298. InfoComm Debrief

It’s time for an InfoComm debrief, as returning guest Elliott Carroll joins Andy and Sean to compare notes on what he and Andy saw during their recent trip to Orlando for this year’s InfoComm trade show. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

As Andy puts it, it was the year of big wireless in small packages — so much of the show was about putting eyes and ears on the latest offerings from Shure, Sennheiser, and Sound Devices, but there was also a lot to check out in terms of spatial audio, new software and hardware updates from Allen & Heath, and much more!

Episode Links:
Allen & Heath Qu Series
Sound Devices Astral
Sennheiser Spectera
Shure ANX4
Lectrosonics DSSM and M2 Duet
Pliant Technologies
d&b audiotechnik Create.Control
TiMax Spatial
L-Acoustics DJ
Episode 298 Transcript

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Transcript

Signal To Noise, Episode 298: InfoComm Debrief

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.  Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com for the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

[00:00:54] Andy Leviss: Hey, who, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me today, uh, guest substitute, co-host and, uh, former, uh, guest Elliot Carroll. What's going on, Elliot?

[00:01:06] Elliott Carroll: Uh, not too much just coming to you for my, uh, black hole of an office here.

[00:01:11] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I feel like I remembered that from last time and, and feeling like just, you know, blink three times if, if you need us to send help.

[00:01:18] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, it's been a year.

[00:01:20] Andy Leviss: barely painted black like plywood wall behind him. It's, it's very murder cabin.

[00:01:25] Elliott Carroll: I've got these colorful acoustic tiles that are sitting right in the corner. I can see them and, uh, I was gonna put them up about 18 months ago when they showed up, and I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

[00:01:36] Andy Leviss: I mean, I only in the last week have like finally made a pass of like, I had no idea there was a desk under the pile of stuff in front of this monitor that I'm looking at you on right now and have slowly been cleaning out the home office and turning it into more of an office unless of a mini storage is.

Both to have a space to do this without like having to move stuff around every week when we're record. And also in hopes of eventually having, having some sort of work that I'm regularly working out of here, crossing fingers and seeing, seeing where that goes. Although still looking folks, so if, if anybody's got anything, you know where to find me. Uh, so Sean was gonna join us, but, uh, I, I think something came up so he may or may not pop in while we're recording, but, uh, Elliot was going to join us anyway 'cause Sean couldn't make it out to Infocom the other week, but Elliot was there and we spent a day hanging out and kind of bouncing around the show floor.

So I figured who better to have come in and kind of, we can talk through what we saw or didn't see there, and we're gonna catch Sean and all of you at home up to speed on it. But, um, I guess we'll, we'll just, uh, catch you up and if Sean pops in, uh, he'll, he'll join us when he can. Um, but how you been otherwise, dude?

[00:02:48] Elliott Carroll: Uh, good, good. Just busy. The normal, busy, like I think everyone else, I think the industry is doing okay as a whole

[00:02:56] Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's, it seems like stuff has been picking up.

[00:03:00] Elliott Carroll: Yeah.

[00:03:01] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, I've been like, I am, I'm on a day off in between two days of, uh, some work on NBA draft stuff. So that's a little hectic. That's a, because they do like, yeah, they used to do like, I guess like six or seven rounds that were all in the main room and just like going for like two days and it would go like crazy late and they've rolled it back a bit.

So now they're basically doing the main event day one that's like in the barley center, like full arena. And then day two they do a smaller event that's like bleachers out on like the atrium of the arena, like scaled back and it's like one of those wild, like we loaded in yesterday, like test what we can, you know, break down anything that's not up in the air so that they can make that be the red carpet for the main event today.

And then we're back in tomorrow to do the day two of the draft tomorrow night. So,

[00:03:48] Elliott Carroll: Oh, those are fun. I it back in my, back in my circus days that I remember the circus, when they would sit in Madison Square Garden, they'd usually sit there for like three weeks. So inevitably there'd be like a hockey game or something, or a basketball or, or something. So I do remember at some point they would clear the floor.

Everything would fly up into the rafters and then they'd have a basketball or a hockey game or whatever it was, and then they'd bring it back down and we, they'd reset it all for another like round of shows.

[00:04:17] Andy Leviss: I wanna say it was like Thanksgiving week, the year that I was out with Sesame Street Live. Oh, I think we were in Milwaukee if I'm not misremembering. And it was already a split week and then we loaded in, did one show, had to do the like, load out stuff and like fly stuff high so they could do a basketball game over Thanksgiving and then come in early the next day, load in, do two shows, come back the next day, do one show, and then load out and then into another split week after that.

That was, yeah, that was a fun, fun three week stretch. It was also they, at one point we had like one of our front of house dresses that had three massive moving lights, like left center, right on it. And so they brought it in and, and um, like lowered it down onto a couple of road cases and they were like rolling the whole thing out as one unit to get it into like the back hallway.

And one of the cases slipped and it landed right on the super expensive, gigantic moving headlight. Just like the shell cracked right on the ground of the arena.

[00:05:15] Elliott Carroll: yikes.

[00:05:16] Andy Leviss: Yeah. It was like, it was the blessed thing of they travel in cases of two, so we had four and only used three. So there was a spare there, but it was, that was, that was a loud sound.

It was not the worst sound I've seen that would be the LED wall tearing last year, but

[00:05:32] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, but that's an, that's a, that's an expensive, oops.

[00:05:36] Andy Leviss: Yeah, it is the, yeah, I had a couple blown drivers just 'cause I. I was still touring, you know, UPA one Cs that had been converted from UPA one a's in like 2005. So it was just old age, but, uh, yeah, it never, never dropped and destroyed anything, thankfully.

[00:05:53] Elliott Carroll: That's good. That's a good mark to have.

[00:05:56] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Although the year before was the year that apparently somebody had pulled their, uh, NL eight, uh, delay lines through a dirty diaper for an entire, like 200 foot run.

[00:06:05] Elliott Carroll: Oh, I, I have gotten, I've definitely pulled front of house snakes, especially in those circus days with vomit. Definitely vomit on them. Yeah.

[00:06:14] Andy Leviss: That was the one. I, I feel like I told somebody this story recently, and I'm trying to remember if it was on the show or not, that like they called the home office. 'cause, 'cause V who did Sesame Street at the time owned all their gear. So it was out of like the company warehouse and they were like, is do, do we need to clean it or.

Can we trash it and do you have a replacement? And because it was only NL four NL eight, they were like, ah, we'll send you a replacement for that. If it was the mulch for front of house, you'd be cleaning it, but that cable's cheap enough. Just it'll meet you at the next venue.

[00:06:46] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, we used to, uh. We would take, we would bag the ends. 'cause ours was like a, I can't remember what power cable. It was an l something, a big Hubble, uh, W four and then some, some other extraneous lines, you know, 300 feet of it. But we would, uh, share, use the same pressure washer that used the hose off the elephants, but we would just bag the ends, spray a bunch of cleaner on the cable and just power wash it every once in a while.

Just 'cause it was just filled. It was just awful. Yeah.

[00:07:15] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that was, there was so much on that like, yeah, I mean, my new front of house, I only had like a 12 pair snake. 'cause it was like, you know, one live mic on stage and the rest was track. It was, you know, Sesame Street. But, um, I. Yeah, there was like, so like trying to stuff so much stuff into small boxes.

There were like the boxes that like all it had in it was cable, but you could not let a local pack because it had to be packed exactly the right way or it wasn't gonna fit.

[00:07:42] Elliott Carroll: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:43] Andy Leviss: Yeah. You know, like rolling a cable into it and like descending squares and leaving a hole enough in the middle to fit two galaxy hotspots in the that, because those were our fallback and front fills were, were the Unpowered Galaxy Hotspots.

[00:07:55] Elliott Carroll: I tell you what, we still have, we have a bunch here, like a great little tiny little baby corporate fold bag. They're, I mean, they get loud enough for like q and As and stuff, and they're tiny, tiny, and

[00:08:06] Andy Leviss: Yeah. They were a little out of their element trying to do like loud Sesame Street music. But you know, we were definitely push, push in there. I mean, for monitors they were fine. 'cause it's like, I'm just trying to like. Blast some sort of tempo and, and dialogue into those giant like Muppet head costumes.

But, uh, yeah, for front fills, they were like, that was stretching their capabilities a little bit, but also doing half to two third arenas with 12 UPA one Cs was also stretching capabilities A little bit.

[00:08:33] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Looking back, really the rig. I feel like now that I know so much more, it's like, oh yeah. I mean they were like MSL fours back when I was doing it, but it was like, not enough. It's like, oh man. This was probably, I mean, granted it's not a loud show, like we would have to mix to like 85 db, 88 peaks 'cause they were kids.

Um, so it was not allowed show, but it was like, oh man, like we did this with like clusters of three ml cell fours, like everywhere.

[00:08:59] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like my left rights were like two UPA, one Cs over, one down, and then I had like a pair each, like left and right as delays. And then like two is like deck and fills outside, you know, Elmo's little ego stage and that, and then like two us ws.

[00:09:14] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Yeah. That was almost what ours, it was like they built these custom giant metal brackets and it was, we'd fly to, there were massive subs, I wanna say like PSW sixes. They were, they were huge and heavy and they had, they were like a trapezoid shape, but two of those. And then underneath was another frame, maybe three MSL fours, and then under those were two ups.

It was like down, and that was the cluster, and we'd have a bunch of those around the arena, but that was

[00:09:39] Andy Leviss: Yeah, you had like, it sounds like, easily two or three times to be had. I'm kind of jealous, but uh, yeah, that was, it was just funny. 'cause then they'd always be like, oh, like, you know, why aren't the people in like the really extremely cheap seats? Like they say they can't hear anything and it's like, well I keep asking you for a third box on that top range of the array to cover there.

You know, otherwise my only option to cover there is to to them out. And then you'll have people in the expensive seats complaining. So like, it's not a choice I wanna make, but who do you want me to favor or do you want to send me two more speakers?

[00:10:11] Elliott Carroll: Sure. Sure.

[00:10:14] Andy Leviss: Yep. But, you know, learned a lot doing all that.

[00:10:16] Elliott Carroll: yeah, absolutely.

[00:10:18] Andy Leviss: Um, but yeah, so, so Infocom, so I guess we should explain to folks who don't know what Infocom is. It's,

[00:10:27] Elliott Carroll: I I, is it the biggest one in the states?

[00:10:30] Andy Leviss: I think so,

[00:10:32] Elliott Carroll: I feel like it is.

[00:10:33] Andy Leviss: yeah. It's definitely, it's one of the biggest like industry trade shows. It's the only, it's, I think it's the only one that's really like truly AV focused

[00:10:43] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. I mean, NAB is very broadcasting video

[00:10:47] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like you get a little weird when like NAB and a S team up and then like, it's technically separate expo rooms, but they're connected.

So you've got the audio side and the broadcast side. Although it's that EV is, is growing contracting every year, but it's definitely not as big as it used to be.

[00:11:05] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. And then LDI is, you know, all lighting, but they also, it also, there's like a digital signage part of I think LDI, which is a whole nother expo area. It's like, it's a separate thing, but they happen at the same time in the same place. So it's kind of together. Um. That one, that one's big too. But yeah, as far as AV goes, um, and definitely audio goes, Infocom is the biggest one in the US and really the only one, well some people did some at N this year, but the only one that has consistent demo rooms, usually anywhere from 12 to 16 manufacturers doing demos

[00:11:39] Andy Leviss: there's like an entire side of the convention center that's all demos. And I mean, that's like one of the big trends. I think I saw it in Infocom this year and I know, like you, you came to me with, came with me to one of the demos and then I think we both made it to a couple others was it's definitely like this year in particular was like immersive and spatial.

Everybody's got some sort of like, if you didn't have it, you've, you've started to figure out some way to like. I pieced together something immersive and spatial this year. Like it, that seems to be the, it's gone from like the cool thing that like acoustics and DB has, and then there's Timex over there to like, now everybody's got something sort of solution.

[00:12:19] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, I would, would definitely agree. Yeah. It, it's immersive or spatial, whatever you wanna call it, depending on what you're really doing. It's kind of two different things, but, but yeah. Yeah, agreed. Everybody with the acoustics, DJ stuff, and then DMB expanding the create control platform with their stuff.

And, and Timex, you know, I, I don't know if it was end of last year, they officially bought Pan Lab and that folded in the Timex, or that was early this year. I can't remember,

[00:12:45] Andy Leviss: Yeah. I, I think it was end of last year. That's, in fact, that's, I gotta reach back out to Daniel about, like, we've periodically talked about him coming on and talking about, you know, the whole spectrum from, I mean, since before Timex bought them. And, uh, we just keep, keep missing each other on schedules, but, uh, yeah, like you and I got to see a little bit of that demo, which was I.

It is interesting 'cause like they've got, because, so that's, you know, it's, I guess does, is Martin owned Timex or they're both owned by the same

[00:13:15] Elliott Carroll: they're all owned by, I think the parent company is a focus rate group. Right.

[00:13:19] Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:13:21] Elliott Carroll: and, and Time

[00:13:22] Andy Leviss: yeah. So like they've, they've got the whole line of like, you start with Pam lab, which is like, you know, spatial audio for the rest of us it's, um, and there's, yeah, it's completely amplitude. There's no delay. It originally started being able to just like write cues and do all that in Q lab.

And then they also came out with Pam lab console, which we'll talk to certain models of console and do it with panning in the console. And then you work up to the full-time X engine, which is, you know, the, the, you know, fancy pants delay and level based panning that, you know, we tend to nowadays associate with, with the spatial audio.

[00:14:03] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. And that, that's really, I think that was wise on their part. 'cause they have kind of like, yeah, that's something for everybody. 'cause Pan Lab, even when they were by themselves, that was super accessible. It was only a couple hundred bucks for a license and you were off and running. If you had Q Lab and like very, you know, if you wanna do spatial,

[00:14:20] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[00:14:21] Elliott Carroll: just separate sources, then that was like the way to go.

Um, yeah. And then the, the console part where you could do it live,

[00:14:28] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting to be able to see those in the same demo room where you can, you know, you can get a feel for, you know, okay, in like this size room, like you, this is what you can get away with, with, with just panning and what you can't. And then see how they compare. And like, I mean, the Pan Lab demo sounded pretty cool in that room, although admittedly it was a smaller room, which makes it a little easier.

And then like, getting to switch over to like the full-time acts, spatialization was like, I, like, I found it super interesting to hear, hear it in that environment.

[00:14:57] Elliott Carroll: You Totally. Yeah. And like the money's in the reverb engines. Right. That's why it's, that's why they have that level of stuff and that's why you go, oh my God, that sounds like we're in a concert hall. Or, you know, it can emulate anything. You, you can make it sound real or natural, for lack of a better term.

But, but yeah, that's where, that's where the money is. That's where it gets expensive.

[00:15:15] Andy Leviss: yeah,

[00:15:16] Elliott Carroll: Yep.

[00:15:17] Andy Leviss: yeah. I mean, and then, yeah, and then all acoustics. You know, Ryan was there, uh, again, showing off the DJ thing that we talked about a couple episodes ago, and he did not do it off vinyl at this demo. They had an actual DJ doing it, but that was also neat 'cause it was a DJ who had just, uh, had just gotten like, introduced to it for Infocom, doing the demos and like by a couple days in, like, he could explain it to anybody, like how it worked and show off and like talk really intelligently about like what it was allowing him to do or not do, which was kind of neat to experience.

[00:15:49] Elliott Carroll: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:50] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah. And then, and you know, there again talking like we talked with Ryan last week and like we've talked with Natalie bef, uh, with Nat before when she was on the show. But like Elisa has like, you know, the Elisa studio that you can, you can do a degree of it even without an ELISA engine up to 16 outputs just off the free software, which is pretty wild, you know, and you can also play with it in naral.

Um, yeah. Did you get a chance to poke much at the, at the new DB software? That was the one thing I didn't really get a, have time to, to do the demo of and see exact, like I've read a little bit about what it is, but did you get a rundown on, on what exactly that is?

[00:16:28] Elliott Carroll: Uh, yeah, the creek control stuff. I kind of was peeking over other people's shoulders as they were getting a kind of a, a, a talk throughout it, but it to,

[00:16:37] Andy Leviss: love trade show creeping.

[00:16:39] Elliott Carroll: I, yeah, it was just, they were so slammed over there when I was over there, but, um, and God, I don't wanna speak in a turn. So anyone with more DNV knowledge, please light me up, Lynn of Discord later.

But it, the cre control to, from what I remember, it was essentially just a, an updated sort of software platform to more readily do things in a more live environment, in, in soundscape, uh, essentially, um, very much like a, and just, I think a new kind of layout. Uh, like a, a new gui, um, that's running concurrent in soundscape.

Um. To where it was just a lot easier to move things on the fly and, and make quick and fast changes, uh, and just work a lot faster. And that was my basic understanding of it.

[00:17:22] Andy Leviss: Yeah, like yeah, it seems like it's like you do the backend building and loading everything up the way you normally would between R one and array calc, and then this gives you like a more, like a more artistic way to interface with it a little bit without having to get like too into the weeds of.

All the extra stuff R one throws at you.

[00:17:42] Elliott Carroll: That also sounds very in line with what I was seeing. Yeah,

[00:17:46] Andy Leviss: Yeah, I gotta, I gotta talk to friends over there and like see if we can do like a, if I can get a little like online demo or something of it. 'cause I just, there was only so much time and I was there on a very whirlwind trip and with a very full dance card.

[00:17:57] Elliott Carroll: yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:58] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah. And then we were talking before the episode, I feel like the, the big theme in live audio seemed to be big RF and small packages, for lack of a better way to put it.

Um, I mean, Spectera was there and got to put ears on that. Uh, shore launched the, I'm suddenly going up on the model number. Um,

[00:18:20] Elliott Carroll: N four X.

[00:18:21] Andy Leviss: yeah, and four XA and D, four x, something like that, which is their new, like, it's only Dante out, no analog, uh, up to 16 channels of vaccine or 24 of uh, ULXD in one ru. Um, and yeah, I mean the, and um, and then also obviously the, um, sound devices astral was there, um, did you get a chance to look at all of those? Any of those,

[00:18:55] Elliott Carroll: Uh, I didn't go back to the sound devices, uh, group only 'cause I got a thorough, uh, rundown at, at NAMM from Cody. Corey, Cody, I'm forgetting his pretty, which one? Cody? Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so didn't, didn't go back and visit those guys. Um, and really I, you and I tried to go over and see the Sure unit just to see it in person.

It's like, okay, it looks like an accident receiver. Great. Like nothing new there, you know?

[00:19:21] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like the, the, the cool big new thing there for folks who haven't caught up on this is that it's licensed based on channel accounts. So you, you buy the hardware with four channels and then you can license it for those extra channels as you need. And if you are a shop that owns a pile of them. You can own, you know, like X number of channels across all your units.

And today I have unit A, B four channels and unit BB eight channels and then tomorrow move for the channels over to unit A to meet unit. Like I don't know that everybody's gonna be doing that, but I can certainly see situations where that's handy. Um, and we actually on the Discord the other day, Jason from Shore got a little into the weeds on it for folks on how that works and how ownership of that works.

'cause there seems to be a lot of like fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the, on folks not understanding it and just getting, you know, either not understanding that it's an outright purchase, it's not a subscription, you're not like having to pay an annual fee for these channels. Uh, you have to own and register the hardware to your account to put your license on it.

So it's not like I can rent a four channel unit from a shop, have my own 16 channel license and drop that on it. Like I would actually have to transfer the license to them or the hardware to me to do that, which is obviously not. Likely to happen for various reasons. So, uh, there's a lot of concerns out there that I feel like some people are scared off of, that are based on not actually understanding how it's working.

So Jason was kind enough to clear some of that up in the discord for folks, which, which was super helpful. Um,

[00:20:52] Elliott Carroll: And for your run of the mill kind of rental houses, which, you know, I also think someone brought up, maybe it was you, it's like rental houses is not the only thing. They're, they're, they're not the only people they're selling to. Right. Um,

[00:21:02] Andy Leviss: there's, there's, I definitely see like corporate campuses and college campuses where that is very useful.

[00:21:09] Elliott Carroll: absolutely. Yeah. Hey, we need four more channels over here today, or we need, you know, 10 more over here, whatever it is, you know, that, that does seem super useful to big, I mean, broadcast studios, anything, right? So anything that, where there's a big, it's a big complex, you know, kind of compound situation. Um, I lost, shoot, I lost my train of thought.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. For the rental houses, it, you know, you're, you know, it's, it's, it's still a more cost effective option. And this is the way all the manufacturers are going try to give you more for your money. Where there, you know, everyone's trying to bring costs down by about 20%. Across the board of, you know, well now you get 16 channels in one ru you're not buying four pieces of hardware anymore, you're buying one.

And, you know, it does bring the overall cost down at scale. Um, so, you know, I, I think there's gonna be plenty of rental houses that buy these as like four or eight channel units. And then if they do really need more, if they grow, they wanna make 'em 12, they make 'em 12. If they wanna make a couple 12, then make a couple 12.

Like, it's, it's kind of endless the possibilities, um, that you can, that you can have with these. And you're buying less hardware overall,

[00:22:18] Andy Leviss: Yeah, and depending on the manufacturer, like there's, you know, like we said, we know sound devices has all sorts of, they have sorted out how to cram enough analog IO into that shore. Has in this case, gone like all in on Dante and has opted to not fit. Analog in which will be great for some folks then for some folks are not as excited about that.

There was much debate in the discord. Uh, you know,

[00:22:40] Elliott Carroll: wa I was one of them. Even being, I'm like, I've only done corporate work for most of my career, and even I was like, ah, why'd they do that? But

[00:22:49] Andy Leviss: yeah. Like I know a lot of, just, just for the fact of like quick and easy re patches if nothing else. Analog is nice. And then obviously like folks on, on Ravage, you know, we, we like our so cards when we can do 'em. Um, so there, there's arguments for both, but there also are lots of workflows like, like we said, studios and corporate campuses where Dante's all they're gonna end up using anyway.

'cause it's one less thing to have to worry about and it's a lot less cable to run.

[00:23:15] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, yeah, speaking of RF two, that was the, it was nice to see spectera in person. Um. Um, so that was nice. I was, which is where

[00:23:28] Andy Leviss: I am mode on it.

[00:23:29] Elliott Carroll: were met up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds really good. The hardware is really, like the belt packs or receivers in this case are both really were really well made.

They felt really good in your hands. Like they were, they were compact and they were sturdy. Uh, it felt really durable and, um, the gooey interface I thought was really slick. It was maybe a touch busy, but maybe there's like options on what you want it to look like. It was a, there was a lot on the screen, which is good and bad 'cause it's like, you know, now everybody has the little thing of like, oh, if they unplugged their headphones or they unplugged the mic, it's like, you see it, like, it, you know, all the telemetry is there, which is really nice.

[00:24:07] Andy Leviss: Or like being able to see what volume it is, like, well you can't, it sounds really noisy 'cause you have the volume cranked, like

[00:24:13] Elliott Carroll: right. All that stuff you can do. Yeah, you can just look at your screen and see if, if it's user error or if there's a real problem. Um, which is nice.

[00:24:21] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and Sennheiser also had had Donia from sound base there showing off chord, which they now have it, they don't. Own outright, but they have an investment in as of last year. Um, so they were talking about a bunch of that and I, I don't know about the Spectera side. I know on the more traditional wireless, it seems likely that they're eventually gonna probably sunset WSM and move to sound-based pro being the replacement monitoring and calculating solution.

Again, I, I don't think they've officially said that, so I don't want to go on record saying that's officially what's gonna happen, but that certainly seems to be the path they are leaning with that investment. Um, and it'll be interesting to see what that they, you know, they sound base has certainly made a commitment to keep investing in.

Like they, they want to always be cross-platform because that's where they came from and that's important for the tool and the way it's designed to be used. Uh, so it'll be interesting to see how that gets skinned and, you know, what might be free if you're using a Sennheiser or what, you know, what'll be paid and how that'll work out.

But that's certainly a thing to keep eyes on. And, you know, as, as that changes, we will, you know, Donnie and Matt will probably come on and, and keep us up to date 'cause we're, we're likewise overdue to get them on the show to, to talk to folks about it.

[00:25:40] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, and I know we didn't do this when we were over there looking at it, but uh, I had some friends over there that was talking to you later that they went over and, you know, plugged the bell pack in, were listening to the music on the Spectera, and then just took a walk on the trade show floor. And, you know, for years, for those of you who weren't there, it's gonna make zero sense.

But they went from the Sennheiser booth, I think, all the way past the reel booth, and it was still working in Crystal Clear,

[00:26:03] Andy Leviss: Oh yeah, that's,

[00:26:04] Elliott Carroll: pretty long hike.

[00:26:05] Andy Leviss: yeah, that's, that's a, particularly in that environment 'cause everybody's just firing off. That's, that's, everybody was joking that it's like one of the hardest RF environments to coordinate 'cause there's so much stuff and nobody's coordinating.

[00:26:17] Elliott Carroll: yeah, yeah. But I, I thought that was, that was pretty impressive. 'cause Yeah, those booze were not close together. Um,

[00:26:23] Andy Leviss: I'd never even thought to ask like, Hey, can I walk with this? I just assumed the answer would be like, no

[00:26:29] Elliott Carroll: No, you cannot walk away with this.

[00:26:32] Andy Leviss: quick run.

[00:26:33] Elliott Carroll: Yeah.

[00:26:34] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, I'm trying, I'm going through my list. Like what other Yeah, like Riddle was there, you know, showing off their stuff. Although, nothing, nothing super new for us. I think on the, on the, like on the Intercom side, I think anything new they have is more video.

[00:26:47] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, I guess the only thing, it's not, I can't remember when they launched it, I think it was sometime some point this year, but just that newer desktop panel that they, that they have now, that that newer smart panel that isn't, does not need to be racked up, which now their newer version might be their only one that isn't a rack mount unit.

Um, oh, that's not true. There's that, there is that desktop model that I'm spacing on, but, um, the older Gray,

[00:27:12] Andy Leviss: I'm, I can push the buttons in my head. I'm just

[00:27:14] Elliott Carroll: yeah, yeah. I can't remember the number. Yeah. But, um, yeah, it was a, it was a, it's a, you know, push button instead of a lever, which this new one's a lever desktop, which,

[00:27:23] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Which makes the folks who are coming from RTS very happy.

[00:27:26] Elliott Carroll: which I think, and I think maybe Brian, it was Brian Maddox alluding to this at some point, like, or maybe it's Mac, I can't remember, but the whole like, oh yeah, they came out with levers to

[00:27:35] Andy Leviss: Yeah, they, well, they, they pretty much,

[00:27:37] Elliott Carroll: coming from

[00:27:37] Andy Leviss: they, they brought Pete, they brought Peter Erskine on as a consultant to like, what should we do to get people more comfortable with it? And he basically had them clone, clone the RTS key

[00:27:47] Elliott Carroll: Oh, so yeah, so, so yeah. May, maybe it was Pete, but yeah, it was, I remember hearing that at some point, but

[00:27:51] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I mean, if it was Peter, you easily could have heard it from Mac too. Is there. And are they the burden? No, they're not the burden, Ernie. They're like the Statler and Waldorf of, of li of, uh, live and broadcast audio. I love you Mac.

[00:28:05] Elliott Carroll: yeah. Um, but yeah, so that was neat. Just circling back to RF too, just some, some a note I had, um, RF venue, you know, who, if you're not familiar with the company, the us uh, Massachusetts based, I wanna say, um,

[00:28:20] Andy Leviss: right.

[00:28:20] Elliott Carroll: company, um, which are, you know, they're kind of known for making quality products at an affordable price, is, I think the, the way I would say

[00:28:28] Andy Leviss: fan fancy RF tools for the rest of us, I.

[00:28:31] Elliott Carroll: There you go. Yeah. So they had a. It was a specific use, but it was a, um, essentially two channel stereo or two mono, essentially like a point-to-point system. So if you wanna have a, if you need a bunch of like wireless speakers somewhere and don't wanna run cable, so it was a one ru transmitting station.

Um, and then, uh, belt packs, um, that you could mount to speakers, um, that had, you know, dual antenna and you know, just like sometimes you use, IM in reverse, if you were doing this, if that's what you had laying around. But they had a specific, um, they made something specific for this, um,

[00:29:09] Andy Leviss: yeah, I mi I

[00:29:09] Elliott Carroll: And it was, yeah, it was at that RF venue price point, right.

So I think it was like the unit plus, like it came with a couple belt packs was like 1500 bucks or something. So like very affordable, which is what they're, what they're known for. Um, and yeah, I just thought that was only, 'cause I think we've done three shows recently where we. You know, did the old, IM in reverse to get some wireless feed somewhere.

Um, but yeah, so that was, that was, sorry, I just wanted to mention that before

[00:29:37] Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, that's cool. I totally miss that. 'cause like the, the newish thing I've seen from them is they've got the, the newer antenna that's like, 'cause everybody knows them for the collapsible, uh, like helical style

[00:29:49] Elliott Carroll: All right.

[00:29:50] Andy Leviss: And they've now got the, like, the rectangular one that, that it like will fit in. I, I, 'cause the, the collapsible ones fit in like, I think a two U rack draw.

So I think the new, I think the new one might fit in A one U if I'm not misremembering or definitely in a two U it's, it's slimming, like it doesn't expand out. Um, and I mean, with any of those antennas, always just look at the data, look at the polars, see what the compromises are, is what I'll say that that's not set as a good or bad, just a.

Yeah, any antenna design has its compromises and just be aware of what you're, what you're getting or not getting.

[00:30:24] Elliott Carroll: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:25] Andy Leviss: you know, and, um, yeah, there's, who else? I mean, um, radioactive designs was there. Um, not really anything new, just, you know, showing their stuff to folks, which is, it's, it's, they definitely have an interesting spot in the wireless intercom world compared to like reddle or Clear com.

Um, but when you need that solution, it can still be a really good solution.

[00:30:49] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, it still gets used on a lot of big shows where they just run out of deck space, like it, even when you get with manufacturers and they have the tricks to expand the deck space, um, which is a thing you have to ask 'em about. But, um,

[00:31:02] Andy Leviss: So in, in.

[00:31:03] Elliott Carroll: it fills holes, uh, in, in on those really large deployments.

Yeah.

[00:31:07] Andy Leviss: Yeah, so, and for folks who aren't familiar, just the RADS thing, which is Jim Stavo, who's, who's been on the show a few times in the early, early days, is it's a hybrid, V-H-F-U-H-F. So it uses one for transmit, one for receive. And so more in the old school of like the old RTS packs, where you've got a base unit that only does, you know, like four belt packs, but by punting the one side of it down to VHF, it frees up more UHF bandwidth that like those units were eating up a lot.

And like Elliot said, now that, you know, we've kind of gotten away from UHF for intercom up to deck, that can still get, that can still get crowded fast on a large show and, you know, having options or, I know, I think this year for, for Juneteenth and Times Square, we did go back to Bolero just like being real careful with antenna placement.

But a couple years ago I. You know, after one year that ERO was just particularly rough given the, the day of day and time, you know, of week that it was, they ended up doing RAD for a year just to see if that would work out better. 'cause it's, you know, a Duffy Square right smack in the middle of Times Square.

So that's not the easiest RF environment for anything.

[00:32:18] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:19] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, and then Clear Calm was, you know, now they were, 'cause at, at NAMM they were sneak previewing the new, uh, free speak belt pack with all the buttons. And, uh,

[00:32:30] Elliott Carroll: So many buttons. Yep.

[00:32:31] Andy Leviss: yeah, it's officially launched. Uh, was it free Speak Edge? Is that the new, is that the new one?

[00:32:36] Elliott Carroll: Uh, icon.

[00:32:37] Andy Leviss: I can Right Edge was the, yeah. Um, yeah, so they were showing that we got to catch up with, uh, Brian who was on the show, you know, last year. It was good to see him. Um, and they're doing some cool stuff. It's, it's so interesting watching the, like ebbs and flows between Rele RTS and Clear come as the each.

One will kind of make a leap in a certain direction, past hooks in terms of capability, and then the other one will catch up. And, you know, and like they're, they're all, you know, they've all at this point got really compelling matrix abilities. Like, you know, I'm not gonna turn my nose up in any of those three brands shown up on a gig at this point.

[00:33:13] Elliott Carroll: No.

[00:33:14] Andy Leviss: I certainly have my, my preferences and what I'm comfortable programming. But at this point, like I've worked on all three and I can make most anything happen on all three. So that's a great place, great place for comm to be.

[00:33:26] Elliott Carroll: yeah. Totally. And they also, um, I, I don't know, just 'cause I saw it on a partner meeting in April maybe, I don't know. But there, you know, the, the four channel helix at Bellack, which is out and about now. Um. Which is always nice. I mean, they had the hrms, but having a a four channel bell pack is always nice.

'cause at least on corporate, so many times you're like, God, I just need a third channel. Or like two people just need a third channel or like, it's, you run into that a lot. So I

[00:33:54] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and you, like, often you end up having to then like cough up the money to like step up to free speak, just to be able to add like a couple extra channels to folks. And it's nice to have a, a more economical alternative that also again, doesn't eat up deck space.

[00:34:09] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. Um, the only other calm thing I saw, um, and not that we don't, we don't own any, but they do, they do, they make nice stuff. The the client guys, um, that was at least it was new to me, that interface, the interface box. Did you see that? It's like a 32 by

[00:34:27] Andy Leviss: I was like,

[00:34:29] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Like a Dante and ass 67 to Crew Net.

[00:34:33] Andy Leviss: okay. Yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah. Soly are the folks who make, uh, crew Comm Intercom, um, which is also very, I know like CP Communications is big on crew Comm. Um, and they, like, I've talked about them recently, they came out with a single ear, you know, headset ear set that's like similar in style to the reel one, but a fraction of the price and more comfortable on the generic Fit ear.

And actually, I was talking to Art from client there and we had been talking about something else and, and he hadn't put together that I was the Signal Tono guy. And he was like, oh. He's like, uh, we've sold a few from folks who mentioned hearing about it on signal to noise. So while I'm thinking about it, thank you to folks for when you buy stuff, you hear us blather on about the show telling folks that this is where you heard about it.

'cause it helps spread the word and, you know, and, and helps us get cool guests and, and, you know, get, you know, the, the news on other new stuff. Oh, hey, Shauna's popping in. Hang on. There he is. What's up Shawn?

[00:35:35] Elliott Carroll: Well, well, well.

[00:35:38] Sean Walker: Yeah, right. Totally.

[00:35:40] Andy Leviss: Something? Something. The late worm catches the.

[00:35:42] Sean Walker: Okay. Oh my God,

[00:35:44] Andy Leviss: Well, that was a great episode. Thanks for joining. Yeah, we're like halfway and we were just talk, we were just talking about some intercom stuff. Um, so we'll let, let's, we'll finish that thought and then we'll, we'll catch you up and, uh, catch up on what you've been up to, dude.

Um, but yeah, so I was talking to the client folks. The other cool thing a client makes for those of us who work on multiple brand of headsets is what they call the Flex lr, uh, gender adapter. It is a female female XLR adapter that is like super duper. I don't know if Elliot and Sean can see on my, I'm trying to, like, it's in a bag, so I can't, it's a little hard to see, but it's like the tiniest turnaround you've ever seen.

Um, and they make it 'cause their crew comm uses, you know, uh, well the, you know, five pin mail four, whichever one it uses. 'cause like RTS tends to need a five pin mail headset. You know, clear, common and reel tend to use a four pin female. So they came up with a really compact little adapter that it's one side locks and one side you can easily release.

So it's designed to lock into their belt packs to convert them to be able to use the same headsets as other brands use. And I, I don't know if I should say this 'cause it, it sounds like a custom thing, but maybe if they, if they get enough requests from folks for this, they'll make it. The other way too is I wrote to them a while back and said, Hey, that's would be really handy for me, but I want it to be able to lock to my headset and be easy to release from the panel, not the other way around.

Is there a way to flip it? And it's, they like you, the end user can't flip it, but they were able to do one. Uh, so it was good to catch up with art and be like, oh yeah, no, I'll, I will, if you can make me one, I'll buy one. And I suspect then if enough folks reached out and told them that was a useful thing that they would use regularly, that they would, you know, make that as a, you know, they've got the Flex 45, so maybe they would make like the Flex 54 as the alternative, which basically you then can have a common headset that's terminated to five pin male to go to like an RTS pack and then pop this adapter on it to turn it into a four pin female to use with clear common read.

So. It's, uh, that as soon as I get the turned around one from them, that'll be going into my backpack for every job I go. 'cause I do enough stuff in corporate and broadcast suites that have RTS that I, I will use that all the time.

[00:38:04] Elliott Carroll: Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Um, I, I just have to finish my thought on it 'cause my brain's gonna go nuts. But that, that client box is a, yeah. 32 by 32 and it takes their crew net protocol and then I spits it out to Dante. Uh, yeah, Dante, and then obviously vice versa. So in the world of like, you know, clear comms, Arcadia has Dante integrated into it, just a way to get a bunch of program channels or a bunch of four wire com channels or, and whatever you need back and forth, um, to wherever it needs to go.

So like in the corporate world, when there's a OB truck involved, usually there's a ton of that going on, or you're in a multi venue situation. There's a ton of that going on. Um, I'm not sure when you would use it in the entertainment world. I'm sure there's always a use, um, but

[00:38:53] Andy Leviss: I started coming out with examples. I'm like, no, those are all really more broadcast

[00:38:56] Elliott Carroll: yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:58] Andy Leviss: um,

[00:38:58] Elliott Carroll: And it's just the one ru half rack, just a little throw down box, um, that's got Ether Con and so Ether Con for Crew Net, and then for Dante's Econ or lc Fiber, I believe is, is on the box. So,

[00:39:13] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that I was say that's one of the cooler things in Comm lately is that everybody's integrating Dante, which makes it so easy. Both, like you said, to get program and like IFB in and out, but also to tie in two different brands of systems. Like not everyone is sit there dicking around with Nu and, and all these analog four wire boxes is like, I can just do a Dante cross batch.

Done, sold, let's do it.

[00:39:34] Elliott Carroll: Yeah.

[00:39:34] Sean Walker: a hundred percent.

[00:39:36] Elliott Carroll: Yeah.

[00:39:37] Andy Leviss: yeah. What else? And then the last thing on the comm front I'll mention is, um, the, those of us who do a lot of corporate are, are particularly on bolero now that free speak does Bluetooth are familiar with the shocks, open comm headsets. Which are the Bluetooth bone conduction, uh, headsets that a lot of us, particularly when we're mixing out a corporate and need to be calm on, calm, like, 'cause you have fully open ears but can still hear you're calm.

And, um, so they were there and I, I feel like they've exploded in the last couple years on like broadcast in, you know, like larger events that I've been doing where like it started where like just, you know, a couple of us on the audio team would have them and suddenly I'm seeing like, stage managers show up and everybody's asking for Bluetooth to be enabled on their compact.

And basically they, they had, they're like, I have these headsets. I know this is the one that's good use 'cause I can still hear everything and be safe, you know, but can you, how do I connect in like, in like I'm, you know, helping folks use it. And I've, it started to get questions from folks, hey, they came out with the open comm two.

W what's the two? Like what, like, do, do I need to replace mine or is mine fine? And I did not know the answer, so I went up to their booth and cornered somebody and was like, can you kind of break down what the difference is? So for those who at home who wanna know slightly better audio quality on the speakers, although it's still bone conduction, so it's never gonna sound like a headphone in your ear.

Uh, the microphone itself has better noise canceling, which is great for folks like us on lounge shows. And apparently I learned at Infocom, it is industry standard for the boom on a headset to be on your right side. And the Open com one had been on the left side. So now the open com two is on the industry standard.

Right side. Elliot Elliot's making a

[00:41:20] Sean Walker: standards is there's so many of them,

[00:41:22] Andy Leviss: right?

[00:41:23] Elliott Carroll: can, you can take the industry standards and shove it. There's no way I'm putting a calm headset on my right side.

[00:41:28] Sean Walker: Elliot, that's why I love you buddy. 'cause you

[00:41:30] Elliott Carroll: it's always, it's always left side,

[00:41:33] Andy Leviss: I that is, I, I ended up getting, uh, getting an open com two. And um, and it's, it's throwing me, 'cause I'm so used to that being on the left side. Um, they also, what else did

[00:41:45] Sean Walker: Who makes that? Andy?

[00:41:46] Andy Leviss: uh, shocks? S-H-O-K-Z

[00:41:48] Sean Walker: Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:50] Andy Leviss: Um, they used to be aftershocks and then at one point, I think Shocks was the, like corporate branded one and Aftershocks was the, and they were like, that's just silly.

We're just shocks.

[00:41:58] Sean Walker: how much are those headsets?

[00:41:59] Andy Leviss: Uh, they're like, uh, 150 it's, you gotta, 'cause they make a version that comes with a USB dongle that's just a Bluetooth receiver that costs like 50 bucks more. None of us actually need that 'cause we're not using it for Zoom. And even if we are, our laptops have Bluetooth. So yeah, it's like in that like a hundred to 200 range.

[00:42:17] Sean Walker: So kind of the same as any other calm headset, really. Like

[00:42:20] Andy Leviss: pretty much, yeah.

[00:42:21] Sean Walker: any reason not just to buy those?

[00:42:24] Andy Leviss: Um, I mean, as long as you've got a belt pack that can do Bluetooth, um, it's at a certain point, if you're on a loud show, volume gets tricky. The trick there is, uh, well there's two tricks. One is there's an EQ mode that you can change on the open com that puts it into a vocal boost mode.

I tend not to do that because I sometimes feed program to it and I just like a little more low end, but that'll roll off some of the low end and give it a little mid boost that'll cut through. The other trick is to put earplugs in 'cause both that will drop your ambience at if, if you can. Obviously if you're mixing, that's not gonna work for you.

But if you're using them backstage as like a comtech or a stage manager, like even a, even a like low level earplug both reduces the background noise, but also because it's bone conduction plugging, your ear changes the frequent response and the level of the bone conduction. So it, it tends to make it cut through a lot more for the folks who don't need the fully open ear again.

That defeats the benefit for those of us who are mixing. So that doesn't work for everybody. Like there's certainly a reason I have like either a client or the Reddle one available when I do need it for louder shoes, but for like 90% of the time, if I'm on Bolero or any of the newer free speak packs or the older ones that have been upgraded, I have Bluetooth, you know, and I even bought the obscenely expensive JK audio, like Blue Set Adapter to be able to use it on rack panels if I want to.

Um, yeah, so I love those. Um, the other features on the new ones are, there's a mute button right on the microphone that does not work with intercoms, or at least not with Bolero. Something to do with the protocol they use to communicate with the pax. The mute button just doesn't, uh, I, I think it's, I think it may be like not actually muting the microphone.

I think it, it commutes like, I think it communicates like a standard mute message to the device that the Bolero just doesn't have. Um, and then there are two, there's the open com two and there's the open com two, uh, 2025 update. And as far as I can tell, the only real thing on the 2025 update is there's no longer a silly proprietary magnetic charging adapter.

It's now A-U-S-B-C. Yes.

[00:44:30] Sean Walker: Nice. That's sweet. That'll be way easier to freaking plug into everything else on site.

[00:44:37] Andy Leviss: Yeah, because the, the older charging adapter was USBA to like this, like little, like two-pronged magnet adapter that was like fine, but it was like, ah, I gotta find somewhere to plug in A-U-S-B-A and I can't lose this cable. And on the open com 2 20 25 update, it's just, there's a little like waterproof ceiling door that you peel back the rubber from and then, you know, plug A-U-S-B-C cable cabling.

So, uh, that, that's was exciting to hear about. Um, yeah, I think that's kind of all I had on comm. Um, we already, we talked about rf. I dunno if there's anything you wanted to know about, like the new RF stuff that came out at. At, uh, Infocom, or if not, we can just have you listen back to the first half of the episode before you joined us later.

[00:45:18] Elliott Carroll: That was, that was a little passive aggressive. Uh,

[00:45:23] Sean Walker: I mean, gimme the highlight. Is there something that I gotta go by right now?

[00:45:26] Andy Leviss: Um,

[00:45:28] Sean Walker: Nope. Okay, great. Cool. Move on.

[00:45:30] Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean it's the, the, the big thing was, was the, the new shore receiver, which we, we dove a little into detail on. Um, and, you know, Spectera on the Sennheiser side.

[00:45:39] Sean Walker: Yeah, I'm already hip to that. Cool. We can move on.

[00:45:42] Andy Leviss: Um.

[00:45:43] Elliott Carroll: kind of perfect timing 'cause we haven't talked really about consoles or speakers yet. Um, yeah, I want to get into, 'cause we, I mean, I, I did a couple demos, um, the Meyer Sound demo. I was so, and not, you know, I'm not a, like a, you know, I, I don't work for a Meyer Sound House, but I kind of thought when you go in their demo room and they had, uh, I.

The, the, the vinyl or the, the, the cover over that speaker stack. I was like, Ooh, did they make a mini version of the panther? Is that what we're about to see? Which I assume has to be in their pipeline. So I thought that's what we're gonna see. But it was a cinema speaker, which was cool,

[00:46:19] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and they were outright like, this is not really the market for this show, we know, but A, it's an awesome sounding speaker. And b, it's a speaker that lets us show off our new gen one, uh, you know, input card. 'cause it's the first speaker that's been integrated, which is the card that we'll do analog, a ES, and

[00:46:39] Elliott Carroll: A, B, B.

[00:46:40] Andy Leviss: Yeah. NAVB all in like in one card. It also has like pro, like basically, you know, like, like, you know, uh, galaxy Galileo equivalent like output processing right in the card of the speaker. So they're starting to roll that out across more models. They, they neither committed nor didn't commit to basically the whole line.

Eventually getting it, it, you know, I think it's a gradual thing that they're gonna roll out, but

[00:47:07] Sean Walker: I mean, it makes sense. Every other powered speaker manufacturer's got all the DSP built into it. Why wouldn't they? Sorry, was that outta, was that outta turn? Did I just

[00:47:15] Andy Leviss: no. Not at all. No,

[00:47:18] Sean Walker: I mean,

[00:47:19] Andy Leviss: I mean, it's,

[00:47:19] Sean Walker: else in the world does it this way and

[00:47:21] Andy Leviss: no, it's, it's sort of,

[00:47:22] Sean Walker: all $20,000 processors.

Come on guys.

[00:47:24] Andy Leviss: yeah, it's certainly a pivot and there's things you, you will still need the box to do, but yeah, they were even shown off. Like you can, you know, you can do like an entire, you know, arena show that used to take like, you know.

Racks and racks and racks full of, you know, galaxy processors and now you need like a couple processors to do like space map stuff and everything else happens in the speaker itself, so.

[00:47:45] Elliott Carroll: I think they used the, the Metallica reference 'cause, and I, I might have this number wrong, but it was an obscene number, I wanna say. It was like. Was it like 30 something Galileos are on that Metallica

[00:47:57] Andy Leviss: sounds right. Yeah.

[00:47:57] Elliott Carroll: like it was like 36 Galileos, or with all the Gen one stuff, it'd be like four, or it'd be a, an absurdly low number, uh, of Galileos you have to put out there now.

Um, but

[00:48:09] Sean Walker: That's pretty sweet. 'cause those things, they're not cheap. They're proud of those things. Price wise,

[00:48:14] Elliott Carroll: they, they, they, well, they should be proud of them for a few reasons, but yeah, they're not

[00:48:18] Sean Walker: a great box. It's, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to s slag on 'em. It's a great box. I mean, we've got 'em. We love them, they're great, but I'm not trying to own 36 of those motherfuckers. You know what I mean?

[00:48:27] Andy Leviss: also not trying, not trying to do Metallica.

[00:48:30] Elliott Carroll: that's right. Yeah.

[00:48:31] Sean Walker: That is correct. They own their rig. That doesn't do me any good.

[00:48:35] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. Um, I know you went out to the NAMM on Andy, but Yeah, I got to, that was my first time hearing the CCL, the DBCL stuff, um, which was, you know, everything you'd hoped it would be. Um, you know, d and b never ceases. To impress, and really all the material manufacturers now are, everything is able to get louder and smaller and lighter and more cardio by design or just inherently because of technology.

[00:49:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

[00:49:04] Sean Walker: Dude. That's killer. And is that their dual six box? That's their little guy now,

[00:49:08] Elliott Carroll: or it's a dual seven, I can't remember

[00:49:10] Sean Walker: but it's like CL then XSL, then KSL, then GSL,

[00:49:13] Andy Leviss: yeah, it's, it's a, yeah. Compact cardio line

[00:49:16] Sean Walker: Dude, that's dope. That's gonna crush for them, man, that like every, every church in the world and every fricking corporate house is going to be looking at those.

And the new GTX seven C from RCF, like those fricking, those little compact cardio boxes are gonna take over the world. Dude,

[00:49:31] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's, and they've, they're impressively punchy. 'cause that's always the worry, like when you start doing like Cartier boxes, like, what, what is my trade off for that cancellation? And they're pleasantly pun like, they actually stand up well to the non-car boxes they have in their line in, in the similar size.

I.

[00:49:47] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. I think for any corporate. Minus like a giant arena corporate and you know, anything I would argue up to a, you know, SL two 50 size concert. I think like a bunch of ccls would be fine. Um, especially if you throw a couple of those already cardioid subs, you know, above them. Um, which I was, I think I might've been even more impressed with the sub 'cause there's a 15, it's not even an 18, and I was kind of surprised at how, how much MFI had, um.

So, yeah, that was everything. I figured it would be, um, the RCF stuff. Uh, yeah, that g TX seven C. Um, yeah. Was it It was good. It was a bummer in the room. They tried to like move a, move the truss in the room forward, so you actually walked behind it, but you don't only get behind it like three feet. So the cardio of it really wasn't super evident, I would say, just because I think you were just really close to it.

Um, but I have no doubt it does what they say it does on paper. Um, as far as the, the rear rejection, um, uh, yeah, the other, the other thing in the RCF demo, I think it was the, uh, I can't remember the model number, but it was an like an outdoor, like almost like install type speaker. I'm gonna totally space on the, on the model number, but it was a, uh, they had like an eight inch version and a 12 inch version.

And the 12 inch version slapped like, I think everyone in the room went, oh, like, it was like an audible, oh, he smokes. Um. And I'm gonna, it's, I think it was in the C line CX something or CI, I can't remember. You would know Sean, but, um, but

[00:51:24] Sean Walker: I would, and I don't do installs.

[00:51:26] Elliott Carroll: well just, you might act, might at least know their model, their model line better than I do.

But yeah, I was, I was impressed with that one. Um, for sure. Um, and speaking of RCF, I think the other thing that I thought was really cool, and this may not be that new, um, but I think they're gonna roll it out anywhere, is the, the NFC tag on the back. So the back of some of the newer speakers, and they're gonna try to put it on more, is it gives you a little quality control of even when the speaker's off, it rolls in.

You can get like a diagnostic check on, you know, are the drivers okay? Is everything okay? You can preset it up like on an app on your phone and just get the, get the app near the back of the speaker and it'll like import your settings into it with it being off. So when you turn on, it'll be how you want it.

I thought that was really slick.

[00:52:13] Sean Walker: It's super cool dude,

[00:52:14] Elliott Carroll: And we'll kind of save time. I mean, maybe it'll take a while to get over the, oh, I'm not gonna actually put sound through the speaker when it gets back from the shop to test it, but maybe enough times you do it and you're like, you've learned to trust it, you know that.

Um, but that would, that would save time. That would be really, that would be really cool.

[00:52:30] Sean Walker: It's also got tuning in for their non RD net boxes. So if you get their, like their new subwoofers that have that in it, and then you've got a box like an NX or NXL that does not have the adjustable DSP from RD like RD net in it, it will have tunings to make that so you can use the sub to kind of tune the tops.

It's pretty fricking cool.

[00:52:51] Elliott Carroll: oh, got it. That is neat. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was nifty. Um,

[00:52:57] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And then did you, did you make it to the hallway of the, the, uh, I'm trying, we'll call 'em the, the freak show speaker, all the, all the weird like point source stuff because there was like, there was Base Boss again, which I, I didn't quite make it to a demo. And then Ocean Way is now doing the arrow wave, which is a live try, trying to do like whole venue with a single, giant, crazy looking point source box.

And, uh, if, if that's your thing, it's a thing to look at.

[00:53:27] Elliott Carroll: yeah, I gotta imagine all that stuff is just like for clubs, right? That's just getting put in, like installed in like clubs,

[00:53:33] Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a, between like them, like Danley, kv, there's certainly a certain segment of the market that's that's trying to make the pitch that like single box that can cover a space is better.

[00:53:47] Sean Walker: Here's what I wanna know. This is an honest curiosity question. This is not a loaded question why they're the same price as the tier one and tier two manufacturers. It's not like they're significantly less expensive. What's the benefit? Actually, not the marketing benefit, but what's the actual benefit for the same price as you could put in El Acoustics or d and b or TT Plus or Meyer, like, you're still spending big money for these other solutions.

It's not like, Hey man, it's K 12 prices for X 12 fricking performance. It's like, Hey man, it's X 12 prices for something that's a different brand. I, I don't, I'm

[00:54:29] Andy Leviss: I mean

[00:54:29] Sean Walker: having a hard time understanding it. You know

[00:54:31] Andy Leviss: mean some of the, the pitch at least theoretically seems to be the whole, like, you know, if we've got one single source and like particularly if we can do everything coax, it's all coming from one place and it's more coherent and I. There at least, like I know the, the arrow wave stuff was making the pitch that you can get stereo throughout the entire room from two giant speakers.

[00:54:52] Sean Walker: But how do they deal with the range ratio?

[00:54:54] Andy Leviss: That's the thing, and I, I don't like talking bad. I, the product didn't sound bad, but I don't think the claim of stereo in every seat in the room holds up is, is I think the best way I can, I can politely put it,

[00:55:09] Sean Walker: I saw I went to the, that room at NAMM, so I, I've seen what you're talking about and I've heard the demos and, and candidly, they, they sound fine ish, right? They're, they're, it's not like a, it's not a bad product at all. I'm just trying to understand where that product market fit is for like, like what is, who's their ideal target customer?

'cause I'm not, I'm having a hard time figuring out who that is. That's all.

[00:55:30] Andy Leviss: yeah, valid question. Elliot just edited his title on here as the Chief Pessimism Officer.

[00:55:36] Sean Walker: it.

[00:55:37] Elliott Carroll: I, I, I,

[00:55:38] Sean Walker: You're hired, by the way. I love it.

[00:55:41] Elliott Carroll: I, I struggle with that too, Sean, that same type of question, but then also like these companies continue to stay in business, so people are buying it and people seem to like it. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's just not for our, maybe the, the, the, the business that, the side of the industry that we deal with, but it's obviously working somewhere,

[00:56:00] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And then I did, I did see on the floor, but I didn't get to hear the, what's the, what's the brand that's the, the Dr. Seus speakers that we were talking about in the Discord. The other, what was it?

[00:56:09] Sean Walker: void,

[00:56:09] Andy Leviss: Yeah, void Acoustics was there, which those are just some wild looking like, I don't know how else

[00:56:13] Sean Walker: looking.

[00:56:14] Andy Leviss: yeah.

I don't know how else to explain it o other than they looked like Dr. Seuss speakers and they're definitely

[00:56:19] Sean Walker: Dude. I want that shit in my living room.

[00:56:20] Andy Leviss: Yeah, they're, they're definitely aiming at, at a Boots and Cats kinda crowd.

[00:56:25] Elliott Carroll: So, yeah, so we, I, I have been, I've heard those in two different demo rooms over the years. Uh, and look for that style of music for Yeah, the boots and cats, as we like to call it. It is in a small room. It slams. I've never heard it in a real life scenario. So, I mean, you can make, you can make everything sound good in a, you know, if with enough time, right?

Um, yeah, lots of boots. So, you know, and there's a segment of the crowd, you know, and the se segment of that, especially, uh, that niche, you know, kind of of music too, that loves it and loves to see it. And it is a look, you know, it's

[00:57:02] Sean Walker: Dude. It looks

[00:57:02] Elliott Carroll: vibe. It's a whole thing, right. So, um, you know, I know they're obviously they're having that We kicked the tires on.

Doing a void. 'cause we have a show down in SoCal. It's, they're always DJs and we do like 30 a year down at this venue on the beach and we kick the tires on having it be a void rig. Um, we didn't ultimately go that route, but we, we looked hard at it. Um, um, but, uh, but anyway, it, you know, I, between that, and I guess they're kind of big in like, um, because they look so cool, they're actually kind of popular in like retail spaces and like restaurant spaces

[00:57:42] Sean Walker: Oh yeah, dude, for sure.

[00:57:44] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. They got this cute little, you know, 'cause they got these cute little boxes that like, you know, you can get 'em painted whatever color you want. They look modern, they

[00:57:51] Sean Walker: Dude, they're super cool looking. Totally.

[00:57:53] Elliott Carroll: So, so yeah. It's, uh, you know, they do, they, they do look cool.

[00:57:59] Andy Leviss: So, yeah, and then we, we had started saying we were entering towards consoles, which the, I feel like the big console news in the live realm was, and, and the sponsor related news was Allen and Heath was, uh, showing off a couple things. They were showing off the new, the new firmware for D Live that if it hasn't dropped already, should be dropping imminently.

Which, uh, the, the big highlights there were, uh, group to group mixing, which I can hear cheers of joy from certain segments of the audience right

[00:58:28] Sean Walker: Hell yes.

[00:58:30] Andy Leviss: Uh, and then they had two new, two new plugins. They had rhythm delay, which is a, like a rhythm designer kind of. You can tap out whatever rhythm you want for a multi-tap

[00:58:39] Sean Walker: like a 2290 would,

[00:58:41] Andy Leviss: um, I think so.

Yeah. Or like you can, like, do you want your, yeah, you want your delay to go do, do, you can tap out the Do do and it'll, yeah. And then you can like edit it in it. And then they've got what they call comp extortion, which, if you look at the graphic layout of that is a stressor, uh, clone. Um, which again, that's a couple folks from the show were posting photos of those on the.

On the Discord. So those were kind of the big highlights on the D Live world.

[00:59:11] Sean Walker: Sweet. Have they changed it so that it EQ values are in queue yet on the channel

[00:59:15] Andy Leviss: You know, I, I forgot we were having that conversation with them and didn't ask. So I don't know the answer to that.

[00:59:21] Sean Walker: bro,

[00:59:22] Elliott Carroll: Someone is going to deliver you a personal handwritten note when they make that change.

[00:59:27] Andy Leviss: Probably.

[00:59:28] Elliott Carroll: gonna, they're gonna break 'cause you're the one ask, you're the one guy asking

[00:59:31] Sean Walker: the one asshole bro. That's, I'm the, I'm the guy dude at NAMM at every show.

[00:59:35] Andy Leviss: says what we're all thinking.

[00:59:36] Sean Walker: I was like, dude, I love your desks. They're great. They sound good. They work awesome. Can you please make it so I understand the fucking interface? And they're like, what? Like, I'm not that smart bud. I need you to just make it how I know how to use it.

[00:59:49] Andy Leviss: Um, and that the other cool thing there was they've got the new generation of the Q consoles. Which are what? What they're, what The Q You always should have been. So, 'cause they will tell you upfront, the original Q was a digital mixed wizard that it was modeled after. You know, which for those who don't know, the Allen he line was basically like, you know, think like 1642.

Like something in that realm on the Mackey of like, you've got certain, certain groups are fixed as pre fade oxen, Cerner are fixed as like, you know, groups. That's all you got. You can't switch modes between them. You know, it is what it is. And for that use of like replacing a mixed wizard with a console that had some digital capabilities, it was cool and the price point was awesome, but you could hit into that limit very fast trying to do like music on it.

Like I have an X 32 compact that now collects dust that I shot out against a, you know, equivalent size QU and I ended up having to go with the X 32 'cause I just didn't have quite the flexibility I needed for, you know, effects ends and stuff.

[01:00:50] Sean Walker: But now it

[01:00:51] Andy Leviss: now it does. Now the, the groups are all, can be pre or post, can all be variable.

Um, yeah. And it's, but the price point's the same. So there's still like nearly dirt cheap. Uh, they still have, you know, that that wild like, you know, cut out, you know, easy to pick up with one arm, you know, uh, design. But they are infinitely more capable than the previous generation was. So, like, I as folks keep looking for inexpensive X 32 replacements, those cues are solidly a direction to look, I think now.

[01:01:22] Elliott Carroll: I, I also, I find the.

Where the channel names are, like the labeling, it kind of looks like electronic ink sort of label. I find that so visually appealing. That was the first thing I noticed.

[01:01:39] Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's a sexy little console. I.

[01:01:41] Elliott Carroll: oh my goodness, this like, it looked, it aesthetically is very aesthetically pleasing and that like electronic ink sort of label it, it does it for me.

I don't know what it is, but it's like a, I think it looks so cool. Um, so yeah.

[01:01:54] Andy Leviss: that's a cool thing. Yeah. So if you're looking for that like budget, digital console, and you know, or, and I know there are a lot of listeners who are like, oh, X 32 might be it, but they're old and I don't really want to, you know, go the beringer direction. Like that's, that's now the place.

Like I can definitely recommend the Q in places I couldn't with the first generation. So

[01:02:13] Elliott Carroll: And the, and this new version, is it, I wanna say it's 96 k.

[01:02:20] Andy Leviss: I believe so. Um, let me, yeah,

[01:02:23] Elliott Carroll: So even for like replacing like, oh, we have these little production desks for music festivals, or, you know, it definitely has a lot of uses, um,

for sure. So, yeah, I bet they will

[01:02:37] Andy Leviss: it up on the other screen, but I only have so many hands.

[01:02:40] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, that's one of those where I bet they'll sell a ton. I wanna, I wanna say the, like the, I don't know the street price, but I felt like the dealer price was like 1500 ish right? In line with like, you know what, like a DM three would be

[01:02:54] Andy Leviss: Like I, I think it was a, I think it was a Q 16. I looked at that was like, yeah, like 10, almost 10 years ago. It was like, yeah, in that like, like thousand to 1500 ish. Um, yeah, like the, I'm trying to, I'm trying to tell if the one I'm looking at is the, oh, this might still be the old one I'm seeing on the website.

Yeah, that's the cla the Q classic is now what the old one is. So hang on, let me, I can try and drill back and pull up the specs for, for the other one. This is compelling audio folks listening to

[01:03:24] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, but there, I'll, I'll fill, I'll fill it. Sean's on the phone. Andy's looking

[01:03:27] Andy Leviss: yeah,

[01:03:28] Elliott Carroll: up, so I'll just yammer for a minute. But yeah, the,

[01:03:30] Andy Leviss: So it's 9 96 K. Uh, all of them, the five, six, and seven all include 38 inputs to mix 32 mono that are linkable, three dedicated stereo.

They also now offer the, you can do the deep processing upgrades just like you can for the fancier console. So you have like some baller plugins available for

[01:03:49] Sean Walker: On the QU

[01:03:50] Andy Leviss: on the QU,

[01:03:51] Sean Walker: dope dude.

[01:03:52] Andy Leviss: uh, yeah. Uh, four mono linkable matrix, six stereo effects engines with dedicated returns that donate up channels, uh, 120, uh, each direction, uh, s link port 32 by 32 USB as output,

[01:04:08] Sean Walker: a huge upgrade for that desk dude.

[01:04:10] Andy Leviss: and, and they all have a D model that has a 16 by 16 Dante interface on top of everything else.

[01:04:18] Sean Walker: killer dude.

[01:04:19] Andy Leviss: Yeah. So that is, that is a super compelling upgrade.

[01:04:23] Sean Walker: Is the EQ and Q or bandwidth?

[01:04:26] Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure it's in bandwidth. I don't even have to look it up to answer that question.

[01:04:33] Sean Walker: I mean, I can't be the only person in the world that has their show file memorized and the bandwidth just fucks me up, dude.

[01:04:41] Andy Leviss: Now I think they're just doing it spite you.

[01:04:43] Sean Walker: Yeah, they're at this point. They have to be.

[01:04:45] Elliott Carroll: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:46] Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, it's, I'm, I'm looking at the, the queue mix pad app and it it is, it is showing it in, it, it, well, it says width, it doesn't actually see, yeah, but it, it says width. It's 0.5. That could be either, but it, it says with not Q so, yeah, who knows.

[01:05:04] Sean Walker: Mm.

[01:05:06] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Although it is funny 'cause I do also have like designers who have like called out system changes to me with like, you know, can you do like a, you know, like a third octave cut and I have to go the other way and be like, I'm in DMB world. It's in QI fuck. Just give it to me in Q. So I've had the opposite problem too.

I will, I will confess.

[01:05:26] Sean Walker: mean, it just needs to be a selection so you can choose it. It doesn't have to be hard one way or the other. Right.

[01:05:31] Andy Leviss: I for sure. Yeah. No, it's, it's that. With, with the caveat of I've worked in software supported enough to know that even the stupidest, this should be easy thing isn't always easy. That ought to be an easy, an easy

[01:05:43] Sean Walker: I have not worked in software support and I have, I. The buying power to buy a bunch of consoles. I want it in fucking Q. Take my money and put it in q

[01:05:56] Andy Leviss: I feel like somebody's gonna take that quote out of context and think we're talking about like some sort of crypto or something.

[01:06:01] Sean Walker: duh. Of

[01:06:02] Andy Leviss: Take my money and put it in queue.

[01:06:04] Sean Walker: I mean, you know, it's, it's a matter of days before I'm canceled like a motherfucker. Right.

[01:06:08] Andy Leviss: I mean, I think that every episode yet here we are,

[01:06:12] Sean Walker: Yeah, right.

[01:06:12] Andy Leviss: some episodes on when I cancel you. But, um, oh, you know, the, just looking through my other notes and photos I took, the other thing I was gonna point out was, uh, gotta look at some of the Electrosonics wireless as well, and they've got their new version of the SSM that is actually waterproof.

It has a battery door that won't slice your finger open,

[01:06:33] Sean Walker: Nice.

[01:06:34] Andy Leviss: which they will like I was joking with Carl about that. He is like, yeah, no, the old battery door is rough. Um, and they also, in the menu setting, you can actually tell it exactly what law of element or headset element you're putting on it and it'll make compensations compensation.

I, I can speak real good. It'll make compensations to the input circuit to adjust for like level impedance and all of that

[01:06:56] Sean Walker: Dude. That's dope,

[01:06:57] Andy Leviss: like any of the, any of the element brands that they are aware of and have programmed in, which is most of the, you know, most of the players you would expect.

[01:07:06] Sean Walker: dude. That's dope.

[01:07:07] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, which is a very like electrosonics kind of thing to do.

They're very smart about, about things like that. Um, yeah, I also got to listen, got to listen to the area air pack, which also sounds awesome. Um, yeah, I'm curious to see where they go the next couple years. 'cause they're the, the one manufacturer that hasn't gone to like the. Some sort of heavy channel. I mean, it's funny 'cause they were always like, they were the dense channel count for a while.

'cause you could have six in one ru. Um, and you know, obviously like a lot of, you know, now all the other brands have kind of been like piling up to like 16, 24, 32. So I'm curious to see what they may be working on behind the scenes. And I have no inside knowledge on that. That's just my legitimate curiosity.

[01:07:51] Sean Walker: I mean, they're not going to not be working on that behind the scenes, right? Like

[01:07:55] Andy Leviss: and I mean, and their stuff, I mean, it, it sounds awesome. It's, they were one of, I mean there's lots of, you know, folks playing out like, you know, you know, sounds as close to wires we can get, but they were really the first one that like, it sounded pretty much as close to a wire as you could get with wireless.

Um, you know, they were the first to go like that digital hybrid with no commander and you know, and great people and fully made in the US If, if that's something you are concerned about.

[01:08:22] Elliott Carroll: yeah. Um, I remember talking to Carl last year, um, but, uh, I, he. He was hinting that they were working very hard to get all the duet IEM stuff out on like some big tours, like they were in talks with some artists and, and whatever to, to kind of make it happen. I'm not sure if anything really came to fruition, but I know they were, I know they're trying hard to be seen as more than just the tv ENG people, you know?

[01:08:50] Andy Leviss: And I know, like I was, I, I threw a hardball question at Carl, which is, 'cause I've had, uh, some like sports broadcast stuff that had tried using their stuff as IFB and there was like, there were often in domed stadiums and arenas, multipath interference issues where, you know, you'd be at an outdoor, you know, stadium and everything was fine and then you'd go to a domed one and suddenly, like you were getting dropouts and noises, uh, across the board.

And it's, uh, it's still a, you know, test it before we use it under fire. But they've definitely made some software improvements to try and I. You know, battle a lot of that and prove that. So that is hopefully good news for folks where that's a concern.

[01:09:30] Elliott Carroll: Hmm.

[01:09:32] Andy Leviss: Um, I'm trying to think if there was anything. I mean, that was Donna, the, the new belt pack was, was the kind of exciting thing on the ultrasonic side.

Um, and like I said there, it listened to their I am as well. Sounded great. Drove my dark matters, you know, beautifully. Um, yeah. Oh, and then, and then the, the other big news a week or two ago, like right before Infocom, but then showing off at their booth was that Sound devices bought JH audio.

[01:10:02] Elliott Carroll: All right. They are now in the, um, what's that parent company I'm forgetting now? Audio tonics.

[01:10:10] Andy Leviss: Yes. Yeah, audio tonics. So yeah, they own them. And which of course is, you know, Cody winked along on, you know, in the Discord when it happened. Uh, that obviously implies that there is a sound devices. I am coming sooner than later. Um, but also, I know, you know, folks have been talking a lot about where JH is going.

You know, there's been a lot of, uh, bumps in, in the road and folks have been having some issues as they've gone through their, uh, their, you know, corporate issues the last couple years. Is that a, is that a fairly polite way to, to summarize the situation?

[01:10:43] Sean Walker: candidly, it's a pain in the ass to run a company. Like I,

[01:10:46] Andy Leviss: Yeah. No, no,

[01:10:47] Sean Walker: people a wide berth on stuff, you

[01:10:48] Andy Leviss: certainly not blaming anybody, but I know like it's, that's kind of, a lot of folks have seemed to be moving away or moving cautiously around JH because as they were going through like the bankruptcy and all that.

So having, you know, them, you know, as part of like sound devices and audio tonics, uh, is certainly an exciting thing there. And with all the shifts that are hap like, you know, dark matter launching and they're doing great stuff. There's the whole, you know, all the like 64 FIR, like that whole family, like trying to take over the industry on their side.

It's certainly, I don't think anybody is disappointed to no longer have to sweat what's gonna happen to JH and to see them, you know, have some resources to stick around.

[01:11:31] Sean Walker: totally.

[01:11:32] Elliott Carroll: Yeah.

[01:11:35] Andy Leviss: I feel like we covered most of the stuff. I, I know. Is there anything else you, you saw Elliot or I.

[01:11:40] Elliott Carroll: uh, the note was just, you know, I just had a note a a just as people. So, I mean, it was nice to, you know, we spent, geez, them as the whole day together that first, what was it, Wednesday?

[01:11:50] Andy Leviss: Yeah, like just running back and forth around the convention center.

[01:11:54] Elliott Carroll: yeah. And like I had so many, so many fun run-ins. I ran into a kid I went to high school with who I had no idea was in the industry. He works for sys, um,

[01:12:04] Andy Leviss: Uh, dude, I, I had one of those at a, a couple years ago with, uh, Russ Huffman, who works for, uh, shore. I was like, wait, I knew, why do I, and it took us a while to realize like, wait a second, we went to high school together. You're not, I'm in audio.

[01:12:16] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, it was so that was so like, I, yeah, I was so nuts. I was just standing there and just walked by. He just went. Huh? Like Elliot like, yeah. Um, so that was fun. Ran into the guy who gave me my first paying gig 22 years ago, whatever now. Like he just, again, just, I just turned the quarter and ran right into him.

Um, so that was, that was always fun. Um,

[01:12:39] Andy Leviss: Yeah, there's, yeah, it's.

[01:12:41] Elliott Carroll: guy who gave me my first corporate freelance gig that ran into him and then, uh, and got to meet, uh, talk for a few minutes with, with Ken Porter, who's the owner and president of Spectrum and in Nashville. So that he was a super nice guy and,

[01:12:58] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like I got, it was cool to like briefly catch up with Brad Barage, who's now at, you know, Martin and Timex, who's an old friend and formerly a Feld, uh, who was on the

[01:13:07] Sean Walker: Timex like the watches.

[01:13:09] Andy Leviss: uh, Timex like the, the spatial processor. Um, and that, that was funny too 'cause I, Brad knew I was gonna be there, but I, like Elliot and I snuck into the back of one of the demos, like after it had started right before,

[01:13:21] Sean Walker: you guys, no way. I don't believe it.

[01:13:23] Andy Leviss: yeah.

Um, and, uh, and Brad came around to like, as he was like, wandering the room to like show off the Timex tracker. He, like, he called me outta the corner of his eye, like leaned over three people to gimme a high five, which was nice to. I see catch up with him. Um, sure. Had an insane like, uh, shore Partners hundredth anniversary VIP event over at Hard Rock Live.

There was a Brad Paisley playing and lots of food and drinks and, uh, we went over to that to try and say hey to some folks. Caught one or two people and then it was just so packed and so loud that we were like, we're gonna grab free food and drinks. And then we ended up going to play mini golf,

[01:14:00] Sean Walker: Nice.

[01:14:02] Andy Leviss: which I will say, I, I suck at golf.

I suck at mini golf. I had the most amazing shot of my life. They, because univer, it's, it's at the Universal Studios, you know, like the, the, the walk that they have there were Hard Rock Live is, and they have a, it's like a ghost in monsters mini golf. And there's one that, it's like, it's a beetle juicy looking worm that like does a loop and you can shoot the ball into the mouth of the, the worm or the snake.

It does the loop dilu through the body comes out the tail and I got a hole in one through the damn thing.

[01:14:32] Sean Walker: Nice.

[01:14:33] Andy Leviss: No idea how I did it. Never gonna do it again. That might be the stupidest, proudest moment of my life.

[01:14:38] Sean Walker: Nice. Good work dude.

[01:14:40] Andy Leviss: I should, I should, I shouldn't. Like Parks and Rec on the Discord. Post a photo. I took a photo of the one hole.

'cause I was like, I made a shot through this Lee Cow. Uh, um, yeah, no, and you're right, like seeing so many people from so many different walks of life, like, um, like Jamie and Gw who are now running Feld. Uh, now that Brad's moved on, um, our old friends are like Jamie Micey I hadn't seen in forever. So it was cool to catch up with him.

Um, and then I said, I'm on, I'm on the job hunt. So like, that was my main reason for going was like, this is, since I'm trying to pivot to the manufacturer side, I know this is a spot where I can corner all the manufacturers I know and love and, uh, yeah. Hey little guy. Um, and so kind of ran my butt around for a day and a half, uh, meeting and schmoozing folks there, which it's great for.

Yeah, if you're doing projects, it's a great chance to like, meet up with, you know, the manufacturers you need to get answers from and like, okay, we keep talking past each other in an email here, let me sketch something on a napkin with you and like, solve that problem. So I know if a few folks solve there, it's, I was always, because in my mind, Infocom, like, I'm like, if it, oh, it's like more like corporate and install stuff.

So I'd like never like rushed to go, but like, I feel like it is, like we were sort of saying at the beginning, Elliot, I'm like, I definitely want to go back. It's, it was the most productive trade show I've been to in many, many years. You know, the only other thing for me that ends up somewhat as productive on the theater side of life is U-S-I-T-T, which is much smaller in a different vibe, but in the theater world is just a, a compelling show.

But, uh, yeah, Infocom was really cool. I'm, I'm glad I got to go.

[01:16:24] Elliott Carroll: Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. If you can go, I think it's like 30 ish thousand people or something. It's a, it's a, it's pretty big. Um, and yeah, so if you're an audio person and you can make it, I, I would advise it. Um, it'll be in Vegas next year. It always flip flops, Vegas on Orlando. Um. Know, June's a tough time for a lot of people, but,

[01:16:45] Sean Walker: I can do, that's two hours from home on a easy peasy dude.

[01:16:49] Andy Leviss: And while it's hot, it's nowhere near as humid as Orlando was.

[01:16:52] Elliott Carroll: It's true. Yeah. That was, it Wa the weather was kind of gross down there that week.

[01:16:55] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, I'm sitting there like, I, I, I think I did force myself into, I don't remember if I did pants or not. Like I brought one pair of pants and like the one day I knew I had a formal interview with somebody, I was like, I'll dress a little nicer, but like, it is too hot for like pants and long sleeve shirts.

Like there were, there were people at booths in like suits and I was like, I don't know how you're doing this guys.

[01:17:15] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. And the, the one nice thing about Infocom too is on the speaker demos, the demo rooms are usually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the shows Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So if you want to come in early, you can get a full day of speaker demos on like a Tuesday before the show floor even opens and it gets too crazy.

Then you could, you know, you could always do a show floor then, you know, get outta there as quick as possible. That's always, that's always on the table, so

[01:17:38] Andy Leviss: Yeah. By like, by the later in the week, by like Thursday or so, like the acoustics demos were like turning, like, I think the last demo of one of the days Ryan said they turned like a hundred and something people away. It was like people were trying to pack into the room.

[01:17:51] Elliott Carroll: Yeah. And you know, just good trade show. Everyone's over it by the last day or Friday, so it's good. It's good to go early. People are excited to talk to you, but the last day everyone's turned into a robot and so

[01:18:01] Andy Leviss: yeah, people have voices still.

[01:18:03] Elliott Carroll: last day.

[01:18:05] Sean Walker: Totally. Well that seems like probably a good place to wrap it up. You guys got anything else to go through?

[01:18:09] Andy Leviss: think that's it.

[01:18:10] Sean Walker: well thanks to Alah Heath for making ripping consoles and DSPs for us to, you know, go get it done And RCF for making banging speakers for, uh, the other end of it. That's the pod y'all. See you next week.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green