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
270. Live Engineers, ProdCom Developers Justin Tyre & Stephen Bailey
In Episode 270, the hosts are joined by live sound engineers and software developers Justin Tyre and Stephen Bailey, who earlier this year launched ProdCom, new software for the live event industry that provides real-time multichannel text transcriptions of talkback mics, intercom chatter, or any other audio fed into a MacOS computer. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.
Stephen and Justin talk about how the idea came about as a way to make their own work as live sound engineers easier, walk Sean and Andy through how it works, and provide a sneak peek at some of what they have planned for the future of ProdCom. They are also generous enough to offer both an extended trial of ProdCom as well as a free one year subscription for a few lucky listeners, so make sure to listen all the way to the end for details on how to enter!
Justin has been creating software for live production environments for the past decade. Over the years, he’s also worked live events in multiple capacities, including audio engineering and graphics. At ProdCom, he brings together his two passions — software creation and audio engineering — merging them to improve communication in live production environments. He lives in Georgia with his wife, two kids, and their energetic Aussiedoodle.
Stephen has an extensive career as both live and post-production mix engineer for a long list of artists, including Chris Tomlin, Crowder, Daughtry, and many others, and as festival FOH engineer for main stages at Coachella, Panorama, and the Buckeye Country Superfest, among others. He’s also worked providing support and training for numerous notable pro audio brands, including DirectOut, DiGiCo, and Waves SoundGrid.
Episode Links:
ProdCom On The Web
ProdCom On Instagram
ProdCom On Facebook
Episode 270 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
Signal To Noise, Episode 270 Live Engineers, ProdCom Developers Justin Tyre & Stephen Bailey
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, welcome to another episode of Signal To Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leavis, and with me the Rick to my Morty, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up Sean?
Sean Walker: Partying, dude. A. K. A. coffee, paperwork, running kids around gymnastics, you know, dad life. That's how I do. You'll be there in a minute. You'll know what I'm talking
Andy Leviss: I
Sean Walker: in a few years.
Andy Leviss: Anxiously awaiting. Anxiously awaiting.
Sean Walker: It's, uh, it's the time when your life is no longer yours. You're just chauffeur for your kids. You know what I mean? You're like on their schedule. You're like, Oh man, but I got this whole life to live and company to run. Nah, fuck that dog. You got to drive kids around.
My wife's usually the superstar about that. Today's, today's unusual, but yeah, I'm, I'm bombing all over town in between work trying to You know, shuffle kids around and stuff. So it's getting, get my dad on today.
Andy Leviss: Right on. Well, you rocketed out, so, and, and I can vouch for that personally, for both you and, and the missus rocketed out, because I came to visit and witnessed it firsthand, and
Sean Walker: Oh, thanks
Andy Leviss: solid parent goals.
Sean Walker: Thanks dog. There's no manual. We're just doing the best we can try not to fuck it up.
Andy Leviss: that's, that's the problem for me, because, you know, I'm a manual reader, so I'm like, where's the manual?
And everybody's like, well, there's like 80, 000 books and they're all terrible. And doesn't matter what you read in the book, it's going out the window the second the baby's there.
Sean Walker: Yeah, it's like driver's ed where you like learn how you're supposed to do it. And the second you get on the road, you're like fucking see ya. Here's how we're going. Ten and two, not a chance.
Andy Leviss: to zipper merge.
Sean Walker: That's it dude. Ten and two is out. You put your hand at noon, you turn the tunes up. You can lean hard, dog.
Just cruises rolling.
Andy Leviss: All right, well, speaking of rolling, why don't we roll right into, into introducing our guests? Because we got two guests with us. We got the little Fab Four layout in front of me on the screen today. We got Justin Tyre and Stephen Bailey, uh, who are the folks who brought us Prodcom, which some of our listeners know about and the rest I think are gonna probably download it before the episode's over.
Uh, why don't we, let's, let's start off and before we dive into that, uh, do you guys each want to give us just a little bit of background on who you are? How you ended up there, and then we'll dive into Prodcom, um, Steven, cause my eyes fell on you, why don't you go first?
Stephen Bailey: Sure. Uh, great to meet you guys. And, uh, I love this little app that we're using. It's pretty nifty. Never heard of it before. But it's cool. Um, so I am, uh, I kind of come from the world of, um, I come from the world of like music. I used to play in a band and play drums in a band for like, Uh, quite a while, um, just a rock band here from Atlanta, from Atlanta.
Um, and that, uh, you know, that sort of grew into this, uh, love of audio and mixing and it kind of got like, I don't want to probably, this is definitely the wrong way to say it, but like, you know, I play drums and it was, it kind of, I wanted like to do more stuff and kind of, uh, kind of expand my brain and, you know, do more challenging.
Things, so to speak, too. Um, so I kind of really fell into audio engineering and, um, mixing, you know, I started off mixing some post stuff, but then I really quickly found that I'm a perfectionist and that being in the studio is really difficult for me because I'll just sit on a track for, for days and days and not end up loving it.
So, um, I figured out pretty quickly that live, live sound, live production, broadcast stuff, that was kind of my, my thing. So, uh, you know, that's kind of the, the really short, uh, gist of it. And, um, I've been mixing, uh, mostly front of house and some broadcast stuff for, for quite a while. I guess I would say most of my adult life.
Um, I don't consider myself to be an old person any yet, uh, even though I'm very old. My kids remind me of that every day. So
Sean Walker: bro. Totally. Totally.
Andy Leviss: Dude, the,
Sean Walker: And the days they don't, your back reminds you, you're like, Oh, just kidding. I'm not 22 anymore.
Stephen Bailey: that literally just started like six months ago. So you can't, our, your listeners can't see, but this little chair behind, uh, you see I'm sitting in, uh, it's my back. So got it, got it from my back. Got it a couple of days ago.
Sean Walker: There you go. I remember vividly the first day I had to ask for help stacking double 18s. I was like, oh, oh, hey, can I get a friend? I'm gonna need a friend on this one now.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, that's a sad day. It's a sad day.
Sean Walker: Totally. But it comes for all of us, so it's okay. I made peace with it.
Stephen Bailey: That's funny.
Andy Leviss: well, well, well, speaking of injuries going around the circle. What's your injury, Justin?
Justin Tyre: Yeah, that's a fun story. Yeah. So, um, yeah, my injuries and a torn Achilles.
Stephen Bailey: did it happen?
Justin Tyre: Oh gosh. I was playing the sport that every old man that says go play the sport pickleball.
Stephen Bailey: It's an, it sounds intense.
Justin Tyre: It was, um, you know, my, my team had won two games in a row, so we were feeling pretty good. And well, this happened in the third game and very convenient timing. I did not want to lose a game. So I didn't lose a game, but, um, Uh, I think that might've felt better.
Stephen Bailey: I don't know. I mean,
Sean Walker: Did you in fact win the third game?
Justin Tyre: Well, the game never ended and it didn't make it halfway through. So I'm not taking it as a loss.
Sean Walker: There you go. There
Andy Leviss: It's, Sean and I were just talking earlier about how much I love a technicality.
Justin Tyre: That is what I'm all about.
Andy Leviss: Alright, so when you're not tearing your Achilles tendon playing pickleball, what's, what's, what's your background?
Justin Tyre: Yeah. So Steven's, Steven's definitely the cool one of the crew. Uh, my background's all in software engineering, so, uh, building apps for live, uh, production, a lot of video playback applications. Um, yeah, so doing that as my day job and then kind of as a hobby. Getting into audio engineering, um, whether it's volunteering or getting hired to mix monitors.
Um, that's kind of my stick for the most part. Uh, Stephen taught me most of what I know about audio engineering that is not, that did not happen on a, uh, analog console.
Stephen Bailey: Are you sure about that?
Andy Leviss: that literally says, like, it's not my fault.
Justin Tyre: Yeah, he, he probably does not want me to say that out loud.
Stephen Bailey: no, Justin's awesome. I just, I'm not sure if I, I'm not sure if that's true. You learned. You're a smart guy. I'm not.
Justin Tyre: the training services sales are going down as we speak.
Andy Leviss: Cool. So, so that being said, with that background, I guess, why don't we should probably explain to folks who don't know what Prodcom is, and then we can talk about how it came about.
Justin Tyre: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So, uh, I'll kick us off there. The, uh, the, the short backstory on Prodcom is I've been mixing monitors for years and years. Uh, a lot of times Steven's in front of the house and after mixing monitors, one day, uh, Sunday morning, it was like, we have a, normally have a band of like 10 to 12 people or so on stage and mixing monitor that is quite fun because you have a range of People who have never had monitors before to professional musicians, uh, which is, uh, challenging as y'all can imagine.
And everybody's talking to you at the same time. And so me just kind of being like, I know I'm not the best and that's okay, but I'm just like walking away. Like I had no idea what most of what they told me was. That was definitely a lot of like, you're telling me what to do. I have no idea. So purely naive question to Steven was, Hey, does this exist?
How do people keep track of talkbacks? And he's basically like, yeah, they don't like, you know, something along those lines. Like, yeah, you just kind of do the best you can move on. Right. Like somebody has to have made this already. Uh, which is kind of the idea was just, I want to text, I want to text read out of everything that people are telling me, just a transcript so I can look at it, read back through what they told me, catch up.
And, uh, after talking to her for a few minutes, it was like, he was pretty confident this doesn't exist. We were like, okay. Top secret. That's not taught to anybody. Let's go figure this out.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. There you have it. And we did a little bit of research. I mean, we, um, like long story short, it's probably too much information, but, um, you know, we like left, uh, this was at, like that specific day, like we were both at church, like, like, On the other end of each other doing audio. And, um, you know, we let, we like, as we were walking out, we were like, okay, like, let's, let's actually like do something about this and like research it and stuff.
So, you know, uh, maybe over like the next, uh, week, maybe a couple of weeks, we really dug into it. Um, Um, uh, we looked at software and stuff. We even started looking at some patents and stuff around that as well and discovered that there was nothing like it on the market. Um, which we were both kind of really surprised, like, you know, this is like, this is a, this would be a really significant capability, like not only to be able to read stuff that people are saying, but also like.
You know, it's like stuck in time now. So like if you're ADD like me and you can't eat cereal and talk at the same time, like, or even think about anything other than eating your cereal, like doing monitors is completely impossible. So what, you know, just the whole concept of this was like, okay, I could get on board with this.
Like, this is actually like, if it was developed right. Easy to use, easy to roll out, you know, very accessible, like this would be a very useful tool, you know, whether you're, you know, you know, a novice super green, you know, doing this as like moonlighting as an audio engineer, or you're like, you know, mixing, uh, doing RF for the Super Bowl and need to be able to hear, you know, Like, see what people are saying, like, you know, it scales the whole industry.
Um, so that's, we really got started and, um, you know, we dug into some stuff. We hired a, uh, a patent attorney and, uh, dug into that. And, uh, we cranked out a few, um, patents around the, the, uh, The concept and the idea and all this, um, some other stuff as well. So that's where we kind of ended up, but that's kind of where Prodcom started.
Um,
Sean Walker: So it's literally like descript for talkback microphones where you can just talk in your talkback and then I can read it at monitors and go, oh shit, up, down, up, down, this person, that person, this person, that person, like piece of cake.
Justin Tyre: Yeah. So think of it kind of like, uh, use Slack or, uh, like a messages thread with a bunch of people in it. So you get a real time transcript with everything.
Andy Leviss: Right? Like, remember when I was talking about subbing on that monitor gig the other week, where, like, everybody's used to somebody who knows all their voices, and I'm just saying, wait, who said what? I, I heard, I heard what got said. And don't know who said it, and then I know Cal wanted something but I lost track of what that Yeah, if I had had this it would have been great.
Stephen Bailey: yeah,
Sean Walker: Okay, so how does it work? Like, how do you, how do I interface this with my monitor console and stuff?
Stephen Bailey: we got to have a Mac computer because right now, um, Justin over here has figured
Sean Walker: there's only one computer to have and obviously it's Mac and audio.
Justin Tyre: That's right.
Stephen Bailey: yeah, I guess you could say that. Um,
Sean Walker: you can't, but I'll say it anyway.
Stephen Bailey: no, it is wild, but so like. Max, like Apple Silicon stuff is they have these like neural engines and basically what they allow you to do interesting can really dive into this a lot more, but they can, they can take, they can basically do real time transcription. Um, which is like pretty, pretty exclusive right now to Apple.
Like, I think some other technologies come, can kind of come pretty close, but nothing like, I mean, like, You know, nothing real time. And that was part of the whole thing. It's like, it's gotta be easy to use. It has to be useful. Like if it's not a real time, that's not really going to be useful. I mean, yeah, I could go back and look at it, read it later.
But what if I'm in real time? Like, what if I'm a producer or like a show caller sitting, you know, at front of house waiting. And I'm like waiting on the video director to tell me a cue. And you know, if it's, you know, 10 seconds behind. Or even five seconds behind, like all of a sudden, that's not very useful to me.
Like I need it in real time. So like, that's, that's what like Mac, like Apple Silicon is like allowing us to do right now. Um, and sure, um, you know, there's, there'll be improvements and different technologies coming in the future too, but like. So coming back to Apple, that's why right now we're exclusively developing this on Apple, um, Apple computers.
So you really just need a computer and the software, which right now you can download from the app store, um, Broadcom app, and then you just need an audio interface and literally any audio interface that's supported by Mac will work. Uh,
Sean Walker: virtual sound card or any of your freaking consoles that are RE, IO, like your x32 or whatever rack, anything, literally, that could be an interface.
Justin Tyre: Yeah.
Sean Walker: Dope.
Andy Leviss: and is there any, like basically anything Apple, Silicon, or Work, or is there like a minimum that's like happy with it, or does it depend on like how many channels, or?
Justin Tyre: Yeah. Uh, Apple Silicon definitely works. Uh, the Intel max kind of get by if you only have like one or two channels,
Andy Leviss: Gotcha.
Justin Tyre: you really need that. As Stephen said, that, uh, Apple Silicon is pretty magical. And the best part is it works without any internet connection. So
Andy Leviss: pretty
Justin Tyre: completely offline,
Sean Walker: Dude.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah.
Justin Tyre: but yeah, any, any, any, uh, any Mac will work.
Um, channel count there's a, it honestly is not limited right now. I've gotten to 25 channels and seen it be pretty awesome.
Andy Leviss: That's pretty great.
Sean Walker: that's sweet. Alright, so, I plug in, I get my interface going, you know, in, in my world it would be done to virtual sound credit on my computer, and as people are calling out, do I just assign the channels of what their talkbacks are into this software and it just starts printing out like a text conversation, like they're doing voice text to me, basically.
Stephen Bailey: yeah, like, do you, do you like multi track record or anything? Yeah.
Sean Walker: Yeah, totally.
Stephen Bailey: cool. Who doesn't, right? You're an idiot if you don't. Um, no. So like if you have DVS already running on your computer and you're already sending audio over to it, like, do you copy like all of your audio or do you like pick and choose stuff?
Sean Walker: Uh, if I'm running, I'll just run all the tracks. I'll just arm however many tracks I got going and let it rip, but I could definitely, like, shave down a few, like, who needs Snare 7? You know what I mean? Andy needs Snare 7, but the rest of us can do a 6, you know?
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. I mean, sometimes the seven come is clutch, but you know, you know, you know, whatever.
Andy Leviss: I've literally only joined Team Second's snare mic in the last year and a half. I resisted snare bottom for so long,
Stephen Bailey: wow,
Sean Walker: it's your first fucking rodeo, Andy. That's alright, we'll forgive you, now that you're on board with fucking both mics, and you're a professional. Welcome to the club.
Stephen Bailey: that is, that's pro. Like when you go, when you go from one to two, you're, you're pro.
Sean Walker: Double pro. It's yeah, yeah, totally.
Andy Leviss: Well, I mean, I do, to, to give everybody a shot for the drinking game, I do do the full Ryan John where I back the, I back the bottom mic off a lot more than you typically would, and I'm using an M88 as my bottom mic, but that's alright. It's just a little, little more body and it just, it makes it sound a little more like a drum and not just like, right in your head.
Stephen Bailey: Interesting. Okay. I might try that. Well, so like, if, you know, if we're gonna
Andy Leviss: Remember what we said about tangents and rabbit holes?
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, well snare, you know, I don't know what to say about that actually. Well, we'll just continue about Dante virtual sound cards. Um, so, but yeah, so if you're already like multi track recording everything, let's just say like, you know, in your patch, your stage rack or whatever, like your drum talkback is, you know, input nine and, or if you have six snares, actually, it would be probably like input 14.
So, and then like your bass talkback is probably. 16, because there's only one baseline. Um, you know, stuff like that. So
Sean Walker: Sure. I mean, you put the second one up so that it looks like you might think it, but really you're just taking the DI, you know what I mean?
Stephen Bailey: exactly,
Sean Walker: Just so they feel good about themselves.
Stephen Bailey: it's true. Um, sorry, Melton. Um, so, um, so let's just say your drummer talkback is 14 and your, uh, yeah, and your bass CI, your, God, your bass talkback is 16 already, right? You're already multi track recording on this computer. So if you just open up Prodcom. You just create a Prodcom channel, you just select the audio device as Dante Virtual Soundcard and then the channel is 14.
That's all you have to do, literally. All you have to do is just open the app and just make the software patch and, and That's all. That's, yeah, you're good to go.
Sean Walker: Dude, even I could figure that out. Holy shit. You guys are awesome.
Stephen Bailey: Justin's awesome.
Sean Walker: Go Justin, go Justin, go Justin, go Justin.
Andy Leviss: Steven's like, Justin's the nerd, I'm the
Justin Tyre: That's,
Stephen Bailey: That is exactly
Justin Tyre: what it is.
Stephen Bailey: He's a nerd in a cool way though, cause he actually makes a lot of money being a nerd. You know? I'm a nerd, but
Andy Leviss: I was going to say, I'm just a nerd.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. I don't get the girls, but I don't get any money either. Except my wife, but anyway, so, um, okay. So let's just say you have like, um, like a DiGiCo quantum console, just for instance, or even like Allen and Heath.
I'm trying to think some of the Yamaha consoles have like the onboard, like. USB, you know, connection. So all these consoles have this in common, a lot of them. So if you just have like a USB, if you basically have a printer cable, right, literally, you can just connect your Mac straight to your console and then route audio, route your talkbacks and anything else, your shout stuff.
Route it all out of your console, straight to your computer into Broadcom. Um, we even route our radio mics in it cause I hate wearing my stupid radio. Um,
Sean Walker: totally. Dude,
Stephen Bailey: so, and it's just like blasting my ear all day. So, um, I just route it, we route it into Broadcom at monitors and then I just shoot it out as like another talkback input into Broadcom.
Um, so I can just read the radio instead of having to listen to it, which is really nice.
Sean Walker: that's sweet.
Stephen Bailey: It's cool.
Andy Leviss: That's smart. And it's like, I was saying like, cause like, I think in part, just cause the name's prodcom and like the first context it had dropped into, like my awareness for was with like, you know, Transcribing like, comparty lines and seeing what's going on there on a corporate gig. That like, using it for monitors hadn't even occurred to me until somebody else pointed it out, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's
Stephen Bailey: Yeah.
Justin Tyre: yeah.
Andy Leviss: Yep, that's a thing I didn't know I needed, but I, I needed.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, that's cool. It's super useful. What, Justin?
Justin Tyre: That's going to say it was almost called MonCom.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, that's true. He let the cat out of the bag.
Justin Tyre: Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Andy Leviss: Well, like, so, how, how long, like, how long has it been out? Like, I know, cause like, it kind of tripped into my radar, like, the last few months, but I, um, I'm curious if it's, like, just a thing I hadn't known about, or, or are y'all still relatively new?
Justin Tyre: we're relatively new, uh, Steven and I have been running it for probably almost two years now, but, uh, we finally released it earlier this year, uh, I think somewhere in the April, March, April timeframe.
Stephen Bailey: It was like March, early March, actually.
Justin Tyre: Yeah.
Stephen Bailey: March, but yeah.
Andy Leviss: so I actually probably first heard about it around the time Blake you were releasing it. So
Justin Tyre: budget is crushing it. At zero
Stephen Bailey: Which is, yeah, zero dollars.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I'm trying to think like where I heard, I remember being on a gig and like Somehow I catch and mention, it might've even been somebody in the discord or on the Facebook, maybe.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: but yeah, whatever, whatever you're doing, it's working. And clearly we're going to, we're going to do what we can, we can today to try and spread that word a little bit.
Sean Walker: All right. So I just downloaded it. And,
Stephen Bailey: That's what you were doing. I was like, what are you doing over
Sean Walker: thousand percent. And it just pops up like a white blank box. So do I go, where do I go? Just go here to like, pick, settings, pick my audio interface, configuration. Dude, this is so easy. System settings.
Stephen Bailey: Are you ripping that free trial?
Sean Walker: No, dude, I just bought it.
It's only like 4 a month, bro. What are you, you kidding me?
Stephen Bailey: We hopefully.
Andy Leviss: solidly in that Bill, Bill O'Reilly, fuck it. We'll do it live mode.
Justin Tyre: I
Sean Walker: yeah, dude. No, you guys talk something smart. I'm gonna go here and fuck with this prodcom thing and see if I
Stephen Bailey: our mics into that and I give you five dollars back. Um,
Sean Walker: I see.
Justin Tyre: Yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll have to get into adding a group too. So that's one of the cool things is you don't have to pre configure. So a lot of comm systems, you know, you have to go to your comm engineer to get them to create new groups for you. You have a limited number of groups. Uh, so in Prodcom you can take whatever channels you have, group them together to have a transcript of all of the conversations happening, uh, as one transcript.
I
Sean Walker: cause I've only got one interface and Andy's got all the controls on his side, but I just put my. Scarlet in here literally mid session and now I'm watching myself type away over here. This is fricking sweet.
Stephen Bailey: yeah. If you got a book report too, like, it comes in great for like our kids, like they just Open up RADCOM and just talk away. Works in different languages too. In fact, Al Qaeda was using it. Um, we, uh, we heard it on, I don't know if you heard it on the news, but, um, no, I don't know what I'm saying. Sorry.
It's been a long day.
Sean Walker: Dude, this is fricking awesome. There's just got like several different people. That'll be super easy to read when you're on a show site. Cause it just goes, it's not like a bunch of random bubbles. It's like their name, you can name them and then just starts yapping, starts writing fricking essays as I'm just yapping over here.
That's awesome.
Stephen Bailey: And also, um, Justin put in this like time sense. So like, you can see how long ago they said something. If it was like a minute or like just now, or, you know, an hour ago. So it gives you context. So like, what's really cool too. Yeah. Especially in the com world, um, because this uses any audio interface. So like it works just as easily with like a com, com system as it does like an audio console.
So, um, like if you're, uh, at a, you know, if you're a video director in a truck or something or whatever, you're a truck engineer and you step away. When you come back, you can actually just see, instead of like having no clue who's tried to contact you or what's been going on in comm world.
Sean Walker: You can see that Bill's been yelling at you for fucking 15 minutes. You're
Stephen Bailey: It exactly, exactly.
And,
Andy Leviss: starting to try and think through the real workflow to like, I know I can get my comm help channel when I'm the comm tech into it, I'm trying to figure out how do I get individual. Channels split in two. I'm like, I'm going to need an extra two Dante cards in the Riedel frame.
Stephen Bailey: yeah, only 14 grand a pop
Justin Tyre: 30,
Sean Walker: Totally.
Justin Tyre: Just sell your
Andy Leviss: Well, it's 30, 000 for the card to show you how many channels you can get. And then you got to pay per channel. Pass.
Sean Walker: Oh dude,
Andy Leviss: love Riedel. love their pricing.
Stephen Bailey: have you, that's, that's the, that's the problem with like manufacturers these days. And I feel bad for them. It's not their fault, but it's like, with now with like, like software and Um, what is the word, like, um, condensing, there's like a word for it in the wireless world, like your, um, God, whatever, like hardware, hardware is just like going out the window and it's all like becoming super compact and inefficient now, but manufacturers aren't going to make money anymore, like W, WMS, have y'all heard of that, wireless stuff that came out where you're
Andy Leviss: Sean and I were literally just talking about it.
Stephen Bailey: Where you're like,
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Stephen Bailey: God, it's like, I hate to be like, that's amazing.
That's a game changer. But like, I hate to be like one of these big wireless companies who makes a lot of money selling a wireless transmitter and receiver per channel, you know, like that's been the game since day one until now. And now it's like, they're going to, now you can just buy everything you could possibly need in one rack space.
Like how much is that going to cost? You know, if a real comm card is like 14 grand,
Sean Walker: billion dollars.
Stephen Bailey: I was, I was thinking about that. I was like, man, that's probably like a 80, 000 box.
Sean Walker: dude, I'm gonna have to remortgage my frickin house to get one.
Stephen Bailey: I don't know. That was
Andy Leviss: Yeah, like we were just, we were just talking about it an episode or two ago and I think somebody did the math and like the pricing that's quoted, it's actually only about, like if you max out 32 by 32 in the new Sennheiser Spectera, it looks like it's going to come out to about 2700 a channel, which is kind of mind blowingly inexpensive for what it is.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, actually.
Andy Leviss: that it, not that it's cheap, but
Stephen Bailey: No, that's cool. I didn't know that. I,
Sean Walker: on par with all the other A list stuff, right? Sorry, Steven, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Stephen Bailey: No, you're good. Yeah. I just didn't have any reference, but how did we start talking about this?
Sean Walker: Oh, you were talking about how software's taking over hardware and hardware's getting smaller and smaller and they're not gonna make any money. I feel sorry for hardware dudes.
Stephen Bailey: Kind of do, but, you know, I'll pour one out
Andy Leviss: fuck it, I'm a software guy.
Sean Walker: Right? Totally.
Stephen Bailey: Software's crazy. I mean, look at my freaking plugins. Who, like, give me some plugins, man.
Justin Tyre: How many plugins do you have right now, Steven?
Sean Walker: All
Stephen Bailey: know. So many.
Sean Walker: All of them.
Stephen Bailey: Actually, not a lot, but a lot.
Andy Leviss: particularly with like the way the Black Friday sales on like the Waves stuff go, I have multiple times had somebody tell me about a cool plug that I need to be using, and I'll sign into the Waves site to look at how much it costs and it's like, you already own this. Like, I,
Sean Walker: Dude, every time.
Stephen Bailey: That's like stuff in my basement, all the crap in my basement. I'm like, God, I need, I need this golf club. And I walk down there and I actually have it sitting in the corner.
Andy Leviss: I. I literally was just saying that I've gotta plug in my Onewheel Pint and see if it even charges because I haven't used it long enough that I'm worried I might have just completely tanked the battery. At which point it's like almost a newborn's worth of money to replace the battery.
Stephen Bailey: What is it?
Andy Leviss: It's the self balancing, like, one wheeled skateboardy thing that looks more like a
Stephen Bailey: Oh, yeah, yeah,
Andy Leviss: So it's not the one that looks like a unicycle, like, you don't go around looking like Rosie from the Jetsons. It's the one that looks like if you took a skateboard and just plopped a go kart tire in the middle of it.
Stephen Bailey: Yep.
Sean Walker: one when you see him rolling down the street, you look at it and you go, that guy's never getting laid.
Justin Tyre: Yeah,
Stephen Bailey: Yep. That's the first
Andy Leviss: somehow I've got a baby coming in.
Justin Tyre: yeah, yeah.
Andy Leviss: Coming
Sean Walker: It's because it's been in the basement for the whole time.
Justin Tyre: You're
Andy Leviss: mean, there is
Justin Tyre: you're not going to be allowed to use that anymore.
Sean Walker: Yeah, right, until that, you're over it, that's done, it's a good, for sale,
Stephen Bailey: Your wife's
Andy Leviss: Well, it was one of those, like, I thought they were dumb for the longest time, and then Adam Savage from Mythbusters started, like, posting videos about it and how it worked, and, like, that started wearing me down. And then they came out with, like, the Pint, which is the smaller, like, kinda commuter one.
It's got less range, but it, like, you know, like, it'll do, like, both ends of a subway trip and then some, and it's, like, actually, like, you can throw it in a bag and, you know, throw it over your back. And I was, like, that's so I'm gonna pre order it. And like, when I lived in Manhattan, it was great because I would like, you know, I could like, I lived like 10 blocks from the theaters for a while, so I could like, just hop on that and be that douchebag going to the theater. And uh,
Stephen Bailey: How many times did you fall? How many times did you eat it?
Andy Leviss: Not a ton. Like, I, like, I got like the wrist guards and like a helmet, particularly for starting out, but it's, you, you do pick up pretty, it's like, disma
Sean Walker: single for the whole time, I was riding that thing with the wrist guards, the helmet, just like, Hey ladies, and they're like, uh uh.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, I was gonna say if a, if a lady
Andy Leviss: a lot now that I think about it.
Sean Walker: That's why you had a dry spell, bud. That's why you had a dry spell.
Stephen Bailey: I was gonna say if, if the one wheel thing wasn't enough, it's definitely the risk guards for sure.
Sean Walker: 2, 000%. Strike
Andy Leviss: mix, I was mixing fucking musicals and theater at the time. Like they were,
Sean Walker: two, Eddie. Strike two.
Stephen Bailey: I, I hear you. I hear you. You gotta do what you gotta do. Man. Times are tough.
Andy Leviss: That said, they are, they're, they're fucking wild to ride because it's like you basically to accelerate and decelerate, you lean forward or backward into it. And it's like, it's, it steers like a snowboard or a skateboard where like you just have to lean a little bit to it.
Stephen Bailey: Mm-Hmm.
Sean Walker: I bet it's fun to ride.
Andy Leviss: turning your head, hey now, just like your mom,
Sean Walker: Hey, hey, hey, let's get off mom's. I just got off yours, all right? Come on.
Andy Leviss: hey now, uh,
Sean Walker: No, but I bet it is fun to ride, right? Like it is pretty fucking
Andy Leviss: Yeah, like, well, it steers so sharply that literally just looking the way you want to go is enough of a weight shift to steer it, usually. So, like, once you get the hang of it for a day or two, it feels like the thing's reading your mind and it's kind of a bit of a mindfuck.
It's
Stephen Bailey: Is it, is it like a hoverboard at all? Have you ever ridden a hoverboard?
Andy Leviss: I've not.
Stephen Bailey: It's like the two wheel version, I think of that, because I have ridden one of those. I've never ridden the signal one, which is like the pro level. I rode like the, you know, the x32 level
Sean Walker: Bro, I'm waiting for the actual hoverboard to come out, like, from frickin Back to the Future, where you can literally just, whoosh,
Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I've worked in theaters that had towers that in theory work like hoverboards and they never work well.
Stephen Bailey: what?
Sean Walker: right?
Stephen Bailey: That's funny.
Andy Leviss: That's, it's like, cause it's, it's aircaster, which, so the Pearlman, the theater I've been working in for a chunk of time last year, they have these big reconfigurable seating towers, and they're heavy enough that like, the easiest way to move it rather than wheeled casters, they do aircasters, which is basically, picture an air hockey table upside down on the bottom of the piece you have to move, with like, compressed air, like, hooked up to it, and it literally, you have to like, sweep the living shit out of the stage, and Make sure there's no gaps in any seams that it's going to get caught on, and then just air pumps through it and floats on this like millimeter or so cushion of
Stephen Bailey: No way.
Andy Leviss: So in theory, if the stage is perfectly flat and perfectly dusted, the thing just glides.
Stephen Bailey: Wow.
Andy Leviss: In theory, communism works.
Stephen Bailey: If people are, if individuals are perfect. so I don't know. That's pretty wild though. Like how much weight is that on that?
Andy Leviss: A lot. In that case, it's actually, that's the comical thing about this building is there was the estimated weight of these towers, there was the actual weight of them once they were constructed. And the venue has these like elevator lifts in the stage so that it can reconfigure audience seating, that when it goes into the round, these towers go on too.
And they discovered, thankfully not the entirely hard way, that these towers were so much over the initial predicted weight that those lifts can't actually support them themselves. So the first time the theater went into the round after it opened, they had to take like three days and have a construction crew come in, drill holes through all the deck elevators, and Like put scaffolding in all the way down to the concrete in the trap room below it to put fake decking in that could actually support the weight of the towers.
Stephen Bailey: my
Andy Leviss: It's bonkers.
Stephen Bailey: That's crazy. That's really cool though.
Andy Leviss: and Sean didn't get to say hey, but he had to peace out because he's going to go pick up the daughter. So,
Stephen Bailey: Uh, that's
Andy Leviss: has good hanging with all of us and, and, and we should, we should keep bantering as long as we want. So,
Stephen Bailey: Yeah,
Andy Leviss: now we can all talk the dirt about Sean.
Justin Tyre: That's
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. Bye Sean. I hate Sean. Do y'all hate Sean?
Andy Leviss: I, I can't say that out loud. I got to work with him every week. That'll
Justin Tyre: him.
Stephen Bailey: Last time you're gonna see him. I like Sean. Sean, I like you, just so you know that. And thanks. Sean got Prodcom up and running in record timing.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, that was, that was pretty fun, like I almost want to, I want to see if we save the screenshot later so we can put it in the show notes, cause that'll be pretty,
Stephen Bailey: There you go.
Justin Tyre: That's
Andy Leviss: but
Stephen Bailey: the man.
Andy Leviss: so yeah, like what's it, like is there other stuff you're working on that you want to like add to ProdCount? Like is it, or is it just like, like maintenance and just dealing with like bugs that people come up?
Or like is there, is there like cool stuff you're working on that you can or are willing to share?
Justin Tyre: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, for us, you know, ProdComm is about making communication better for live production. So, um, as Steve and I alluded to, the traditional comm systems don't really account for like monitors in front of house, like good communication there. It's just not good.
Andy Leviss: I mean, I just try to not talk to the other guy at all.
Justin Tyre: yeah, that, that was my strategy with Steven for a long time.
Andy Leviss: Yet somehow here you two still are
Justin Tyre: right.
Stephen Bailey: until we all got fired.
Justin Tyre: that's why we're here. Uh,
Andy Leviss: to make sense.
Justin Tyre: So, so for us, I think probably the next things that we're working on is, uh, some of the, you know, right now it's, you have to plug in the outer audio interface directly to the computer. So what would it look like if, I had it at MonitorWorld and Stephen just launched it on his computer, could connect to mine, we could share channels over the local network.
Um, probably some new licensing things, uh, as far as like, just for larger organizations so that, again, maybe Stephen's the guy and he wants to, um, purchase a site license or some sort of like, uh, local network license for, uh, Prodcom and then everybody can just join and share channels, not have to buy individual licenses.
Andy Leviss: I like it.
Justin Tyre: Some of those things could be helpful for like production houses or, um, especially like a lot of, uh, use case we've seen as the churches. So it'd be a lot of value there.
Andy Leviss: Cool. I mean, I like that. Cause like there's some of the questions I had that I was, that I was going to ask as we're going, you're answering right here. So that's,
Stephen Bailey: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: that's, it feels like on the same page, which is great. Cause yeah, that was going to be the thing is like the, it's, it's that convenience, but also headache of like the, it being the subscription to the app store right now is.
It's like handy and convenient, but yeah, like if I'm trying to like get a gig to purchase it, it's like its own separate, like that becomes its own hassle.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. That's exactly what we're addressing right now. Like the next big kind of hurdle is like this, the multi licensing. And you know, we're like a rental with like your audio vendor or your church or whatever. You know, your feeder or whoever would just buy like a one, like a server based license and it would be, you know, I mean, it would be a little more expensive, but then anybody, you know, I say this now, it should be how it works.
We'll see. But like anybody who's on the local network can just launch their computer and, and launch a product on, and just pull in all those channels and it doesn't cost them anything. Like you don't even need.
Andy Leviss: which channels you want to look at.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there'll be like some, you know, it's definitely, it definitely, there's definitely a long game here a lot more than what meets the eye currently.
Um, so as future development happens, you know, there'll be lots of different layers of, you know. Security and like making sure like, you know, the right people will have the right transcripts and have access to them. And people who don't need them won't, stuff like that. So, you know, we won't talk about that now, but that's just, you know, there's a lot more we're in development, you know, around the whole Prodcom system.
Andy Leviss: And that's, I mean, that's also one of those things. Like I, I have some background in software world as listeners know. I worked tech support for QLab for four years, so I've kind of.
Stephen Bailey: Oh, cool.
Andy Leviss: been in that world was in that world and like around and I know that's one of the debates that always comes up that I feel like I'm often trying to be the voice of reason for the other side on whether on Facebook or Discord or whoever is the like the oh my god I fucking hate subscriptions and the like And I fall on both sides, because there's times where, like, as a user, I hate it, but also as somebody who's seen the development side, I get where that's useful and where it's really beneficial to everybody.
Stephen Bailey: yeah,
Andy Leviss: Um, like, I mean, I don't know if, like, did you guys consider other models, or was, like, kind of subscription where you always, or, like, how did, how did you land there?
Justin Tyre: Yeah, I think, uh, we talked briefly about other, about other models, but I think for us, it was more of, we want to have the runway to be able to build kind of what the vision of the product is, the bigger, the bigger product and the only way to get there and be able to sell anything before we get there was, was the subscription. Um,
Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, I mean, in, in, chime in or tell me if this is totally off base, I know the, the argument I always gave in favor of it when, when those conversations come up is, If you're doing like paid upgrades every couple of years, what tends to, A, if you really do the math long term, the math often ends up evening out.
It's just in chunks every four years or three years instead of annually or monthly. The other side of it being, and, and, and again, mostly saying this for like folks who haven't heard this argument and, and I'm curious if, if this is the you come from, is that If I've got to justify as a developer, if I've got to justify a paid upgrade every couple of years, I need to bank enough features to make it worth people spending that money on it every three years.
So if I come out with a bunch of cool features, I'm gonna hold on to them and like I might trickle out like little
Stephen Bailey: exactly.
Andy Leviss: stuff now to like keep it exciting but like I need something that's gonna be worth selling in three years where if it's a subscription I don't give a shit about that anymore. I can like the money's coming in you're paying for it when you need it and like if if there's an awesome new feature like I don't need to say that for an upgrade I can release that tomorrow once I know it works.
Justin Tyre: Yeah, and I think that's, that's it for us too is, you know, we want to be able to talk to our users, get that feedback and just release it back to them. Uh, so we're, one of the features we've been, that's been on our radar is that we're working on kind of incrementally getting to is better notifications and basically being able to pop up the window.
So, you know, you have a, you have the product on window, maybe it's overlaid on some other windows on your computer and you just want it to go away because normally you want to look at smart, you want to look at whatever other tools you have up. But when somebody says your name or says a keyword. I want the window to pop up, see the transcript, and then maybe hit a button on the console and it goes away to clear the transcript.
So, um, things like that in a traditional model we would have no chance of doing until a paid upgrade.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. As annoying as subscriptions are, as, and, I completely, I get it, trust me. Been on both sides of that, 100%. Um, it is like, you know, A, we are able to release new, like, features and not hold back. Like we, Justin's developing this stuff and we're just, you know, You know, doing it QA a little bit, and then we're just sending it out like, like really fast.
And we're also getting, like, we're developing and prioritizing development almost, I would say almost a hundred percent, like based on user feedback. So like people will write us and say, Hey, you know, X, Y, and Z, like, this would be so cool. Like, is there any way it could do this or this? And that's what, that's how we're developing the app.
I mean, We're both, we're both industry users. I mean, we developed it and we built it around what, you know, the, the problem that we seeded, we, the problem we saw that needed a solution. Um, so that's kind of where it was born out of. And now, now that it's developed and online, we're seeking user feedback to continue to develop it.
Like we do have like a long term like roadmap for sure. And there's structure there, but you know, Like these little features and stuff that like, you know, man, if, if we could just pop up this other window here and the text size could be smaller, whatever, like, you know, that's the stuff that we're really looking for.
Um, and we're able to develop that because it is a subscription based model. Um, you know, we're developing it and releasing it immediately. And also, um, like. You know, our wives would have been really upset probably if we had to take out like a second mortgage, um, you know, for the, you know, for, for the non subscription model.
So that played into it a little bit. Um, you know, I was going to say one other thing and I totally forgot it was about the subscription model, but, um, you know, oh, and, uh, it's also streamlines. It just makes it so much simpler. Like the whole, like a really, really huge key theme of product is like.
Simpleness and just like ease of use. So like, to me, at least like software upgrades and like, if you buy like a perpetual software license and you have it for 2. 3 versions and then you have to upgrade it and if you have this version, you pay the full amount, but if you have this other version that you pay half, it's just very convoluted to me.
Andy Leviss: hang on, let me get my abacus and start.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, exactly. Like, let me get my graphing calculator and figure this out. So, you know, now it's like, you know, it's, it's. It's a subscription based model. It's very simple. Hopefully, genuinely really hope that like people find the pricing very reasonable for them, um, and for what they're going to be getting, especially, um, you know, the next few updates.
So, you know, it, it, it's kind of like, you know, yeah, it's annoying. So subscriptions are annoying, but it's also like, that's how you have to survive and make a, it's the only way to survive and make a good product unless you're a billionaire, you know? Um, it's the only way to do it in this software world these days, so.
Andy Leviss: That's fair. And, and, I mean, we'll say, like, and I think what we just, like, experienced here live with, like, Sean downloading and getting it up and running,
Stephen Bailey: Mm hmm.
Andy Leviss: you guys have built something that, like, gets up and running so fast that it's very clear it's built by people who designed it to use. It's, like, that's always the thing, like, like, when I have conversations with folks about, like, different audio consoles, like, there's, at this point, they all have the same functions, but it's very clear that some of them Got a list of the requests of what the user wanted and handed it to some engineers who don't actually do it to figure out how to do what they thought that was being written on that paper.
And then there's ones where they sat the engineer down in a room with the end user and they worked on it together. And you can very clearly tell which are which.
Stephen Bailey: Yup.
Andy Leviss: I think, I, I think it shows clearly, like I said, it shows clearly. In how quickly Sean got up and running that, like, this was built to use.
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. We hope so. I mean, I freaking use it. I was telling Justin the other day, like, it literally saved, saved my ass, like, for sure. Like, I was, um, there was like one, there was one instance where there was like a microphone, it was the wrong one. Like, someone had swapped a battery out or something, and it was the wrong microphone that was going out, and.
I literally wouldn't have known it. I wouldn't have known it unless I had seen Prodcom because my shout speaker was down, like it was, I just turned it off. Cause you know, that's a whole nother thing to like running your shout system through that is, is so helpful because you don't have to have your shout speaker blasting and you can actually hear what people are like.
You can.
Andy Leviss: mean I can actually have a shout speaker on a corporate event?
Stephen Bailey: Yeah, exactly. Literally. Exactly. Like, I mean, you're going to have like a shout speaker blasting, you know, you would never risk that in like a corporate event or even like a church or like, or even in an arena on a, in a rock show when, you know, you know, there's like, it's a quiet part of the set. I mean, you can hear, have you ever had your shout speaker up so loud that you can hear it like bouncing off the walls?
Like when somebody
Andy Leviss: never happened.
Justin Tyre: That's a hearing loss right there for you, Steven.
Stephen Bailey: it's like a mini PA, but seriously, like, you can't risk that. I mean, I've. So many times I've cranked my shout speaker until I forgot I was up and you know, it's just bit me hard. So, um, I, we even heard it in the audience mics of a recording one time, true story, my shout speaker. Anyway, uh,
Andy Leviss: you're recording or somebody else's?
Stephen Bailey: I think, uh, but it's from front of house.
Andy Leviss: for you to be like, yeah, it was a commercial DVD.
Stephen Bailey: that would be amazing. But, um, Yeah, I don't, I can't remember where I was going with that, but you know, um, shout speakers, blah, blah, blah. What was, what were we talking about? It's been a really long day.
Justin Tyre: Gymnastics?
Andy Leviss: like woven through, I mean, yeah, because we were on subscriptions. Then we got back up onto actually using the pro I think just on how easy it is to use
Stephen Bailey: yeah, hold on.
Andy Leviss: we were heading.
Stephen Bailey: Let me go back in
Justin Tyre: Oh, it saved
Stephen Bailey: see what I said.
Justin Tyre: you on the show.
Stephen Bailey: That's right. It saved me. Thank you, Justin. This is why you're a smart guy. You'll, you will get paid a lot of money one day. Um, so. It has saved me for real. And, um, I, I use the app like literally, um, in fact, sometimes I'll even go back and use the, the non beta version.
If there's like a little bug or something in it that we're trying to still work out because it's that useful to me. Like I need it. It's like a drug, honestly. So
Andy Leviss: That's, I mean, I can almost even see it being useful, like just on like corporate events where they want to record and be like, here you go. And here's a transcript too, just in case.
Justin Tyre: So you can export a transcript? Yeah.
Stephen Bailey: it blackmail, but yes. Um, uh, uh,
Andy Leviss: I like me. I'd like me a good dad joke.
Stephen Bailey: Dang, I was going to say something and it totally left me. It's like that time of night where it's like past my bedtime. Um, what was I going to say? Man, it's going to come to me in like two seconds. Let's keep talking. Um, well,
Justin Tyre: This is fun watching you kind of sweat here.
Stephen Bailey: yeah, no, like it was, I was going to say something so cool. It was a really cool thing I was going to say. Everyone, everybody is missing out right now. I'm so sorry.
Andy Leviss: while you're thinking about that, I'll throw you like one of the wrap up questions we've been doing. And it's funny because we actually just recorded an episode with somebody else from Atlanta today, so I'm curious to see if we get overlapping answers.
But, uh, if, if, if we're coming to Atlanta to visit and hang out, where are we going for lunch or dinner?
Stephen Bailey: Hmm. Hold on. Let's hit pause here.
Andy Leviss: like, Google best restaurants in Atlanta.
Stephen Bailey: I mean, what do you like? What do you like to eat?
Andy Leviss: I mean, everything. It's, I mean, it's because we're like, it's, it's kind of become the true, the traditional end question on the podcast just for like, people like to know, like, okay, I'm torn through Atlanta. What wouldn't I know about if a local didn't tell me?
Stephen Bailey: I mean, you know, if barbecue is your thing, I'm gonna have to say Fox Brothers barbecue. Justin, what do you think?
Justin Tyre: I think that'd be a good call. Uh, what is the, uh, what is the steak frites place above, uh, Little Sparrow?
Stephen Bailey: Oh, man. This is when we start losing all of our listeners.
Justin Tyre: Blanc, Bar
Andy Leviss: I think I'm like trying to go back in the transcript for that episode and see where I was that, where I was that.
Justin Tyre: we're, this is gonna get cut here,
Andy Leviss: I was gonna say,
Justin Tyre: Bar
Andy Leviss: Marcel was the place that uh, that our other Atlanta guest
Justin Tyre: that's a solid, solid choice,
Stephen Bailey: Marcelo's, yeah, they have great steaks. Um, we also have a place, um, called Cheesecake Factory. It's actually like right down by the mall near my house, so it's really good. Um, just kidding. I hate their menus. They have like every they have like 10, 000 things on their menu and I literally
Andy Leviss: The Spiralbound. I don't think I've been to Cheesecake Factory since my 21st birthday.
Stephen Bailey: That's amazing. I love that statement. Well,
Andy Leviss: my 21st birthday, I was Uh, I had, I lived in an apartment off campus in Boston with, like, three other friends, two female, two male, and my roommate had an on again, off again with one of our other roommates who, at that point, they had broken up, I had a crush on her, and I was about to be like, maybe I'll ask her out.
They got back together. Thus, I became the third wheel with the two of them on my 21st birthday at Cheesecake Factory.
Stephen Bailey: that is awful. I would never go back to Cheesecake Factory
Andy Leviss: I, I haven't.
Stephen Bailey: Wow.
Andy Leviss: Although I feel like there was one chicken dish that was pretty solid.
Stephen Bailey: Orange chicken. Yes.
Andy Leviss: Yep. Yep.
Stephen Bailey: God, they have like taco. You want chicken? You want Chinese food or tacos or a pizza? That's what,
Andy Leviss: Yes. Yes. All of those. And can I have cheesecake?
Stephen Bailey: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: So we've, we've got a friend of the podcast who has started a Google sheet collecting when we do remember to ask this question, collecting the answers. And I'm like, I feel like we're going to have a big debate over whether we put Cheesecake Factory in for this episode.
Stephen Bailey: No, I would say that would be an emphatic no for me, but yeah, to answer your question in about a roundabout 15 minute answer, um, Fox Brothers, Bar Blanc, man, uh, Varsity. If you haven't been to Varsity, you gotta go to Varsity. I like it. Sue me.
Justin Tyre: for sure.
Andy Leviss: All right. I'm just like, what's the, so what style of barbecue are they doing? It? Cause I feel like when I think about barbecue, I don't think about Atlanta. It's like, what, what style barbecue is it?
Stephen Bailey: Good, the good kind? It's brisket. Like they do brisket and pork, right? Kind of.
Justin Tyre: Brisket, pulled pork,
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Is it like, like vinegar, tomato,
Justin Tyre: yeah, uh, I mean, you don't need a whole lot on brisket, if it's done right.
Andy Leviss: If it's done right. Absolutely.
Stephen Bailey: So you're like way, you're talking way over my head. Like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Justin Tyre: give me some meat on the plate,
Stephen Bailey: Yeah. Is it a sandwich? Can I eat it? Is it good?
Andy Leviss: enough.
Stephen Bailey: That's
Andy Leviss: it's like the end of the world cause there's like, there's like the tomato y based barbecues, there's the vinegar based, and then there's the weird fuckers with the mustard barbecue.
Stephen Bailey: Totally. No, I hear you. Are you like, do you have like a pretty refined palate? Like, do you appreciate like, I don't know, anything from coffee to whiskey to like,
Andy Leviss: You got the two things I do appreciate are coffee and whiskey. I'm like weird about certain foods. Like my autism goes, goes weird about certain tastes and
Justin Tyre: coffee and whiskey and cheesecake.
Stephen Bailey: And cheesecake. I
Andy Leviss: you see you got your New York cheesecake and then you got your Italian cheesecake.
Stephen Bailey: oh God. Yeah. See, like I had, I know people who can like take, like drink some whiskey. Like we were at a restaurant one time. This is like, I'm sorry. I'm digressing so hard. Um, at a restaurant and uh, we were out on the road and he's like, I want this like certain kind of whiskey. Um, his name is Mark. Shout out to you, Mark.
And the waiter brings him this whiskey. It's like some, like, it's a scotch actually. Sorry, Mark. It's a scotch and it's like an old one. There you go. And, um, it, he brings it out. It's like some 15 year or 20 year or some crap. I don't know what he's talking about. And he tastes it and he's like. Immediately, like immediately, he was like, this is not, this is not it.
And he like puts it on the table and he's like, this isn't it. This is not what I ordered. And it's expensive too. And sure enough, the waiter goes back and he's like, Oh, I'm so sorry. Like, you know, he brings them the right one. And he's like the waiter or the bartender messed it up, which is, you know, BS.
Like we know what happened there, but it was just really funny. Cause he called him out and he's like, You know, I know a couple of people like that. They just, they can, they taste things that I can only, I don't even know what they're talking about. You know what I mean? I'm just like, give me a, you know, I don't know, street tacos from, uh, I don't know, I can't even think.
I want some tacos though. Well,
Andy Leviss: tacos are the official food of the podcast. So I feel like once we've brought it full circuit at tacos, we should probably wrap it up and let y'all go because we've just ticked all the boxes on the bingo card.
Stephen Bailey: perfect. That sounds perfect.
Andy Leviss: So, with that being said, uh, you know, uh, thanks Justin and Steven for coming out.
Everybody, like, definitely check out Prodcom, um, um, you know, downloading onto my new computer as soon as we sign off. That you heard how fast Sean got up and running with it. Like, thanks for spending the time with us and for building that tool. Uh, thanks also to our sponsors, Allen and Heath and RCF, for helping keep the virtual lights on here.
And uh, we'll catch you next time on another episode of Signal to Noise.
Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green
Andy Leviss: Hey everybody! I know you usually expect a blooper here, but this time, we've got a special treat for everybody who made it all the way to the end of the episode. Two treats, even!
First, for anybody who wants to try out ProdCom after hearing Justin and Stephen talk about it today, from now until October 31, if you download it and select the Annual license, instead of the usual 7 day trial, the guys have extended it to 30 days! If you like it, Apple will bill you for an annual subscription automatically after the 30 days, but if you don't, just go ahead and cancel the subscription any time before the 30 days are up, and you won't get billed!
Second, if you want a chance to win a free year of ProdCom, shoot an email to andy@prosoundweb.com with "ProdCom Giveaway" in the subject. On October 10th, 2024, we'll randomly draw four names from everybody who sends in an email, and send you a code you can redeem through October 17th for a free one year subscription!
