283. “All Things Audio” From The 2025 NAMM Show

Fresh back from the 2025 North American Music Merchants (NAMM) Show in Anaheim, CA, Andy and Sean compare notes on all the cool new audio things they saw there, including loudspeakers, in-ear monitors, plugins, consoles, and everything in between. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Be sure to register for Live Sound Nashville on March 11, where you can check out the annual Live Sound International Loudspeaker Demo, hear talks by Jim Yakabuski, Sawyer Dickenson, Wayne Pauley, and much more! Use code “SAVE10” at https://livesound.regfox.com/live-sound-nashville to take $10 off the already low $30 registration!

Episode Links:
Korneff Audio Shure Level-Loc Plugin
Dark Matter Audio Labs IEMs
Allen & Heath SQ Rack
TT+ Audio GTX Line Array System
Sound Devices Astral Wireless Family
Shure Axient Digital PSM & Nexadyne Microphones
d&b CL-Series Compact Cardioid Line Array
Episode 283 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 283 - Back from NAMM

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, whose new dLive RackUltra FX upgrade levels up your console with 8 next-generation FX racks – putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing, and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at allen-heath.com

RCF and TT+ AUDIO.... Delivering premium audio solutions designed for tour sound and music professionals for over 75 years. Hear TT+ AUDIO's GTX 10 and GTX 12 line passive line array and the GTS 29 dual 19" passive subwoofer.... all powered by RCF's XPS 16k amplifier, live in the arena at Winter NAMM 2025. Many other RCF products will be demo'd in Hall A in room #17108. Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com for the latest news and product information.

This year, the Live Sound International Loudspeaker Demo has a new home! Take advantage of this unique opportunity to listen to, evaluate, and compare numerous top professional loudspeaker systems in a controlled listening environment at Live Sound Nashville, hosted at Worldwide Stages in Spring Hill, TN on March 11th!

Find the link to register for this jam packed day, including talks by Jim Yakabuski, Sawyer Dickenson, and Wayne Pauley, and much more in the show notes, and use the promo code "SAVE10" to get $10 off the $30 registration!

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Signal the Noise. I'm your host Andy Leviss and with me as always, the name to my AS, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: What's up, buddy? How are you? 

Andy Leviss: Right? I figure like I'm the nerdy convention. You're the loud and raucous one. 

Sean Walker: All right. I like it. I like 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah, you know, sometimes, sometimes they're thematic jokes. 

Sean Walker: I like it. I'm into 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: loud and raucous is my jam. 

Andy Leviss: right? 

Drum hall all the way. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Right, 

Andy Leviss: I didn't even go near the drum hall. I didn't manage to find the drum hall. I didn't try to find the drum hall. It was great. 

Sean Walker: bro. I got to admit I walked into the DJ hall and just made an about face. That was like, nope. Choices were 

Andy Leviss: room, wrong 

Sean Walker: a hung room 

Andy Leviss: So we should, we should probably rewind and for those that don't know, last week was NAMM out in Anaheim. We talked about it last year when you came back and I was at home, and this year we both went and kind of jackassed around around the Anaheim Convention Center for a few days, saw lots of cool people, lots of cool stuff we did, you know, we hung out at the Alan and Heath booth and did a panel with Jeff Hawley from Alan and Heath. 

Uh, hung out with our friends at RCF, lots of other friends. And, and I figured we'd do the thing that I guess is now is twice a, twice as a habit, three times as a tradition. So next year it'll be a tradition and do kind of a little name wrap up. But this year, instead of me just asking you dumb questions about what you saw, we can actually talk about what we both saw, right? 

Like we saw a bunch of stuff together. We saw a bunch of stuff on our own. And so, um, yeah, I mean like the people was like, so many people are there. It's awesome. And there's like, there's. I think like the, the pro audio side of it is relatively new, like the separate hall, right? 

Sean Walker: It was, it's been there the years I've been there, but uh, yeah, I think it was, it must've been an expansion or something. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah, like I know they were saying like, cause it's like, apparently like that it's taking over from ISE a little bit is like the big, or no, not ISE, uh, music mess. The, the big one in Europe, like now that there's a state side thing and that it's, everything's like a separated out until like its own pro audio hall has been helping like 

Sean Walker: It was 

Andy Leviss: bring more of that stuff over. 

Sean Walker: It was so nice to escape the DJs and get over to pro audio where it was, let's call it quiet for a trade show. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean like I ventured into like the music side of it a couple times because that's where most but not all of The I am manufacturers are which we're gonna circle back to it a little bit But other than that it was like nope hanging out on the pro audio side hanging out with old friends 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. 

Andy Leviss: And like friends like before we talk about the gear like we saw so like we saw Ryan Ryan cleans up nice in a suit man 

Sean Walker: It was kind of funny to see him with his business face on. That was great, dude. 

Andy Leviss: So Ryan was there doing some Elisa demos, uh, uh, for L acoustics, 

Sean Walker: Which was sweet, dude. I hadn't experienced that before. That was a pretty fricking cool demo to sit 

Andy Leviss: it's, it's great. And it's, it's a cool thing. Cause like a lot of us think of like immersive as like the fully immersive like shit. And that was just like mostly a frontal system. And what it's doing is just, um, you know, positional stuff and like kind of broader, like taking a stereo mix and making it so that it translates and you can actually tell through the entire theater where everything's coming from. 

Sean Walker: totally did. It was, it was pretty sweet, dude. It was sweet. And it was cool to like, you know, it was cool to see our dude. Put his business face on and, and get to it rather than just nerding by Neve compressors with us. It was great. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, instead he was nerding about the stuff he gets paid to nerd 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: no, but it's like, it's a great, it did a really good job of consolidating. Like I saw a bunch of demos and there were some demos that were really good at like finding that balance between the technical and the, to show us what it can do. 

And there were some demos that were not as good and I'm not going to name names, but there were some demos that were just like, okay, enough. This isn't a yes. Let us hear the damn speaker already. 

Sean Walker: dude. Totally. You know, it was interesting as like. I didn't fully form this opinion until this year at NAMM, but it was kind of like lingering and I was, wasn't quite sure how to like vocalize it, but I absolutely judge manufacturers and I'll be the first to say it. I judge manufacturers based on their demo booth and, uh, how they treat people there and how they like welcome or don't welcome people there because. 

Anybody that buys gear will know the customer service doesn't get any better after they have your money you know what I mean, so to walk into The speaker manufacturers are really the easy ones because they've got all the rooms along the the side to walk into all the different manufacturers and see how they had it set up how they were accommodating or catering to people or not or whatever it was it was a pretty stark difference between some of the manufacturers and Uh, it was pretty cool to see You know how some of them? 

We're taking really good care of people with like coffee and had a bar and snacks and what, you know, whatever else it was there. Right. And some of them was like this empty, cold room. And you were like, cool, man. What, uh, what are we doing? Why am I hanging out here for an hour? You know what I mean? So it was, it was sweet. 

And, uh, you know, no surprise. Our, our RCF homies had a freaking killer room that. Had all kinds of coffee and snacks and wine and wanted to make sure it was super taken care of L acoustics did a great job, too Since we were just chatting about ryan and those guys They had a you know had a bar and some snacks and it was great man to see that Uh l acoustics had a pretty cool patio, which was nice. 

I think they shared that with meyer and Maybe D and B too, but 

Andy Leviss: Wait, they had a patio? 

Sean Walker: yeah, bro. You didn't hang out in the patio and tell bad jokes. They're ready. Come on, dog. You missed out, 

Andy Leviss: Hook a brother up, man! 

Sean Walker: Nah, dog. Nah, dog. That's, that's VIP only dog is this VIP. No, no, anybody can go. I was, I'm just being a 

Andy Leviss: I hooked you up with the mermaid party, man. 

Sean Walker: just, I'm just being a ding dog. 

There was, there was no, like you could literally just walk out the door to, to the patio, dude. It was right behind the demo room. I think everybody along that wall had the same shared. Kind of patio thing. It was, it was pretty sweet to like get out of the chaos for a minute, you know, but it was cool, man. 

It was cool. Some of the other, like, I don't want to, how do I say this carefully? I'm not known for choosing my words carefully, but like you could tell that RCF and L acoustics and you know, some of those manufacturers did a good job of, of caring about, you know, the people in the front end and stuff. And some of the others that maybe weren't as experienced, let's say with like. 

Lots of customers or customer service. We're kind of just like Here's our stuff, buy our stuff. And you're like, that's cool, man. But like, we're all people too. It's been a long ass day. A little reprieve was very welcomed when we walked into some of those demo rooms together and we're like, yo, a cup of coffee and some water. 

Oh man, I'll buy those speakers. You know, like, like, like, 

Andy Leviss: on the subject of speakers and demos, because there's one and we were actually, you and I were on a panel with the guy from this company, but I didn't make it to the demo and all my friends were like, Oh man, you missed out. That was wild. Did you make it to the bass boss demo? 

Sean Walker: I did it last year. I did not do it this year. Once was enough. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: Uh, very, 

Andy Leviss: because I guess they had like a new box this year like that all in one like 

Sean Walker: uh, he was telling me about that. 

Andy Leviss: Monster. Yeah. 

Sean Walker: I, I didn't hear it. He was telling me about that, but I, I didn't make it down there. What a, what a nice dude that guy was to do when we chatted with him for bed. What really nice dude. I just, if I'm really being honest, man, that's not my target audience. So I didn't, 

Andy Leviss: is a very specific tool for a very specific set of situations 

Sean Walker: not the tool for my 

Andy Leviss: you or I often find us 

Sean Walker: It's not, not the tool for my job. So I, I didn't spend a lot of time there and that's not in any way, shape or form a slide against that. Just, it's just not the tool that I'm looking for. So I was like, cool, man, that's somebody else's tool. They'll go 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, but if you need, if you need like an all in one like point source, like, I think it was like five white, like subwoofer mid and high box all in one that can go up to like 145 SPL, like, um, 

Sean Walker: were like, They seem to be reasonably well made, like they're all nice wood box and stuff. They, they were loud. Like I, you know, 

Andy Leviss: I guess past that, like, we, do you want to just start diving in? Like, what were some of your highlights? Like, what was the things you, you were either blown away from or just looking forward to seeing and got to check out? I know there's a couple that we shared, but. 

Sean Walker: uh, it was really cool to see, uh, my favorite part of it was seeing all the people, right? My favorite part was getting to see people that I don't get to see all the time because they live on the other side of the country. Right. So I got to, got to hang out with like Sage and Abby and some other people that. 

I don't get to see all the time, Evan from, who's in California, you know, Sean, Sean 2. 0. You know what I mean? Like some of those guys that guys and gals that I don't get to see much because they're all over the country. And it was wonderful to get to like hang, have coffee, shoot the breeze. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: Totally. 

Sean Walker: Uh, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I got to, I finally got to meet Willa in person, which was fucking awesome. 

Sean Walker: dude. Oh yeah, dude. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, we, yeah, we both, we both hung out with 

Sean Walker: so great. 

Andy Leviss: booth and, and, uh, Laura Davidson at Shore who you don't know, but I've, I've done a gig with before as in with her musician hat on, like we got to hang out a little bit and catch up. 

Um, our, our buddy who's in the discord, Jason Waffle, I I'm told he was there. He's told I was there. We managed to just miss each other for like three days. Um, yeah, I mean, sure. That was the, the big stuff coming from shore was we all knew going in a while ago that the new accident PSMs were there and like, they had those, so we could at least, obviously you weren't going to listen to them too much on a show floor, but like put hands on them and kind of see the feature set and then like right before it opened, so that was actually the way, like when people asked the other day, how to sum up Nan this year, I was like, it felt like it was the year of. 

Oh, finally, is that what you say? That's a fair. And amongst those finally is on shore. There was the KSM 11 finally available as a wired mic, which mind you, these days, wired vocal mics, less and less in demand, but it's still a valuable thing to have. And like, if we actually had a conversation with Matt Engstrom from shore, who. 

Has had his hands in a bunch of projects. It's sure over the years, but was like driving the development of the case. I'm 11. And he basically said, we've only got so many mechanical engineers. Like there's only so many resources to go. It was important to us to get it out as a wireless. So like we concentrated on that first. 

And then once we saw how it did, we. Figured we, you know, then we could go back and, and, you know, engineer the wire version. So that dropped this year. And then, you know, Nexodyne was the other big thing. And they've got these Nexodyne drum and guitar mics that came out like the first, you know, new shore drum and guitar mics in God knows how long. 

And they're, there's some chonky, beefy looking, like it's the durability. We don't love from shore. Um, you know, didn't really get to hear them too much, but definitely, definitely interested too. 

Sean Walker: man. Absolutely. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, I'm trying to think what else, um, 

Sean Walker: It was, it was cool. Two more, a couple more people off top of my head that were really fun to see that, you know, you don't always, well, you always get to see in person is like, it was super cool to meet Mike Diaz that we interviewed of Earthworks fam. It was so great to meet that dude and hang out. 

What a nice dude. Same with Brian from ClearCom. It was like, we, you know, we had him on the pod and it was cool to go meet him and go, Oh man, yeah. All these people really are as cool in person as they seem to be. You know what I mean? When you're like giving them the, give them the 

Andy Leviss: a, yeah, you're always like, you're always afraid of like, don't meet your heroes, but 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. 

It was great to meet them. And then, uh, my bro, Chris Weatherford that I, I hang out with a bunch here cause he's also a Seattle guy. You know, we do coffee and. Work together and stuff. But like to see him with his Adamson hat on was pretty, was pretty cool. Same, same with Ryan. Like to see him, both him and Chris, both like, all right, here's my business face and here's what I actually do for a living rather than just like shooting the breeze about audio. 

It was really cool to, 

Andy Leviss: yeah, it was, it was cool for me to meet Chris cause you know, I know him through discord, which those of you on discord may know him better as you gross Chris. 

Sean Walker: totally, but nothing gross about him actually. You know what I mean? What a 

Andy Leviss: he's an awesome dude. 

Sean Walker: what a great dude. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, 

Sean Walker: those are, those are really my favorites was like just the people, man, just seeing the people and, and, and getting to hang out and, and shoot the 

Andy Leviss: Wayne motherfucking crazy hippie Pauly 

Sean Walker: what a great dude. What a 

Andy Leviss: We're gonna we're we're working on scheduling to have Wayne come out and talk about what he was doing at NAMM because He was doing some wild shit that included schlepping his his paragon to NAMM But uh, well, we're not gonna dig a ton into that just yet Cuz we're gonna we're gonna come back to that in a week or so 

Sean Walker: Word. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, but Mike was awesome. 

Like you got to hang with Mike, I think the night before I got there. Cause cause I couldn't fly out until a day later and Mike, you know, being a part of his life is, is in your world. Mike, I told him, you know, Hey, you know, since my last set of customs got lost, stolen, whatever, because they do anybody but me any good. 

But still, like I haven't had customs in a long time and I'm like, I'm, I'm feeling the itch. Maybe I should look into it and he was like, I will take you around for a morning and I met him at like, you know, 1115 one morning and he took me like introducing me to watch it to like clear tune monitors and a couple of folks at UE and to Tal over at dark matter audio, which I think that was definitely one of my sleeper hits from the show. Yeah, like we're gonna, we're not gonna dig too deep into Dark Matter because, spoiler alert, we're having the guys from Dark Matter on one of our next couple episodes, but uh, they, they're a brand new in ear company that launched at NAMM, and I think Sean and I were both pretty excited listening to them. 

Sean Walker: I sure was man. I, I, you know, without fan fricking fanboy on it. It was, they were pretty stunning dude. Their, their sixes were pretty stunning. The four, fours were a little bright for me, but I could see like how that's absolutely personal opinion and not, that's not like, Oh, these are, there's nothing wrong with them. 

They were just a little bright for me. But if you were on stage and had a lot of, yeah. You know, like a boomy mix. It would, it would help with a lot of that. If you had a engineer that did not mix bright, like myself, I tend to mix pretty bright. So having a more neutral. Uh, presentation was, was preferable for me, but it was also a welcome, uh, quiet down from the floor. 

Right. Cause you put them in, you got another isolation. I was like, Oh, so nice. 

Andy Leviss: to play audio? It's like, Nope. Just want to sit here for a 

Sean Walker: Just going to stand here in the quiet for a minute, dude. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Um, yeah. And like I said, we'll, we'll dig a lot more into detail on them and who they are, uh, in one of the next couple episodes, cause we're recording with them. We're recording with them tomorrow, but you're not going to hear that'll be a couple episodes from now that everybody else will hear it. 

Thanks to the magic of podcasting. 

Sean Walker: you go, dude. It was, uh, it was pretty cool to actually get to put hands on the new waves. It'll be one classic console that. Uh, I've heard a bunch about her, seen a bunch of marketing, but to actually like touch that wiggle it, move it, you know what I mean? It was physically larger than I thought it was. 

I was thinking QL one size and it's much taller than that. And, and 

Andy Leviss: It's about, it's about the width, but it's like, it's depth wise. It's it's, it's a chonker. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. But it would still fit in a belly to fly, which I think is, it's probably ideal. That's, that's what it was designed for. Right. And, uh, it was, it was pretty cool, man. Like it would take me a little. It would take me a minute because I'm just such a, just so ingrained in the way that I work, you know, on one platform to, to get fast on it, but. 

Anybody that's familiar with super rack would just be right at home. You know what I mean? I think that's going to be a cool 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I mean, for folks that are like building, you know, other like LV one like console rigs out of like parts and pieces, like it's certainly a valuable trade off in, in you've got a slightly chonker package than necessarily one you might build that could pack down super compact, but it's all there. 

It's all wired up. You just plug it in and it works. 

Sean Walker: yeah, totally. I think, I think that was pretty cool, man. And, and you know, for somebody like me, that's not super tech nerd and able to put all that stuff together to just have it already built and ready to rip was, was pretty cool. And 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, like I mean, like, 

Sean Walker: or something like that's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of firepower for less than 10 grand. 

Andy Leviss: will remember like when we had Chris Pugh on talking about like building all the all of his setup and getting it rock solid and there's still some of that to go because you're dealing with like the stage box switches and stuff like that. But um, but yeah, it certainly takes a lot of that like figuring and wiring and testing and kicking the tires out of the equation. 

So that was pretty cool. Um, what else? I mean, I mean, we should talk about like, we saw a cool plugin together. Transcribed Right. The, the, the, the shore level lock, uh, from Cornef. 

Sean Walker: Dude, dude. 

Andy Leviss: So you have, or you, you had a, an actual level lock, right? 

Sean Walker: to tell it died. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. So why don't you fill folks in for, for folks that don't know. 

Sean Walker: All right. So Dan Korneff, who is a super rad mix engineer, typically like rock music. I think he did like the Paramore records and stuff with David Bendis, uh, as digitized with some other engineers. And I'm, I wasn't super hip to exactly who else was involved, but they got together and they modeled their Shure Level-Loc different Shure Level-Locs to have the thing. 

And they made a... 

Andy Leviss: It's like, yeah, I think it's like, it's one of Dan's personal collection and then two different ones from Tchad Blake's collection. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. 

Andy Leviss: Which in like, in, in Tchad's the one who like kind of made the, in that way that this industry does, somebody makes their signature sound a certain piece of gear and they like make a bunch of hit records and suddenly everybody wants the gear and the gear skyrockets. 

Chad was that guy with the level lock, but like, let's take it a step back. And for those who don't know, like what is the Shure Level-Loc? 

Sean Walker: It's basically a distortion box. It's like, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's a box go squishy. 

Sean Walker: uh, dude, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's, it's like, it's, it's what would technically be called a character compressor. 

Sean Walker: uh, lots of character. It's got lots of personal. It's got more personality than I do, bro. You know what I'm saying? Like it, 

Andy Leviss: it was so, so Maddings from, so the, the interesting thing about this is it's licensed from Shure. So like they've shores never done that before. Like they, they license other technologies and like they did put in a cloud lifter into the SM7dB, but this was the first product that they've licensed something of theirs out to somebody else to make a product. 

And like, they went to Korneff to do it. Cause like. These were things from like, I don't know, it was like 50s. I don't remember when the level lock was first made, but they were made for like early broadcast chains when like, you would blow the crap out of, you know, speakers and transmitters and everything, you know, 

Sean Walker: you can blow the crap out of drums dog. 

Andy Leviss: yeah. 

Well, well that's, that's, that's that bitter irony. If it was a device meant to keep you from blowing the crap out of stuff. And then we turned around and abuse and use it to, to distort and crunch that. And they're really cool. Cause they, they like. They could run off battery or off wall power and base level, they would sound different running off battery versus wall power. 

But then as the battery died, just like, you know, with Brian May's guitar amp, like it would, the tone would change dramatically and they like Korneff and the team fucking modeled that. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. It was pretty cool to like put it on a drum bus and then change the battery voltage and how like the battery and not dying as in like needs to be recharged, but dying as in like needs to be replaced. Like it's broken and you could add more broken, which was so fucking cool, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's wild. And we're like, it's, it's a little to the fringe of what we cover, but, but Dan, Dan Korneff and, and Mat Engstrom from Shure were like, they're super into the podcast. And they were like, if you want, we'll come on and talk about it. So we'll, we're going to circle back to them and come on and get the whole story of that. 

And, and some of Dan's other stuff. 

Sean Walker: going to get my nerd on and I'm going to ask Dan all about making fucking slamming rock records while you guys try to talk about some audio. So you don't get me fired for just going full recording geek on Dan while he's here. 

Andy Leviss: It's all good. As long as it's live to live to two track, we're fine. 

Sean Walker: yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. No, but it'll be, it'll be super dope. I think it'd be a great place to like distort vocals or drum buses or that kind of a thing. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, it's certainly like a rock and drum crunch thing or 

Sean Walker: dude, it'll be, 

Andy Leviss: extra crispy guitars. 

Sean Walker: it is an effect. Situation. It is not a control situation, right? Like you definitely are like, I want this to be crunchy and gainy and, and messed up sounding. 

It is not like any clean control. And that has a little vibe to it. Right. But I'm going to definitely start messing around with, I'm going to buy a, buy a. Uh, license for wanting to start messing around 

Andy Leviss: yeah. And it's like I was just looking to put it in the show notes and it's, I think it's like the new, I think it must be like the NAMM launch sale, but still doing online. So it's like 75 bucks instead of 150 it'll normally 

Sean Walker: done. I'm gonna buy that Well, it's still on sale. That's that's a 

Andy Leviss: but we'll get them on soon. Um, I'm trying to think what else, what else was, I mean, do we want, do we want to talk about the RCF demo a little bit or do we want to save that for when we get Wayne on? 

I guess we can do like the quick version 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude they they took over the arena again this year and They hung the gtx12 And gtx10s side by side so you could kind of abm during the show and they had like a you know Like a pretty cool. I don't know what you call them. Maybe you Like a local or regional original band that did a couple of covers that that was pretty smoking and then like an all star LA kind of jam kind of vibe and uh, they, they did a, uh, I thought they did a great job, man, the show looked good. 

It was executed well, the speakers sounded good and, uh, You know, it was just cool, like to see the, to see the A team happening, you know what I mean? Wayne Pauly was at front of house, Michael Lawrence was S E ing, Carolyn was doing the, doing the monitors, and they had my dude Garrett down to go do a stage patch and sort out the 

Andy Leviss: and, and our buddy Chris matters was there helping Michael out on the SE side for 

Sean Walker: yep, Metters was down there ripping too, and so they just, they had a frickin you know, they had an all star team to make sure it all went great, and It was, it was great, man. It was killer. It was awesome. And they're, they're doing a, every revision of that product gets better and better and better and better. 

And it's, it's been cool to like kind of be behind the scenes on watching that GTX rig get built, developed, re redone, redeveloped, redone, you know, every iteration other than the one at NAMM last year, which, you know, we won't talk about that, but you know, it's, it's just, it's been cool to kind of watch it come together behind the scenes and, and have something that is absolutely in the wheelhouse with, top tier PAs out there right now. 

And that's, that's cool, man. It, it's definitely down to personal preference rather than down to like it will or won't do it, you know? 

Andy Leviss: yeah. And like, it was fun at the end because like a lot of the, like the big, like, we'll call them feature demos, like the headline concerts that folks do there. It's like, this is our top tier rig. Like this is what we're putting out and we'll do it. And like RCF actually hung the two different arrays and like switched between them at points during the show. 

And like both of them were pretty rocking. Like the small one kept up really well. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. If you, if you were not paying attention, you wouldn't, you, you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference when they were switching PAs for those of us that were like, Watching and like, okay, and here comes the next one. You were like, oh yeah, yeah, that, that is the 10 inch instead of the 12 inch. 

Right. Like you, you could, you could tell, but like, if you were just drinking and passively listening, you wouldn't fucking know they were swapping PAs back and forth. It was not like what happened right now. You know what I mean? So it was, it was pretty cool. It was a cool idea. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like that was pretty awesome. And then of course, I guess, well, while continuing down the route of show sponsors, you know, we spent a little bit of time at the Allen and Heath booth. Um, everything was. Everybody's been asking for an SQ round, 

Sean Walker: And they did it. 

Andy Leviss: and they were asking like that. 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah, no, that's what I sound like at the Heath booth. They're like, what the fuck, bro? Leave me alone. Like 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we've, we've, everybody's been kind of crying for an SQ rack for a while to like be able to stop specking X32 racks for monitor, for monitor rigs. 

And they finally came out with it. 

Sean Walker: totally dude. Totally. And, uh, they also came up with something that I think all of us have been asking for forever. Is they broke up the mandatory three stereo matrices and you can now make them six mono matrices, which I was like, that's cool, man. That means that I can almost buy a bunch of your desks. 

And then I gave them a whole laundry list of other shit I wanted. And they were like, okay, well, we'll make that the next revision in the next month or so and 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like literally like one of the guys from the UK was like, hold on, I, let me take photos and videos. Cause that's how I remember stuff and sat there with Sean taking a bunch of notes and yeah. So like being able to split the, the matrix is up is on the SQ rack right now. And it's coming to what should be the next firmware update for the rest of the SQ consoles. 

Along with there's a couple new compressors in the SQ rack that are going to come to the rest of them. Basically they said the, the built in like SQ control screen is the only thing that won't come just because that you kind of need for the rack situation for installs, but don't, but yeah, they're doing some really cool stuff right now. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, man. Totally. And, and you guys can all like cuss me out on the discord server later when they make the next update and it's got all the stuff that I asked for. And then you're like, what the, why did you do to my fricking desk that I know and love so much? But, uh, I just, I need it to work more like all the other desks in that price range work. 

So it makes a lot more sense for me, the biggest one I'm going to talk right over you right now. Cause I 

Andy Leviss: no, I was probably about to say the thing you're about to say, 

Sean Walker: going to freak out, right? Like I cannot deal with the EQs in bandwidth. They must be in queue. I have memorized my shows. I know what every EQ input of every channel is in queue. 

And I was like, yo man, I will not buy a desk and I need a bunch of them. I will not buy a desk until you change that. And they're like, that's it. That's all you need. And I was like, yeah, dude, that's what I need. Like I need that. I need those 

Andy Leviss: friend, Sean. He is a simple, simple man. 

Sean Walker: Totally. They were like, okay, well we'll do that. 

No problem. We'll just make it an option. So they're not going to. Blow for those bandwidth lovers out there. They're not going to blow that up, but, but they, they are, uh, working on a firmware update so that the rest of us can figure out our fucking lives or trying to mix on their platform, which I'm stoked about to, uh, you know, never purchase another music group desk again in my life, you know, I'm, I'm glad. 

So there, there it is. Music group will never, will never sponsor us. So that's fine. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I was gonna say, we, we try not, we try not to speak ill of, of things and we're not going to get your shame. We've talked about how, like, it's been a valuable tool for you over the years and we know it's a valuable tool for others, but the, the ethics in the history of the company, people can Google and, and simply the complete and utter lack of support these days. 

Sean Walker: That's the one, the last, the last one. That's the one is that like, I can't get parts to repair the day. I got a bunch of desks that need repairs, right? Cause they're a couple thousand dollar desk. Like I need faders. I need scribble strips. I need a bunch of stuff. And then they, I can't get it. I go down to talk to somebody like, Oh yeah, no problem. 

Blah, blah, blah. So you send them an email or a phone call. Black hole. 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I'll sell you a perfectly working x32 compact you can use for parts or whole 

Sean Walker: no, not a chance bro to cost you more in shipping to get it here than it would be with the parts worth, but uh, yeah, we're, we're stoked that, that, uh, you know, we'll have some, some SQ love coming here in the, in the near future and then I can, I can buy a pallet full of those fucking things and get to it here. 

Andy Leviss: nice Yeah, now you have to keep us updated on how that goes 

Sean Walker: I sure will. I sure will. I also one nerd thing that I'm going to care about. I don't know if you care or not, but I care about, I found a manufacturer for fiber. Yeah. That will make me fiber with the Opticon quad, like whenever I want. And I don't have to go, I didn't have a good resource for that before. 

It was just like, go to whatever it was. And so now I'm stoked that we can get fiber made for us. And so I'm going to have some, I'm going to get my own, my own fiber vibe going. I'll let you know how it 

Andy Leviss: man I'm triggered right now because I was working on a build of a show like the day before he came out for One of those artsy designers that has beliefs and I'm not gonna name the show I'm not gonna name the designer, but it was like the special fiber connectors brought over because he doesn't like optical con and Specking a particular brand of network switches for his Dante network Because he doesn't like the way Netgear and Cisco switches make Dante sound. 

Sean Walker: I'm sorry. Say that again. Oh 

Andy Leviss: He's specked micro tic switches for his Audio network because he thinks that net gear and Cisco switches make Dante sound bad Yeah, folks can hear the look that you and I are both making 

Sean Walker: Oh boy. 

Andy Leviss: you can hear our faces So yeah, that was my that was my Wednesday before I flew out on Thursday was a lot of like, okay Okay, here we are. It's 

Sean Walker: So I got to sell off my entire switch inventory because it doesn't sound good. Is 

Andy Leviss: Apparently, apparently. Yeah. I, yeah, today. And that's not how any of this works. 

Sean Walker: Today in the it's ones and zeros, but at this point, like, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and like even the clocking, it's like a standard clocking protocol. It's PTP not to be confused with PCP, which maybe that's what he's been doing. And that's why he's got that idea. 

Sean Walker: that's a whole ass other vibe. We're not, we're not going down that road. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I'm trying to think what else is like, I, I mean, that's the thing with like three, you know, two or three days there on the show floor. It's just like overwhelming. Like, 

Sean Walker: Oh dude, 

uh, I got, I got to go hang with Elliot Carroll for a while, which was pretty good. Sweet to meet that dude in person after yapping with him nonstop, either in the podcast or via phone. And we wandered around and he would, he, we went to the Yamaha booth 'cause you know, we we're corporate guys, but we, we, we bonded over Yamaha and it was cool, like put hands on a bunch of the new desks and talk about the V three update. 

It had the auto mixer in it from the DM three. It 

Andy Leviss: Oh my God. Yeah. How do we not talk about that yet? That was the other big Oh, finally. 

Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. It is not a Dugan. It is their own proprietary auto mixer, but it's just fricking fine. Cause they only, he's got one, you know, music. Everybody's got an auto mixer they're using at this point. I'm sure they all bought the same one and just put it in the desk, but Holy crap. 

How awesome is that? Uh, and then, uh, yeah, it was just, it was cool to hang with Elliot and shoot the breeze. And you know, again, back to the, the people have been my, my favorite part of the whole thing is just meeting all the different people and hanging with them. And, and, uh, it's, it's been rad, dude. It was totally rad. 

I don't. Unfortunately, Elliot and I, and, and I think everybody shares the same. Like I need a desk that fits between X and M 32 and DM seven kind of price point and performance and stuff. And so we were 

Andy Leviss: I don't know what a DM five is going to be, but God damn it. Do I want to see? 

Sean Walker: where I was going, dude, Elliot was like freaking full court press dude. And we, we were both like, yo man, here's what he needs to do. Here's what he needs to have. Here's what we're gonna do and we'll buy pallets full. And he, the guy was like, well, I can't confirm or deny, but uh. You're not the first people that have brought this up to us. 

And we were like, nor will we be the last man fill this cap in the market. So it was, uh, that was funny, but, but, uh, I think, I think the SQ is going to do that now with the updates and I'm stoked to go buy a pile of those 

Andy Leviss: will say, I wish I had access to sales graphs for the DM three. Cause I want to see what it's going to do now that it can automakes. Cause it suddenly went from like, It's okay to use in a breakout room, too. It can really handle breakout 

Sean Walker: yet. It totally. 

Andy Leviss: by adding that auto 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally, man. T T DM three D just took over. TF1 is king of breakout rooms forever. And, 

Andy Leviss: Thank fucking god. 

Sean Walker: Totally. Totally. Totally. But, 

Andy Leviss: I mean, like, to be fair, it's based on the same software, they do share a lot, but it's just a little bit friendlier, 

Sean Walker: everything about it's friendlier dude. And the size is friendlier fits in a Pelican a little easier than the bigger case. And it's just, they're great, man. It's going to be great. So that was, that was pretty cool. And, uh, man, what was it? What were those was just like, there wasn't anything that was like, Oh shit. 

Have you guys seen this? Other than all the people was just so good dude. It was so good hanging with all the people but gear wise There wasn't anything like life changing that I saw that was that I can't can't get over Was there anything that you saw that was like 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I 

Sean Walker: we haven't talked 

Andy Leviss: like most of the highlights. Like I said, like I definitely want to check out the shore mics at some point. 

Sean Walker: totally dude. Yep. Yep. Check those out Hmm 

let's see what else it was kind of cool. Actually, it's pretty cool to see the Well, we're hanging with Chris was cool to see like the VGT rig in person and their new, their new subs that are all powered now. So it all kind of like makes a little more complete ecosystem. That was pretty 

Andy Leviss: yeah. Like that was the big thing. And also they did it. They did it really well, but like you can basically swap out the back plate on the speaker and turn it into a powered box 

Sean Walker: So if any Adamson companies out there that have a pile of their single 19s, they make a amp plate for it. Now that you can just rip the. You know, four panel off and put this, put this one on and all of a sudden it's up to spec with the new thing and powered and ready to rip. If that's you, if that's your 

Andy Leviss: crazy low. Do you remember the number on how many they said like one soaker could power like basically an entire line, but I forget how many boxes there's super power efficient. 

Sean Walker: think he said 16 or 18 on one soak. I you'll have to ask Chris to be sure, but it was absolutely mind blowing. I had to ask him. Three times to make him say it. Cause I apparently hadn't had enough coffee, but I was like, wait, wait, one Soca powers an entire half of an arena PA. And he was like, yeah, yeah, totally. 

I was like, Oh my God, that's dope. That's the opposite of some of the other manufacturers that you're like, you need one 2130 to each speaker. Come on dog. How am I going to get that up there? You know, it's not quite that bad, but there, there was one where They were talking about their box and I was like, Hey man, you do know that's too much power for the size of this thing. 

And they were like, yeah, but it sounds so good. I'm like, I don't know if I'd go that far, you know, also the same manufacturer that was not having a whole bunch of snacks and coffee. So, you know, I'm out naturally. I'm out. Right. Like they weren't helping the debt. They weren't feeding the dad, bud. I'm out. 

I'm simple, man. I'm simple. Caffeinate 

Andy Leviss: And I hate that I know exactly which manufacturer you're talking about at 

Sean Walker: right. Totally, dude. Totally. But, uh, you know, I don't know, man, I, I've just, uh, not a, I'm not a good fit to be really judge a manufacturer cause I look at, I can only look at it from my side. You know what I mean? Everybody's doing the best they can and there's lots of good stuff out there. 

So I shouldn't slag on it. But like if your box is twice as heavy and takes twice as much power as everybody else's box and it's the same price, Like what, what are you thinking, man? You know what I mean? How are you going to have going to be twice as heavy, require twice the power with the same output and the same price. 

Like there's just no, where's the trade off for the weight and the power consumption. You know what I mean? So I was, I was blown away that, you know, Chris and the Addison team had made it so power efficient, which reminded me of, you know, like our fricking RCF ecosystem, where I can run eight boxes on one fricking 20 amp power con cable. 

It's just, it's insane. So it was cool to see that on a large scale, right? Where do you just go? Oh yeah. One socket is a whole half of an arena rig. So you're just like fricking two soakers and this thing rips and they got them out with imagine dragons and much of the people that I don't remember if we can, I don't remember what parts were, were, and we're not able to say, but I do know that I can say imagine dragons is out because it's on their social. 

So that's, that's fricking, that's, it was cool to see that man. See, see people, you know, caring about audio and doing a good job and lots of good. There's lots of good manufacturers that care and do a good job, but, but it's nice when you can like run into it in our little circle of friends and, and, you know, put faces to names and touch the products that we've been talking about. 

And it was just cool. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I, I actually, I, before I forget, I also got a chance to hear the DMB CCL line array, 

Sean Walker: Was that thing sweet? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, it's pretty tight. I don't know if you can hear me over the, over the now cranky baby. 

Sean Walker: we got you, bud. 

Andy Leviss: But, um, yeah, it was pretty great. Um, there, it's their new compact cardioid line array. And it's, I mean, they have, 

Sean Walker: is that what CCL means? Is that where they're going with it? Oh man, they're so smart. 

Andy Leviss: right. So efficiently German. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right. Totally. As 

totally dude. Totally. As my buddy, Jason Wagner would say, there will be no mistakes, but yeah, I did that. I I'm stoked to hear that box. That's a, that's going to be a really good addition to their lineup. That'll be, that'll be cool. They, they make a great product too, man. It's, it's cool to have so many good options nowadays that we didn't always have before to, to, uh, you know, to choose from the DMV guys make a good product, the L acoustics, the Meyer, the, yeah. 

RCF, they're all making great speakers these days. And so it's cool to like Adamson, you know what I mean? They just go now we're choosing based on personal preference rather than based on like, does it do a good job or not? They're all doing a great job. And now you can just go like, Oh, I, I like this ecosystem. 

I like this out of the box tonality, or I like the support I get from these guys or whatever to choose rather than like. Oh man, there's only two guys that do a good job and the rest of them are trying to figure it out still, you know, so that was, that's pretty cool to kind of watch it all go down, you know. 

Um, the other cool thing that I saw while I was there that I didn't get to the booth, but I saw it, it was actually at the RCF arena demo, was Sound Devices makes a wireless system that will go into the OptiCore loop of your Digico console. And it does like, man, somebody's going to quote me on these specs and they're going to be wrong, but it was something astounding. 

Like 

Andy Leviss: it can do 32 channels in one U 

Sean Walker: that's where I was going with that. Yeah. It's like 32 channels with one you. But you get it coming out OptiCore, maybe Dante and Matty and Analog, I think I'd have to go look at the specs, but it was some astounding where you were like, Whoa, you've got like four or five outputs so you can get into almost any ecosystem. 

And it goes into your OptiCore loop in one you that actually it's to you. The rack is one you the OptiCore is one you. So it makes it to to you rack. Uh. The consensus that I got from the people that actually used it were, wow, what a fricking cool technology and slick package. And they can't wait to try it with some of the capsules that we know and love like a KSM or a 

Andy Leviss: the, the cool thing about that, there's an insert in the top of the handheld that flips around so it can do short threading or Sennheiser threading from the same handheld also, and this is bonkers, there's a weight in the bottom that you can remove or buy a heavier weight for, to balance whatever capsule you put on the top of 

Sean Walker: So dope, dude. 

Andy Leviss: And it's like, it's, they've redesigned the antenna because they're fucking nerds. So if you cup the antenna, it only loses like about three DB instead of like the massive RF dropout you get with most antennas on handhelds. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's fricking dope. That's dope. I didn't hear it. So I don't, you know, I don't know, but, uh, sound devices is known to be making pretty high quality stuff, especially for like location audio. So I would expect it to be an excellent product. And I think for touring, man, the fact that you can put that in your OptiCore loop, just, I think that's stunning, man. 

That's super cool. And for us, Us, you know, corporate nerds, like Bill put it on our Dante network or for man, for us regional shops that have to go back and forth between doing corporate and concerts to be, to have it in our Dante network on corporate shows in our off the court loop on, on concerts or festivals or rock shows, as we would call it here, how fricking cool and, and still be able to have an analog output, like, Holy cow, dude, what a, what a, okay. 

Maybe that's a cool device that we saw that I was like, Holy 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like, they've got like, they've got like small single channel receivers. They can be POE. So if you need to remote, like. Yeah, so if you need to remote one channel of RF somewhere, like on a, on a big, like, you know, for like an exterior, you know, interview thing or whatever, just run one cable. That's got your control, your Dante and your power. 

Sean Walker: holy mind blown dude 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And they have 

Sean Walker: some nerd shit on a level. I'm not even capable of 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like, I forget what they call it, but they've got their equivalent of like the Shor's Shillink kind of remote control stuff, but like there's, the analyzer is built into the receiver. So it's as if you have a spectrum manager built into the receiver that can like, and it can dynamically assign all the channels on its own. 

So like, just like you would with a Shor spectrum manager. And like, apparently the range, they built their own protocol for it. So the range on it is just like, Bunkers control range to begin with plus you can then buy a remote unit, but you don't have to put like Show link access points all over the place. 

It's just right there on the receiver and that'll cover most venues 

Sean Walker: I'm gonna blow up Chris matters about it cuz he had the most Access to it of any of us and I'm just gonna like mama light his ass up dog. Let's be it Can I be honest right 

Andy Leviss: Spoiler, we're also i'm working on getting gary trender from sound devices to come talk about it on the 

Sean Walker: Thanks dog. 

Andy Leviss: we'll hear that side of it 

Sean Walker: Yeah, perfect 

Andy Leviss: an old friend. 

Sean Walker: But but matters had a whole bunch of experience with it so he could chat about it Uh, you know, on the phone or on the discord or whatever, and, and, and share his experience. Cause I, I didn't actually use the product, so I can't, I can't speak to it from a use just from like, man, this looks really cool. 

Yeah, yeah, just looks super cool. So, uh, that's good. All right, cool, man. Well, uh, we'll kind of just wrap it up here I think it's a good place to wrap it up. We got All the yapping done. I think we need to do and little dudes Having a whole ass day right now. So thank you so much to Alan Heath for making cool desks and DSPs and letting us yap about audio. 

Huge thanks to RCF for everything you do for us, man. We, we love that you make speakers for regular ass companies to go print money with and you do a great job. Thanks to all the listeners. That's the pod y'all.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green