274. Answering Questions From The Community

In Episode 274, Sean and Andy open it up to listeners in the Signal to Noise Discord and Facebook groups to ask them anything, who provided a lot of great questions about work/home life, gear they bring to gigs, business goals — and, of course — tacos! This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Episode Links:
Episode 274 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

Transcript

Episode 274 - Ask Us Anything

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 the Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me, the EL to my Fudge Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: Sup dude, how are ya? 

Andy Leviss: Clearly I'm in a cookie kind of mood today. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right. You keep the Elves going in a little tree and making some yummy cookies. 

Andy Leviss: Oh, man. I don't, you know, it's weird, and I hate that I know this, and this tells you so much about me, but every other cookie has gotten smaller, and I swear the Keebler, the E. L. Fudge filling has gotten thicker over the 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Cookie connoisseur. I like 

Andy Leviss: right? 

Sean Walker: I like it. 

Andy Leviss: Like, to the point that, like, the double ones are too much. Like, I used to, as a kid, I would peel them apart, like, get the fudge side from two, and then peel the fudge layer off a third one, and sandwich that in the middle. And even with that as my background, the double stuffed ones they sell now are a little too much. 

Sean Walker: All right, all right, fair enough. I haven't, I haven't gone into the uh, store bought cookie realm in a long time. My, my wife's an excellent baker and my daughter's learning to bake too, so they make great cookies and cakes and stuff, you know, so I got that dad bod going still. 

Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah, I, I, I came home to some, like, Apple turnovers last night that I was too tired to eat, so that's waiting for me when I get home again 

Sean Walker: Nice. 

Andy Leviss: because I am, I'm, I think we talked about it, I'm, like, doing, like, a kind of staggered parental leave, so I'm working a few days a week, uh, while Kate's home with, with Matthew, and then we'll 

Sean Walker: In case, in case you aren't hip to this, Andy, if she made Apple turnovers with a brand new baby, you married up, bro. Do not fuck up this situation. 

Andy Leviss: is not news 

Sean Walker: grass, the grass does not get greener, bud. 

Andy Leviss: That's, she is, well we both do a little of each. She is the baker and I am the cook. That's, I actually have um, have you seen Hedley and Bennett? The, like the fancy aprons that they 

Sean Walker: yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Andy Leviss: They, they do a Sesame Street line. So one of my gifts when, when Matthew was born was I got the Oscar the Grouch, uh, apron with Chef Dad embroidered on the chest. 

Sean Walker: Nice. 

Andy Leviss: and then when he's old enough, we'll get him a matching, like kid size one, 

Sean Walker: obvies, obvies, a couple of little fluffy hats. You ready to go? 

Andy Leviss: Although so, so for the winners, PA of the day has a line of baby onesies and they have a mommy's little A2, uh, 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. 

Andy Leviss: I think I, I forget whether I put, I think I posted photos to the discord the other day of him 

Sean Walker: That's, that's awesome. 

Andy Leviss: that was a win. 

Sean Walker: So baby life is good though. 

Andy Leviss: baby life is good, uh, 

Sean Walker: You don't look too worse for the wear. 

Andy Leviss: I mean, 

Sean Walker: You don't have big 

Andy Leviss: messed up my sideburns this morning, but otherwise. I was too tired, I was too tired to be trusted with a clipper and that didn't stop me. 

Sean Walker: Fair enough. 

Andy Leviss: there's a little bit of, a 

Sean Walker: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: going on over 

Sean Walker: Alright, alright. Nobody will notice, bud. Nobody but you will notice. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, now that I just told everybody. 

Sean Walker: Right? It's fine. It's fine. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, um, I mean I, it's, I should go to the barber to fix it but I've now gotta wait a little while because I will get way too much grief from the barber for He's like, you do that again, I'm gonna charge you extra. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right? Totally. 

Andy Leviss: That's what he said last time. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah. Son of a bitch! 

Andy Leviss: Uh, so yeah, we figured today, you know, we, we, um, threw it open to the folks on the Discord and Facebook to ask us questions and tell us what they wanted to hear. 

And actually on that subject, we were just talking before we started, we want to throw that out more widely to everybody. We want to know what you want to hear. Like Sean and I have been babbling our, our stupid mouths off for like a year and change. Now we know what we like talking about, which is kind of a wide look. 

We, we both have varying degrees of ADHD. I think it's safe to say we, yeah, we, we, we talk about a lot of stuff and we want to know what you guys want to hear. Like, do you like hearing like a mix of interesting people and not always just audio people? Do you want us to focus more on like, Tips and tricks kind of talking to folks or do you like hearing people's stories and how they got where they were or do you like the mix of all of them? 

So we're working with the ProSoundWeb folks and we're going to do like a proper, like formal listener survey that'll go out and probably have some like prize drawings attached to it in the next, like, I don't want to say exactly when, cause we're still working on it. So keep an eye out for that, but yeah, we're not eligible for the prizes though. 

Sean Walker: Shit. 

Andy Leviss: That's, that's, that's with great responsibility comes 

Sean Walker: Dammit. 

Andy Leviss: but, but also in the meantime, like we've got the email address signal to noise@prosoundweb.com, at signal, the number two noise@prosoundweb.com and like, shoot us an email anytime that goes to both of us. It also goes to some of the behind the scenes folks on the Pro Sound website. 

And tell us what you like, tell us what you don't like, you know? Be nice, we've got feelings, but, uh, you know, we wanna make sure we're doing what you guys wanna listen to, and gals and non binary pals. Um, 

Sean Walker: Speak for yourself. I don't have feelings. I've been working in production for too long. 

Andy Leviss: I have feelings, I may not have a soul anymore, but there are feelings somewhere deep 

Sean Walker: I've got feelings. I'm just kidding. 

Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, and I mean on that subject too, I don't want to get too deep down the rabbit hole, but I know a lot of our friends out there this week are, and listeners are, uh, non binary, a bunch of other minorities that are having a tough week with things that are going on, and we're not going to get into specifics of what it is, you all know what I'm getting at. 

But I just want to remind y'all, like, if you're on the discord, there's the mental health channel. If you need a place to vent about whatever, come join us. If you need to reach out to one of us, like hit us up, like we're here for y'all. Like we're all big family, man. 

Sean Walker: Word. 

Andy Leviss: And on that note, let's, let's dive into questions. You want to, you want to start hardball or softball? 

Sean Walker: I might as well just go harden the paint, dawg. Let's get it. 

Andy Leviss: All right. Uh, Eric, 

Sean Walker: I need to stretch first? Let me stretch. Hang on. I don't want to pull a hammy or nothing. I am getting old, bud. Alright. Alright, I'm ready. I'm 

Andy Leviss: Alright, I got a nice hardball for you to start off. Uh, Eric, uh, from the Discord, uh, also known as CableEvangelist for his passionate and, dare I say, correct opinions on StarQuad Cable, 

Sean Walker: Oh shit. 

Andy Leviss: we'll get into another 

Sean Walker: Oh, I want to know. I want to 

Andy Leviss: Uh, uh, he asks, is a hot dog a taco? 

Sean Walker: Fuck no. Fuck no! 

Andy Leviss: by the cube rule it is, because it's, it's got three sides covered. 

Sean Walker: Nope. Uh uh. Not a taco. 

Andy Leviss: See, and then we can get into, is a taco a sandwich, which now has been legally decided both ways in different states, and I, it, I don't know what to make of the fact that that's been decided in two separate court cases. 

Sean Walker: We spent time and money deciding if a taco is a sandwich in court? What the fuck is wrong with us, dude? Jesus. 

Andy Leviss: in, in both cases it was a lease that either said you couldn't sell sandwiches or you could sell sandwiches. And basically in both cases, and in both cases, the judge was like, found, found in honor of keeping the business open basically. So the 

Sean Walker: Yeah, alright, alright, 

Andy Leviss: we're gonna call it a Mexican sandwich, even though there are things that are Mexican sandwiches and 

Sean Walker: Like a torta? Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: by the same token, when they were like, You can't have sandwiches, there's already a sandwich shop in the mall, was like, They're tacos, they're not sandwiches, Tortas are sandwiches. So, 

Sean Walker: Don't sell tortas. Sell tacos and burritos, dawg. Good 

Andy Leviss: yeah. 

Sean Walker: alright. 

Andy Leviss: Um, okay, so that one being the, the, uh See, that was the one I had queued up that was both a softball and a hardball. 

Sean Walker: Alright. Alright. 

Andy Leviss: It's a squishy ball. 

Sean Walker: Squishy ball. 

Andy Leviss: okay, uh, friend and recurring guest of the podcast, Evan, uh, asked us, what's one thing you want to change about the way you lead others in your work life or your personal life? I 

Sean Walker: One way that I want to change the way I lead others in my work life or my personal life. Um. 

Andy Leviss: was going to say, I, 

Sean Walker: No, no. 

Andy Leviss: have an answer ready, if not, I'll, 

Sean Walker: I, I work very hard on trying to be a leader and not be a boss, if that makes sense. I try not to ask people to do things that I won't do, although as I get older and am more broken from doing the things that I've asked people not to do, I, I end up doing those less, but, uh, I am, Transitioning, I think, more from that into teacher, into teaching, because I, through the, you know, fuck, I can't even believe you guys are dragging actual fucking comments out of me, but through this entire journey of this podcast and the Discord server and all the craziness over the last number of years, uh, I have realized that if we're being really candid, the bar ain't that fucking high in our industry, man. 

And, uh, I'd, I'd like to be, uh, Be a part of raising the bar a little bit. So, uh, I'm working on, you know, trying to be a little more of a teacher. We've, I've, I have come to realize I know more than I thought I knew. And that some of that would be helpful to other people in different facets of things. And, uh, so here at our shop, we have a learning and teaching mentality where we're always trying to learn. 

Cause you can't know everything about everything or. Even everything about one thing, right? Uh, and then we try to pass that down to other people. And, and so as we're, you know, really got me thinking was like, when we're looking for other techs to come work, we're like, fuck man, so many people got so many holes in their game. 

It'd be real helpful if there was a way to like, plug some of those holes, you know what I mean? So they could be a lot more effective. So we're just going to have a lot more training, teaching and, and, you know, kind of free to everybody. And I'll, I'll, as those start coming up, I'll make sure that, you know, if, if anybody's interested, they're welcome to come for free. 

But. That's, that's how I'm changing my, my leadership, as it were, is from just, like, charging forward to try to, like, teach on a broader scale, I think. 

Andy Leviss: right on. And I mean, for me, it's weird because I'm, I bounce between so many different positions. Sometimes I'm the guy in charge, sometimes I'm fourth shmoe from the left, but like in all of those, I think I'm, I'm at a point in my career where I'm rarely the least experienced person in the room or the newest person in the room. 

So in, in any of those situations, there's opportunities for leading and teaching and It's, I know it's a thing I struggle with is that balance between explaining just like showing somebody how to do it or the show's in an hour I just need to do it and I'll explain it to you later 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. 

Andy Leviss: and and trying to remind myself when it's okay to like yes I can do it faster but we've got the time let somebody else learn how to do it and I can help them or I can go back and show them how they could have done it a little more efficiently after. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and like, I've had jobs lately where, like, stuff has grown where, like, I'm working with somebody a little less experienced, you know, who might do, like, say, like, a mic tracking sheet for a corporate event, and, and doesn't actually think through and look at the run of show and how much time is left in between stuff, and You know, like I've almost gotten bitten in like letting somebody else do that and, and, you know, coming out and being like, wait, that's never gonna work. 

We've got and having a pivot last minute. But it's also if they hadn't been the one to do it, they wouldn't have seen how that almost caused an issue. 

Sean Walker: Sure. 

Andy Leviss: You know, and I feel like at a certain point, even this, the scramble to fix it both shows them that it lets somebody realize that something was an issue, but also lets them see how to fix it. 

And you can find that balance to like, not let the show pay for the learning experience, but still have a learning experience. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. Dude, totally. And, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll say that, like, the other part about, you know, my comment, or your comment, is like, we talked a little bit, a couple episodes ago, about imposter syndrome, right, or, or, you know, a lot of people have that. And. You know, when you asked that question, I had a, I gotta admit, I had a little of that kick in, cause like, dude, there's so many of our listeners that have forgotten more about audio in the last five minutes than I'll ever fucking know. 

Right? So many of them. But, there, 

But there are also so many of them that could benefit from just our years of experience getting our asses kicked in the trenches and like, hey man, This run of show ain't gonna work like you think it is. You're like, let me, let me help you out here. And here's why, right? So it's not like, I don't say I want to help teach cause I think I know everything. 

That's not even remotely the fucking case. It's just like, I've, I've come to realize that whatever it is that I do know at whatever level that happens to be, which is not, you know, at some of the highest levels that have ever been high, you know what I mean? There's, there's people that, like I said, have forgotten more in the last fucking five minutes that I'll ever know. 

But just that like, dude, we got to start as an industry sharing more and teaching more and not just like. Well, I went to this one training class and I got certified. Yeah, man, but that's not how the real world works. Like, we all went and got our driver's test and then you got on the road and went, Oh, shit! 

You know what I mean? So, you know, just sharing some of that real world experience and then, ultimately, it's selfish, if I can be real candid for a minute. It's selfish. Trying to find texts is brutal right now, trying to find texts that kick ass is twice as brutal, and so we're gonna have to make some kick ass texts, you know, so, 

Andy Leviss: a big change I've seen in the industry lately, is it, it seems like we have shifted a lot from the, like, I had to learn it the hard way, and that's what makes me hireable. So, you know, you figure it out for yourself to, I think a lot of those folks have aged out, retired, or just people have realized they're jerks and don't hire them anymore. 

And I feel like, over the last five to seven years or so, I've seen a much better, bigger trend. I'm like, no, no, let's, We need more good people. Let me help you be good at this too. 

Sean Walker: totally dude. Totally. That was a very eloquent way to say what I was rambling through. Thanks, bud. 

Andy Leviss: I, usually I'm the one who's like rambly and, and, and word salad. So, you know, it's funny you mentioned imposter syndrome and two things on that. 

One is that I actually have a, a, Um, I'm an expert on that who I need to get back in emailing with that we were working on, um, on trying to get together with to do an episode dedicated to, uh, imposter syndrome. Uh, yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm not really sure if we're qualified to talk about that, but I guess we can. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, fair enough. 

Andy Leviss: See, that, that, 

Sean Walker: Yeah, I got it. I got it. I got it. Yeah. Yeah, I got 

Andy Leviss: yeah. Uh, and then I was, like, literally just yesterday, I was on a job with, um, at, uh, at Jazz at Lincoln Center for a corporate event, which is the venue that, uh, past guest Jim Van Bergen is the house head at. And. And. You know, as you know from a way out of Mon, he's an old, old friend, and I've worked for him a bunch. 

This was the first time I was mixing an event for him. It was like a straightforward, it was like a fireside chat, like a couple people, you know, over a dinner, like nothing crazy. And a friend of ours who works there, Katie, who's, you know, a young, up and coming, like, New York, you know, sound person, was the A2 on it, and at one point during the event, Katie texts me and is like, do you have a dugan on these guys? 

And I'm in that like immediate imposter syndrome moment of like, no, I don't. Why? Like, is something sounding janky on like, program? Like, because I've got other stuff on it. Like, is something sounding weird? Like she and Jim were quickly like, no, no, everything sounds great. And she was like, Now, I just like, I just recently learned, like, what a dugan was, and I'm just curious if you're using it or what you're using, and I was like, oh, yeah, no, no problem. 

I only have two people on this thing, so, like, a dugan sort of isn't really worth bothering to put in when I've only got two people on stage, but Here's the other stuff I did to make it sound a little cleaner, you know, and which is, I mean, nothing unfamiliar to folks, you know, that we've talked about before, is I had some dance in, particularly because, you know, I've been using Axient on so many shows lately, and we're using Sennheiser analog wireless, and I forgot how much higher the noise floor is on analog wireless, because it's been so long. 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Andy Leviss: some dance to kind of clean that up, and then a little bit of the 5045 to get just a little bit of extra gain out of stuff. But yeah, no, that was a solid moment of like, my immediate instinct wasn't like, Oh, you're trying to learn. It was like, Oh, fuck, what did I do wrong? 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. Totally. I think, I think we've all got a little bit of that, you know what I mean? And, and, you know, I'll admit from, in my own fucking crazy noggin, cause you know, we're all little fucking nuts or we go sell insurance at a cubicle someplace, right? It's like, it's that, it's this balance of like, dude I know I'm good at what I do. 

Otherwise I wouldn't have a fucking job, you know what I mean? But then you're like, but there's somebody better. And I don't want to sound like a fucking prick saying I'm good at, you know, I'm good at this and then have somebody be like, oh man, I remember my first time too, you know? Because it's such a blend of like technical and art and everything, you know what I mean? 

It's just, it's hard. I get it, man. I get it. 

Andy Leviss: yep, yep, yep. Uh, 

Sean Walker: right, what's the next one? Hit me. 

Andy Leviss: Ben J. said, uh, said he had a question that's kind of topical for him at the moment. Um, how do you, how do you go about making new connections when you move somewhere new? Or, like, particularly, like, from Sean's perspective, um, like, if you're getting a cold call from somebody who's, like, a new freelancer in town, like, what do you want to hear from them? 

How to, you know, how should they introduce them? How can they, you Kind of get into your orbit and help, you know, settle in and find work in a new area. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that is a great question. Um, I would say the first thing to do would be to go do a web search and find whatever, if you're trying to find production companies or places to work, go do a web search, find out who's in town, you know, who's, who's local, and then like actually spend some time on their website to figure out what it is they do, right? 

Because if you want to go do theater, do not call a touring sound company, right? If you want to go do corporate, don't call the theater company, right? Find the companies that do what you want to do. And then, you know, 

Andy Leviss: there's two sides to that. There's both finding the companies that have the work you want. And there's also not looking at like a schmo to a company, talking about all the work you've done in an area that they have nothing to do with. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, I did. Totally. Totally. And, uh, and then when you do, like, go through their company, I would stalk them, to be honest with you. I'd look at their website, I'd look at their social media, you know, I'd find whatever I could, I'd see if there were articles written about them or from them or whatever, and I would just do as much research into these different companies and I would take notes. 

And then I would call them. Because I get a lot of these calls, and I will say that most Excuse me. Most people are, uh, calling and wanting to talk about them and they're wanting to talk about what they do and their experiences. But they aren't asking about what we do, so they have no idea if they're a good fit off the top of the, you know, from the jump or not. 

And, uh, so I spend a lot of time on the phone with people calling going, Oh man, I wanna do, you know, I'm really passionate about theater and automation and this, and you're like, Yeah, I don't do any of that, man. Like, what part of my website makes you think that we're doing theater and automation? Or, man, I can't wait to get on the road and go tour. 

I was like, did you look at the website, bud? Like, there's nothing on this website that says, touring frickin Monitor guy, you know what I mean? So, uh, that, that would, that's where I'd go. And then I would also talk about like, when you call them, you get people on the phone, cause you'll, you'll get a very degree of someplace from the secretary to the, to the owner, depending on how big the company is. 

Talk about like the, Instead of like, Oh, well, I, I know about Dante and I know about this and that. Talk about the experiences you've got and the, some of the, some of the shows that you've done that are similar to what they've done and some of the challenges you faced and then how you overcame those, right? 

Like talk about the problems and then how you solve them. Cause really, I don't give one flying fuck if you're Dante certified or not. I care about that. You're going to take care of my clients and you're going to make me look like a superstar when I pay your ass too much money. Right? Because, uh, like I'm paying for results. 

I'm not paying for certifications. You know what I mean? So 

Andy Leviss: you can teach the technical stuff. You can't teach the people stuff. 

Sean Walker: absolutely. And, and also by telling me about the events you've done and the problems, the challenges are there because Literally every event has some challenge, whether that's your fault or not, whether that's in your department or not, like there's some challenges, right? Like, okay, cool. We did this event and catering was late or the florist was late or whatever it was in the thing. 

You're like, cool. Well, how did that affect things? You're like, well, push the schedule back. So I didn't have as much time for soundcheck or tuning or the dock was busy, the dock was busy. Oh, the caterer's truck died on the dock. So we couldn't get to the dock or had to push around the block or, you know, whatever it is, or it could be catastrophic on your end. 

I don't, you know, but. The real world scenarios are, are better and like, the faster you can just get to talk to me like a human, rather than like, you're trying to sell me, the, the faster we'll have a relationship and we can start working together, you know what I mean? Cause, 

Andy Leviss: it's like we said last week with Ben, it's a cliche that like, be a good hang. Like it's, that became like the running joke of this podcast for a long time. But. It's also true. 

Sean Walker: It's not a joke, dude. I don't want to spend 12 to 18 hours a day with an asshole. You know what I mean? That's why we do this virtually, Andy. God! 

Andy Leviss: Wait, which, wait, I'm the asshole or 

Sean Walker: No, no, no. No, me, me, me, me. Yeah, yeah. No. 

Andy Leviss: No, I just got the Dennis Leary song stuck in my head. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. Totally. Uh, no, we do it virtually because we're on opposite sides of the country. Not, not, not because I'm an asshole. Usually. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. 

Sean Walker: Uh, was that a rambly enough answer to that question? 

Andy Leviss: I think that was a solid, and I mean, Ben, like, let us, let us know if that answers your question or if there's other stuff, and we can certainly, like, this sounds like mentorship channel on the Discord if, if folks want to weigh in with their thoughts. 

Sean Walker: Totally. The other thing I will say is, uh, before we move on, sorry, if what I just said is not what you were looking for, then the other answer is, like, how to meet new people or whatever. If you're, let's say, looking to go tour with bands, go where the fucking bands are. Go to their show, go say hi, go introduce yourself, you know what I mean? 

Especially if they're at some place that has a house engineer and they didn't have their own engineer. And you said, hey man, great job tonight, everything was, you know, fan, I like what you're doing. Um, everything sounded fine, but I think I could really like, you know, add to it and make you look like a golden god on stage every night. 

Uh, I'd love to be a part of your team. Very few people are going to be like, no man, I'm cool, I don't want to look like a golden god, I'm great, I'm straight. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: and like definitely like there's a line to thread there because you never want to like, you don't want to be the guy introducing yourself putting down a mix. 

Sean Walker: Nope. Just say, I could take it up a notch, or two, or twelve. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, like the pitch I've made to like bands or artists I've worked with is the like, look, like, a house engineer is great or like the venue I know you're going to the house engineer is pretty good, but they're doing five bands that night and five different bands the night before. 

If you've got somebody who's dedicated to you and knows your music and their whole goal there is to make sure that you sound exactly like how you want. It's gonna make your life easier and it's gonna make you sound like more of what you want to sound like. 

Sean Walker: And then also you have an advocate. So when there's five bands that night and the house guy's burnt to the ground cause he's, you know, been there for way too long, and they're asking way too much of him, and mixing the show is probably the only reprieve he actually gets from the other shit they're asking him to do at the venue. 

You know what I mean? That you've got an advocate for like, no, we do need our sound check. No, it does need to be this long. No, I do need to fricking park the bus here. Like you, it's not just the, the 90 minutes of mixing or hour or 30 minutes or whatever your slot is, it's also having an advocate and having basically a built in tech director for your little, your little company, right? 

Your little tour. So it's, it's more than just the mix. It'd be like, you know, I can solve all the tech problems for you 

Andy Leviss: Yeah 

Sean Walker: take it off your shit to worry about, you 

Andy Leviss: and simply like once you know a band or once you know an artist and and you have that relationship you understand their language and understand what they need often before they need it you know which is something that somebody like you know Mixer of the day no matter how great they are isn't gonna know because you just don't know that report like I I had a An actor I toured with on a on a tour a bunch of years ago who she was doing a series of cabaret Performances in the city and I had offered like hey like I know you I kind of know You know, what you tend to need, you know, to feel good on stage. 

Like if I can help, let me know. And she was like, yeah, like the, that venue is pretty good. Like, I think I'll be fine. Like, you know, appreciate it though. And did the first one. And then when a second one came around, she was like, Hey, remember how you said, like, it might be a little easier if I had somebody who like knew me well there. 

Yeah? What are you doing, you know, this date? 

Sean Walker: What are you doing tomorrow? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and so like when, when she came back around a few months later and did that second show there, like she brought me in with her and, and literally at the end of the night just I got the big hug of like, I should have listened to you the first time, like the show last time was fine, but this one was just so much easier and I didn't have to stress about stuff. And 

Sean Walker: dude. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, so like communicating that to artists is, is both helpful. And also sometimes it's a long game. Sometimes they may not, you know, heed it at first and they may not hear it. And then after a show or two, without that, they may circle back around and say, Hey, you know, I think you might've been right. 

Let's give it a shot. So, so play the long game. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Totally. Alright, what's next? 

Andy Leviss: What's next? I was about to make a weird New York public access TV reference that 

Sean Walker: Don't do it. 

Andy Leviss: me would have gotten. 

Sean Walker: Don't do it. Damn it, Leviss. 

Andy Leviss: um, so Elliot, PA Elliot Carroll Past Yes. Asked. I'm gonna tweak his question a little bit from what he asked and kind of broaden out a little bit. 

Um, again, and I'm sorry, we keep firing questions in Sean's direction more than mine right now, although he's got a specific one for me too. Uh, but this one is, uh, we'll, we'll call it. Like what should a company owner be looking at in terms of like goals, new opportunities over the next few years? Like if, if somebody's looking to like build or grow or even sustain their business, like is there any advice you have for that, Sean? 

Sean Walker: Yeah. More than we can fit in one hour worth of podcast, so I'll try to keep it short. Uh, I would say that the, the trick is to transition from thinking like a technician to thinking like a CEO and like a business owner. And what I mean by that is start thinking about, uh, uh, The business as its own entity and how to make that healthy. 

So instead of like, what console do I need to make it sound good? Or how much fiber do we need? Or what, what, what frequency band do we need our accent in or blah, blah, blah. Think about like, how do I make the journey for the customer easier? How do I make it easier to buy from us? How do I make it a more pleasurable experience when we are on site? 

What are some things I can do to really wow my clients? That's got nothing to do with, well, obviously we sound the best, you know what I mean? Cause everybody's saying that same shit, right? And then forecast out over, you know, 2, years, whatever your life expectancy is, what those anticipated, uh, goals and, uh, you know, landmarks and stuff are so that you can go, okay, cool, in the next two years I want to do X, Y, Z. 

I want to get my Inventory system straightened out so that we stop making mistakes. In the next five years, I want to get my inventory system automated so that it, you know, auto checks things in and out. So you've got your RFID tags in the cases and in every time it rolls through the, through the door of the shop, it checks itself in or out. 

Right? So you can then go, okay, cool. This is, this is starting to make sense and I'm making less mistakes, right? Rad. And, uh, As you start doing those things, and they'll seem, some of them will seem trivial, some of them will seem like a big deal, pretty soon what you've got is a well oiled machine that does not make mistakes. 

Right? And that's really the biggest thing that, that gets us in our industry, is that we rely so much on Pen and paper and fax machines as it were compared to the rest of the world that we make people mistakes You know, we make human mistakes on little things that shouldn't be mistakes, you know oh, I forgot the frickin thinger and the dinger, you know, I mean and The other thing I will say in my own personal experience. 

I'll share what what I've experienced and what what works for me was 

We had a perfect Perfect score as it were for the entirety of my company. We have had zero shop runs Ever in the history of my company until I hired a shop guy and then at first I was furious Because there we had we had three shop ones on run one show. Thankfully the show was close and I was like blowing a fucking gasket You know what I mean? 

Cause like for more than a decade, not a single shop run, perfect score. Then on one show, we had three shop runs and I was just losing my shit. And I was like, the kid's fired. What's what, what the fuck? You know what I mean? But I realized it wasn't his fault. It was my fault. Cause I had not put systems and SOPs in place to like, this is how this works here. 

You know what I mean? This is how the fuck we check in and check out shows here. Because it's just been a small team of guys that all knew what they were doing, or gals, right? We got a couple gals that freaking kick ass for us too. But like, just a small team of people that know what they're doing. So we're like, yep, I know what I'm doing. 

No gap here, checking through the pick list. Boom, boom, boom. Pick list matches what's in the freaking inventory system matches what's on the truck. Let's go. But we had not communicated that clearly to our new employee. And so they didn't get the memo as it were. And so they didn't do the job. And so that's my fault. 

That's not his fault. You know what I mean? That that's my bad for not. Clearly explaining my expectations to them. So what I've been working on recently is SOPs and trying to just get it to be better, dude, just be a better place to work because like you can't yell at him, right? You can't yell at him for not doing what he wasn't told to do. 

That's just, that's just an asshole thing to do. So, um, I would say, you know, work on, on getting the, the business to be as healthy as you can. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? I'm talking weird right now. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, no, that makes sense, and it, I feel like it's sort of like that one, that end of that circles back to what we were saying earlier about taking the time to teach and sometimes you have to let the mistakes happen, because end result of it, you end up with two better people instead of one person and 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Andy Leviss: work there anymore. 

Sean Walker: Right. Totally. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, I mean that's, there was like a Facebook thread recently with like somebody posted like a dinged out, like, A forklift had gotten driven into, you know, a shelf in the warehouse and, like, took out a couple shelves. Like, the gear stayed up, but the shelves were destroyed. 

Sean Walker: Lame. 

Andy Leviss: and there, like, people in the comments were like, well, I guess that guy got fired right away, huh? 

And, and whoever it was that had posted it said, maybe it was even somebody on the Discord, I'm trying to remember. But it basically said, like, no, because if I fire somebody, the next new person could make the same mistake. Whereas, like If I talk to the person who made that mistake about why it happened and make sure it doesn't happen again, they are never going to make that mistake again. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: And then looking at looking down the list of questions, Elliot also had the question for me, which was, uh, he wanted to know if there were any things about keeping a baby alive that no one told me that I quickly learned. 

Sean Walker: All of them. All of the things, Andy. 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I was going to say no, only because as I'm sure you know, Elliot, and you know, Sean, the second everybody finds out you're having a baby. 

Everybody's got advice, everybody's got, and the best advice I got was a good friend of mine in the sound world and hopefully future guest when we can coordinate schedules, Vinny Oliveri, said to me, the one piece of advice he was going to offer was that everybody's going to ask if they can give you a piece of advice. 

I would suggest that your answer is yes, you get one. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. 

Andy Leviss: And make them pick their best. 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Andy Leviss: And, and that has been great. The other, the other tip I was sharing with some other sound, because the TSDCA, uh, Discord just started a, uh, chapter for, uh, sound folks with kids on, like, parenting. Uh, started a channel over there, and the tip I threw in at first that, um, credit to, I, I don't know if she got it from one of our other friends, but I'll give, I'll give credit in our household to Kate for this one, is when we set up the nursery right by the changing table, we put up two of the little 3M command hooks and we each have a pair of earplugs hanging right by the changing table. 

Sean Walker: Nice. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, which have come in handy a few times, 

Sean Walker: Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: we've got extra cranky diaper time. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah, 

Andy Leviss: Um, no, but it's, yeah, it's, I mean, the other, the, it's not a thing about keeping the baby alive, but like, uh, like Kate was saying to me yesterday, like, You, you don't really appreciate till you've got a little human there, how like, pure and genuine the tiny little hug from that tiny little hand is, because there's no pretense behind it. 

It's just, hey mom, hey dad, 

Sean Walker: Love you, Mom and Dad. Totally. And that literally, from now on, every decision you make is to keep that baby alive and healthy and well. 

Andy Leviss: yep. 

Sean Walker: No pressure, Andy! No pressure. 

Andy Leviss: And hey, for the next few years, let's make those decisions on no sleep at all. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. That new espresso machine's getting a fuckin workout at your house, bud. 

Andy Leviss: Oh yeah, oh yeah, 

Sean Walker: Espresso, wine. Espresso, wine. Espresso, wine. You're back and forth, right? 

Andy Leviss: Espresso, Wine, Cryus, but wait, no, that's a different kind of wine. 

Sean Walker: Alright, what's next? 

Andy Leviss: Simon Barrett asks, for both of us, um, Do we know many people who've jumped ship from their normal career in the world of live sound, etc. Sorry, from a normal career into the world of live sound, and how did it go for them? Did they stick with more family friendly things such as like system integrations or going to tour in a theater or just run a hire shop? 

I feel like the, my usual first answer for this is yes, my friend Sean. Which if, if folks remember way back when, when Sean was a guest on the show, like you definitely made a huge change from, from the business world to the sound world. So you want to, for, for, for folks who are newer and weren't around for that, you want to give like the, like the 30 second recap? 

Sean Walker: Sure, but I'll answer the question first and then I'll give the 30 second recap. I have known a couple people that have made the jump from, let's call it corporate America, to production. And they, fuckin about faced and sprinted back to corporate America as fast as they could. The hours were long. They The trajectory to the top is scattered and not very clear and the pay is average at best comparatively speaking to what they were doing in corporate America. 

And here in production, you cannot show up to work, log into Facebook, change tabs when the boss shows up, Go back to Facebook when the boss leaves and then get basically nothing done and collect a six figure salary like you can in corporate America. And so, the fact that they actually had to go to work and actually had to have results because, I don't know if we've mentioned this before on the pod, but the show's at fucking eight, bro. 

I don't care what you got going on in your life. I don't care what's happening in your frickin Facebook feed. Like, show's at eight. Get to work. It's gotta get done. You know what I mean? And I don't mean like, I don't care about you. I just mean like, look, man. There is a deadline on this. You cannot push off this deadline, is what I'm trying to say, you know. 

Because I very do, very much do care about people and my people and stuff. But like, show's a date. Gotta get to work. You can answer those frickin IMs later, dawg. You know what I mean? Or DMs or whatever the kids call it now. See, I'm showing my age, Andy. 

Andy Leviss: Something with a tic tac, I don't 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, it's ticky, it's ticking like a bomb. Uh, so those are my experiences from, just from watching that, now that I'm in production. I made that jump, um, a while ago. And I was a, I was a, uh, mortgage broker for years. And then did corporate business, business sales for Verizon and for Car Toys. Which is a, like, car stereo company here. 

Before I started doing, doing audio and, uh, At this point, I don't know how to do anything else, but what we're doing, you know, I've kind of forgotten all that stuff and only know how to do this. Uh, but, uh, and I don't know that I could go back because I have had this intensity instilled in me in this, in this business of like, like I just said, man, shows at eight, it has to get done. 

And I don't think a lot of people have that and I kind of, I kind of dig it. I kind of don't know how to let go of that intensity, you know? And so I've, I look around and I think, I go, man, I like, not a lot of other industries have that same intensity that we do here in production. And I kind of dig it that like it has to happen. 

And I think like, man, what if some of these other industries, like what if Microsoft had the same intensity of getting the code and the fucking software right the first time on time that we have when a show starts? You know, like, can you imagine where the world would be if the software companies fucking knocked it out of the park on schedule, on budget, on time, every time, like, you know what I mean? 

And I'm not trying to 

Andy Leviss: if I didn't have to wait until the third OS update of a new OS to even think about updating? 

Sean Walker: if it wasn't just the shotgun blast of like new thing, tell us how it's broken and we'll fix it. Like we're not your dev team, bro. I'm not the testing software. Like I paid for this, you know? Um, so, and I'm not trying to slag on Microsoft, dude, those guys, dude, those guys are awesome. But like, just, you know, software in general, right? 

Like, it's just a different mentality of like. They just don't have the same intensity in other industries that we have, and I dig it here. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, I find I've seen more folks making somewhat of like the opposite directions one way or another pulling out of like the show life either because of the schedule or just like not being able to be home or like build a family relationship and I've seen, and I've seen Two forks of that shift, one going to totally unrelated industries, after this I'm done with it, I'm burnt out, or folks, yeah, like, going, whether to the installs or integrations side, or going into teaching, or, um, you know, finding more of the, like, you know, like, I mean, I mean, the gig I'm covering, you know, part time right now is, like, it's not fully, like, office hours, but it's a little more predictable, it's at a, it's at a broadcast facility, you know, kind of, Keep an eye on like, basically all the back end audio, so like, you know, IFBs, comm and stuff like that. 

And it's, there's some weekends, there's, you know, some days are, you know, 10am to 7pm, and some days are, you know, noon to 9, that sort of thing, but it's a little more predictable. Um, it's, it's not always as exciting as, you know, being on a rock show or a corporate event. And like, likewise, I think I've talked before, we've talked to other folks about, you know, transitioning more away from. 

Theatre is, you know, is the occasional thing I do in doing more corporate work, because while that still sometimes is the crazy hours, it's a little more flexible, a little more schedulable, and a little more, like, buck for your bang, I guess? Is that? 

Sean Walker: It's a little more fuck you pay me than the theater world is. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. 

Sean Walker: You want me to fly across the country for two weeks? Yeah, man, here's the number. I don't have that number. Call somebody less good than me. You know, that's fine. Call somebody else. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Um, yeah, so that's Simon's question. Um, there's kind of a couple related questions that I think We can maybe touch on a little bit now, but I think they may also end up becoming an episode of their own, maybe with a 

Sean Walker: Pants on or pants off? Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: question or the episode? I mean, nobody else can see you and I can only see you from the waist up, so, you 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. Perfect. 

Andy Leviss: yeah. You're pondering what I'm pondering. 

Sean Walker: right. 

Andy Leviss: Um, but, um, because there was a little bit of a discussion about, like, backpacks and, and, and kind of what's your everyday carry today that you and I were going on. Um, but it's sort of been an ongoing theme across a couple channels of the Discord this week. 

Um, Megan, you know, who's one of our moderators in the Discord, uh, was kind of asking, like, what do you bring to a gig in terms of what do you bring and bill the client for? What do you expect the company to supply? What do you bring and don't build just because it makes your life easier or is expected and that sort of thing. 

Um, uh, another of the Andes on the channel also asked, like, just about the what, when, and why of purchasing gear as a freelancer. Um, 

Sean Walker: Why don't, why don't you start there and I will chime in since you do a lot more freelancing than I 

Andy Leviss: Cool. Yeah. And like I said, I think, I think if, if folks are interested, we can certainly dig into this deeper and maybe drag a couple of the other freelance friends in, in, on the podcast and, and maybe like Elliott or somebody else from the, the hiring freelancer side too, to dig deeper in it, but the short answer. 

I mean, we've all got that, like, it's a Pelican, it's a Nanuk, it's a backpack of, like, the gadgets you need. Like, the show's probably gonna have a cue box. If I can have a cue box, or a DB box, or a SoundBullet with me, it's gonna be a little faster for me to grab mine. And I know it works, I know it's got a fresh battery, that sort of thing. 

And that's the, um, you know, like a multimeter. Like, will, will a show workbox have one? If it's a company I'm willing to work for, it 

Sean Walker: I would fucking hope so, dude. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. But also like, I, I know how the one I use works. I know the one I use has, you know, the, the cat rating that we talked with Rich Cadena about last year that like, I know I'm comfortable and feel safe with. 

You know, it's so like, I will certainly bring my own, but I don't need to. And like, some of that stuff is on the level of things I'm not going to charge for, like, I, I want to bring the headphones I like, like, you know, I, There will always be a pair of 7506s on the show. They're not my favorite to use. 

They're fine. They do the job. There's a reason they're around, but like, I'm slightly more comfortable with like, the choices I'm making when I'm listening to something on a different pair of headphones. That I'm going to bring. I'm not going to build a client for that. That's 

Sean Walker: I was gonna say, and from the other side, if you show up and try to build me for your headphones, get the fuck off my job site. Don't be a prick dude. 

Andy Leviss: but on the other hand, like if I'm bringing like a wireless measurement kit or a thing like that, that's a conversation. Like if you're, if you're hiring, you know, You know, somebody as an SE, if they want you to supply the stuff, they'll supply the stuff. But if they want to use the rig that they know they're fast with, it's to your benefit to pay them a few hundred bucks for that rig, because they're going to work so much more efficiently. 

You know, like, I'll like, yeah, generally, like a corporate event, they're going to, if they don't discuss it with you beforehand, they're often going to send a QLab machine on it. I'm still going to bring mine and I'm going to try and invoice, you know, a kit fee for it because that's pretty standard in, in the corporate world to do that because I know it works. 

I know it's optimized. I know I'm not going to have to go digging to make sure it's not going to fall asleep because depending on the production company, even if it's sent as a QLab machine, it's not always necessarily optimized. 

Sean Walker: You got your own stingers already built in that you've used for years, that you're like five minutes to show. Come in, sit down. You know, you got all the ST things already built in that. You're like, I know where they're at. I already ready to queue. I don't have to go build a whole thing. 

Andy Leviss: yeah. Or like, can I, 

Sean Walker: give me a hundred bucks for this fucking laptop so I can get to it. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, like, can I load a playlist in either QLab or, you know, Apple Music or Spotify or whatever to play walk in music? Yeah, but if I load it in, in DJ Pro that I pay for a subscription for, it's going to be a smoother playlist that does transitions that You know, automatically in auto mix mode that a regular, you know, like Apple music or Spotify isn't going to do and shout out to Jay Richardson for turning me on to that program. 

It's fucking awesome. Um, it's, it, 

Sean Walker: Wait, what is that? Yes. 

Andy Leviss: pro. It's, it's like an annual, it runs on like iOS and Mac laptops. You can load your own music into it. It'll work with Apple music and title SoundCloud and a few other services. It won't work with Spotify cause Spotify locked their service down. You load your playlist in? Wait, 

Sean Walker: I am so excited right now. We have officially got a nickname for you. DJ Press Play. All right. So DJ Press Play, what's the next question? 

Andy Leviss: well, so, so, but what, what DJ Pro does that I really like is it's got in, in its auto mix mode. You load a playlist in, but it will, it will do a basically tempo blending matching. So it's not gonna speed up a song to like, make them all match the same tempo, but it will towards the end of a song, as it's cross elevating, it will start. 

If track A is faster than track B, it'll slowly slow down track A a little bit to meet in the middle. Where it'll 

Sean Walker: it's not, not quite such a jarring transition. 

Andy Leviss: And it'll, it'll ease the tempo in and out. So by the time you're into the song, it's at its normal tempo or pretty close to it, but it'll kind of blend them together through the, and you can turn that off if you, if you don't like it. 

But I happen to, I happen to like it a lot. I think more often than not, they make it sound pretty good. 

Sean Walker: That is pretty sweet, dude. Pretty sweet. There you go. Great advice from DJ Press Play. What's next, Andy? 

Andy Leviss: Well, I mean, and then, uh, it's, yeah, and then talking about, like, one of the things I mentioned in the Discord about gear, gear on shows is, um, is, like, microphones. Like, like, we all know, like, I'm particular about my drum, we're all particular about my drum mics, and if you're not speccing just, like, you know, the standard, you know, Shure, Sennheiser, whatever, Like, I'm gonna ask the production company, hey this is the list of what I'd like for the drums, can you provide it? 

If they can, great, problem solved. I might bring a spare if it's something that I know is fragile and I happen to have it, but at that point they're providing it. If they can't, I'll say, okay, I can provide it, can you pay me x? To rent it generally, they're, they're usually amenable, but the question is like, there's those gigs that come either where they, where they say no, or where you just, you know, if you ask, it's going to be a no. 

Cause there's no budget on it. So the question is, do I bring my mics anyway, under the thought of if they're sitting at home and I'm on a job, they're not making me any money at home. So even if they're not making me money on the job, at least they're making my life easier, which sort of indirectly is making me money because it's making me work less hard for my money. and I think, I don't have a great answer for when to do that or not, because you do 

Sean Walker: I do. 

Andy Leviss: risk. 

Sean Walker: I have a great answer for it. 

Andy Leviss: what's your answer? 

Sean Walker: Is it within the scope of the show? Right? So, if you, if I call you and say, Andy, I'm doing this. Arena show with a frickin artist and, you know, the drums are super important and we've got a, you know, we've got a basic Shure kit to send with you and you said, Hey man, I got this bangin ass Earthworks DPA buyer, whatever kit you like that I, I would love and I think it'd be a great fit for the show and, you know, give me, give me a couple of bucks for it in addition to my day rate and I think we'll really just, it'll make it outstanding and really make the client stoked about their drum sounds. 

It'll sound great in their ears. And, uh, I think it'll make everybody look better. Fuck yeah, dude. I'll give you some money for that. If I'm like, hey Andy, I got this SO100 show that's a frickin Rage Cage Beer Fest, and I got a Shure mic box and we got a pair of X32s. And I need you to come rip. And you're like, but I want to bring these earthworks. 

Eat a dick, Andy. Like use the Shure mics we got or the Sennheisers or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to pay you for it. If you want to bring it, that's fine. I'm not going to pay you for it. Right. So like when you're asking these things, not you specifically, I know that you understand, but like when they're asking you the things, the scope of the show is going to be super important, right? 

Like don't try to cram a square peg into a round hole and don't try to take 10 grand worth of drum mics to a 200 show. You know what I mean? If you called and said, dude, I would love more than anything to come fricking get my ass handed to me on an SM100 show for a fricking day. Also, I'm going to nerd out and bring some mics because I just want to see what's up. 

Rad, dude. No problem. Have fun with your mics, dude. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: and there's the bouncing act of like, it's, on a smaller show that doesn't have the budget to like, pay you a rental fee for that stuff. One way to look at it is like, oh, well they're calling me because they know I'm going to bring these mics, they're taking advantage of me. The other way is, because they know you're bringing the tools to make it sound that much better, you're going to get the call. 

Alright, cool. Where somebody else may not. So there's like, there's a balance there. 

Sean Walker: I'm calling you for your result. Right? And if those are the, 

Andy Leviss: to get that 

Sean Walker: if those are the tools you need to get your result, then bring them, right? If we've got the budget and, and the scope of show where I would have budget to do something like that. Rad. I'm happy to pay you for them, because everybody should get paid for the things they need to get paid for. 

If there's not the scope, I still need the same result, right? Like, I still need the same result. And in our industry, as we've talked ad nauseam, sometimes you're frickin you know, just getting it done and collecting a day rate, and sometimes you're like, look at the fuckin rad shit I'm doing today! You know what I mean? 

And it, and it's All of us, you know what I mean, all of us are doing that. So like, arenas one day, clubs the next day, theater one day. You know what I mean? Like you can be doing all kinds of stuff. Corporate one day. So when you go to, when you're thinking about trying to bill for your kit, think about the scope of the show and go like, if I was the other side of this, would I think I was out of my mind? 

You know what I mean? And as hiring people, and I think, you know, you mentioned Elliott and some other people here that own, own companies. We're always wanting to do the best for our clients. And we legitimately want to pay you for your time and for your stuff. We're not, we're not trying to be cheap. We just have a budget to meet. 

The client has given us a fucking number and that's the number. And I can't, I can't just say, by the way, the engineer I hired for this wants to bring another couple hundred bucks for the microphone so that they can feel fancy in the pansies. Uh, here's the invoice. You know what I mean? That's, that's not fair to the client either. 

Right? So the, and the earlier you can get in those conversations, the better, right? Hey, Andy, can you come do this show? We're working on a budget for the client. Yeah man, I think it'd really benefit for my mic package. Okay, let me see if I can get that in on the, on the order for the client. You know, like, it needs to be a conversation as early as possible. 

And also realize, sometimes, you just can't, bro. Leave that shit at home and come use all the normal stuff a sound company has and collect your day rate, put a smile on, have some frickin pod time and go home. You know? 

Andy Leviss: totally. Yeah. There's a time when I play like, like in the corporate world, like this came up recently on a, on a large event I did, like there's always going to be some solution as like an A2 to monitor microphones. Like there's, whether it's plugging headphones in the rack or something. But like, a lot of the, we'll say, higher level corporate A2s, like, will often bring our own monitoring solution with us if we've got something small that works, whether it's like, um, Sarah Even, who's an old, old friend who I worked on an event with recently, like, she has a, uh, Surface tablet that runs, um, Uh, I'm blanking on what it's, it's by, I'm totally drawing a blank on the name of the software now, but it's basically, it's a, it's like a Dante monitor, like, or whatever audio card, you have like little touch buttons for each channel you patch to it so you can sit there and like solo them to your headphones. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: then travels like a little Focusrite, RedNet, uh, you know, headphone amp that's the destination for that. So that way, instead of having to dick around with the rack or today, I've got Axient today. I've got, you know, Sennheiser, like every one of them monitors differently this way here, I can very quickly solo through them and I'm always using the same station or like, 

Sean Walker: that's dope. 

Andy Leviss: like a different little Dante monitor that I've started using to do kind of the same thing. 

Sean Walker: The RedNet shoot is so dope. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, and, and, like, that stuff is useful, and, but also, on the level that, on the level of GigZuni, that, you usually can, like, charge a little bit of a kit fee, it's not unheard of to, like, there's either the A2 kit fee, or if you're in front of house, they expect you to, you know, bring, you know, You know, a QLab machine or two and, and to bill for it. 

So at a certain level of gig, that that's an expected thing. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely, dude. And if, and if you get in, like I said, if you get in front of that and I go, Hey, dude, I got this corporate show. You want to come out and do it? Blah, blah. You're like, yeah, cool. What's the scope of the show? What are we doing? And blah, blah. You're like, great, man. I think I'm gonna need this. 

I'm gonna need my kit of this. I'm gonna need my two Keylight machines and this, this, this to do that effectively for you. Okay, great. What does that cost me? It costs you X. Yeah, man, that's, that's in the wheelhouse what we can do. Great. Or, ooh, uh, um, uh, you're already at the top end of my budget. Could we do it for like, you know, this, this, that, or that? 

Can I, can I give you a hundred bucks for that instead of two hundred or whatever it is, right? And, dude, who doesn't want another hundred dollars in the day, right? You know what I mean? Like, cause the reality is, if you're not in the negotiation, you're probably bringing that shit anyway, dude. You're probably, you know what I mean? 

Like if you can get another couple, couple bucks for it, great. If not, you know, it's coming anyway. Cause you're like, I'm not going to deal with whatever the horseshit they've got on site for me is I want my rig so I can knock it out of the park for this client. You know, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's, this is part of what I want to get into and why I think at some point we should spin this off into its own episode is I was talking with Brian Maddox over text like, uh, last week, and we were talking a little bit about this and about the like slimming kits down and the. Do you bring stuff so that like, you can save the day even if it's not for like, your position on the show? 

Like, something that like, I know not every A2 is gonna carry certain stuff, like, do I throw this in my kit because I know it'll be handy even if it's making the A2's life easier to make my life easier? Or, I'm getting too old for this shit, carrying like, this stuff around, like, I'm gonna Pack the stuff I know I'm going to need and the stuff that I don't need that will make, that might make somebody else's life easier. 

Like I might start like jettisoning just because it's a lot of shit to carry around to use once every 10 gigs and, and finding that balance of, of when saving the day on that one out of every 10 gigs is worth it or not. 

Sean Walker: totally. That's totally personal preference. My, my preference is as long as it fits in my Pelican, I want to have as much. Life saving, lifesavers as possible. You know what I mean? I'll put as many lifesavers as I can in the Pelican. And once I have to go to another Pelican, I'm out. No, like I'm not 

Andy Leviss: I mean, in, in, in some of the deciding factor in that question is, are you throwing it in the back of a car or a truck? Are you taking it on a subway or are you taking it on an airplane? That can also make a huge. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely, yeah. And if you're taking it on an airplane and your client knows that, like when I fly people in I try to very clearly understand their scope, their role, what they need, what's going on and what they can likely get through TSA and go okay cool I'm gonna make sure they've got the rest of what they're gonna need and we try to have that conversation before they get on the plane 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Or is there time for me to just UPS or FedEx this to your shop so I don't 

Sean Walker: yeah totally dude totally or like if you're getting in a car like just pack the shit you need and go to work dude I don't need to go through all that every time you know what I mean all right next question you 

Andy Leviss: okay, yeah, lightning round through a couple others. Uh, uh, what do you do to prevent burnout or keep the job fun? I mean, I feel like we did a whole episode on that 

Sean Walker: I trudge. I fucking trudge. I don't. I'm burnt out. I 

Andy Leviss: Although, I mean, you've definitely been getting better about vacations this year, which we did do a whole episode on a little while 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, for the first time in a decade I've finally gone on vacation and it's been a lot better. 

Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, and I mean, I'm just, I'm trying to, you know, Be a little more judicious about what gigs I take and don't, and, and, not always sweat the money. Cause 

Sean Walker: Is that why you won't call me back? You son of a bitch? Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! 

Andy Leviss: But, um, But I mean, like, I've got an almost one month old at home, like he's only gonna be that young once. 

Like, trying to find that balance to make sure I'm, you know, contributing my share towards, like, keeping him alive and healthy and happy and eventually well educated, but also being there for him too. 

Sean Walker: Being a good dad, dude. 

Andy Leviss: It's been a week of like, you know, fear of missing. Like there's been a couple of really cool gigs that came across my radar the last couple of weeks that I had to say no to because I needed to be home. 

And on the one hand, like it would have been cool gigs with some great friends doing some like once in a lifetime stuff that I'm bummed to have missed, but I absolutely made the right choice. Like I was home with my three week old. 

Sean Walker: Because you know what else is once in a lifetime? This day in Matthew's life. 

Andy Leviss: Mm hmm. 

Sean Walker: You know what I mean. 

Andy Leviss: Um, uh, 

Sean Walker: Alright, what's next? Shit. 

Andy Leviss: what else? Uh, um, so Andre Schauer is a regular fixture on the Facebook, uh, group for signal noise asked, uh, which of your guests revealed the most or most surprising mixing tricks and what were they? And you can't say Ryan, John. 

Sean Walker: Shit. 

Andy Leviss: I mean, that's a tough one. And it's funny. Cause like 

Sean Walker: Okay, can I, can I blow the fourth wall right now? Can I just tell people like, Andy and I talked about this before the podcast, because he was like, Hey man, I don't know what to say. And I was like, Well, yeah, I'm with you, because, you know, candidly, our good friend Ryan, who also has his own podcast, is one of the few that dives in fucking deep with not only, like, what he's doing, how he's doing it, why he's doing it, asks for others opinions, like, what do you guys use for saturation? 

Like, just gets in the frickin nerd with the rest of us, and then when you try his tricks, you're like, fuck, that works like a charm! Like a beaut! You know what I mean? So we had to, like Thinkin thinkin thinkin I had to come up with the guest last time, Ben. He was, we, we really got, we really got down with our frickin level, like, we're mixin hot dog. 

I'm gettin some, you know what I mean? Like, I came to rock and roll, you know what I'm sayin I'm, I'm gettin it, and game stage matters, you know what I mean? And then Um, a couple of episodes ago we were talking about mixing 80s bands and we got down with our reverb and I was totally down with the reverb, dude. 

That was rad. You know? Yeah, dog. Totally. Reverb brothers in arms. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: Yep, and I mean the other one I'll throw out is, which was one that I think it was because it came out in busy season, was like a sleeper with a lot of folks we've been catching up with. It was when we had Paul Bevanon who talked a lot about orchestral 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. 

Andy Leviss: so much gold in that episode about like, like particularly about mixing like more orchestral or choir stuff with rock bands and how to balance that out and you know how to build a mix when you've got out of necessity a bazillion open mics on stage that are picking up everything. 

And. Just, you know, remembering to listen to mics in how they're working together and not in unison. Like, you know, if you've got an orchestra on stage and you're amplifying, your trumpet mic is not gonna be a full trumpet mic because your string mics are also fucking trumpet mics. And they're gonna be open first, so just, you know Listening to fill in what you need and that sort of thing 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, so that's the one like if I were going to tell folks to go back and listen to an episode They haven't listened to I think that would be the that's the one I keep telling folks to if you haven't go back and check that one out Because there's a lot of a lot of cool cool stuff from a guy who's done all sorts I mean, how often do you get somebody who mixes like orchestral stuff like that and like, you know live film scores? 

But also mixes like Mott the Hoople 

Sean Walker: Right? That's dope. No, I told Matt, I told Matt to go check that out. He's out with Tech N9ne right now and they had an orchestra on one of the runs. And I was like, yo dude, you gotta, you gotta listen to this episode with Paul before you go, cause he had an orchestra and a ripping band and a rapper. And I was like, this is going to be so helpful. 

And he was like, holy shit, that's great. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah. 

Sean Walker: He got done with the show. And he was like, bro, that was so fucking helpful. 

Andy Leviss: Nice. Nice. Uh, okay. Last, last one we'll throw in here to wrap up or, or well, two, two from one person because we'll wrap up with the second one. Uh, the first one, which I think is going to just be referring folks back to an earlier episode, but, um, Andy with an I asked, uh, DSPs, do, um, we have thoughts on using like, whether the Allen and Heath AHM line or other DSP is more like that for like festival or corporate work versus like a lake or galaxy. 

And I know we dug into that a little bit with you a while back when you were learning to program like a FreeWire DSP for a project. And I mean, how, how, how did, how did that work out? Is it something you would consider doing again? Would you not? 

Sean Walker: Um, man, I, I will, I will speak from my personal experience. And, uh, with the ginormous caveat that there are a lot of people that know more about DSP than me, one, some might even say everybody knows more about DSP than I do, but, uh, I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever try to deploy a free wire DSP as a front of house drive processor in my own situation. 

Cause I would probably eat a bullet trying to do all that. And it stops audio when you make updates. Right? So like when you're like, okay, cool, you can do this, you can program this, you can change this and then send a unit. It stops the audio. So it's just really not the right tool for that job. I have two of the Allen and Heath AHMs in the shop right now that we just got, uh, for some other stuff we're doing. 

And in playing with those, I think that's an excellent balance of like the, the flexibility of a FreeWire DSP with the ease of use of a more traditional DSP. I think it's really a cool like marriage of. User friendliness and also being able to dive deep when you need to and that probably is a good like it's probably a good Inexpensive way to get into front of house DSPs, you know Like an 32 with the buttons on the front so you still have maybe some mutes or something you can program Like on a you know, cuz I like having the front panel mute so that you can just like oh the guest engineer Doesn't know what time it is today, huh? 

Let me just mute that so it doesn't blow up my rig uh And then like, you know, some people have talked a lot about, you know, Lake or, you know, Galaxy or DirectOut or whatever. And again, there's a zillion people with more knowledge about it than I am. But I think that the The Lake is an excellent choice because it makes shapes that other thingies don't make. 

If you are a front of house engineer, if you're like, Hey man, literally I want to just send my left right into this lake and then it will split out left right sub fill on tour and that'll give me the EQs and the stuff I need for that. It's a little more challenging to drive an arena scale PA with a stack of lakes all tied together than it would be with something like a galaxy or whatever that is really designed for that purpose or whatever. 

End. You know, I'll, I'll get lit up in the discord about people that are like, yo dog, let me show you how the real world works. But, and that's okay, dude, I'm cool with that too. But those are my experiences with, with DSPs is that like, they're all tools for a job. Each of them probably does their job super well. 

And if you put them in the right scenario, they can all do an excellent job of that. But I would, I would eat a bullet trying to do a free wire DSP as a front house processing platform. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I will say as somebody who for a number of years programmed those DSPs for a living, I agree, they are great, they are powerful. If you have needs that a more fixed architecture DSP isn't doing and have the time to build that out once so that you have it built, great. But then remember, as we've said before on the show, you are building all that stuff that comes pre built in a galaxy or a lake or whatever. 

So 

Sean Walker: I did. 

Andy Leviss: don't do it to save money, because you're going to make up for that money in time. Thank you. Like 

Sean Walker: it took me like eight hours and those of you that program DSPs for a living are going to laugh at me right now and that's okay. It took me like eight hours to program a biamp to Sarah. To basically emulate what a Galileo does, right? By the time you got, like, inputs, matrix, outputs, the DSP that's involved, and at the end of it, I was like, cause, you know, you get those, you can find those Tesseras online for like a hundred bucks on eBay, bro, it's like a great deal, you know? 

I was like, oh, this is gonna be great! I'm gonna save so much money, it's got Dante built in, or AVB or whatever, this is gonna be sick! Well, it's not the same AVB that I thought, and it's not redundant, Dante. So it's not quite the same and it stops audio every time you make a change Well, that's not really gonna be helpful in the middle of a show when I want to make a change Change this send or commit or whatever they call it. 

You're like, that's that's not you can't do that in the show You know, 

Andy Leviss: yeah. And like, to be clear, like knob settings and EQ settings and stuff, you're not rebooting the thing to do. It's, it's when you're making architecture changes and the reason you don't. 

Sean Walker: Oh 

Andy Leviss: clarifying for listeners. And, and the reason, the reason you don't have that on a, on a Galaxy or Galileo or Lake is because you can't rebuild that architecture. 

That's, that's why it's a fixed architecture. DSP, so it's, it's, and it can't do it on the fly 'cause it's literally, it's tearing the whole system apart and rebuilding it. Like you're, you're gonna lose audio if you re cable your front of house rack. That's basically what you're doing in the DSP. 

Sean Walker: Totally dude, totally 

Andy Leviss: Um, okay, and then last question to wrap this up, also from Andy with an I. 

Uh, what's your favorite gig snack? Sean's my favorite gig snack. 

Sean Walker: Hey girl. Hey 

Andy Leviss: Um, I mean, 

Sean Walker: Like, okay, if we're talking just snack, like not actual like meal order, but just gig, my favorite gig snack, it varies whether it's corporate or rock and roll. On a rock and roll show, like outdoor concerts where it's hot, dude, fresh cucumbers and hummus. Like fresh sliced cucumbers and hummus. 

Oh my god, bro It's so good because it's like warm or I mean cold and like crispy and it's delightful. I love it Garrett turned me on to that because you know He likes he likes that kind of thing And then obviously sparkly water because I don't go anywhere without sparkly water if you guys haven't put this down. 

That's where I'm at 

Corporate probably like quest bars like the protein bars, you know, I mean cuz you're like The lost black sheep of the fucking catering world. You're like, yo man, this Sambach sandwich that's 200 fucking dollars to the client that tastes like a gas station sandwich. I'm cool on that day five. You know what I mean? 

Like, I'm gonna just stick with this bar and go get some dinner tonight. You know, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: also with the sparkly water. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I'll I'll I mean folks at this point know my answer the last like six months has been Uncrustables man. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dog. 

Andy Leviss: They came out with a raspberry jelly one lately. And that is like I was like, that's I that is what you could have done to make this better. It's a peanut butter and raspberry Uncrustable. 

Sean Walker: Duh. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: the, the other one I, I will reserve the answer for potentially in the future, which also brings it back on brand for the podcast, is if Klondike actually makes good on their word and does bring back the Chaco taco, my answer will be Chaco Taco. But we'll see. They said they're gonna bring it back, but. They haven't 

Sean Walker: see. We'll see. Alright, fair enough. Are there more questions? Or is that 

Andy Leviss: I think that's it for that, that's, that brings us a little past the hour mark. Uh, 

Sean Walker: Alright, sweet. 

Andy Leviss: through the whole list I had, but yeah. Folks have other questions. Send 'em to us again, and like we said, tell us what you like hearing. Tell us what you don't like hearing. Tell us what you wanna hear more of. 

Uh, signal two, noise@prosoundweb.com. That's signal, the number two noise@prosoundweb.com. Let us know. 

Sean Walker: Word. Thank you to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us yap. And that's the pod, y'all.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green