GTX 12 rig, which was fucking sweet. 

Andy Leviss: And boy, are your arms tired. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. All that flapping, get me down. There is a pain in the ass. Uh, I survived a tornado, like literally no shit. So I landed in, landed in Austin. I got it there a couple of days earlier. 

My parents live, uh, you know, down in, in Texas. And so I went to visit them for a couple of days and then went and did this, this gig. And while I was there visiting my parents, we were driving home from dinner and a tornado hit, like the phones went off and was like, tornado warning, tornado, we can find a shelter. 

We're like, I wonder if you need to like heed that warning or if that's like, Miles away or like how close is that? Well, we should probably figure out like some place to pull over in case we need to, boom, tornado. Like by the time you'd literally been like, man, we should probably do something about this, literally could not see one inch in front of our face, it was raining so hard. 

Andy Leviss: And, and, and for those, for those who've never experienced at home, the, the, you know, on topic for us meme to explain tornado warning versus tornado watch is always tornado watch means, Hey, we've got the ingredients around that, uh, you know, if you want to make tacos, we got all the things and warning is tacos are happening now. 

Sean Walker: Hot sauce being poured on taco that's already made. Hope you like it. 

Andy Leviss: look at, look at, look out for the avocado, incoming. 

Sean Walker: Totally. So we thump, thumped around a fricking parking lot in the stalls until we found the, uh, the covered, you know, uh, gas pump. Shelter kind of thing and pulled under far enough so that the hail that was coming golf ball size at What felt like a zillion miles an hour and sounded like machine gun bullets hitting the car Was hitting just the car and not the window so we didn't have any broken windows Dad's car basically looks like a fucking dented up golf ball at this point 

Andy Leviss: Woof. 

Sean Walker: pretty insane to live through, dude. 

I didn't like, I, I don't know how they categorize tornadoes or what that's called, or I don't know if it was a severe one or not a severe one. I didn't see any dogs or witches fly by on their 

Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I think they categorize it by how many dogs in 

Sean Walker: yeah, 

Andy Leviss: baskets come through on bikes. 

Sean Walker: there was none, none of that, which is, which was cool, but like the, you know, the, the bus stop, we watched that get itself blown over. So that roof of that bus stop ended up in the middle of the street. And as we, like, as it had passed and we were driving on, we were like, We were okay. And you know, the, the, ultimately the car is fine. 

It's just dented up from the hail. But, uh, as we're driving, finishing our drive home, many buildings had like trees through them and were totally destroyed. It was dude. It was insane. 

Andy Leviss: That's, that's wild. Yeah, I had, I, where was I was doing a gig in Kansas City last month and like, I landed at the airport to like, tornado warnings, but we thankfully dodged it, so, but I'm glad you're okay, man. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Thanks, man. Me too. But my, my kids are super excited. I'm okay. My wife's like, ah, I'm glad you're home. I'm just kidding. Uh, but it was crazy, man. I live in Seattle, man. I don't have weather like that. You know what I mean? Like we get, we get clouds, Overcast. I don't, I don't have tornadoes and shit. So, 

Andy Leviss: it's just like occasionally rains. Coffee is the weirdest thing. 

Sean Walker: yeah, it totally. 

Then after that, uh, I travel up to, to Round Rock to this little music festival, Lone Star Jam, as it were. And, uh, it's 104. 7 in the shade and all the humidity. Cause it had just been, you know, raining everywhere. So it's just all the humidity, which was super hot. But, uh, after, uh, You know, after NAMM, RCF was like, Hey man, uh, you want to come out and hear this rig and also help us fly PA and see how it all goes together? 

And it was freaking stunning, dude. Like, they, they fixed all the firmware and troubles they had at NAMM and it was freaking stunning. It was pretty, yeah dude, it was pretty cool cause it was a multi day music festival and uh, Libre is headlined on. Friday, which means, and I, I'm getting hip to this as, as it's going along. 

So I, I'm not going to speak like an expert. I'm just re retelling my experience. Uh, I was told on Friday that Wayne is all subs on the ground, all facing forward as God intended. And so he had 18 double 18s on the ground facing forward as God intended, which meant the whole place went boom, boom pow. And, 

Andy Leviss: Wayne is solidly old school is my understanding. 

Sean Walker: uh, he is. He's also very nice and hella talented and it was one of the best sounding shows I've ever heard in my frickin life. 

Andy Leviss: And that's, he's still rocking the, he's still rocking the Paragon. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely. 

Andy Leviss: Oh man, those things are beasts in every sense of the word. 

Sean Walker: It is. Totally. It actually wasn't that hard to tip with like six of us or whatever and the tipper, you know what I mean? But it was, dude, it was killer. 

It was a super fun experience and just an amazing sounding show. And a super nice, I mean, Wayne's killer, super nice. The whole team was really nice and it was just great. 

Andy Leviss: That's awesome. Yeah. He seems, he seems that I, I've yet to have the pleasure of meeting him in person, but like when, when we've interacted on Facebook, he seems like a really, really cool dude 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, he's super cool. And, you know, this is, I met him at NAMM, then I met him here, and so I, you know, I'm not like super homies with the dude, I just have met him a few times and he's been super kind and cordial and is like a lot of people in our community where he's just super forthcoming with like, oh, here's how I made that sound like that, or here's the trick for that, or blah, blah, blah. 

He wasn't like Oh, no, I won't tell you anything. You know what I mean? So I was like, how did you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? And, uh, it was, it was great, man. It was, it was super great. But the anyway, first day was all subs in the ground, face forward. Uh, it was like on a climbing roof stage outside, you know, 12 aside of this GTX 12 box and then 18 subs and the GTX 10s for front fills and a little, little outfill kind of guy. 

Uh, 

Andy Leviss: give you some boom. 

Sean Walker: I do totally. Uh, and then the next day we flipped the subs into cardioid. Still all on the ground because there was no place to fly them on this particular stage. And it was astounding, the difference on stage. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. 

Sean Walker: It was, it was a super well behaved PA without much blowback on the stage. And the cardioid worked awesome. 

Just, just like you would expect it to, right? It worked, it worked great. And so 

Andy Leviss: did you feel a change in much out front as a result of that or just like subtle you had to listen for? 

Sean Walker: I did not immediately go, Oh man, that's a huge change out front. I was like, man, fricking sounds great. Uh, but on stage was the major change was like, holy crap, dude, it's killer. You know what I mean? And like, it's a outdoor climbing roof, which everybody's probably been on a zillion times, you know, 40 or 50 feet wide or whatever the fuck it was. 

Your standard, like, you know, casino outdoor stage, even though it wasn't at a casino and the loudest thing on the stage was the fricking drum kit with the PA at full tilt. It was, it was awesome, dude. Just, you know, just like you've. Some of the other manufacturers that make excellent PAs, same kind of experience, dude, where it was just like, oh dude, they made something that absolutely is in the ballpark of where they're trying to compete with, you know what I 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like, what's, what's your deal for processing? Is it built into the box or do they have a standalone processor or how does it work for them? 

Sean Walker: it is a passive PA with an amplifier and all the DSPs built into an amp. So it is, I don't, I don't know, like, I don't think I know anything that anybody else doesn't know, but it is very obviously squarely focused at K2. Where it's a Slammin 12 inch line array, 4 channel amp with 4 ins, 4 outs, DSP built in, Dante built in to the amp, so if you're nerds like you and me that like that kind of shit, you can drive by Dante, which is sweet, and it cables and circuits just the same way K2 does, and I say that because everybody knows how that all works, right? 

Like, that's the shit. That's the kind of like most common box in that size for lots of years. So that'll make sense to everybody as though like, Oh, that's how that ecosystem works. Sweet. You know? 

Andy Leviss: And the important question, are they black? 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. Absolutely. The other cool thing was, well, not cool, hot. The other thing was it was 104. 

7 degrees in the shade at this show, and humid, like just humid. Like the bro, I am, I'm a pasty dude from Seattle, dog. I was just roasting and dripping sweat and the amps, they're cool. Cause in RDNet, you can just like a lot of other manufacturer softwares, right? Like you can monitor from RDNet. And so as we're checking out like the, The different things, they were just cruising along, man. 

They didn't even care. They were freaking drawing very little power at full rip and not getting hot, not, not having a problems. It's like super stupid hot outside. And they're just like, yeah, I don't really care, man. We're going to keep rocking. So it was great. There wasn't any hiccups or, or anything, which was, which was cool. 

Andy Leviss: That sounds like a blast, man. 

Sean Walker: It was a total blast, dude. It was a total blast. And, uh, it was, it was. A super fun experience. And it was super cool to like, to see, uh, to see kind of behind the R and D, you know what I mean? I don't, I don't build speakers. I don't do that kind of stuff. I've never R and D'd something of this scale. So it's kind of cool to see behind it where, you know, at NAM there was, there was obviously a problem, dude, somebody made a mistake, push some firmware and, you know, it didn't, didn't really sound that great. 

And then they were like, Hey, we made a mistake. The boxes are good. The bones are good. The amps are killer. Like it's all, it's all good. We just did something stupid and push some firmware we shouldn't have. They've got it all fixed and the boxes are fricking, it's ripping now. It's a, it's definitely competing with where it needs to be competing. 

So that's cool, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I mean, there's no manufacturer out there that doesn't, like, look, bugs slip through, shit happens, like, we do weird stuff with things that they never anticipated. So it's 

Sean Walker: Nobody's never 

Andy Leviss: long as you're getting it fixed, 

Sean Walker: Like everybody has had a 

Andy Leviss: never made a mistake. 

Sean Walker: I know that. Just tell your wife, she'll, she'll agree. You don't make mistakes, but like, But it was, it was super cool. And I'm really, I'm really stoked that they were hoping for a top tier performing system and they, they got it. 

You know what I mean? It, it is. In my opinion, it is absolutely now to the point of personal preference rather than the point of, will it do it or not? You know what I'm saying? Somebody is going to like this or Panther or K2 or the SL series or any of the other excellent boxes from all the manufacturers that are doing those kinds of things, and they'll like things about them, but they're not going to go, this thing's a pile of junk or this thing, I could only do this cause that won't do it. 

They've now got a box that competes with the big boys and it can be up to personal preference, which is cool. I liked that it had, it had the top end clarity that I really like about Panther. Like when we had Panther out for our show, I was pretty impressed about how clear it was and how much it did not hurt when you laid into it, you know? 

Andy Leviss: All right. That's, that's important. 

Sean Walker: Totally. And then I was super impressed about the low end extension of this GTX 12 box. It's got the extension that I really like about K2, because K2's got some meat to it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how much time everybody has spent on K2. I know there's a lot of our listeners spent a lot of time on K2 and others have probably never heard it, but like, it's a pretty freaking kick ass box, dude. 

When you, when you get to it, it's got, it's got plenty of stuff. And the GTX 12 is sweet because it's like The top end that I love about the Panther and the guts I like about K2 in a super well behaved box, it's kind of a ripper, dude. You know, like it's not cardioid like the SL stuff, if that's important to you, but it's freaking, it's pretty sweet. 

I'm kind of excited to see how they, how they do with it over the years, you know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. No, that's awesome. Like, I'm loving seeing both more options out there and, and, and the people with the existing options doing new things with them. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, totally. So that, that was a adventure there. And then, uh, I think it's mostly just been advancing shows and paperwork. We've got a super cool show coming up where we're going to load a. SZ100 mobile stage, onto a ferry, and go through a rock show with a pile of video wall. In the middle of a fucking harbor. 

Andy Leviss: I am, I am triggered by talk of video all these days. So, those, if you're on the Discord, or if, or if you're on Facebook and partaking the AV Rigging Disasters page, a job I was on last month. Made the the top of the AV rigging disasters Facebook page for a good solid couple days because there was there was a rigging related Incident that involved an LED wall tearing and I'm not gonna get too much more into specifics than that other than to say that my understanding is that it was a mechanical issue and not a human issue and Yeah, I never again want to hear the sound of a massive LED wall splitting at the seam in the middle 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. I can't even imagine. Everybody 

Andy Leviss: was like, everybody was okay, yeah, nobody was hurt other than, you know, some underwear needed to be replaced. 

Sean Walker: Dude, a thousand percent. Just hearing about it. I need to change my shorts. 

Andy Leviss: but it literally, like, the, like, it was a combination of the sound of like a zipper busting open, and like Fabio in like a romance novel just Popping his shirt buttons off like all at once. And it was still passing video. That's like when at one point somebody actually posted on, on Facebook, uh, version with the client logo up, which for, for those listening, we're new to corporate work is a real big, no, no. 

You never post the client logo or the vendor logo, particularly when it's a disaster. So that, that one, that one, the guy eventually took down, but it's like, oh man, no, no, no, no. Yeah, so that was, that was a day. 

Sean Walker: That was a whole ass day, bro. 

Andy Leviss: oh yeah, and again, I, I, I'm not gonna mention the venue it was at, but the, the crew at that venue, uh, was badass and like, you know, a subset of the crew pulled like an 18 hour shift and like overnight, you know, once they determined they could safely remove this LED wall, like, took it out, loaded it out. 

Built an extra row of staging upstage of the main stage and put a ground supported, you know, stationary wall instead, and the show went up on time the next day. 

Sean Walker: Dude. What a bunch of rippers. That's awesome. That you're right. That's a team of badasses, dude. 

Andy Leviss: And local crews that just, yeah, 

Sean Walker: That's killer. Everybody okay? Sweet. 

Andy Leviss: every, everybody was good. It was good. I had a couple of, a couple of my locals were right nearby when it happened, but managed to, you know, duck out of the way and get under the stage and, and yeah, nobody was hurt other than, like I said, other, other than wallet and clothing. 

Sean Walker: Sweet. 

Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah, but yeah, that was, that was the, the high, although I've been like zigging and zagging around, so I made it like you were in Texas. Did you have any Texas barbecue while you were down there? 

Sean Walker: I did not. I was able to, I was able to dodge that and stick to tacos and burgers and had delicious, uh, Italian one night. 

Andy Leviss: All right. 

Sean Walker: which was, which was rad. So I, every time I go, my parents or I got a sister that lives there also, they try to take me to barbecue and it's always just like, like good meats slathered in too much fricking sugary sauce. 

You know what I mean? And I'm 

Andy Leviss: bigger in Texas, man. 

Sean Walker: I know dude. And I'm not like, I don't know. I'm not a huge barbecue guy to start with. Not that I don't like to barbecue at home, but like, you know what I mean? The food category of barbecue. Because usually it's just smothered in frickin sugary sauce and I'm not into it. 

But sometimes you get it where like, and I don't know the different times between the different places and I'm not, I'm not hip to the barbecue frickin culture like I probably should be. But 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I know the places to avoid. I know the ones with like vinegar, vinegar and mustard based like Yeah, no no no, 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Totally. But some of them have like the rubs and stuff and those are cool. 

Like when it's got, you know, lots of good flavor and the rubs and stuff. And some places it's like, you know, drowning fricking sugar sauce. And you're like, nah, I'm good, dude. You just destroyed this meat. Thanks. You know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah Like, I was gigging in Kansas City a lot Like, probably around the same time you were in Texas And yeah, we did, we had from, uh The, that client that I've been there a couple of times for, there's always one meal they'll bring in from Jack Stack, which is like one of the, like, OG, you know, Kansas City barbecue spots. 

And it's usually pretty, it's like, it tastes good enough on its own. They give you the sauce on the side and you can add as much as you want. They're the solid deal. But that was actually a cool gig. That's um, it's a corporate gig, so I gotta be cagey about clients and such, but got to play with our buddy Brian Maddox again. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: cause it was, it's a, yeah, although virtually, so it was a, it's a mass, like this is a three city gig for a major, uh, We'll say telecom company and, uh, there's three cities. So I was a one in one of the cities, Brian was doing another, and then, uh, our buddy Jorgen Bratnov was doing the third city and it's like, it's wild. 

We've got like eight stems going back and forth between each city, like. 

Sean Walker: Dude, crazy. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, audience response mics, playback, uh, dry program, and a full mix, like, backup program, you know, and all sorts of mixed minuses going back and forth, and it's what, it's, and they're, like, basically embedded in the video signal, which is all GPS clock sync through all three cities, and then we'll 

Sean Walker: shit, bro. That's, that's some nerd shit on a level I can't even comprehend. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, I, I just barely, I, I know how to do my side of it, and that's it, and this was, it's a gig I've been on a bunch, it's like an A2 where I've done, like, ancillary sites for, and this was my first time getting dropped into the A1 chair there, so, uh, that was, and, and, uh. It did seem to be successful. Um, 

Sean Walker: Dude, 

Andy Leviss: but yeah, so like all the, all the videos like hooked up into that. 

It's um, SRT is the, I forget what it stands for, but it's the like video over internet, like secure, uh, transport, and then we do the backups and all the four wire for like all the reedle between all three cities is done over Unity Connect, which I think we've talked about before. So. 

Sean Walker: been mentioned before, but tell me about that. Cause, You know, I want to know. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so most people know, like, hear Unity, and if they know of it at all, they know of Unity Intercom, which is, it's, like, you can either set up your own server or, like, rent access on their server, and it's like iPhone and Android based intercom, so, like, either if you've got a bunch of people on site that, like, really just need to listen to comm but don't need to be on it and you don't want to spare the belt packs or sometimes like You've got remote producers and stuff So unity intercom does that and there's a big push to talk button there You can use your earbuds or whatever to your phone and it works pretty solid But the same folks have a program called unity connect which is uses like the same underlying audio transport But allows you to send like, you know, 64 channels up to you know, back and forth between multiple Sites over the internet. 

So like whenever he's like, Oh, like you had to do like, it's you got to do like Dante over the internet and you got to like do all these weird like VPN things that it's like, it's, it's actually a lot easier because you just use a virtual sound card or you know, a DigiFace Dante or something into a computer and just use assign that interface to what's going to unity connect and it does it. 

And you can, you can tweak it a bit to like prioritize like latency versus bandwidth and that thing. But it's like, you get some pretty solid connections. Just straight up across the internet with minimal futzing about. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's fucking awesome. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's wild. Like, and it's literally wild having like, you know, three different copies of, you know, like eight mixed minus stems going back and forth with two other cities. 

Over the internet. And yeah, Jorgen had some sort of RIVAGE console and I, I forget which one Brian had, but Brian had a, you know, a nice big RIVAGE surface and I was crammed on a QL1. It was cozy. 

Sean Walker: Q01 is no slouch. It packs a lot of firepower and a little itty 

Andy Leviss: it is. We, I was, I was, it's, I'm not knocking the console. I love it. I was just, I was maxed out. I was one of those, like, didn't need a QL5, but if a QL3 were actually a thing, which I always forget it isn't until somebody looks at me like, that's not a thing, Andy, that's the, 

Sean Walker: the CL that has a three. The QL is one or five, right? 

Andy Leviss: Yep. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a little cozy. It was like if I had been asked for like one more mix, I would have been out of luck, but, uh, 

Sean Walker: That's where, dude, I, I gotta say, like, that's where the new DM7 Compact is going to be the fucking shit, bro. 

Andy Leviss: I almost, so this last week I was 

Sean Walker: 10 zillion percent more than a, say what? 

Andy Leviss: Oh, I was, no, I was just saying I was, I was almost on a DM seven this last weekend, but. We can sort of go back to my last weekend. 

Sean Walker: I was just gonna say, I, I haven't actually had the pleasure of using the DMs, the seven yet. We got some threes, which are actually pretty sweet for a little desk, but the DM seven C is squarely in our sights. Cause it's like, what seems like two to 10 X the console that the QLs are in the footprint of a QL one. 

And you're like, bro, it's twice as much Dante, way more buses. You know what I mean? Like, it just seems like it's gonna take over the freaking world, bro. We're gonna start ordering those by the pallet, you know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Now everybody I've 

Sean Walker: you have much drive time on the DMs? Are you liking them? Are they 

Andy Leviss: don't. This would have been the first, which is one of the reasons I did. So I was doing, um, skipping ahead a couple gigs because it's been this whirlwind of like travel dates for me, which is very unusual for me. Um, and, and, but it's been, it's been crazy, but, um, I was just down at the Kennedy Center doing monitors for a show that, uh, uh, As of last week before I flew, the input count was going to be a full 96 inputs, going to like, um, I was doing monitors, so like 11 wedges and 9 ears I think was our final count, and then they were like, actually we're getting up closer to like 105, 106, and, you know, at one point, like months ago, they were like, we think it'll be on a CL, and then clearly the channel count knocked that out real fast. 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. That's RIVAGE territory for sure. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so they were looking in, cause the, the Kennedy Center house console is a Soundcraft VI 7000. Often they'll rent a matching one into that so they can either do an analog split or do a MADI split, but with like the, those get a little weird in like configuring. Like how to do a record of which cards and for doing that many record channels is like getting into multiple cards and it's a thing. 

Whereas like Yamaha, you know, there are some options that will give you, you know, 144 channels. And so at one point they'd offered up a DM7. And I was like, I can, I should fit on that. That should be fine. And then before, like, while we were back and forth, they were like, or we could do a PM3. And I was like, that one, that one. 

Sean Walker: That one. Every time, that one. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, it's been a while, like in the, like in the last few weeks I've like, in, either been on or been adjacent to like a 3, a 5, and a, we'll lump the 7 and the 10 basically together, cause they're the same surface for all intents and purposes. I, 

Sean Walker: and you and Maddox were talking about, like, hit me to this RIVAGE thing. You and Maddox were talking about, like, one of those particular services is both of your favorites, right? Is that the five? 

Andy Leviss: I go back and forth, like the 5 is the one I was living on at the prom and that's the one Brian really likes cause it's got the 3 monitors built in. Which is real handy, uh, the 7 and the 10, er, the 10 is the original, and then the 7 is basically a 10, but it's got a scaled down DSP built right into the surface instead of having an outboard DSP, um, but otherwise it's the same, and they have 

Sean Walker: we like that or not like that? 

Andy Leviss: it depends on if, it depends on if you need the extra capacity of the DSP. 

Sean Walker: Of course you need the extra capacity of DSP. Once you buy it, you're going 

Andy Leviss: even even the even the small ones can do like a hundred and forty four by like Try to remember how many makes like I think it's like 72 mixes by like 32 matrices And then it's like adding the other DSP gets you up to like 288 channels 

Sean Walker: Okay. Well, obviously you need 288 channels. Cause as soon as you blow a hundred K in this console, you're going to need every bit of it. And then you're going to need all the dynamic EQs. Cause obviously I've been listening to Ryan talk about how to do stuff better. So I can get gooder and I need all the dynamic EQs ever. 

So 

Andy Leviss: That's, that's my, my, well, that's my two favorite things about the, about the Rivage, at least comparing them to like the CLs, is way more physical faders and way more, and they've got a four band version of the dynamic EQ, you like, you, you could, depending on which DSP you have, run out of power for plugins and inserts, but. 

It'd take a while, like, they basically got, so like, instead of like how on the CL there's like, you've got X number of rack spaces, you've just got like a bunch of DSP blocks and different, different process, different processing plugin, or plugins, they're not really, I guess they're technically still plugins, take different amounts of DSP and they'll tell you like, this one takes up four slots, this one takes up 16 slots, but there's like, dozens and dozens of, so like, you know, I've, I've done shows where I was like, I mean, we got 16 Bricasti M7 clones in there, like, you know, the Y7, the Yamaha scaled down version of it, you know, plus a bunch of da like, and, I mean, Dance, we've talked about before, like, they're kinda taking on a Cedar DNS, which saved my bot on a couple inputs on this show. 

Sean Walker: And that, if I understand right, that kind of makes the 5045 look like it's its first rodeo, right? 

Andy Leviss: In, in terms of, in terms of noise reduction, yes. In terms of, like, you, uh, 5045 you're trying to wring out that last little bit of gain on, like, a corporate thing. But, but in terms of noise, yeah, cause like the 5045 is basically an expander. So it's just trying to duck out in between words. Whereas the dance is actually doing like, it's, I think it's basically a multiband expander, so like you basically, you train it on the noise and it's got five filters that it'll assign as needed. 

And those will like dynamically, you know, you know, gate or expand in and out, and it's like, if you, if you tune it and put the parameters right, like, it'll take buzz out of a bass amp and not, and like, not make it sound like anything's been chopped out of it. 

Sean Walker: That's pretty dope. And are you using that by and large on individual channels or on buses like to records or different things to, 

Andy Leviss: Uh, it depends, like on, on lavs, if like on that, because you've got so much power, like I'm tending to, to, unless I really need to do it on individual channels, just cause, You know, that way if one's picking up more AC or the other, like you're not, you're not trying to chop that out of all five microphones when you really need to only take it out of one, um, and yeah, like I said, I've used it for like hum on bass amps or like, you know, every once in a while you get like a PCDI that like, the ground lift switch doesn't get rid of the problem, it just gets it from like, eh, to oof, and back. 

Those are 

Sean Walker: it go good? How's it go good? 

Andy Leviss: Eh? Or 

Sean Walker: Okay. 

Andy Leviss: You know what I'm talking about 

Sean Walker: I know exactly what you're talking about. I just love the description. That's all. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so uh, yeah, but so like I had a couple of video playbacks that were like buzzing and popped that in and like we just have like a shit ton of choir mics and just, you know, that starts to get hissy, you know, once you got that, like it doesn't matter what you like, four, four, like whatever you've got on there, like you get that many condensers open, you know, the, the noise floor is going to creep up, 

Sean Walker: Yeah. You just hear the air conditioning and you hear the room and everything. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so like Pop and Dance, like on those, just like cleaned it right up, which was 

Sean Walker: Dude, killer. 

Andy Leviss: Um, 

Sean Walker: And that's in the DM now too, right? 

Andy Leviss: I believe it's got DaNSe i, I'm pretty sure it's got almost all of those plugins, it's just less, fewer of them can be instantiated. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that is 

Andy Leviss: Of course, if I'm not, somebody's gonna angrily like correct us in the Discord once this posts. 

Sean Walker: That's fine. Yeah, I've been, I've been wrong for decades. I'm married. I don't care. Correct mail you want. All right. I don't really care. You know, I was just thinking, dude, is this little DM7C, like if it's got the Bricasti emulations built in and dance and a bunch of like four band, like you could almost rip that thing around on big shows with some Rios or Tios and not need an outboard server and just be fricking crushing people like show up, 

Andy Leviss: yeah, now I'm, 

Sean Walker: cable, power, whatever. 

Andy Leviss: and see if they've got the list online that I can find. It does have DaNSe I don't believe it has the Bricasti. It's got the fancier version of the Rev X, 

Sean Walker: right. 

Andy Leviss: although this might not be a full list, I'm not 100 percent sure. It's got all the Portico stuff, which is nice. 

I think we've talked about the Portico, the 5043, uh, before. 

Sean Walker: I think it's dope. 

Andy Leviss: That's tight. And, yeah. That's the one I, I can't remember if I said it on here or not, but like I read some review of it years ago that was like basically just like leave the dials at you know their default like 12 o'clock or whatever positions and for vocals you're pretty much there and they're not like I know we've talked about that with other I know like you you've vouched for like other plugins and you're like yeah no the stock setting is a pretty solid starting point and that Portico comp definitely falls into that category. 

Sean Walker: Oh, that's sweet, dude. I find myself futzing with it, but I really like it on vocals. That lives on my 

Andy Leviss: Oh yeah, you, you, I mean you can definitely treat, and like, and like going back and forth between like the feed, like, I mean, at some point we should have somebody smarter than us come on, and probably Ryan or somebody, and like talk about the difference between feedforward and feedback compressors and get our nerd on, because that's the stuff that breaks my head, and it's just a little bit of like, eh, now it's, now it sounds more compy, now it sounds less compy. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. But I totally dig that portico compressor. I futz with the things. I like the fastest attack and fastest release. Cause I think it's only like 20 milliseconds attack and maybe it's a hundred milliseconds release or whatever. 

And I find that works really well for my vocal bus when I'm mixing music shows on a 

Andy Leviss: right on. So you're putting it on the whole bus? 

Sean Walker: I am. Yeah, yeah, totally. Cause I, I just, when I'm mixing music and you know, I'm in QL land, I'm using the channel compressor on the channel itself. And then the, the premium racks, typically speaking on the buses, because by and large I'm doing throwing goes or running guns or whatever you guys want to call it. 

Like I don't get to like sit, prep, show files, do virtual playback. Mix. I get to like, what's coming on the pipe next, bud? Oh, cool. You know what I mean? And we're 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and, and like we said, I'm, I'm realizing that like I'm getting spoiled having spent so much time on RIVAGE lately where you can drop a bunch of those plugins in and like toss them on channels, but yeah, in CL and QL land, you're definitely parsing them out very, very carefully. 

Sean Walker: very carefully, 

Andy Leviss: Which is not a bad place to be, like, I'll admit that, like, there's times where, like, after spending a while on, on one of the more flexible consoles, with that, you start being like, I'm dropping too much shit on everything, and I should maybe dial it back a little bit. 

Sean Walker: dude, I will say I think about, I think about that a lot. And then I watched Wayne Pauly mix this Lee Bryce show with like 

six channels of EQ engaged maybe. 

Andy Leviss: Alright. 

Sean Walker: and like three reverbs and two delays. And just got to fucking ripping. And I was like, I'm going to put my console on table saw, bro. Like I, I need to be like, holy crap. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I think it's funny that, like, is, like, the Paragon, was it, like, the, in the, in the days when that console was, like, king, it was, cause, you know, it was the first console you could have, like, a gain and a comp on every channel, so I love the, like, the one person we think of who's a poster child for that, as long as, like, yeah, I don't actually use them all, I just like how the rest of the console sounds. 

Sean Walker: I mean, he used the, the, the gates and comps on a lot of channels, but like. It wasn't like, like, I'll admit, bro, I'm an over EQer, alright, I'll just, I'll say it, I'll EQ anonymous, bro, I gotta go, you know what I'm saying, I, I, I'm fucking up some drum channels, you know what I mean, I'm carving smiley faces in damn near everything, and, uh, and I'm unabashedly so, I don't really care, you guys get a better way, do it your way, that's fine, uh, you He was just like, yeah, you know, a few channels of EQ, show sounded absolutely mentally incredible. 

Just, it was just mental. How incredible it was like, I can't even believe this is coming out of speakers right now. 

Andy Leviss: Nice. 

Sean Walker: And I was just like, Oh man, I gotta, I gotta find another line of work. 

Andy Leviss: Question and life choices right 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Andy Leviss: That's, I had my, 

Sean Walker: How do I even life? Do I even? 

Andy Leviss: that was my, my week before that was a little bit of a questioning. How did I end up here? It was, I was, I was doing, I was doing a convention gig, uh, in Boston and just managing a bunch of overflow rooms. And it was just like, running ragged across like eight different rooms. Oh yeah. Like, I think the one day was like just shy of 40, 000 steps. 

Sean Walker: So basically he's sitting on the couch eating bonbons, I see how you are, that's cool 

Andy Leviss: yeah, yeah, no, it was my, it's, it was the first week in a while that I didn't get the, you've been less active than recently, warning from my phone. It was, my phone was like, yo bro, you okay? 

Sean Walker: Is that you've been less active notification? Is that like, it's polite way of saying get off your fucking ass? 

Andy Leviss: I, I, not saying it is, but I'm not saying it's not. 

Sean Walker: Your phone's 

Andy Leviss: man, I've been doing comma bunch, what do you want? 

Sean Walker: yeah, hey bud, you should get up and wiggle, like move around bro. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, so, you know, it's funny to talk about thinking back of a couple different gigs I've been doing like the last month and talking about doing calm. I got a question for you because the thing that Kenny Barnwell was posting on Facebook recently is how particularly in touring, you know, like you've, You kind of have to and want to when you send a resume and specialize, like even if you're good at four different things, you send that on a resume to folks in the touring market and they're like, well, we don't know where to, where to put this person, you know, he or she is like, they're just kind of jack of all trades. 

Like we want somebody who's really damn good at the one thing we're looking for. And I know like on, I feel like on the corporate world where I'm like living in, sometimes that's true, but a lot of times like you can be really valuable to folks if they know they can trust you to like. We can book you for RF, but then if like our staffing needs change and we have to bounce you to, you know, Programming Readle, like, you'll be fine doing that. 

Or like, if we have to shuffle you around and like drop you in an A1 slot because somebody had an emergency, we can do that. Where does that fall in your world as hiring? Like, do you prefer one or the other, or do you just like kind of take everybody individually? 

Sean Walker: Um, I'm going to say both. I love the second part of what you just said, which is somebody who's a flexible multi tool. Because at a small sound company like mine, everybody needs to be a flexible multi tool. Uh, I will also say that when you're doing your resume to anybody, but specifically to sound companies, We also want to know what problem you're solving for us. 

So if your strength is com or RF or systems engineering or a one or whatever, lead with that. Right. And then also I'm, I'm great or equally good at this, this, this, this, this, and this, or you know what I mean? So that I can. As I'm looking at your resume, I can understand in just a few, like a few seconds to look at this thing. 

Am I looking at a corporate A1? Am I looking at a comms guy? Am I looking at a touring monitor guy or a systems engineer? Like, I need to know who you are, right? That doesn't mean that if you're a ripping systems engineer, you're not also a great front of house guy or a great monitor guy. I mean, you know, maybe you do a lot of things well, but I kind of want to know like, what's your main jam? 

And then what are the other things that you're really good at that I could, I could utilize you for, right? Because ultimately. I want to put people in positions so that they can succeed. If, if the people succeed, I succeed, the company succeeds, we all win. Right? If I put somebody in a position where they are not going to succeed, then the whole thing comes crashing down around us. 

They don't have a good time. We don't have a good time. The client doesn't have a good time. It just doesn't make sense. Right? So I need to know, like, where on this crew are you going to be happy, And do an excellent job and what, what holes do you want to fill on this, this crew sheet, right? But what I don't want is like, hey, I do audio and video and lighting and staging and Scenic and this and that, like there's no way you do all of those to the level that I'm hoping you do audio for us at. 

You know what I mean? And that doesn't mean like you couldn't have done any of that or I don't want to see that or whatever, but like If you are like, I've done all these things and all this stuff. And you're like, okay, cool. Well, which one are you good at? Or which one are you passionate about? Or which one do you want to do? 

Right. Cause like, if somebody is super stoked at lighting and they're, you know, pretty good at audio too, but they don't really like audio, but they just happen to be good at it. Cause you know, those people where they're like. Kind of good at everything naturally. It just pisses you off. You know, that person's not really 

Andy Leviss: say it to my face. 

Sean Walker: sorry Doug. 

Sorry 

Andy Leviss: And I'm humble. Humility is definitely top of the list on my resume. 

Sean Walker: 000 percent Kate's been saying that to me for years. She's like, he's so humble. He's such a nice guy. It's so humble 

But like if you're not if you're not stoked on it, I don't want I don't want you to be there You know, I mean if you'd rather be doing lighting or scenic or whatever it is, like go do that man I don't I don't need you like being bummed out that you're you know, A2 on a rock show. And you're like, man, I'd really rather just be doing lights, you know? Um, 

Andy Leviss: What I really want to do is direct. 

Sean Walker: right. Then go direct, bro. Go do it. That's fine. You know, I got some, I got some friends. I'll, I'll give you the numbers, you know, whatever. Uh, no, I don't think I have any director friends, but you get the point. I'm not, I'm not that fancy, bro. 

Andy Leviss: I have one friend who claims they're a director, but that was just a whole Craigslist thing. It's weird. I, well, it's, 

Sean Walker: Camcorders. It's just, it's not a thing. We don't want to talk about moving on, moving on, 

Andy Leviss: Um, 

Sean Walker: but like, Ultimately, I want to know what your forte is, what you're passionate about, what you're good at, and what, what problems you'll solve for me. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: yeah, 

Sean Walker: And then I'm, then I'm totally cool to hear all the other stuff you've done in your life and that's fine. I don't, I'm not saying any of this to belittle your other experience in life, just that like, what is your jam right now? 

Are you a rip in front of house guy? Great. I will put you in front of house. You know what I mean? Or gal. I don't, it doesn't have to be guy or gal. Person. Rip in front of house person. You know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Front of house folk. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. Totally, I've, that's my long winded, overcaffeinated ramble about that. 

Andy Leviss: No, I, I dig it. I'm under caffeinated. So we're meeting in the middle there. 

Sean Walker: Nice. What about you? 

Andy Leviss: there's, um, what's that? 

Sean Walker: What about you? Like when you, you know, you're freaking recommending people and staff seeing events and probably helping recommend staff or some, what are you like, what are you hoping to see in somebody's resume? 

Andy Leviss: like, I'm solidly, like, I tend to be in that, like, I don't see resumes. Like, you know, I'd like, it's, it's rare to. It's rare to like have resumes come across like it's it's very often like the that like You know, it's that, like, that thing that becomes the danger of feeding into itself, which, you know, I try and be wary of, but like, you know, well, I met this person on a gig and they were awesome. 

And like, they were good at doing that. Or, or maybe we talked to you, like what we were doing, like these jobs, we talked about what other stuff they do. And like, they were an A2 on that gig, but like, they also know their shit as an A1. Um, and yeah, that's certainly helpful and like figuring out where those pieces fit in. 

And like, I know we've talked like when, when Pete would just goes on a while back, we talked a little bit about, you know, You know, finding the right players for that team. And I don't think he actually made the analogy there, but I feel like the underlying analogy was, you know, like if a casting director, just like finding the right person for a role. 

And sometimes you'll bring somebody in to read for one role and realize like, Oh, that ain't gonna work, but you know what, they'd be really good over here. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, totally. And and sometimes it's, it's also really hard to tell just via a resume, right? I've had Over the last few years, I've had lots of people fly out and, and rock with us, right? From, from our community or from other places, and the, it's so hard to tell from the resume, dude. We've had some people that came out and I was like, Alright, well they're, you know, competent at their job, whatever, and they're just not a good fit. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: the hang is not there, whatever, right? 

Andy Leviss: I feel almost like sometimes a resume is like, it's really good at like, showing you red flags, like you'll see stuff on a resume that immediately you're like, oh, oh, no, no, I can already tell. But like, it's not necessarily so good at like, giving like an absolute positive green flag like that you still like there's another layer of like, you know, just seeing how things click in person that you 

Sean Walker: That's an excellent observation and comment. I think I agree wholeheartedly, because we've also had some people that came out that, you know, the resume was great or whatever, and they were super cool and a super good hang. You know what I mean? It was, it was super fun. And we'd love to have it back. You know what I mean? 

And that's, that doesn't mean that the people that weren't a good fit for us aren't good at their jobs or aren't aren't going to be a great fit for somebody else. I'm sure they're all staying busy and working and you know what I mean? That's cool. And it's, I'm not speaking just of people that have flown in. 

I'm, um, I'm just being, you know, all the freelancers in general, right? Like we, we just, everybody finds their, their fricking group, right? They find their people that make sense, that do things the way they want to do or have the same vision or, or the same ideas about work or audio or customer service or whatever your jam is. 

And you just hire the people that further that vision, you know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's like I said, like, I think it's you could tell looking at a resume real fast if like somebody is very obviously like padding or stretching or like, you know, spackling over some things. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: And I feel like those again, those fall into that like that fit was the famous Supreme Court about pornography that I can't necessarily tell you what to look for. 

But I know when I see it, 

Sean Walker: yeah, sure. Totally. Totally. And, you know, there's, then there's also the people that have like, that have like, killer resumes. And you're like, ah, if I call them, this, this gig is way up, way beneath them or whatever. And they're like, yeah, I'll go. If you're paying the rate, like, fuck yeah, I'll show up. You know what I 

Andy Leviss: I was just talking to somebody about that too, like that's, like, it's, God, I'm going to say this and this is going to sound like such like douchey first world problem, but like, one of the things I've noticed in the last, you know, chunk of a year that we've been doing this, like, now that like people hear us talking on here all the time and like talking about what like stuff I've done, people are just like, oh, either he's too busy or like he just wouldn't be interested in that. 

It's like, no, fucking call me, man. 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I got, I got, I got 18 years worth of saving up to do in the next, uh, the next few months, so, I guess 21 years, uh, 

Sean Walker: Bro. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, slipping that in, now that, now that we've posted about it on Facebook, I can say, like, I don't, I don't talk too much of the, of the personal home stuff on here, but, I'm gonna be a dad in October. 

Sean Walker: Nice. Good work, dad. 

Andy Leviss: so I'll come to you for lots of tips of what not to do, I mean what to do. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Dadding and parenting is dadding, parenting, husbanding. It's all pretty simple, dude. Don't be a dick. If you follow 

Andy Leviss: did learn recently that husbanding and husbandry are two somewhat different 

Sean Walker: Okay. Copy that. Well, don't be a dick and everything will be fine. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, husbandry is, is uh, shepherding animals into relationships so that they produce, 

Sean Walker: Do that differently. That's a different, that's a whole nother thing, bro. You 

Andy Leviss: a whole different 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. That's a whole different thing. That's, we're not going to go 

Andy Leviss: that for the, yeah, leave that for the breeders and the farmers. 

Sean Walker: That's wrong. Wrong part of the country, dude. Wrong part of the country. That's a whole nother thing. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: I know we gotta, I gotta let you go. I, one quick thing, cause I know everybody's dying to hear, how'd your DSP adventure go? 

Sean Walker: Went awesome. 

Andy Leviss: Alright. 

Sean Walker: It went awesome. So I, uh, not being the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to programming DSPs, I had a hell of a time. And I think it was the other Andy that I was obviously cheating on you 

Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, cause when we, when we talked about this a couple episodes ago, I found out I wasn't your only DSP phone a friend. And then on the Discord, I found out that I wasn't your only DSP phone an Andy. 

Sean Walker: yeah, thousand percent. Thousand percent. Uh, he gives good discord. You know what I mean? He gives good fun. 

Andy Leviss: Nice. 

Sean Walker: Uh, you know, everything's got its quirks, right? And I was learning to program this, this BiAmp DSP, because I don't know how much everybody else knows about them, but you can find them used on eBay for pennies on the dollar and they're pretty good. 

Still work pretty well for a lot of things. So I was able to, you know, like old stock market adage, buy low and sell high and uh, made it worth all the headaches. But 

Andy Leviss: There you go. 

Sean Walker: ultimately I just did something really dumb and I just programmed it like it was a Galileo. So I just made my own like input matrix output processing, made it basically a mini mini Galileo, 8 input, 8 output kind of vibe. 

And then put it in a few, it was just for some bar installs, dude, where they were like no DSP, nothing. And all I had to do was. SignalRoute, HiPass, QuickTune was some smart on some rando speakers or whatever and they were peachy and I was able to like, you know, save the client a significant amount of money over buying brand new by saying, hey man, I can, you know, we can start out a used one and I'll save you a frickin thousands of dollars over a brand new one and they were like, yeah dude, no problem. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I mean, that's the thing with those, those black box DSPs is they can get real overwhelming because you have so many options, but as with anything, as with even talking about like the Paragon or like, or the Rivage, like just because it's there, you don't need to use it. 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. Totally. So ultimately I spent probably 10 hours just blasting my head against the desk with, uh, the other Andy's help. He basically cut that down from what was going to be 100 hours to 10. 

Andy Leviss: Nice. 

Sean Walker: uh, I just, I got one all firmware updated and programmed and then rinsed and repeated that through four other, three other boxes. 

So four boxes total and scattered those around in little, little, basically little bar installs. And one, one ended up in my recording studio and then a couple in little, little bar installs that saved the clients a pile of money and has been, A super improvement over their no DSP situation before and winning. 

Andy Leviss: That's the way to do it, man. 

Sean Walker: Totally. I will say I got a, I got a, uh, I got learnt on the Allen and Heath AHM DSP while I was in the middle of cussing out this, my lack of knowledge. Like not, not that the buyout product is not good, just that I was like, I'm woefully unequipped for this. The AHM is super easy to use comparatively speaking and I'm stoked. 

The problem is there's no profit margin in it. There's not, you know, There's, there's, it's, it's not the same, right? So like, it's way easier to use. It's got the iPad app built in and I was like, Oh my God, for this other thing, I'm doing that. Cause that's just going to make all the sense in the whole wide world to just put the new thing in that's got super easy programming, iPad app built in, super easy to make the, the background on, you know what I mean? 

But again, I'll, uh, there was another Discord user. Evan was the one turned me on to that. He was like, oh dude, Let me show you how to do this. And he spent like a few minutes on the phone. It was like, let me show you how to do this or ding dong. And I was like, Oh, thanks bro. And it was super, it was way easy. 

So it's, it's like a balance, right? Super hard to program or hard to learn to program and you make a pile of money or you make less money, but it's way fricking easy to program and way newer and get all the stuff built in. So 

Andy Leviss: I mean, that's, that's sort of what we were starting to get into with Elliot the other week. It was always trade offs and figuring out what, what makes the most sense for a situation. And sometimes it's the profit. Sometimes it's the tool. 

Sean Walker: totally dude, totally. And, and they're tools for a job. You know what I mean? Like 

Andy Leviss: Absolutely. 

Sean Walker: BuyAmp is definitely the 800 pound gorilla in the install market for, for DSPs. Or, or one of them, right? And, uh, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like by amp symmetrics, Q SYS would be like the top three. Yeah. 

Sean Walker: totally, dude. Yeah, you know that way better than I do, but And we don't do many installs, which is why it was so frustrating for me, because I'm just used to a Galileo where you're like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, it's all right there in front of you, and pretty much anybody can sort it out, and staring at it for ten minutes, you know what I mean? 

And, so, having to, like, connect to the box, update the box, reconnect to the box, push to the box, retrieve from the box, do this thing to the box, touch the box, rub it around, rub its feet, you know, it's like, it's like, trying to make your freaking girlfriend happy, you know what I mean? Holy shit, like, how many things I gotta do over here at one time? 

Sorry, was that too far? 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I, I just had images in my head. I was, I was just dealing with and sorting those out for a minute, but I'm also like, today was a loaded day tomorrow. I've got a 7am to midnight call and yesterday I was home, but it was, it was finally repaired the espresso machine. I started taking apart seven years ago. 

Sean Walker: god, tell me all about it. I got one more, I got one more minute. Tell me about the espresso machine. I need 

Andy Leviss: It's uh, it's an Alex Duetto 2, which they're up to the 4 now, but so it's a dual boiler, so there's two boilers in it, and it had started leaking out of one of the gaskets on the boiler, so, and it had been on the shelf because like my old apartment didn't have space for it, and then we don't entirely have space for it here, but we decided to pivot our home a little more towards lattes right now instead of brewed coffee, so I was like, well, I guess I'll see if I can set it up and we'll see if we can make it fit in the kitchen instead of the coffee maker. 

And, uh, it's assembled, but like with its shell off right now, but working. And I had a, I had a baking tray under it as a drip tray all day and there's no water leaking out. There was a, there was a trip to Home Depot mid project to get a new impact driver, cause I had my wimpy little 12 volt impact driver and. 

My, my beefy 12 volt one was not here. It's in a workbox in storage at a sound shop right now, and I'm not even sure that would have been enough. So, got to go to Home Depot and be like, I need your beefiest electric or battery impact driver now. And this like, giant like, 1 7 16th inch socket to get the heating element out of the bottom of this thing. 

And it was like, my little one was like, just like rat, rat, rat, rat, rat, rat, rat, like for 20 minutes. And like, it wasn't doing anything other than burning through batteries and got like the big, you know, uh, um, Milwaukee, you know, 18 volt one. And just 

Sean Walker: the fuel, M18 fuel, those are badass, dude. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, the, the like beefy one that they only sell like tool only that does like, it's like, it's like 2000, uh, inch pounds per minute or 

Sean Walker: things are insane. The amount of stuff my 

Andy Leviss: Oh, it was like three hits and the thing came right out. I thought it was like, I don't like, it surprised me how quickly it came out. It almost took my hand 

Sean Walker: It was like four wheel one car pit stop. Done. 

Andy Leviss: I, I bought it with the full, like, I'm going to take these two heating elements out, put new gaskets on and put them back in and then return it. 

And now I'm like, can I find more uses for this? Cause it's a cool little tool. 

Sean Walker: Thousand percent, dude. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: Well, that's awesome. Well, dude, it was good hanging with you. I got to go rip to a client's place and, uh, you know, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I'm going to go  

Sean Walker: stuff and help some more people 

Andy Leviss: feed myself, 

Sean Walker: do it, but thank you to Allen and Heath and thank you to RCF for having us and, you know, keeping us telling bad jokes and telling war stories as it were. 

Thanks for hanging out, Andy. And thank you to everybody for listening, man. We really appreciate you guys. We, we wouldn't be here without you. That's the pod. We'll see you next week. 

Andy Leviss: take care, everybody.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green