Signal To Noise Podcast
The Signal to Noise podcast features conversations with people from all corners of the live sound industry, from FOH and monitor engineers, tour managers, Broadway sound designers, broadcast mixers, system engineers, and more.
Signal To Noise Podcast
260. Meeting Up For A Music Festival & Much More
For the first time in 10 months of podcasting, Sean and Andy were together in the same place, so how better to celebrate than with a livestream? They talk about meeting up for a music festival Sean’s company (Audio Engineers Northwest) provided a PA and support for, in addition to presenting a demo of the TT+ GTX 12 line array (courtesy of show sponsor RCF). This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.
They also discuss how accommodating an artist’s needs for the second day of the festival led to getting to experience some less common subwoofer tuning techniques to avoid power alleys. Andy also recaps his two days earlier in the week attending a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape workshop, followed by taking questions from the live audience in the text chat — and Sean espouses the awesomeness of a Taco Bell Grilled Cheese Burrito.
Episode Links:
TT+ Audio GTX 12
d&b Soundscape
Todd’s S2N Food Recommendations (Google Sheet)
Episode 260 Transcript
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 260 - Live And In Person At Sean's Warehouse
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 Noise. Uh, for a change, we're, uh, we're doing it live. I'm your host, Andy Levis, and with me, the, uh, dust to my mop, Mr. Sean Walker.
Sean Walker: Sup, y'all?
Andy Leviss: You can tell I'm going ADHD because I'm just looking at a mop right over there, because those of you who are watching live, we are in Sean's, uh, shop today.
Sean Walker: We're partying. Andy flew in and so we're like, yo dawg, let's uh, let's hang out.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and here we are. So we do have some folks in the audience, so please feel free to pop in the chat and say, Hey, I know Trey's there and, and my chair is falling apart now.
Sean Walker: You broke it.
Andy Leviss: Yep. This is why Sean can't have nice things. Uh,
Sean Walker: dogs, that's why I can't have nice things.
Andy Leviss: mean that too.
He's got like a hundred and ninety pound Hulk of a dog. Absolute sweetheart, but she's absolutely the dog. If you're watching on the video and you're you've Matter seen Sean before, exactly the kind of dog you expect Sean to
Sean Walker: Yeah, right, dude.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, you two, you two fit together. Totally. But, uh, and I see, like I said, I know Trey's in the audience and we had the pleasure of meeting Trey yesterday too.
Sean Walker: Yeah, totally.
Andy Leviss: Because, uh, yeah, I mean, should, uh, yeah, we got two audio engineers and one audio interface over here, so we're, we're all backseat driving. Yeah.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: Um, Yeah, so I had a, I had a gig in, uh, well, starting in Vancouver on a, on a cruise ship for a few days doing an install that's gonna head into Alaska.
And all my connection options were through Seattle. So I was like, yo, Sean, you got, you got that like GTX line array demo happening right now, right? So I flew in a day early, hung out, uh, we met. Uh, Trey, who's hanging in the chat, and a few other folks, uh, Matt and Kyle, who were on the last episode, were there working their butts off for Sean, so I got to meet them in person, which was cool.
And uh, here we are.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: So, uh, I don't know, you want to start and like tell folks a little bit about, uh, what the last couple days were?
Sean Walker: Oh, man. Last couple days is a pretty straightforward music festival as far as most people are concerned. Just SL three 20 and a big flat open field with.
You know, nine a side line array and too many subs, which is, you know, how you do.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, or just the right amount of subs. I'm leaning over here on the no longer existing armrest on my chair. That's, that's the side I need to lounge on. Uh, yeah, so it was this, so the GTX line, the GTX 12, right? Yep. Which I swear, like, we're not getting extra from RCF to keep, like, talking about them so much.
It just happens that it's been a couple months of, like, playing with them, and they make some nice stuff.
Sean Walker: Dude, it was awesome, man.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, like that is, that is a solid, clean line array.
Sean Walker: Totally, dude. It sounds great.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, rig's real nice, sounds good, like the subs are nice and punchy. Um, and it's, so I missed, so it was, it was a two day, uh, two day kind of mini festival.
Sean Walker: Yeah, we had one day was rock night with, uh, some local bands like Van Epson and another band.
Then we had Sweetwater and Mudhoney, some old like grunge bands playing. And then Saturday was country night. So it was Clay Walker and Dina Carter and then a local opener. And, uh, you know, just out, I don't know what the deal is, but we got, we got boat gigs, dude. We just do the boat gigs. It was out in the, out in the marina.
It was on the water. So we, we just, uh, went and rocked out. On the marina. This one was actually on land though, not on a boat this time, even though the event was called Rock the Boat.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Oh, and John, John's messaging in chat. He says that he's watching an iPhone and it's, it's, we're both out of frame because it's cropping right to the center here.
Sean Walker: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll slide in tighter. Like we like each other. Is that
Sean Walker: better, John?
Andy Leviss: What's up, John? Um, Yeah, so it was a cool show, got to see the GTX and also as it happened, um, as it happens on some of those festivals, like there's different artist needs, you know, different requirements and for various reasons of how Clay Walker, who was the headliner last night, performs, y'all needed to worry about sightlines a little more and like shuffle the subs and front fills around a little bit.
Sean Walker: Yeah, he's got MS, so he sits for most of his set. So he's like two or three songs, then he has to sit. So we had to take this, they were stacked in, you know, carts of three and cardioid, and we had to take the center two stacks down to a single sub and kind of futz them around a little bit so you could see from the front row if he was sitting and you were sitting and not have, you know, Subs blocking your view, which worked fine, dude.
We had Chris and Michael doing systems, so they were able to sort it out, piece cake, and make it sound
Andy Leviss: anyway. Yeah, and they did, for those that want to get nerdy and have either read elsewhere, like Merline had an article on some of the sub processing stuff, or it's, it comes up in the Discord once every few months, there's, um, was it Showco that orig or Prism?
Like somewhere in that family, companies originally came up with it. with uh, Aardvarking, which is a delay based thing that basically your left and right sub signals get like notches that match out where like one gets a notch, where the other one gets a boost, and it gets a bunch of those. So the idea being that where the power alley would meet in the middle, they cancel each other out.
Totally. Um, and so you get a more even sub coverage with some trade offs that come with it. And uh, what Michael ended up doing for y'all there was, was the EQ version of that rather than delay, which is sort of like Um, I, I think, uh, Jim, Jim Yak has a version of it he calls, uh, uh, Armadillo ing, since Aardvark ing is the, the proprietary, uh, like, choke over whoever it was, one.
And so instead of being, like, delays to create nulls and cancellations, it's just like, the left gets an EQ. Thank you. Boost in one place and the right gets a cut and then like, you know, they notch kind of alternate between each other and it works pretty well. Like, we'll, we'll link in the show notes when we publish this on the feed to Merline's, uh, like analysis of it.
Um, and, you know, and there are some trade offs there, but the thing to always take into account is that while there are trade offs, the trade off is not being versus not doing it at all and everything's perfect, it's a trade off versus having a massive power alley down the center of the field. Totally.
And given that, it's, it definitely sounded worth the trade off with what I heard, like I got to walk left to right, it was pretty solid, you know, still pretty punchy low end, so yeah.
Sean Walker: it was great totally and and if you aren't hip to what we're talking about or this is your first time checking it out I think Katie wrote an article about it a while back of like her
her boss,
or somebody she knew, right,
Andy Leviss: a,
Sean Walker: was involved with that, so I think she's got an article you can search someplace
Andy Leviss: With the
Sean Walker: search, which is fantastic, it's really primo searching Discord, you can find anything you want just by searching and then hitting Google and finding it later.
Andy Leviss: Is that sarcasm, Sean?
Sean Walker: 100 percent
Andy Leviss: Discord search is a special, special, special Short bus special. Yeah. Um, yeah, I feel like, I don't know if she wrote an article.
It definitely got talked in the Discord a bunch. I think it was one of those, like, Oh, you shouldn't write about that, it's somewhat proprietary. And Merline's article is pretty great because he literally is like, I can't say that this is aardvarking, because that's a proprietary thing, so I'm not going to say that this is aardvarking, and for those listening later at home, I'm winking very loudly right now.
Um, yeah, so John's saying, yeah, he's done a version of that with graphic EQs, just boost and cut. Uh, opposite left to right, which yeah, you can certainly do it with graphic EQs too. You know, do it with parametrics, you can get a little narrower and get a little more places happening along within like the limited range of the subwoofer.
But yeah, it'll, in the right situation, it can work a bun. It can work pretty, pretty all right.
Sean Walker: Totally. And we actually had a unique situation in this particular show that was not planned at all, but headliner Clay Walker owns their own and carries D Lives. So we had both Allen and Heath and RCF on the same show.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, live it, live in that sponsor life. Yeah, right.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, like,
Sean Walker: And it was great.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, show sounded cool. Like, you know, I was bummed I couldn't get out the day before and see Sean, uh, mix his show, but, uh.
Sean Walker: Oh man, you're not missing anything. It's just, you know, rock and roll doing rock and roll, bro.
Andy Leviss: Right
And I mean, I wasn't there, so you can tell me it was the most fucking awesome thing ever.
Sean Walker: it was easy with a good band and a good PA man.
Nice. You know what I mean? I, I had a, I had a good band and great, great pa and great systems tech, so it made it easy to just, you know, fumble through it.
Andy Leviss: There you go. And I see the audit.
We've got like eight folks up in the, on the Riverside side. I can't tell how many people are watching on the Facebook side right now. A couple. Great. So yeah, like if folks have like, please throw in questions and interrupt us, heckle us, you know, we're happy to, Oh, there's Ben. Um, so Ben just threw out a question.
He said, what are some gigs you like doing that you wish you get to do more?
Sean Walker: Um I think my favorite gig to do is the well paid band engineer gig when you can just like roll in, rip a killer show, roll out, and don't have to deal with all of the rest of it. You're just like, yeah man, that's cool. I'm gonna want this, this, this, this, this. Boom.
Andy Leviss: and you're out. You got a box of white gloves somewhere back here in the warehouse.
Sean Walker: You're heading for the bus, you're like, see ya!
Andy Leviss: Yeah, um, oh man. It varies a lot because like I have like the good and bad of like my career is that like I kind of wrote, we were talking about this in the car earlier that like, I kind of rotate through concert, corporate and theater and like part of me, like John, John and the chat just said the ones that pay on time.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Sean's like, yep, those are the ones. Yeah. Like sometimes like I wish I was mixing theater more consistently these days, but also like. Sometimes I don't like it's nice to be able to dip into that and sub on some shows and come and go You know I was saying right now like I've got some holes in my calendar in August and I got some new microphones that earthworks Just sent me to poke at so I'm I'm anxious to find some music the next few months to do because right now like my calendar is full of some like RF and comm gigs which I love doing and it's certainly nice to have the job where like everybody appreciates you and you're not in the firing line of all the rifles when something goes wrong or in throwing distance from a monitor wedge from an angry, uh, somebody, but uh, yeah, that might be.
Sean Walker: Yeah, call Andy for some music gigs, dude.
And then we can heckle him over his shoulder while he's mixing.
Andy Leviss: that's why you're glad I didn't show up the day earlier.
Sean Walker: right? Totally, just Um, can you make it sound better? Like, I don't know, I'm doing the best I can, man, sorry.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Sorry. Crowd, crowd strike, you know?
Sean Walker: Yeah, sorry.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Uh, um, so I mean, yeah. What else do you got going on this week, dude?
Sean Walker: This week we are back up into the islands coming up to go do a private party in somebody's backyard.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Right.
Sean Walker: drop an SA 100 in somebody's backyard and get to it with,
uh,
I don't remember who the artist is, but some, somebody that was cool in the sixties, I think that's, you know, it's still hanging
Andy Leviss: There's a few of those.
Yeah. So
Sean Walker: it'll be fun. That'll be, that'll be cool.
Andy Leviss: And hang on, I'm seeing a notification on Facebook. Let's see if there's a, there's somebody, oh, no, nope, that's not for us. Um,
Sean Walker: summertime here, I get a lot of like, then it seems like a lot of island slash boat slash whatever gigs that are just all logistics for a what's otherwise a super basic gig.
You know what I mean? Like if, if you were, you know,
if
it was just done here on the mainland, you'd be like, it's ADA side of NASA 100. Who cares? Like piece of cake, dude. But they're all like ferry rides or ferry shuttles up or craziness and logistic nightmares to get up there. You know what I mean? Yeah.
But
Andy Leviss: And like are most of these on boats that like have like AC power on board or are you bringing like jennies on? Jennies, like 45 kVA
Sean Walker: Jenny's? Cause they, it's like a sweet spot, much bigger than that. And they're too heavy to get on the boat and smaller than that. They don't have the chutzpah, you know what I
Andy Leviss: what I mean?
Yep.
Sean Walker: But this particular case is somebody's backyard that overlooks the ocean, must be nice,
Andy Leviss: There
Sean Walker: and
Andy Leviss: uh,
Sean Walker: we're gonna just go rock with a band.
So other than ferrying up on the Washington State ferries, which is like, you know, just buy a ticket and go, which is pretty easy, it's just a straightforward private party kind of thing, you
Andy Leviss: it'll
Sean Walker: be cool. And then
after that we've got a Stampede, rodeo kind of thing. It'll just be a dust bowl. We'll take all 48 of our little 26s and try to make them rock and roll the
Andy Leviss: best we can.
Sean Walker: because they, uh, you know, they do a good job, but they're not a large format box.
You know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah. They're adorable though.
Sean Walker: they are, they're cute, dude. You like suck them under your arm
Andy Leviss: and carry them with you. Yeah. Sean had the, the HCL 26 is out as a, I think he's, he's going to grab one to show the folks that are watching the video. Um, yeah, cause he, yeah. Yeah, he said they're all pinned together.
So, uh, but yeah, uh, Sean had those out as front fills on, on this gig this week. So I got to see them in person too. And they're just the cutest. They are, dude. They're like a,
Sean Walker: it's like a T 10 or a Kiva 2, or you know, the little Dual 6 box,
Andy Leviss: Yeah, like a little like Melody kind of. They're a little smaller than a Melody.
I feel like a Melody is wider. Yeah, but
Sean Walker: But they're little, dude, but they're cute.
Andy Leviss: Yep. Yep, and then they punch. Totally.
cool.
and then I'm, I'm, I'm also on a boat this week. I am, that's the, the reason I am in Seattle and route to Vancouver is to pop onto a cruise ship for a few days to help install some There's a little bit of haziness.
It's either four channels of Axene or four rack units of Axene. Either way. Not a whole lot, and Ford, I'm ending up on a cruise ship for like five days from Vancouver to Juneau, Alaska, so Word. Yeah, well, nice work if I can get it.
Sean Walker: Can you, can you handle that many channels? That's a lot of channels
Andy Leviss: It's a lot of channels, it should be, it should be a good time.
Yeah, right. Like hopefully the crew there is cool. It's uh, yeah, the ship is like upgrading from some UHFRs to some Axion and Like, the gear's already on board. They were originally scheduled to do it when they were, like, in port in the UK, but that's not for a couple months, and for whatever reason they were like, you know what, we want to do it now.
So, uh,
Sean Walker: Is that like in one of the ballrooms or
Andy Leviss: It's, like, in one of the theaters. It's, it's in, like, the, like, the main theater of the ship, as far as I know. Let them hear it. Yeah, it's the Queen Elizabeth 2. And it's the Royal Theatre, the Royal something theatre, something like that.
Sean Walker: So is that like two hours worth of work to do and then you're just like throwing on the swim trunks and hanging out in the pool with umbrella
Andy Leviss: see. Um, so, and John said watch out for all that DTV on the ocean. See, the cool thing about being on a boat Is that it's basically like a Faraday cage in the boat, because it's all that steel hull and the, and the, you know, theater is down into that enough that basically all I need to worry about from what I'm told is whatever is like, else is on the ship.
So, you know, we'll see what's there, but like, yeah, there shouldn't be any TV, don't need to worry about like, what port we're into, because it's all pretty well naturally shielded by the fact that it's on a big ass metal boat.
Sean Walker: Oh, that's cool. That's easy.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, so it should be good. So yeah, it's like, kind of go out there, pull the old stuff out of the rack, put the new stuff in and recable what needs to recable, get some wireless workbench on a Yeah, I think that notification is not from here.
Sean Walker: Oh, got it.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, I think that's just other stuff in my feed. Oh, hey Colin. I think I don't know if Colin Hardesty is out there actually watching. If you just said, Hey, but good friend and sometimes coworker of mine, just thumbs up the live video. And again, uh, for folks catching in late, if you're on Facebook, it seems like for whatever reason, the video is not making it through to Facebook today.
So I popped a link to riverside. fm in the comments, which will take you straight to the studio and video. is working on there. Although it seems like if you're watching in portrait mode on an iPhone, you might be getting like half of my face and half of Sean's, but
Sean Walker: Which is an upgrade, I
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Average that to one incredibly handsome, you know, host. Um, yeah. So yeah, getting ready to go on a boat for a few days and then head back and all the quirks that come with traveling onto a boat and having to like be on the boat by a certain time. So like they end up having to pay you for a day early to get into town and stay in a hotel so you can get on the boat early enough.
Then just this week, hoping the airplane gods continue to be with me because, uh, for, I don't think anywhere in the world anybody's not aware of all the IT problems that have been going on everywhere right now from like hospitals to, to airplanes, to everything. Cause um, you know, like even when I was doing installs with AV stuff, like you do Crestron training and the very first thing that Crestron tells you What this tells you is no firmware Fridays.
No updates after 3pm, and never on a Friday. And apparently this CrowdStrike, who's this like, commercial security provider, pushed out an update, and not only pushed out an update on a Friday, But, like, didn't do rolling updates or staggered updates. They pushed it out to everything all at once and it broke things bad.
Sean Walker: Oh, no
Andy Leviss: So, yeah, the airport was a little crazy yesterday. My flight was early enough that, like, there was a little bit of a scramble to get crew to it because of crew that didn't make connections or that it, like, timed out. But we only delayed, like, 40 minutes and I'm still seeing lots of, like, cancellations and delays.
But knock on wood, my flight is still happening. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes.
Sean Walker: Well, let's hope, dude. It's a freaking short flight. It's only like an hour flight or so
Andy Leviss: yeah. I could almost walk there. You could like, I mean, I, as long as I'm there by like 9:00 AM tomorrow,
Sean Walker: I mean you make it basically, you know, you only got one wheelie bag, you'll be fine
Andy Leviss: dude.
Right? Yeah, I know. Great idea. Great
plan.
Sean Walker: your steps in dude.
Andy Leviss: That's what I did yesterday, going back and forth between front of house and backstage hanging out and right. I did not nap. I should have gotten napped in your truck cab more than I did.
Sean Walker: Dude, that was a late one. Thanks for hanging on that.
Yeah,
Andy Leviss: it was a long day.
Sean Walker: He came in like, dude, let's hang for the day. I'm like, that's cool man. I'll be on the job site all day. So he was like, I guess I'll hang on the job site all day. No problem, dude. What are you up at? Three in the morning to come get on
Andy Leviss: up at, I was,
Sean Walker: we finally got home.
You were like,
Andy Leviss: shoot me in the face.
Yeah, and the midnight here was 3 a. m. Totally. For me back home in New York, so I was Oh, fuck.
Sean Walker: You're a trooper, dude.
Andy Leviss: I wasn't fully up 24 hours because I slept a little bit on the plane. I did, uh, I'm a weirdo and like, I'll just throw a comfort movie on so I can tune in and out of it. And like, Indiana Jones or like those movies that I've seen enough times that like, I don't really have to pay attention.
So I napped to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on the flight out here.
Sean Walker: That's a good comfort movie.
Andy Leviss: It's, you know, yeah, you just wake up and it's like, KALIMA!
Sean Walker: Yeah, right?
Totally. Um,
Andy Leviss: what's Ben saying? Ben, eh. Gotta stop by the macaroon store in the airport on the way out, it's his favorite part of being in Seattle.
I say, what did I, I had like, there were some like, some wild cookies I had in the terminal and I'm trying to remember the name of the cookie place. They're like these weird like, no, it was like these like deep dish almost cookie. Oh,
Sean Walker: Oh, I don't know.
Andy Leviss: And I can, I can, I can look at the credit card receipt and tell you everybody hang out.
It's a food thing. So
Sean Walker: It's worth the wait, I
Andy Leviss: Yeah. It'll be worth it. It'll be worth the wait for a second. Uh, but, but, but low rider cookies.
Sean Walker: Okay, never had them.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. They're like these like thick, almost like deep dish, like half inch thick cookies. And they had one that was like stuffed with peanut butter and it was like, I don't need that, but I need that.
Sean Walker: You're right, totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Sean Walker: Emotionally I need that, but my waistline doesn't need
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, but, but. Oh, one new message. Just show me. Oh, right. I forgot that Riverside doesn't stream. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Trey, so Trey came in too to check out the show cause Trey's just over the water in Seattle.
And uh, so yeah, he got back around 2. 30am last night by the time he finally got home and you know, hung out with Michael and Chris from RCF and got a copy of Between the Lines. That he's going to rock into.
Sean Walker: It's a great book, dude. I got it as somebody pretty new to systems engineering, relatively speaking, compared to, you know, some of the other rippers that are in our, in our community. It was fun to watch, to like shadow that dude on a bunch of different shows as he's, you know, been out or we've been running around and like watching work is basically just like going through the book, dude.
He basically wrote his workflow down and it turns out awesome every time. It's great. And, and Chris did, he was badass too, man. It was great to have a team as the It was great to like, have super awesome people in each department, you know, doing their jobs so I didn't have to worry about anything on this show.
I was literally like, smoking cigars and drinking bubbly water and making bad jokes and grabbing ass while everybody was really working. It was pretty cool.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, so, and so, so this was a gig you had lined up, and then like, and then just RCF reached out and was like, hey, do you want to check out the new toys? Or like, how did that, how did that come
Sean Walker: I mean, yeah, yeah, kind of just, you know, I keep in touch with Tark and I was like, Hey man, what, what are the chances of that rig is like, you know, sitting in a warehouse someplace during this time? And he was like, we could probably make that work. And I'm like, all right, cool, man.
Thanks dude. Which is sweet. You know, they, they, they're awesome, dude. They take, they take good care of me. I've, I bought a bunch more PA this year, which is cool. So now we've got 48 boxes of their, of their, I don't know if you guys can't see in the stack in the corner here, but
Andy Leviss: hang on, I can pan them over. Like the
Sean Walker: orange, the orange cases over there are all.
All the NX 32s and then the little, tall, slim, black cases on the ground are what we put our HDL 26s in. And there's some extra 26s on the shelf up there that haven't gotten into their cases yet.
But
they've just been great, dude. You know what I mean? We had, we had a Tier 1 PA for a while that, you know, worked just fine.
But
Andy Leviss: these
Sean Walker: things are just freaking incredible for the money, man. I can't, I literally can't stop saying enough good things about it. And they are not paying me directly to say that. You know what I mean?
Just
freaking, they're awesome,
man.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Yeah, that's, no, that was like a, yeah, cause they were, they were sponsoring the podcast before you and I were even on it. And you were buying their shit before. And I mean shit, good shit, not bad shit.
Sean Walker: yeah, yeah, totally.
Andy Leviss: We love you, Tarek. We love you, RCF. Totally.
Sean Walker: There, there, I mean, it's not a perfect product line. There was one or two products where I was like, oh man, not that one.
You know what I mean? Just like anybody's got one, like, you know, K3. Uh, but, yeah.
Andy Leviss: But for
Sean Walker: the most part, all their stuff has been great, dude. Sounds good, works good. Haven't had any problems that wasn't our own fault,
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I think we talked about it a little bit too, and I think it's, I think it's fair.
'cause like they talk about it too, like, like, um, when they had that out at, was it Nam that like shit went a little off the rail? Like there was, there was a little sp speaking of I wasn't there. I I I
Sean Walker: I was. It was, it was, it was more than a
Andy Leviss: off
Sean Walker: the rail, dude. Yeah. I, I was, I was in front of house with Pooch and Jim and those guys, and fricking it would, he did a great job, dude.
That pooch is an incredible mixer and it sounded good, but it was like, mm, something ain't right here. You know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and apparently like the day before, there had been like a firmware update pushed out that just like this CrowdStrike thing the entire world's dealing with now, an update went out and kind of tanked some stuff and it's a bummer, particularly at such a high profile, you know, a showcase like that.
Yeah Tarek
Sean Walker: got after it and they Went and found the problem and fixed it and you know, they updated the firmware and now it's freaking slaying. It's a killer sound of PA
Andy Leviss: PA. Yeah, and those, like, I don't know the model of the amp, but those amps are wild.
Sean Walker: XPS 1600 or 16k or something
Andy Leviss: like that. Yeah, which is like how many watts it's got, right?
Probably. Yeah, I think like 16, 000, um.
Sean Walker: And it's daunting. It's like the same, it's the same architecture as like an LA 12X where it's four inputs, four outputs. Plus Dante, which is sweet for us corporate guys that are like, yeah, man, I'm gonna hang it everywhere in the fricking place and run EtherCon or fiber to it rather than having to like, pull multi pair drive, you know?
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and like what's astounding about it though is these amps like they sip power. Like it's like they're not sitting there like you know they're not sitting there like cracking the top off the bottle of power like pounding it down. They're just there with like a little like you know capri sun pack straw just like daintily sipping power out and pumping out low end like the Yeah, I'm trying to remember how many subs were on, like, one amp.
Sean Walker: There were 18 subs total on the show And I think when we measured power During the headliner it was
Andy Leviss: I think
Sean Walker: the sub leg was only drawn two amps or something in three phase power It was like
Andy Leviss: almost nothing. Yeah, I'm trying to remember how many subs were on, like, an individual amp, cause, like, the amp I was looking at was, like, drawing, like, maybe a tenth of a watt.
And like, that was the subs, and it was like the subs, like, during, you know, a part of Soundcheck when, like, like, stuff was pumping, like, there was some low end going through that. It's, they did a really nice job engineering those.
Sean Walker: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: And they look pretty, too.
Sean Walker: I mean, that's the important part, as long as it looks cool coming off the truck, bro.
Andy Leviss: you can get half your jobs done.
Um, yeah, and there was like some other cool stuff, like apparently as soon as you get, uh, as soon as you get power to the amps, the network module in it comes online, even if the rest of the amp's in standby. Yeah, so you can
Sean Walker: talk to it and program.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, you can like sit there and like readdress things and get them all lined up and programmed without having to power the full amp up and without having to like tweak and configure stuff, so.
You know, compared to some of the stuff I've had to deal with on other brands of amps. That's certainly, uh, certainly a nice sales pitch right there as when you're the person teching it.
Sean Walker: Yep.
Andy Leviss: And then, you know, the cool part is, like,
Sean Walker: it's under development,
Andy Leviss: man. It's not like, like, the software is
Sean Walker: not quite as slick as DMB's ecosystem. They got a really great ecosystem, man, that, you know what I whole R1, ArrayCalc, Suite, it just, it works killer,
Andy Leviss: But the RDNet software is super
powerful,
Sean Walker: and they're just working on making it more elegant, which is great,
Andy Leviss: Yeah, well, on that note, actually, talking about DMB and their ecosystem, that was actually the other thing that I did, uh, that I did, uh, Uh, last week was I spent two days at a D& B Soundscape workshop. Oh, how was that? It was pretty cool. It's, you know, I'd, I'd worked with Soundscape a little bit and Soundscape is sort of, for those who don't know D& B, Soundscape is sort of the overarching term for their ecosystem of, of like all the stuff that like uses a DS 100 processor, which is their, like originally Dante, they've now got the DS 100 and it's, uh, Milan, I, Milan or Matty, I think it's Milan.
Maybe it's Matty. No, I think they added a Milan version too. Yeah, we can google it later. Or somebody can fact check me in the chat. Um, but it's, like, that's their big matrix. It can do, it can not only do, like, time and delay matrixing manually, but then it's got, uh, on scene and on space, or end space. Um, because I keep wanting to pronounce it the French way, but they're German, so I don't know how they, uh After two days of class, I should remember how they pronounce it.
I think they pronounce it as in seen and in space, but it's E N.
Sean Walker: I think the way it's pronounced is, There will be no mistakes!
Andy Leviss: yeah, yeah. The German engineers are very, uh, very intense.
Sean Walker: And
Andy Leviss: precise. Yeah, yeah, there were fun stories of like, of the US, you know, training and support folks going back and forth with the German engineers to like, understand why things are certain ways, you know, so that they could explain it to classes like this.
But um, so there's basically two modes that inputs can go into in this, and they can, they can share outputs, but you dedicate inputs to one or the other. Um, and, and space is Basically like a, you know, multiple input, you know, up to 64 channel output reverb engine with like real, um, convolution reverbs. And you can go in so similar to like, it's, it works differently than like Meyer Constellation does, but you can do sort of kind of similar.
You know, space enhancement things, like they talk in my class a bit about how to use it as like a virtual orchestra shell kind of situation if you've got a dead room or a deader room and want to make it sound more like a cathedral or, you know, or, you know, um, symphony hall or anything like that. Um, and basically there's like, there's two types of technology.
So like, um, Meyer Constellation works. They put a pile of microphones out through the room and then a pile of speakers and it's all Matrix Live. And they're basically creating reflective surfaces by having the microphone where the reflection would be picked up and then making that come out of the speakers in the same area.
So that's called regenerative, um, like reverb or regenerative, you know, virtual spaces or whatever. And then what Uh, N Space does is inline, where it's happening digitally. It's like an effects unit, it's just an effects unit with, you know, many, many more discrete outputs. And basically, you've got surrounds that are calculated dynamically based on where in space they are in your mains.
And then overhead, they basically have four zones. So, left to right, there's no real overhead variation, but front to back, there's like four zones, the way they record these impulses. Um, and, uh, And so you can just feed, you know, sources straight out of your console into that and treat it as an effects engine or an insert, or you can hang microphones in the space and use it sort of as a regenerative one.
Just to allow, and like, I know one of the examples D& B gave that was really cool was that, uh, like when they set up demo rooms at like trade shows, they're like, it's a trade show floor and the room's kinda dead, so like, people don't really talk, so they started actually putting a couple microphones in the room and turning N Space on into that, and then they can both use it as a demo, but also because the room feels a little more live and a little more natural, they said suddenly people hang out and talk instead of just peacing out after the demo.
Oh, that's cool. So it's like, it's cool. Like the ways you can manipulate that or like do that to like make an audit and. I mean, I've done that on theater shows, too, where, like, you don't want pre show music, but, like, it's in, you know, a hundred seat theater, so it's really small, so, like, you can either put microphones in and just kind of reinforce the audience to other spots of the audience, or just straight up just play a little low recording of, like, a crowd chatter, and, like, one spot People in the audience hear people chattering.
They're more willing to talk and it makes it a way less awkward waiting for the show to start for half an hour than if you didn't have anything. Um, that's a, that's a good trick, dude. Yeah.
Sean Walker: Yeah. I never, I never even
Andy Leviss: of that. There's just waited
Sean Walker: in silence.
Andy Leviss: right. Like awkward style. Just look at it. Waiting, looking.
Um, yeah, so that, so that's, that's, uh, that's end space, which is like the one side of it. And then end scene is the cool, that's the more like space map or space map go kind of, or, um, um, You know, Timex or Elise's L Acoustics version of like the object makes mixing. So instead of having mono or trying to have stereo and not really having stereo, cause you're in a wide live room and you know, one person down the middle gets a stereo image where you actually like place like direct outs of either groups or individual inputs into the engine up to 64 of them, and then you place them in space and it does, depending on how it's configured and where in the room you're placing the virtual object.
It'll either do some combination of time and delay matrixing to make it sound like it's coming there. And it's like, even in the small room we were in, like doing demos of that was like, you go from, you know, a stereo or a mono mix where it's like, yep, sounds like a wall of sound to like, they could play back a recording and by like spreading, you know, the five or six instruments and voices throughout the space, suddenly it's like, yep, the vocalist there, he's, he's there.
So like, it's cool for playback. It's also really cool for live stuff because you can make the drums sound like they're coming from the drums. And that's cool. Yeah. And it like, having heard it both in the demo and that small theater, and then mixed on it a little bit for one of the shows I did at the Perlman Center, you know, earlier in the year, it's really cool.
You got to think about stuff a little differently because you know, you're mixing with a lot of direct outs and like, you're still doing EQ and level balance on the console, but you know, you're not busting stuff together as much. And it's, I mean, I'm a snot about my undervalves in theaters, like when I'm tuning it, like, I'm never going to tell you I'm the best sE, I'm also not going to tell you I'm the worst sE, like I'm, I'm decent enough, like, I'm a front of house engineer who can tune a pretty solid system, uh, you know, for my needs, and like, it was cool because in that main space at the Pearlman, where they've got this DS 100, we didn't have the DS 100 in for that first six month chunk y'all have heard me talk about.
You know, through much of last year when I was working there. The dark days, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and no, we didn't have any dark days on the schedule, that's the problem. We were doing like 15 hour days of like, you know, 5, 6, 7 days a week. Um, and, uh, so, you know, the first chunk of shows in there, I tuned it all manually, lined up the underbox, you know, dialed them in, spent a while there getting them, so you know.
Somebody could come in and be like, yo, your underbelts aren't on, and then you'd mute them, and they'd be like, oh, shit, they were doing a lot, which, which I take pride in, but I'm a snot about how those are tuned, and I went away, you know, to do some other gigs for a little while and came back, and they had gone through and, like, took the time to figure out the DS 100, you know, take a laser measure and, like, measure and build an accurate array calc file with all the speakers where they actually belonged, and you load that into, um, into R1 and, you know, You know, and, and get the whole, you know, soundscape thing going with it.
And it does the delay and the EQ on those and went through and listened. And it was like one of those, like, well, why don't you take a listen and see how it is? And if you know, you want to make tweaks, we'll make tweaks, but like, see what we get. And I was game. So I went in and listened and leaned in and put my ear up to the speaker to see what it was doing.
And d& b does a damn good job with that processing on there. Like that is a, and. And I will say, like, well, obviously D& B strongly encourages you to use it with their speakers. They're also happy to sell you that box to use with anything else, too. So, um, you know, to a certain point, it's like, it's mostly doing delay and EQ.
So, while it's not necessarily officially supported as a processor for other brands, there's, there's no reason not to. And, I mean, Elecoustics has Elisa, which is their version of a similar thing. You know, they all work in the ways they do, and each one works a little different and has its pluses and minuses, but like, there's some cool tools where We're seeing come out now.
Sean Walker: How do you do your underbox when you're doing them? Since you're such a snot about it, like, how do you, what makes it work for you?
Andy Leviss: Um, it's that very, like, Bob McCarthy workflow and a little bit of, and a little bit of the tips like Pat Brown shared with us a while back is, like, kind of go in, get your main sound on how you want to, get those all balanced out, if it's an array, you know, get the array sounding consistent through the areas it's covering.
And then once I'm done, I'll go in and take, uh, like a reference trace of, You know, this is what my mains are sounding like tuned, you know, it's flat ish, but it's not going to be flat. I'm with whatever, you know, curve I want to put on it. Right. And then take a reference trace of that. Then you go back, move the microphone into like the area of coverage of the underbelks and, you know, and.
You know, depending on time, if I've got time to do a few positions back there, obviously like three or so, you know, is better, but you know, there's days where you got to do it fast and it's like, okay, I know the mains are good and I've done that with multiple positions. Let's get one there and basically bring up the mains and you see what's missing.
Yeah. And then just, yeah, and then just bring, bring the, you know, bring, you know, slowly bring the level up into the undervalchs, you know, and you'll end up like basically exceeding your curve and then cut back out and, you know, high pass out what you don't need from that to get it settled in. And then, you know, do the ti and the, the timing is where I picked up that trick from pat of, uh, when we had him on.
And if, if I remember, I'll link to that on the show notes when we post this, uh, to start, you know, put your click track on and start way, way long in your delay time, and then cheat your way backwards towards where you think it should be. And it does like it, it's. I don't know why, but like as Pat pointed out in that episode, working backwards, it's a lot easier to tell like when you've hit that pocket and when you overshoot than working forwards, like working forwards, there's, I guess like too much of a pocket where it's close enough that like your brain is kind of having trouble finding it.
But like when it's late and it's an echo, it's very, very obvious. So like since I started doing that, it's been good. And then I will always go and either throw on, uh, Either Human Nature by Michael Jackson, which is Michael Jackson's Toto song. Okay. It did. It, uh, it was, uh, it was actually written by, uh, by, um, I think Lukather, I think Steve Lukather for Toto, and Toto wasn't sure if they were gonna do it or not, and Quincy and Michael heard it and were like, yo, can we do that song?
We like that song. And if you go back and listen to it, it's totally a fucking Toto song. Um, and it's got like that, that, you know, that, that Porcaro drumming going on in it. Or I will, uh, I will go for just straight up Toto Rosanna. And I actually like off of YouTube, there's a pretty decent quality isolated, uh, just the drum track from that.
It's like, sometimes if I really want to focus on like making sure my delays are all lined up right, I'll just throw that drum track on because like that is like, there's some amazing drumming on that song and like all the like. Symbol work and that is like if it's not in time You'll hear like all sorts of like flams and double shit going on And it will become very obvious very fast that your delay times are not quite in the pocket I wouldn't want to necessarily set my delay time with that It's a little busy to listen to but it's great for verifying it after
And Ben saying he wants to start a petition for Sean to host the next Season of Noise and meet up with 48 boxes of RCF and a DS 100. Sounds like a sick movie night.
Sean Walker: Done.
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Alright, you gotta figure out who we, you gotta talk to friends at D& B then and see if we can borrow a DS 100. Yeah, dude, totally.
But um I
Sean Walker: my buddy Jason Wagner still knows who to call at D& B to ask about borrowing that for movie
Andy Leviss: Yeah. We'll just do
Sean Walker: do it out in front of the shop, dude.
We'll just set up like an SL 100 and some video wall
Andy Leviss: fricken
Sean Walker: start hanging things around Genie
Towers.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And then five minutes later it'll start raining.
And, uh, yeah, welcome to Seattle. Trains like I'm in. Okay, perfect. Yeah. He's, he's right over in Seattle. You can just hop on over here. Um, so actually that's a, that's a cool. So one of the questions I had, cause it was a thing that had come up. When I was working in, in installs, you know, before I left that last year is how do you do like surround playback in these like object based mixing things?
Because they're not, because both they're not, you know, like Atmos or whatever systems, they're like much more fine grained than that. And also like Atmos doesn't really have a concept of front fills, which we need. So Atmos is just kind of like, we don't know what to do with it. Why, why are you sitting so close?
Like just sit where speakers can cover you. We don't always have that luxury, we gotta just cover
Sean Walker: people wherever they're gonna be.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, so basically, like what you, you could in theory go and like do a custom Atmos like configuration and that would be the ideal way to do it, but practically what a lot of folks end up doing, as long as you don't have Atmos coming in to sign off and like thumbs up the room, cause they will not do it.
Thumbs up doing it this way. But if you're just trying to get like Atmos playback as close as you can without it being an officially certified Atmos room, you just create your, like, you know, however many, whether it's, you know, like, what is Atmos? It's like nine, 2, 4, I Somebody in the chat will probably correct me with what the like, you know, the top channels to subs to, you know, surrounds is or, you know, or you get like a 7.
2 or a 5. 1, like any of those configurations, basically, you can create an object for each of those, like, speakers that you would have. And create a virtual one. And you have to be careful with modes, like there's in DMB, like uh, and scene, there's different modes for how it blends the delay and how it spreads stuff across speakers.
So there's like totally off, where it's just like no delay, only level, basically panning. There's tight, which just keeps it spread to a couple speakers near where it is. And then there's um, I'm blanking on what it's called now. I don't think it's wide. Whatever the third mode is that basically does like much more spread of like how many speakers to lay through, which gives you like a lot more spatial imaging to it, but causes a problem if you're not doing single object.
Like if you have the same signal going to two sources, so if it's panned through like in an Atmos where it's positioned in between two speakers, if you do it in that wider, I think it is wide. I think it's tight versus wide. And in that wider mode, then you'll get weird echoes and stuff because Since the source is hitting two inputs and getting delayed both to like sum down at the same speaker, you can get either phasing or echoes.
So you gotta like configure it carefully, but there's a way you can configure it and basically create virtual atmos or surround speakers and Yeah, a couple folks are popping in the chat and fact checking me that it's, uh, yeah, seven, seven, two, four, uh, seven, four, two, somewhere, yeah, like seven, seven mains, four overhead surrounds, and, and two low end channels, I believe.
Um, yeah, so you would basically create those, you know, like 13 channels or whatever in, as virtual channels, and It'll get you close enough and it's a it's a pretty cool cool tool toy somewhere in between to have
Let's see who else we got a handful of folks in there I don't know if anybody else has any other questions or if we just blather on about a chance.
I mean We did we did not do tacos last night. I trade did you did you all end up making a taco stop?
Last night on the way out. Yeah
Sean Walker: I found the cheeseburger shop.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, I would say Eric's here, he's like, best tacos nearby. That is, that is the question I was already veering
Sean Walker: Taco book.
Andy Leviss: Uh, they're saying the good taco place was closed in the drive thru line at uh, oh yeah, because they were going to try and go to Taco Bell, uh, as, as you do at about 2 a.
m.
Sean Walker: Yo man, I hadn't been to Taco Bell in probably a decade, maybe a decade and a half. And we were out doing Lee Bryce and Lawrence was like, yo man. Except for that grilled stuffed burrito, and I was like, what? He was like, yeah man, that's the
Andy Leviss: the jam. The Grilled
Sean Walker: Grilled cheese burrito, that was it, grilled cheese burrito. And I was like, alright, whatever dude.
So we ordered it up, got back to the room, and I was like, yo dude, this burrito's fire.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, I hate how often Taco Bell has become my, like, I need something quick and I don't want to think about it. Yeah, right? Like, I've talked about, like, uh, you know, when I'm doing gigs out of town, doing Domino's is like the safety safe of, like, I know what I'm gonna pay, I know what I'm gonna get, it'll be fine.
Sean Walker: Yeah, but you're from New York, you can't order dominoes, bro.
Andy Leviss: Come on. We've talked about this before. We've talked about this before. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, Taco Bell's definitely, like, yeah, I hadn't done Taco Bell in years and now, like, in the last six months, I don't want to talk about how many times I've ended up just like They do, and I was telling you all yesterday, they do a solid breakfast, like the, the cheesy toasted breakfast burritos are my jam.
It's like two bucks, three bucks and, like, you get a little stuff like, you know, scrambled eggs, nacho cheese sauce, sausage or whatever. That's awesome. Um, yeah,
Sean Walker: there's this little joint down the street here in Everett called Taco Book that makes killer tacos. If if you're in Everett and want to go get great
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And did you get any tacos? Cause there was a taco vendor at the, at the festival, but I think we went, we went to like the, cause it was like the, the, the, the Bratmobile not to be confused with the Bratmobile, which is.
Sean Walker: That was, the Bratmobile was my truck on the way home. I was like, I want to go to bed, I want my mommy.
You know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: it was, it was late
Sean Walker: Yeah. Though the Bratmobile had killer burgers though, they had this German cheeseburger that was frickin delightful.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and then Trey's also saying, Tacos Chukis, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but, uh, C H U K I S in Seattle is pretty good.
So see, we got to mention a bunch of places cause, um, uh, I'm trying to remember who it is in the discord that just started putting together a Google spreadsheet of all the restaurants that have been mentioned in Signal to Noise.
And he's been working his way through. Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll link to it. It's, it's in, it's in, I think it's an episode discussion. It might be in the food channel. Um, I'll, I'll link to the spreadsheet. He's doing, doing God's work for us on that.
Sean Walker: Oh man, I was in Nashville last week or the week before.
Andy Leviss: Okay. It's Todd. Todd is doing
it.
Sean Walker: Bro, DegTie in Nashville is awesome. It was so good, I had it twice. I was like, oh well, nope, we can go back to DegTie, dude. And then obviously Hattie B's, right? Like the old standby for Nashville Hot Chicken, but DegTie was the shit when we were there.
Andy Leviss: I didn't get to try that and I love Thai food.
Because when I was in Nashville for a gig last year, I went, um, uh, Denny and a couple other folks had posted in the Discord some racks and there's like a ramen place that's also a whiskey bar that I was like, you're speaking my
Sean Walker: You were like, sold, dude, I'm in.
Andy Leviss: That was pretty great. That was pretty solid.
Yeah, no, Trey's yelling that we gotta pin the Google Sheet, which I will.
If you're not on the Discord, you can go there now, it's in the food. It's like the last couple, uh The last couple of messages in the, in the food channel on the, on the signal noise discord. And, uh, Todd, as of a few days ago had made it up through episode 109 and he said, it's not definitive and it's not polished.
Cause he's going through like, uh, you know, like auto generated transcripts of it and, and doing text search. He's not listening to, you know, 250 something episodes for it.
Sean Walker: Good for you, Todd. Don't, you don't gotta go back through the whole
Andy Leviss: work smart. Not
Sean Walker: yeah, yeah, totally. Good work, buddy.
Andy Leviss: But, yeah, so that's up there, like, folks can make at it and, uh, and we will, uh, but yeah, we're giving, we're giving you some work in this episode. We mentioned a pile of
Sean Walker: Yeah,
that's what's up. Oh, also, Fisherman Jack's here in Everett is delightful if you like, yeah, if you like Asian
Andy Leviss: Oh, yeah, you were telling me about that last week and then we never made it.
Sean Walker: We didn't, dude. We got stuck on site. We should have gone, though. It was right down the street.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Well, now I just gotta come back.
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, totally. We'll get some frickin dinner and some coffee.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Yeah. But, um, that's, we're rounding out about 50 minutes. I don't know, does anybody else have any other questions with the, the handful of folks that are still in the chat?
Sean Walker: They're like, no, get off my frickin screen, you guys.
Andy Leviss: let's go look over at Facebook and see, nope, that's not on here, that's, that's just other folks liking the stream, uh, which is still, yeah, I don't know why the Facebook video is not going through, because it certainly is getting the audio, and that is a Riverside graphic it's getting.
I don't know what's up with that. Weird.
we're
Sean Walker: audio guys and not video guys and the audio is working.
Andy Leviss: I mean it could. I'm gonna blame the CrowdStrike crashes. I don't know that it has anything to do with that, but that seems like the get out of jail free for anything computer related this weekend.
Sean Walker: There you go.
Andy Leviss: Um, cool. Well, I mean, it sounds like questions are dying down and we've been yammering on, so I don't know. Is there any last bit of
Sage wisdom you want to throw out at folks while we're
Sean Walker: Bro, did you just ask me for sage wisdom?
Andy Leviss: I know I'm blowing you up, like, folks don't know how smart this dude is.
Come on,
Sean Walker: on, dawg. Don't, don't, don't blow my cover, man. I'm, I'm trying real hard for
Andy Leviss: Larry the Cable
Sean Walker: you know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: you know what I mean? Dude.
Sean Walker: you know what I didn't find out? Speaking of the, like, Larry the Cable Guy vibe and just the not super smart dude, but you just find out behind the scenes they're super smart.
Did you know that Kid Rock has like a zillion businesses that are cranking money? So
Andy Leviss: So why doesn't he just shut up?
Sean Walker: don't know. I mean, I don't know anything about the dude, but I was, they were just telling me because I was like, man, what was that place that we went in Nashville that was just super loud?
They're like, oh, Kid Rocks. I'm like, yeah, man, that place is so loud. You can hear from like blocks away. They're like, yeah, yeah. But did you know that he's got a bunch of other businesses and they're all super profitable? He's really successful. I was like, I did not. Tell me all about it. So you have to go down that web search rabbit hole to find out that.
But like, dude, he owns a bunch of businesses. He is super successful and then also has that same like persona, you know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah, well it's like, you've seen like videos of like, Larry the Cable Guy back before he was Larry the Cable Guy?
Sean Walker: I haven't
Andy Leviss: Oh, he was like, khakis and polo shirt dude doing his stand up back in the day before he hit on that character and Uh huh.
Went into it, yeah, cause like he, I want to say he grew up in like Connecticut. Like he's, he's definitely nothing like that character he plays, which is wild. That's super funny. But yeah, like likewise, Mr. Mr a Def Le Leopard t-shirt over here. Yeah. is, yeah, no, I will say like, I, like, I don't dunno.
I'm gonna get all Malin now that we're like hanging out in person. Like I have, I am so lucky to have this dude like holding down the other microphone with me on this
thing.
Oh,
thank because like, like. He's not only funny and cracking like, oh, possibly worse jokes than I do sometimes, but like this dude, like you guys don't, don't sleep on this guy.
Like the shit that comes out of his mouth. Like he'll, he puts in these little seats. Like, I think he does it as a scavenger hunt to like hide these really smart
Sean Walker: They're easter eggs bro, you gotta find the easter
Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's
Sean Walker: like an easter egg hunt.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, it's like, this is the guy I come to with the business questions, they're like, this sounds stupid.
Is this stupid?
Sean Walker: Probably, it's probably stupid.
Andy Leviss: probably stupid. That's how I roll.
Sean Walker: No, no, it's not, it's not.
Andy Leviss: Um, cool. But yeah, man. It's, yeah. And Ben's like, and Sean with the Divorce Prevention Program sermons.
Sean Walker: I mean, bro, you gotta stay on that, you gotta stay on that bro's Divorce Prevention Program, dude. Absolutely. She'll take half, dawg. You, you know, don't, don't give away half. Don't be stupid.
Andy Leviss: Nope. And I will say I had the pleasure, uh, you know, I won't say last night because we were dead tired last night, but this morning of, you know, properly meeting and hanging out with Ashley, Sean's better half, and his two kids, who are absolutely just adorable, and his hulk of a dog.
Sean Walker: You're right, totally. Yeah, it's a handful. It's a handful. They're rad, I'm blessed, but it's a handful at
Andy Leviss: Yeah. I feel like the dog and the cat must be where, cause you barely noticed the cat cause the dog is such like a lovable Hulk. Yeah. There's just
Sean Walker: it's just like 191 pounds of frickin love. Yeah,
Andy Leviss: just kind of pops in and sneaks in and out.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like, I wonder if they're like, if that's on purpose, it's like, yo, you distract them, I'm going to go find some
Sean Walker: There
you go, totally. You didn't even get to meet the ducks and chickens and stuff. There's like a whole farm
Andy Leviss: There's ducks and chickens? Yeah, dude. Oh, shit.
Sean Walker: Ashley loves animals, so there's like, we got ducks and chickens in the
Andy Leviss: This explains why you two are together.
Sean Walker: Yeah, right? Seriously, dude. I got
Andy Leviss: the beard going. She's like, oh, he's
Sean Walker: so fuzzy. But, yeah, it's rad. Well, thanks for hanging out, dude. You should come back more.
Andy Leviss: Absolutely. And, you know, and thanks to everybody in the chat and watching the stream for hanging out and for those sitting there listening to this when we posted on the feed on Thursday.
Yeah, and of course, you know, thanks as always to Allen and Heath and RCF who we got to hear rocking and doing their thing this week.
Sean Walker: Together this time! They were both together. It was Allen and Heath Desks and RCF PA, because the headliner owned them.
That was rad. Yeah. It worked great.
Andy Leviss: Um, and shout out to, to Boz, who was back on episode 95, who was mixing Clay Walker
yesterday.
Yeah,
Sean Walker: smoking mix. That guy's great. Awesome,
Andy Leviss: Awesome, awesome dude. We were actually talking, we might have him come back, cause like, he was, he was on, like I said, way back on episode 95, and you know, he's, he's changed artists. He's working with a little bit since then, and like, moved on to other things, and you know, he, he said he was kinda down to come hang with us and talk about like, what he still does the same as what he did back then.
Totally. You know, what sort of stuff has changed. You know, what he's learned and all that.
Sean Walker: got dropped into the, he and his, his monitor guy got dropped into those consoles 'cause the artist owns them and so
Andy Leviss: they
Sean Walker: were figuring 'em out and he's like, man, it was a little bit of a hump.
'cause I came from Dig World, but what a fricking cool desk.
Andy Leviss: yeah,
Sean Walker: it's, it showed, man, those, the fricking show sounded awesome.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, it sounded good. And like Boz is a cool dude. Um, totally, we'll, we'll link to that, that old episode with him too, so you can check it out. I'm like, that's a dude, like, he's like, like Clay Walker is like classic country. Like he, uh, I know we had, um, Dave Stan on like last year who, who is currently a mixing Tanya Tucker, and I'm gonna pronounce it right for you, for you, Dave and Boz.
Cause I know better. Um, but, uh, um, uh, yeah, he used to mix her, but then he's also done like a bunch of like, you know, like metal bands. It's like, dude has had a weird and varied career. And it's like, like, I know he talks a little bit in, in episode 95 about it. I'm digging more like we like into that, like hopping such dramatic genre changes.
Sean Walker: he was out with The Pretty Reckless before this. He went from The Pretty Reckless to Clay Walker, and I was like, Yo man, that's a little bit of a genre change.
He was like, I know. It's kinda cool though. And the boss was cool. He says Clay's awesome,
Andy Leviss: nice
Sean Walker: Makes it cool when you
Andy Leviss: got a cool boss and also I got to throw props out to Steve the bus driver.
Sean Walker: Oh, dude, that guy was
Andy Leviss: holy shit Yeah, this guy was a G Yeah, so this is the guy who drives, you know, cuz they got two buses They got the artist bus and the crew buses you do and he's he's Clay's bus driver and dude You Take the bus, like from backstage, pull it out and make a little bit of an angle change so that you could thread through between a U Haul that like the one of the food vendors had and like an SUV on a diagonal into a tight parking lot, then straightened back out, went straight through the parking lot in reverse, and then nailed a three point turn in a tour bus to then weave his way back around like a tight U Haul.
You know, hairpin turn through the parking lot the other way.
Sean Walker: To sneak past our truck where we're sitting in the lift gate, smoking cigars, and shooting the breeze,
Andy Leviss: And literally like four different points of this, like pile of stagehands and sound engineers just looking at him like, dude, like throwing him thumbs up.
And he, he got a standing ovation from like about eight of us at the end and he's just looking out, like, you know, throwing peace signs out the window. Like, I appreciate you guys. That guy was gangster, dude. Yeah, that was, that was, I was saying that was one of the. And that's the two single best bits of commercial driving I've ever seen in my
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: The other one being a dude out in like Long Island City, Queens, you know, nearby the sound shop I used to work at, who in a full on 53 foot trailer nailed a three point perfect like textbook K turn without ever like stopping in between the points of the turn. Just boom, boom, boom, boom. Go. That's awesome.
And yeah, a bunch of like, you know, four or five of us, like very jaded local one stagehands just looking at each other like, you saw that. I didn't imagine that.
Sean Walker: right?
Andy Leviss: So yeah, but I, you know, I doubt he's listening. But like, boss, if you happen to be listening or anybody else on that team, you know, again, pass on our props to Steve because that dude is, is An impressive ass bus driver.
Yeah,
Sean Walker: dude. Totally.
Andy Leviss: So, and speaking of getting on the bus, I gotta start winding towards the airport and we're right around that hour mark. We had already, you know, in that ADHD way that we do, we'd started saying goodbye and then, you know, have circled back around. So, we'll once again say thanks to y'all for hanging.
Thanks to the folks who hung in the chat and threw a couple questions at us. Thanks again to RCF and Allen and Heath.
Sean Walker: thanks for hanging y'all. That's the pod!
Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green
