311. New York-Based Mixer & Sound Designer Jason Crystal

New York-based mixer and sound designer Jason Crystal joins the show in Episode 311 for a tour through his wide-ranging career, spanning from Broadway — where his resume includes working as the associate sound designer and audio supervisor for every production of Hamilton around the world, as well as sound designing the Broadway and touring productions of Suffs — to mixing front of house for major broadcast events such as the Tony Awards and the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Whether you’re interested or working in musical theatre, TV awards shows, a look behind what goes in to SNL every week, or the logistics and technical challenges of massive multi-stage televised concert events, this episode is for you!

Episode Links:
Hamilton, The German EP On Apple Music & Spotif
Suffs
Signal to Noise Episode 306 (Sonic Secrets of Hamilton)
Episode 311 Transcript

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The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.

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Transcript

Episode 311 - Jason Crystal

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

[00:00:58] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Levison. With me is always the null to my side tone. Mr. Sean Walker. What's up Sean?

[00:01:08] Sean Walker: What's up, dude? Where do you get these things, dude? Do you spend like hours just looking for these little like one line intros?

[00:01:16] Andy Leviss: sometimes moments of inspiration, sometimes moments of desperation. Um, I really

[00:01:22] Sean Walker: not talking about your previous dating life, Annie. We're talking about these little one-liners you got.

[00:01:26] Andy Leviss: I, it's a pattern that recurs in many aspects of my life. Uh, um, yeah.

[00:01:34] Sean Walker: enough, dude. Fair

[00:01:35] Andy Leviss: yeah. No, I really, I

[00:01:36] Sean Walker: some of 'em are pretty funny, dude. I,

[00:01:38] Andy Leviss: and some of them are terrible, and that's the idea. Um, again, like past dating, um,

[00:01:42] Sean Walker: yeah. Right. Totally.

[00:01:44] Andy Leviss: yeah, no, I, I do legit need to go through at some point and make the list of them because I know there's ones that I'm like, I think I've used that one before.

[00:01:52] Sean Walker: If you use the Dad-a-base again, bro, or you canned Yeah.

[00:01:58] Andy Leviss: So, yeah, this, the, uh, I, uh, I mean, what's, what's new with you? I know we're getting wintry weather here. So I had our, my first, uh, it started looking like it was gonna snow and then suddenly it was sleeting this morning. So it was, uh, uh, an exciting morning.

[00:02:12] Sean Walker: Yeah, it started to get cold here, but not, not cold. Like you guys get cold, like cold in the high thirties, low forties cold. Not the like, what the fuck is going on with my life cold? You know what I mean?

[00:02:21] Andy Leviss: No, we're like right at that like low thirties where it's, again, it's like sleet and wintry mix is the technical term, I think. But, uh,

[00:02:28] Sean Walker: I don't know those terms.

[00:02:29] Andy Leviss: yeah. Well, we should, we should,

[00:02:30] Sean Walker: rain or it snow.

[00:02:32] Andy Leviss: we should cut our, our, like our, our useless non audio banter short this time. 'cause this is a guest who I've known for a very long time and it's literal months.

We've been trying to mesh up schedules between work and family stuff to get him on the show. So I'm so excited to have him here with us and to introduce you and our listeners to Jason Crystal, who again, I've known you What, going back to like 2010 or so, I wanna say.

[00:02:56] Jason Crystal: That feels about right though. I, I am here for the non audio banter. I just wanna flag

[00:03:00] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

[00:03:01] Jason Crystal: just, you know, like we can, we can move on from it, but I, but I'm here for it and I

[00:03:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Appreciate it. Um, so Jason, I mean, I'll let you kind of enter yourself and tell us like how, where, how you got into audio and the niches. You are, but Jason's just for the. Quick perspective on it has had a very varied career in the various aspects of live audio and broadcast audio, uh, Broadway touring, like on the theater world, which is where I originally know him from.

But then also has these like. V. Very different aspects of doing like front of house, mixing music, mixing for like large TV events like the SNL 50 Homecoming concert at Radio City that we've talked about before, or the Tony Awards and I You've also done, is it streaming mixes for the ma? Why don't I stop talking?

I'll let you introduce yourself. Let's do it that way.

[00:03:48] Jason Crystal: Yeah. Uh, thanks Andy yeah, it's, it, it's good to be on. Thank you both for having me. Um, yeah, I mean, my, my bread and butter historically has been Broadway and, and theater. Uh, I was sort of a theater kid, turned a hobby into a, a job. I was a assistant and an associate for, for a really long time.

And in the past few years, started doing a lot of my own Broadway and theatrical work. Uh, you also alluded to a little bit of a, a tangent I went on in. In terms of TV broadcast and live events. And the short version of that was, that was born of an employment panic. During the COVID pandemic, uh, there

[00:04:25] Andy Leviss: Oh, we all have those stories.

[00:04:27] Jason Crystal: like, oh my gosh, there is no theater. Other people must need audio. Let me, you know. See what I can drum up essentially. And, and, uh, I know you guys are both, uh, dads as well, but my, my first was born, uh, in April of 2020, which was quite the time to be, uh, worried about the state of the world and simultaneously unemployed. So,

[00:04:50] Sean Walker: That's, that's the motivation, isn't it?

[00:04:52] Jason Crystal: yeah. that'll that'll wake you up pretty good. That'll

you'll send some emails as a result of that, I'll

[00:04:57] Sean Walker: If that doesn't light a fire in your ass, I don't know what will new dad, and by the way, can't fail for my family. Good talks you out there.

[00:05:02] Jason Crystal: Correct. Yeah. So that was, you know, uh, a moment. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I, I can go into in depth on any, any one of these things. But essentially, uh, a lot of theater, I'm still in and out of Saturday Night Live the broadcast show quite a bit.

I did some work on the 50th anniversary and various other sort of live corporate or TV streaming events. So yeah, that's sort of the current, the current docket.

[00:05:26] Sean Walker: All right. Let me ask you a couple of nerd questions, just 'cause they're popping up here when you,

[00:05:31] Andy Leviss: He is, he gotta read on you real fast, Jason.

[00:05:34] Sean Walker: since you do so many different types of, let's call it front of house mixing, even though there's lots of other type of things, how do you find yourself, uh, doing your workflow differently when you're doing broadcast versus when you're doing front of house versus when you're doing, I don't wanna talk about theater, Andy.

You'll go on for fucking ever. We'll never get outta here. So h how does broadcast change your front of house mixing for you?

[00:05:57] Jason Crystal: I think I, I will, uh, I'll start with theater is, that was my baseline, but I won't let Andy jump in. I won't let him say anything.

Um, so in, in theater world, I tend to be a designer, a design associate or a designer on shows. So I'm doing much more of the system layout, the creative decisions. The equipment selection, staffing, things like that.

On the broadcast side, I tend to be much more hands-on, so. On a broadcast gig or a live event gig. The whole, the, the whole trick is speed. It's about how fast can you get things going on a live event. It's different for, for an installed system like Saturday Night Live, but for a live event, it's like you have minimal time to sound check. Minimal time to hear anything. You have to pre dial as much as you can, and it's about getting up and running quickly. And that's a very, very different workflow than theater where we have days or weeks to rehearsal show on stage, which, you know, sometimes can still feel tight, but the idea of, you know, you're gonna get.

30 minutes. And then there's a show is just a different mindset, which is one of the reasons

I tend to be hands-on. 'cause I, like, I, I don't have the time to translate something from my brain to a human to a machine. I wanna just put my hands on the machine.

[00:07:13] Sean Walker: totally

[00:07:14] Jason Crystal: Um, I dunno if that, I dunno if that answered the question, but that's sort of,

that, that's the biggest difference is, is the amount of time.

[00:07:20] Sean Walker: Totally. Do you find yourself changing, uh, like the way that you EQ things or the level of things in your mix based on whether it's a front of house mix or a broadcast mix

[00:07:31] Jason Crystal: Yes. Yeah, I mean for, for a broadcast show, the front of house mix in some ways needs to be secondary to the broadcast mix. And different broadcast mixers have different needs from the front of house engineer. So, and also depends a lot on the content. So Saturday Night Live in the studio is a fairly quiet. Room other than when the audience is laughing, right? Like it's a, it's a very contained space. It should be very clean, it should be dry. And obviously we wanna hear the applause and the laughter, but if nobody's applauding and nobody's laughing, it should just sound like a person speaking on a concert stage.

If you hear room and ambience and it, you can tell in the broadcast mix that it's loud in the room, that's probably fine. So it really depends on who the broadcast mixer is, and then that relationship is important so that they can take notes in front of house. What might be bleeding into audience mics, what might be bleeding into vocal mics and, and you sort of have to do a little bit of, uh, uh, investigation as to what it is about the live mix that might be affecting the broadcast mix.

[00:08:37] Sean Walker: Totally like, Hey bro, can you turn that down like your Max L Guy, people in the fricking back row and I can't hear my lavs anymore.

[00:08:44] Jason Crystal: Correct? Yes. That is something we aim to avoid.

[00:08:47] Andy Leviss: Jason, what I'm, I'm curious if you found a similar thing or if this is just that, like you are better than I am, but, um, I know like one of the cool things I've noticed in some environments where I've bounced between seats in the same general event, like where sometimes I'm on broadcast and sometimes I'm on front of house is when you're on broadcast you'll hear, like, you'll hear the start of like ringing sometimes or like echoes in the house.

Be like yelling to the front and like sitting there like, what is this guy doing? Like he's not hearing it. And then you switch seats in front of house and you're like, no. You know when you're listening to that broadcast feed from a live room, you hear stuff before you can sometimes hear it in the room and it's, it's like a really interesting perspective I found.

You don't get till you've done both of those.

[00:09:27] Jason Crystal: Yeah, I mean, what you're listening for does vary a lot based on what seat you're in. I mean, most of what I do is front of house or is pa like I do some broadcast work on the like truck end of things, but. Mostly I'm, I'm in front of a, a big pa. So though that gives you a resolution in terms of dynamic range that far exceeds what you're gonna get in broadcast.

The difference is what you're listening to on broadcast is pristine. You know, like you're not being polluted by the guy sitting next to coughing or the acoustic sound of an electric guitar amp on the stage. Like you're just getting the pure broadcast signal 'cause you're in another room somewhere.

[00:10:03] Andy Leviss: Unless Jason turns it up too loud and then your host.

[00:10:05] Jason Crystal: Correct.

And then there's probably a, a bigger problem.

[00:10:08] Andy Leviss: Yeah, so I mean, I would love to, if you're, do it like there's. Two particularly large shows that you've, that you've done that like folks have specifically asked us about on the listeners that if, if you're cool to dive into a little bit, which would be, as I said, like the Tony Awards and then that the SNL concert, which again, like I, I think it's useful to talk specifically, but that, that broadly worked like that certain genre of music shows works.

And I, I think it's interesting to about how that works for you at front of house and like. The different positions in there, like the music mixer and the production mixer and, and the artist mixers and how that all works together.

[00:10:45] Jason Crystal: Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, let me start, do you care which one? I, lemme start with the Tony's, since

that's slightly more recent. Um. All of these shows, all of these sort of live event shows have multiple mixers doing different things. So the sort of the, uh, uh, on the Tony Awards, uh, Paul Whitman is the production mixer, the broadcast mixer, and he is in charge of assembling all of the other mixes and streams and content and playback and audience mikes into one coherent mix for broadcast. The, uh, so he's sort of, he's sort of the boss. It's sort of in some ways. There's a history to the broadcast mixer being the head honcho the same way sort of on a music tour. The front of house mixer might be the, might be in charge of the department. The broadcast production mixer tends to be in charge in events like this.

So we all sort of report, report to that chair. Uh, additionally on the Tony's, there's somebody mixing monitors for the talent. There's, uh. And I'm not gonna start naming all of these positions 'cause I'm gonna mess one up and then I'll, then it will, it'll be a disaster. And I'll feel guilty

[00:11:48] Sean Walker: You'll never hear the end of it.

[00:11:50] Jason Crystal: I will never, I will just feel, I will feel bad. I'll credit the wrong person.

They'll

[00:11:53] Andy Leviss: is like, I remembered the boss. That's what I need to

[00:11:56] Jason Crystal: Everyone was great.

Um, yes, if you worked on the show, you were great. Um, but, uh, so there's a, a modern mixer. There's a front of house production mixer, which whose job is to mix essentially all non-performance elements. So that includes acceptance speeches, video playback, intros. Commercials, stingers, anything that isn't a performance. This person is mixing walk-in music, you know, and, and it, and that person is there, you know, they're, they're on point the entire what ends up being 75 hours, that is the Tony Awards, right? They're like, they they are, they are on,

[00:12:34] Sean Walker: Lots of coffee.

[00:12:35] Jason Crystal: lots of coffee, uh, but no bathroom breaks and.

[00:12:39] Sean Walker: Perfect.

[00:12:40] Jason Crystal: My job the past two years on the Tony's has been in front of House Music mixer, which is the performances. So anytime one of the musical acts and sometimes plays, the plays are often taken by the production mixer 'cause they're sort of more just sort of vocal elements. But all of the musical performances at the Tony's, I've been mixing for the past two years, and that includes the intro. Uh, the, the opener, if there's a finale, all of the musical theater performances, and I get to take a little bit of a break during speeches and during awards, except that I'm probably, uh, rapidly, uh, line checking whatever the next act is while they're awarding things. And. That's the, that tends, that's the mixing sort of contingent. Uh, there's also a mixer at the Dena Center who's mixing the orchestra down. So for the Tony Awards, the live orchestras at the Dena Center down the road and someone is onsite mixing that and sending, sending a stream up to all of us for that live orchestra. So it takes a village. There's also various. Playback mixers and sweeteners and other, other ancillary mixing jobs, some of which are all broadcast based. So like there's a lot of folks in the truck who are playing additional content that doesn't hit front of house. And so I'm not super privy to it, so I don't want to skip anybody. But I also know there's a lot of broadcast voodoo that I dunno my hands on.

[00:14:00] Andy Leviss: So real quick, without getting too in depth for it, for the folks who don't know, like what are sweeteners?

[00:14:06] Jason Crystal: That. I think, again, I don't know in the sense that like I don't have to use, I don't

like touch sweeteners, but I think it's like there's, there is a combination of live audience sweetened audience applause. Things that may or may not actually be live. I don't know how much that's used. My understanding is actually typically in the live event, very little of it is used and it's really useful for rehearsals and for dresses. Uh,

I'm

[00:14:33] Andy Leviss: that makes

[00:14:33] Jason Crystal: I I'm gonna go out and say that like, this is outside my area of expertise and I don't wanna

[00:14:37] Andy Leviss: That's why I said we'll keep it brief, but yeah, that I never thought about it for rehearsal, but yeah. 'cause otherwise timing for a broadcast thing where you're expecting audience reaction gets, gets weird.

[00:14:46] Jason Crystal: Yes. And again, I'm only partially certain that this is how this works. I am, I

am not in

[00:14:52] Andy Leviss: we should, I know there's a couple folks who like really specialize in that for like all these shows and we should reach out and get one of

[00:14:57] Jason Crystal: Yes, you should get a proper, like, like I touch broadcast a

lot, but I don't mix the broadcast a lot. So there are people with more, more expertise in

[00:15:04] Andy Leviss: Well, that's your, as a live sound oriented show, we figured you're like our gateway drug

[00:15:08] Jason Crystal: There we go. Yes. I'm happy to connect you with folks.

[00:15:13] Andy Leviss: Um, so, uh, I guess on the, on the Tony's, like you've got all those different acts coming in and like, are the, like, are some of them bringing like their mixers with them? All of them? Like how does that usually work?

[00:15:25] Jason Crystal: a little bit of everything. So usually, so. I'm always the one with my hands on the console for the performance. Sometimes the different acts will bring a mixer to, which is great. First of all, I gotta tell you like when the mixers from the, from the various Broadway shows come and visit front of house during Tony's rehearsal, it is like the best day in theater Sound

world.

I get to just sit. It really is. I get to like see people I know and like they get to tell me like how their show goes and how they want it to sound. And we all go on our merry way. It's really, it's really a lot of fun. Um.

[00:15:57] Andy Leviss: And I'm guessing for the folks who've worked mixing for you, it's in the past. It's fun to be able to reverse the, reverse the roles

[00:16:03] Jason Crystal: no, it's fun. It's like fun to get the notes. It's fun to like, I don't know, it's also just, uh, it's also the, the mixers from the shows recognize the thing we're trying to do at the Tony's is not the same thing. Right? Like they recognize that like there's no version where it's gonna sound in Radio City Music Hall, the same way it does in their 900 seat theater.

So what they're coming to communicate with me about is like. What is important musically? What, how, what might be different in the big space versus the little space? What, you know, what they expect to hear, what might be some elements are on track maybe that aren't tracked in the, in the live show. So like we have those sorts of conversations.

Sometimes some shows will bring a twos also to help their cast members get into Mike's for the Tony's and essentially shows can send whoever they want and, and I'm happy to see them.

[00:16:56] Sean Walker: How do you keep that consistent across all the different things? Like when we, you know, when you see it on tv, it all sounds great, right? How do you keep each act consistent, like level-wise and the different things? Are you, are you. Relying on your meters or just what it sounds like in the room or how do you, how do you go about, what kinda a workflow do you do you make so that everything sounds awesome and it's consistently awesome, rather than just like, well, this one sounded great and that one was not, and this one was, you know what I mean?

That kinda a thing kind.

[00:17:25] Jason Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I rely mostly on ears. I mean, I have an SPL meter I'm running, but it is not decisive in that, particularly with musical theater. You can't sort of assume that two pieces should sound of similar level or bandwidth or style, right? Like it varies so drastically that having like numbers on your screen probably won't do the piece justice.

So I have that just for reference to make sure, say if there's a like a rock musical that I'm not like over blowing anything and I have something, you know, just to make sure I'm sort of between the bands, but. And in, in the end it's, it's by ear. And so, you know, I'm taking a combination of notes on a script plus stored snapshots on a console.

And between those two things, by the time we get to the actual performance, I have some idea of how it's gonna go. I mean, it, it all happens very quickly. I think each, each musical act has something like 90 minutes to rehearse on stage, plus or minus. 20 minutes. It's pretty quick. And then we do a dress run of the Tony's on Sunday morning.

We do the Tony's on Sunday night, and, uh, and that's it. So it, it's all pretty rapid. You can only get so finessed in that, in that timetable. Most of that blocking time is spent stage is spent blocking and spacing, you know, we'll, we'll run it maybe two times, three times if we're ahead of schedule. But, uh, it goes pretty quick.

So at some point you sort of. You know, put up the faders, dial things rapidly, see if anyone has thoughts, and then you go again.

[00:18:55] Sean Walker: Totally. Dude, that's awesome.

[00:18:57] Jason Crystal: Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's fun. It's really, I mean, it's not, not stressful. I mean, it, it is like, you know, I don't know. I, it is a stressful day and obviously I love the theater. People in the theater business, so I wanna do right by all of them. Uh, the flip side is like, you know, you, you have limited resources, limited time, so you make the best of what you got.

So it's a little bit triage at times,

[00:19:20] Sean Walker: Totally. So for all the people out there that are less experienced listening, trying to figure it out. Be fucking awesome. That's how you do that. Got it.

[00:19:28] Jason Crystal: or at least be quick. At least move quickly.

[00:19:32] Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah. She's been complaining about that for years.

[00:19:34] Jason Crystal: Yeah.

[00:19:35] Sean Walker: Okay. How does it change when you're in the broadcast seat?

[00:19:39] Jason Crystal: Um, yeah, the broadcast seat is, is like. So on the broadcast side, what I, the only few, the few broadcast gigs I've done, like production mixing, have tend to be streaming events. I haven't done like a live network broadcast gig. I did a couple PBSs and, uh, and streaming, and that tends to be a very different workflow because everything just sort of comes to you in the sense that like you're receiving feeds from a whole bunch of other people who are hopefully doing their jobs.

Great. So, uh, in the, in the case of. Yeah, you, you, I'm not actually gonna talk about my broadcast mixing experience. I'm gonna talk a little bit about SNL and how that works, because that is actually a much better example of the how complicated these things can get. Um, the, the broadcast mixer, uh, for SNL receives. Feeds from about eight other consoles. People generating other content live in real time. So there's like a, there's a sound effects mixer, there's music mixers, there's uh, playback mixer, there's uh, and there's obviously video playbacks. There are four mixers in the studio itself, mixing various aspects of the live show for the audience. Uh, which is all to say that the, uh, uh, production mixer I know. Describe it as being the funnel. Everything. Everything comes to the production mixer and they have to like make sense of it, right?

Like everyone's doing their own little area and they need to make sure it all coheres into a single broadcast event.

And whether that's utility, whether it's just like. We need to make sure we hear X, Y, and Z. Or whether that's creative. Oh, this needs to be quieter than this. I'll either adjust it on my end or I'll give the note. 'cause I know it's the third mixer from the right who's generating that mix that you know like, like they need to know the whole, they need to see the whole board and know like when something needs to change, who it is and like what knob to turn.

Both like sort of physically, but also logistically.

[00:21:32] Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. That's cool, man, that it's like a bunch of sub mixes

[00:21:36] Jason Crystal: Yeah. Yes. Plus a, you know, plus a bunch of live mics, you know, like the, the, it's, it's, it's a, it's a big chair.

[00:21:42] Sean Walker: how,

[00:21:45] Andy Leviss: Uh, I was gonna, so like at front of house on SNL, like how much of those like subm mixes are coming to you, or how much of the stuff in the room are you like generating for yourself in that

[00:21:53] Jason Crystal: For front of house for SNL is, is a interesting beast. I've only done the music mix front of house at SNL I'm gonna do what's, what's called the production fold back, uh, mix next month, but

[00:22:05] Sean Walker: Is that the roots kind of a thing that they're doing or is

[00:22:07] Jason Crystal: So, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, there's a house band and then there's a guest, musician, artist, uh, every, every broadcast. So the music mix handles both, both of those sort of sets.

Uh,

[00:22:20] Sean Walker: that's gotta be a super fun job to like

[00:22:22] Jason Crystal: oh, it's super fun.

[00:22:23] Sean Walker: house band and then also really cool artists showing up to do something reasonably vulnerable. 'cause it's not in front of 50,000 people in a stadium or whatever, but to like come. It's gotta be really cool, dude.

[00:22:34] Jason Crystal: It's a cool, it's a cool gig. Yeah. Um, Caroline Sanchez, who has that chair normally, she's like, she, she's been, I think that's been her chair for three years or so. And, uh, yeah, she's got a, she's got a good, she's got a good gig.

Um, and, uh, yeah, but in, in the house, in the studio, in Studio eight h at SNL, there are four, four mixers.

One doing music, one doing production elements, one doing. Fold back for the cast, for the sketches, for anyone who's performing as part of sketches in SNL, and then there's a monitor mixer for the musicians. So there's a, there's a lot happening. And that's just the live, that's just in the live room. That's before you get to broadcast.

So it's a, it's a big organism.

[00:23:12] Andy Leviss: and the music on that is, is that again, a situation where kind of you're the fingers on the faders working with the artists engineers.

[00:23:19] Jason Crystal: Yeah, I mean, uh, typically what happens, and again, I, I'm gonna sort of credit, uh, Fred Denmark, who's the production mixer for broadcast, and Caroline Sanchez, the music mixer at front of house. Like they, uh, Caroline in particular is dealing with the artist's team. Often the artist, the music artists will often spend time, uh. With, uh, Josiah Gluck and Java Carey, who are the. Music broadcast mixers, yet more mixers who are in a broadcast studio in a different room, because often those guest artists care a lot about what's going on on air, which might not necessarily resemble the live mix in the house. Often what happens is maybe an artist's producer or manager will be in the broadcast side and their front of house mixer might be out front with Caroline, but, and or they may like. Move around, like during this take, we're gonna go here during this take, we go there. So they sort of wander around. But yeah, it is, it is definitely in consultation with the, uh, guest artists teams.

[00:24:21] Sean Walker: And do the, like the front of house mixers for the artists don't mix the show. Right? They

[00:24:28] Jason Crystal: They do not, yeah, they,

[00:24:29] Sean Walker: they can come be like, Hey, here's what we kind of want, or here's the vibe. But you guys, Caroline, or you or or everybody else are actually mixing the show and just taking notes from people and suggestions and vibe,

[00:24:39] Jason Crystal: Correct. Yeah. They, they rarely have their hands on the fader. Occasionally they may, you know, like if the, a lot of those folks have been through SNLA lot and have a long relationship with the audio team there. So occasionally they may be like, Hey, can I like ride my artist's primary vocal fader for this one, whatever.

And like, sure fine. I mean, it's not, it's not like,

uh, there's not like a wall up, but typically, you know, it's sort of bad,

bad form to. Grab someone else's console. Um, and they tend to tend to re respect that a lot.

[00:25:09] Sean Walker: Sure. I guess what I was asking is it's not like a festival where they're bringing their own desk and they're doing the live mix. They're

[00:25:14] Jason Crystal: no. It's all on. the, only

[00:25:16] Sean Walker: is on you. They're showing up as guests and saying, Hey, good to meet you, and here's kind of the vibe we're looking for thanks and not bringing their own control packaging and, and you're not doing it festival style where each musical act has its own vibe.

[00:25:28] Jason Crystal: Correct.

Yeah.

No, it's all, it's all on, on on SNL's hardware. The only exception sometimes is they'll bring a monitor package if their guests are used to a particular monitor mix. And I eems and like, like sometimes they'll bring in a monitor, mixer, and monitor package, but it's never their sort of front of house rig. Yeah.

[00:25:47] Andy Leviss: So is there anything on like SNL proper that you two wanna touch on that we haven't before we dig into like the, the multi-stage concert like

[00:25:55] Jason Crystal: Yeah. No, I mean, I think, I think that sort of covers it. I mean, I'm, I'm definitely a guest there. I mean, they're, they're, they're amazing folks and I'm in and outta that building, you know, maybe a couple times a month. But, uh, no, what they're doing is there, there is no parallel to it. I think anywhere in live, live

[00:26:10] Sean Walker: But dude, how fricking cool dude.

[00:26:12] Jason Crystal: it's very cool.

It's,

[00:26:13] Sean Walker: how cool to be in and out a few times a month. Go get to, you know, experience that and hang with kick ass people like that, man. That's rad.

[00:26:19] Jason Crystal: It's, it's, it's been a good ride. Yeah. I was brought on during the 50th season last year and sort of have been, they haven't been able to quite get rid of me yet, so

it's, uh, it's been a good ride. Yeah.

[00:26:29] Sean Walker: So what's up with this concert You wanna talk about Andy?

[00:26:31] Jason Crystal: Um, yeah, I mean, I can talk about the concert a little bit. I

mean, what's, what's, what's helpful?

What's

[00:26:37] Sean Walker: He's, dying to talk about this concert.

[00:26:38] Andy Leviss: well, no, I mean, I just, 'cause it's, it's, the thing that's come up like in the Discord a bunch of times is people just asking like, how do this work? How do the changeovers

[00:26:44] Jason Crystal: Oh, got it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:45] Andy Leviss: we've, explained a little bit like in the

[00:26:47] Jason Crystal: Sort of like logistically, like how is this possible?

[00:26:49] Andy Leviss: Yeah,

[00:26:50] Sean Walker: you do that at

[00:26:51] Andy Leviss: and like, 'cause 'cause in that, 'cause I mean, on a show like that, it, it, there is that exponential where like instead of just a music mixer and a production mixer, now there may be two music mixers and that sort of thing.

So like having, you know, driven desks for that. I think you'd be a good person to kind of dig in and explain how that works logistically and.

[00:27:09] Sean Walker: And for, for perspective, a lot of our audience can only think about it like maybe a music festival would be even at a large scale. Right. But like how does that differ from.

[00:27:19] Jason Crystal: from

[00:27:20] Sean Walker: You know, a drive system at front of house and a production console, front of house and artist desks coming through all the time in a festival setting to what you guys did for the 50th, where maybe it's different or maybe a lot of it's the same or whatever, but how it, how is that different?

Right? Or how does that work?

[00:27:34] Jason Crystal: Yeah, I mean, I, I guess the big difference is that it is all driven from the same hardware, right? Like it it is. The logistics of it are, you're correct. There are two front of house music mixer. There were two front of house music mixers for the SNL 50th. Homecoming concert, and we basically tossed back and forth. So, uh, we looked at the rundown along with Tom Holmes, who is the production mixer, broadcast mixer, who's done, uh, many, many, uh, Grammy Awards and Tony Awards and Kennedy Center honors.

He's, he's, he's very broadcast, fancy. Um, and so, you know, he, he sort of made a plan with us on sort how best to divvy it up. And some of that was. Dictated by what stage a particular artist was on. So Radio City has a giant. Turntable and one band or one act might be setting up upstage picture. Picture a big drop in and everyone's facing the upstage wall while another artist performs facing downstage on the front of the turntable. And once the act ends, maybe there's a speech or a commercial break. Meanwhile, the turntable spins around revealing the other act. Suddenly, oh my gosh, there's another band set up like as, as if by magic. What is actually happening is, uh. The crew at Radio City, along with a whole bunch of production audio folks and a twos and, uh, monitor.

Texts are rapidly set and Andy's been part of these sorts of jobs are rapidly, uh, plugging and testing and line checking while the downstage act is happening. So typically while one front of house mixer is mixing, the other music mixer is on headphones, uh, listening line, checking along with the crew on the other stage while things get ready.

[00:29:15] Sean Walker: So to, to recap that because, uh, while we are following along, I am certain there's half our Discord server that's like, huh uh. There are two complete sets of front of house and monitor and split snakes and subs, snake packages and mics and stands and everything, and you're literally a being between the two.

So you've got set up a downstage, ripping for the audience while set up. B is frantically plugging in W2, W one, whatever, you know, boxes getting line checked, getting that good for. On cans and then, oh look, poof, turntable flips around and B is ripping while A is tearing down their artist and going, doing the same thing.

Is that what you're saying?

[00:29:56] Jason Crystal: Correct. That's, yeah, that, that's exactly right. There are a couple places where the two systems interact.

We had, I'd have to look at the stage rack plot. We had

[00:30:03] Sean Walker: The coffee machine, that's where

[00:30:04] Jason Crystal: that, that's where they interact. Yeah, We had, um, so

[00:30:06] Sean Walker: maker at full tilt at all times.

[00:30:08] Jason Crystal: correct, yes. All paths, right, right. Where the two stages meets. That's the

[00:30:12] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:30:13] Jason Crystal: Um, now the, uh. Some stage racks were designated specifically for one stage or one monitor mixer. There was, I think, a one stage rack that was shared on both, both consoles, uh, either via a, I'd have to look back at the paperwork, but, uh, there's a lot of analog splitting, a lot of

big passive analog splitting

as well as a couple stage racks that are shared. Um, and some of it is like, do you have enough capacity to split? So like this grows exponentially, right? So you have stage A, so that would be, there's a front of house mixer for music A, there's a broadcast music mixer for stage A, there's a monitor mixer for stage A, and then again, stage B monitors. Front of house broadcast.

So you're talking right there, you're talking about six positions plus that. That's even like before you get to places where things might be shared. So like whether you're on stage A or stage B, you may always need some RF to always work, whether it's presenters or hosts or whatever.

So

[00:31:15] Sean Walker: the one stage stage

[00:31:16] Jason Crystal: There's some, some of that is all shared.

And then where does it go from there? The music mixes then feed the front of house production mixer who's handling those streams along with everything else that's happening. And then the broadcast mixer is handling all the music inputs. So it ends up being a lot of splits on splits. On splits. And this is before you get to any sort of additional record or, uh, pro tools playback or,

you know. Yeah. So it can get, it can get pretty, pretty big, pretty quick, but it's a lot of. Analog passive splits.

[00:31:45] Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. I mean, it would have to be, 'cause trying to do that all, like trying to, I mean, you'd have to have several network engineers just sorting out that and people would be freaking out

[00:31:55] Jason Crystal: Yeah. Also like, there's no time to solve, gain tracking problems.

Like there's no time to be like, you moved my head amp, how dare you. There's,

or like, you turned phantom off and now I don't have the whatever. Like, there's just no time.

[00:32:07] Sean Walker: A hundred percent. I gotta mash my button and get it back working and

[00:32:10] Jason Crystal: yeah. It's like whatever happens fastest is, is the answer.

[00:32:13] Sean Walker: Yeah. Analog splits the way for sure. Dude. It's not like tour where you're like building it. Setting it. You can share the stage box and like. You got it all worked out in rehearsals. You know, you gotta, it's like more like a festival.

We gotta move fast, right? So

[00:32:24] Jason Crystal: Yeah. And also like the monitor the monitor mixer and the front of house mixer may be working on different things, right? Like the, a guest artist may wanna like, hear, work on their own v vocal IEM and their reverb settings while something else is being line checked out front or something is rehearsing like, like you need to sort of trust that the monitor mixers are either, uh, behaving safely with regards to shared gains, but also are aware of sort of what's happening out front and the more passive. Gear in line. The sort of safer everyone can be.

[00:32:54] Sean Walker: I trust no one. When I'm out front, I, I imagine that I'm not alone in being very particular about my gain structure and I trust no one at the other end of the snake with my gain structure. So I'm on team analog split whenever I can.

[00:33:09] Jason Crystal: Perfect. Also, also they don't exhibit firmware problems.

[00:33:14] Sean Walker: That's correct. They sure don't. And, and if it does, that's my own bad for not sorting out in the shop before I dropped it off at, you know, radio City Music Hall.

[00:33:21] Jason Crystal: correct. correct. This is, this is correct.

[00:33:24] Andy Leviss: Uh, the, the, the console support check is just gonna stay

[00:33:26] Jason Crystal: yeah.

[00:33:28] Sean Walker: Yeah. Right.

[00:33:29] Jason Crystal: Um, yeah. So that, that's sort of like the overall structure of all of that. I mean, it's a, it's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of humans, uh, sort of rapidly deploying things.

[00:33:39] Sean Walker: That's super cool, dude. How fun. What a

[00:33:41] Jason Crystal: It was, it was fun That

[00:33:42] Sean Walker: you're like listening to comm radios all day, just, you know what

[00:33:45] Jason Crystal: Yeah, I mean?

the, the calm situation, there's a lot of traffic.

Yeah. I would

[00:33:49] Andy Leviss: That, that was gonna be my next question.

[00:33:51] Jason Crystal: yeah. I wouldn't say it's, it's like it. I would be lying if I said it was a fun day. It was actually an incredibly stressful day. Uh, there were moments of fun. There were moments of like mid musical number being like, oh, this is cool. I get to mix them. That's pretty neat. Oh crap, what's next on the dock?

Right? Like, you sort of have to like, hold on for the ride.

[00:34:14] Sean Walker: But looking back must be like,

[00:34:16] Jason Crystal: I'm very like.

[00:34:16] Sean Walker: What a cool thing you got, you got to do. Right? Like

[00:34:19] Jason Crystal: I feel very lucky to have gotten to do it. I feel very, like, proud of the work. The whole audio team got an Emmy nomination, which we're all very proud

of, and, and it was a, it was a great broadcast. Uh, so I'm, I'm like very happy to have done it even if in the moment it was just like, like sort of a constant fire.

[00:34:36] Andy Leviss: That's, I I, every aspect of that production felt that

[00:34:40] Jason Crystal: Yeah, yeah,

[00:34:41] Andy Leviss: if, if you weren't a little bit stressed during that show, that's when you knew you were doing something wrong.

[00:34:45] Jason Crystal: yeah. Correct.

[00:34:46] Sean Walker: Fair enough. Fair enough. And Andy, you, you were on that gig or your wife was on that gig. One of, one of you was on that

[00:34:52] Andy Leviss: we, we were both on that. We were both on that one. Uh, that was actually the

[00:34:55] Sean Walker: you, again, second best audio engineer in your house. Yeah. Got it. Okay.

[00:35:00] Andy Leviss: Yep. That's how I regularly introduce myself. Uh, yeah, I was,

[00:35:04] Sean Walker: 'cause he doesn't wanna sleep on the couch, that's why. And he, he's a smart

[00:35:06] Andy Leviss: it's also 'cause it's true. can vouch,

[00:35:10] Jason Crystal: Why not both?

[00:35:11] Sean Walker: Right. Totally.

[00:35:13] Andy Leviss: uh, yeah, I was, I was on comms for that one. So, and yeah, I mean this, to give you an

[00:35:17] Sean Walker: did comms go?

[00:35:19] Andy Leviss: mean, it was in like, we had 90 something drops just of wireless bolero before we got to wired packs and paddles. So we had two of us working on wireless com and then another two folks only working on wired com.

[00:35:34] Sean Walker: So when Jason's throwing Bolero packs across the venue, you fucked up. I got it.

[00:35:38] Andy Leviss: was gonna say, the, the show, the, the graph for this uh, episode might just be a screenshot of mine and Jason's texts about comm stuff from that show.

[00:35:45] Jason Crystal: There we go. Yes. The, the one lucky thing we get to do at front of house that the broadcast folks don't get to do is like, once our act starts, typically I take my headset off, right? Like, like it's so particularly, I mean, the Tonys are a little bit more of a mild show, but that was a loud concert, right?

That was a full, that was a full on concert. So,

uh, you know, I'm like, I'm not gonna listen to Calm while, you know.

There's a music act

[00:36:09] Sean Walker: I'm rocking, dude. I'm mixing right now. I got stuff to do. You need me have my assistant call me?

[00:36:13] Jason Crystal: well, yeah, yeah.

Uhhuh Like I have an assistant. You're you're very funny. Yes.

Um, it was it was more like, oh, have the someone else at front of house who's wearing come throw something at me

[00:36:24] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The person crying next to me, I should have been on comp. Got

[00:36:27] Jason Crystal: yeah, yeah. That's it. That's right.

[00:36:29] Andy Leviss: Yeah, this is the poking stick.

[00:36:31] Sean Walker: Yeah, right, totally.

[00:36:32] Jason Crystal: Yeah.

[00:36:35] Sean Walker: That's funny.

[00:36:37] Jason Crystal: Um, I'm.

[00:36:37] Andy Leviss: Is there any other cool stuff you've done that we haven't touched on that you like wish we had or like you want talk? Uh, I actually, we will come back. I did remember a question I was told whenever we have you on, we need

[00:36:47] Jason Crystal: Oh, oh my,

[00:36:48] Andy Leviss: that one first.

[00:36:49] Jason Crystal: oh, uh, is if there's something else, uh, about the, uh, I think

[00:36:53] Andy Leviss: Or not, not necessarily about that show. About any, anything or any other show, any other shows you've done that we haven't touched on that you think, I mean, we've made it, I wanna point out, we've made it almost 36 and a half minutes in the episode with a single mention of the show, which you've spent probably the most time on as an associate designer, and I'm, I'm proud of us all for not having

[00:37:11] Sean Walker: 'cause I started with no theater, Andy, before this became a theater episode.

[00:37:15] Jason Crystal: that's right. Also, I think you've had a number of my colleagues on lately, so.

[00:37:19] Andy Leviss: we, we did, we, we borrowed an episode from 20,000 Hertz that had a, had a number of,

[00:37:23] Jason Crystal: Oh, got it. Fair, fair enough.

Um, yeah, I mean, would you like me to discuss

[00:37:28] Andy Leviss: I mean at, at

[00:37:28] Sean Walker: do whatever you want,

[00:37:29] Andy Leviss: we're gonna piss people off. We should, we

[00:37:31] Sean Walker: you do whatever you want. I was just being a smart

[00:37:32] Jason Crystal: I'll, I'll do the I mean, the quick version is, you know, we, we've been talking about big live events, but you know, my bread and butter is, is Broadway work and Hamilton has been a significant part of that over the past decade.

You know, I've been supervising that show, uh, on behalf of, uh, Nevin Steinberg sound designer. Uh, since it was off Broadway and it continues to be a pretty steady part of my life. So that includes both, like helping with technical supports, staffing system specification, launching of new productions, um, and it continues to, to, to chug along.

I feel very sort of lucky to be connected to that. And it's also been fun to have something that feels like it's unchanged while like, sort of my career has gone up and down and I've changed to different interests and started doing new things. Like, like Hamilton continues to like. B and uh, and the team there is great too.

So, no, I don't,

I don't have like anything, I don't think of anything like insightful to say other than that continues to be a, a big part of my life.

[00:38:29] Andy Leviss: I. I have one technical profession on that. 'cause I've, I've heard from folks there's like that you, so the folks who don't know Jason, as I was sort of joking before Jason, and one of the reasons I think we've gotten along over the years is 'cause you share a particularly nerdy bent that I have. Is that, is that a fair way to put

[00:38:45] Jason Crystal: I think that's probably

fair. I think, I.

think mutual friends would agree.

[00:38:49] Andy Leviss: Um, and, and, uh, I mean there, there's lots of cool things you've done on shows, but I, I, am I correct in understanding that like, as far as like choosing, there's some like matrix and calculation involved in which actors get, like, which Mike Elements on Hamilton? Is that, is that urban legend or is that

[00:39:04] Jason Crystal: No, I mean, I don't think it, it's not urban legend, but I also don't think it's, you know, most of that sort of mike selection stuff is, is on Nevins, uh, plate, you know, in the sense that like, my job is to implement his sound design on that show, and some of that involves. Turning it into charts and graphs and, and flow charts and spreadsheets and, you know, that.

I like that sort of thing. It's also been, it, it's tricky as I've been doing more of my own design work in the past, you know, four or five years, uh, I have a hard time letting that go. Like, that's still what I want to be doing is like turning my ideas into charts and spreadsheets. Um,

but I, I got, I got the gig.

Um,

[00:39:42] Sean Walker: I got this chart and spreadsheet that needs to be made. Write me

[00:39:44] Jason Crystal: Perfect. I'm on it. Well, I'll, I'll, uh, be between me and, uh, chat GBT We'll, we'll take,

we'll take

[00:39:50] Sean Walker: you gotta get it sorted, right?

[00:39:51] Jason Crystal: Yeah, yeah. Um, but yes, no, I mean there are, there are very specific things we do for different characters and different actors playing different characters and based on, you know, uh, whether they're a cover based on whether they're an ensemble member, based on which, which specific character they are, which is informed by what sort of costume and hat. They're in. So, yeah, I mean, after a decade of one show, you know, when, when I'm 20, 25 is the first year that we haven't teched a new production of Hamilton since it opened. Uh, which is sort of wild. We've, we've been making a lot

of them over the past few. It's crazy, right? It's like, um, and that is like both like probably good, but also like I miss my friends.

Uh, but so.

[00:40:33] Sean Walker: people? What, when you have haven't checked a new version, what do you mean?

[00:40:35] Jason Crystal: so periodically we will need to launch either a tour of the show, whether that's a US tour or an international tour. We have a sit down in London. We've done productions in Germany and Australia and New Zealand. We've sort of been a lot of different places there. There was a time where there were four US touring companies of that show. Each of those requires a full tech process, a full like setup of set up, a production out of nothing. And how do you cast it and staff it and install it and cable it and program it. And this is sort of, this had sort of become a little bit of an annual clock,

uh, you know, uh, which is, which is, which has been pretty, uh, a pretty good ride.

Um, and I'm sure there will be more of that, but this is the first year there hasn't been a new one. And, and I think that's probably fine.

[00:41:22] Sean Walker: I, I see. So your inner spreadsheet diagram is slowly dying. You're like, what the fuck? I was looking forward to four spreadsheet diagram

[00:41:28] Jason Crystal: know, but now I just make spreadsheets for other shows,

[00:41:31] Sean Walker: There you go. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, that's cool. Is that, um, just 'cause of the time it's been or just it just isn't going this year? There just aren't

[00:41:38] Jason Crystal: No, no, I, meaning, meaning like, you know, Mo, most Broadway shows are sort of lucky to run a year, and Hamilton's been very fortunate. So I think the, the fact that we've gotten to launch so many productions is very lucky. And I think this is just the first year there wasn't sort of an immediate market or need for another production of the show Somewhere in the world.

[00:41:57] Sean Walker: Got it. Got it. Cool.

[00:42:00] Andy Leviss: So, oh.

[00:42:01] Sean Walker: No, no, no. I was just gonna say, it seems like you've had an awesome run, dude, so that's fricking

[00:42:04] Jason Crystal: yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and our existing productions are still running, so we have four productions running right now, uh, worldwide. And again, there, there will probably, there, there are markets. The show hasn't hit yet, so I imagine at some point something will happen.

[00:42:16] Sean Walker: Yeah. Sweet.

[00:42:17] Andy Leviss: Hamilton Dust Musical.

[00:42:19] Jason Crystal: Yeah, we did, yeah, Hamilton Dust Musical, that was 20 20

20 20 22. We did it in

German, in Germany, it was

uh,

[00:42:26] Andy Leviss: was, I didn't realize you had

[00:42:27] Jason Crystal: look it up on Spotify. They recorded I think like a dozen of the songs in German and it's unbelievably cool.

[00:42:33] Andy Leviss: Uh, okay. I I, I'm scribbling a note to link that in the show notes. Um, so the, the question I was told, when we finally get you on, we have to ask, and I mentioned this to you, but we've been trying to get you on this show so long ago that I think you forgot I had mentioned it, is that we had, uh, con on when we were talking about how to dance in Ohio.

[00:42:50] Jason Crystal: I love Connor.

[00:42:52] Andy Leviss: Connor's awesome. And, um, and Connor was like, if you talk to Jason, you gotta hear about the whole, like the, like the big like max MSP knob thing he did on softs.

[00:43:02] Jason Crystal: Oh, oh my gosh. Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll do the quick version. So it wasn't, it wasn't in Maxims p it was all in a Python script on a Dimitri frame, but same, same difference basically. So, uh, I was a sound designer for Broadway show called Softs, uh, and it's currently on tour in the us so check it out. Uh, the. On the Broadway production, I installed a sound system that could sort of variably split all of the vocal parts.

Not just pan, but also like in an infinite number of ways. So essentially what I wanted to do was have the ability to separate out voices, uh, horizontally as you look at the stage, but not necessarily by tracking, not like as you move stage, right. You're hearing it more from that. Speaker, I wanted to give the engineer a knob, which would basically separate out and condense the voices, uh, based on what was happening in a particular musical number to be used in basically the big events.

The, the, the show relies heavily on moments where the whole cast is singing. And what I didn't wanna do is have all those voices pile up in a single speaker, because I sometimes find that harsh, or at least unmusical. And this was a way to sort of spread it out. Uh. Sonically, not just like in terms of like technology.

So the long and short of it is there was an encoder on the console, which is a digital quantum seven mapped to uh, a fader on a Dmitri frame. Dmitri was running our system processing speaker processing. And system matrixing. And that knob mapped to a fader, which a Python script was constantly watching.

And what that fader would do would route different bus inputs to Dmitri to different speakers at a variable level. In the end, what it allowed us to do was like, in this moment, we would like the spread of the cast rather than just having a, like say on a stereo channel, you might have a spread, like I might just hit my mic.

You might have a stereo spread that is wide or mono. This is the extreme version of that, where at the center. All the voices go to all of the vocal speakers, but at the extreme end, you may have a single voice only coming out of one speaker. That might be all the way on one side of the stage, which would, would be too extreme.

So we were playing with essentially mixing and spreading voices based on what was happening musically.

[00:45:19] Sean Walker: And for us non programming nerds is that simple. Similar to how they're doing immersive now with like Elisa and whatever the DMV thing is and stuff so that they're like, can move it around.

[00:45:29] Jason Crystal: It's sim, it's similar. This was, uh, similar perhaps result. This was much less about localization and more about experience. So one of the things we were also doing was playing with like, perhaps at the extreme ends of this knob. It's also going into the surrounds. It wasn't meant to be believable. It wasn't meant to be like.

Oh, now it sounds like that person's voice is coming from their face and not from a speaker. 'cause that was actually sort of the goal. The whole show is a very sort of traditional, uh, traditional musical that way. It's, it's not a rock musical. Um, and so my hope is that you actually believed the person all the time. Uh, what it was doing though was only in use when it was big groups. Uh,

so, so yeah, it was, it was more for an effect of a, of a crowd and rather than like individuals being localized.

[00:46:16] Andy Leviss: So,

[00:46:17] Sean Walker: what a fricking cool thing,

[00:46:18] Jason Crystal: It was fun. Yeah, it

[00:46:19] Andy Leviss: yeah, and correct me if I'm misunderstanding, then it's 'cause the goal with like a Spatialization approach is that. You've got that, that positioning and everybody in the theater is as much as technically possible hearing the same thing no matter where they are. It sounds like here, broad picture, macro, everybody's hearing effectively the same show, but like depending on where you are, you're hearing a slightly different balance of the voices and, and being okay with that.

'cause that's giving you that clarity and depth.

[00:46:46] Jason Crystal: Yes. And also, not only might you hear a different, uh, again, we would, we would never go to the extreme, but like what you might hear, not just a different like arrival of different voices. What you also might hear is which side people are arriving from. So like, almost everybody is in the field of at least two speakers, right?

So like, rather than being like. Everyone's at the speaker at the far end of the theater where no one can hear them. Maybe it's, maybe it's panning, maybe it's panning far left. Maybe it's panning a little bit left. So you are maybe getting a different spread if you're not getting a different amplitude of each voice. Now,

that was a rabbit hole.

[00:47:23] Sean Walker: That's, that's cool though. And how, like you just decided one day like, fuck it, I'm gonna code this Python thing in this box and it, it's gonna work. Like how do you, where do you, how do you get

[00:47:34] Jason Crystal: I mean, my, my background is in engineering and computer science. Uh, I was

[00:47:38] Sean Walker: Oh, so an actual engineer rather than us just claiming to be engineers. Got it.

[00:47:42] Jason Crystal: yes. Like, like, like a real engineer, not like,

[00:47:44] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah. No, like my fake engineer asked like a real engineer. Got it.

[00:47:48] Jason Crystal: Um, so I, coding and computers have always been a fun, I don't know, job, hobby class, I don't know, something.

And so opportunities to be geeky with that stuff are, are few and far between.

So I

[00:48:01] Sean Walker: dude. So fun.

[00:48:04] Jason Crystal: Um, yeah.

[00:48:07] Sean Walker: Nope. Lost it. Sorry guys.

[00:48:08] Jason Crystal: Cool.

[00:48:09] Andy Leviss: I would say usually going up on a question is my job.

[00:48:13] Jason Crystal: Um,

what else? What else can I tell y'all?

[00:48:17] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say that was gonna be my next question was, is there anything you, you wish we'd asked you that we haven't yet?

[00:48:22] Sean Walker: What's for fricking brunch when we come visit? That's what I want to know, dude.

[00:48:25] Jason Crystal: right. Well, well,

[00:48:26] Andy Leviss: Uh, I was gonna say, yeah, I was gonna say, what's your, what's your favorite pizza place, but what's your favorite brunch spot?

[00:48:31] Jason Crystal: Oh my gosh. I'm like, I have two small

children, so my brunch spot is like whatever the closest spot is.

[00:48:37] Sean Walker: Right someplace between home, Starbucks and whatever. I was able to wrangle out of that loophole to go do something that actually is delicious. Right? Yet

[00:48:46] Jason Crystal: Yes. This is

[00:48:47] Sean Walker: my mine are eight and 11. I get it. Dad,

[00:48:48] Jason Crystal: Ah, yes. Great.

[00:48:50] Sean Walker: oh my God, we gotta get some go. We got the family's gotta do this, and you're like.

I wouldn't mind something that did not taste like rubber eggs out

[00:48:56] Jason Crystal: Yes. Yes. The sooner we feed them, the less likely they are to turn into tiny monsters.

[00:49:02] Sean Walker: muti me. Right. Like

[00:49:03] Jason Crystal: Yes. Yes. This, this is

[00:49:05] Andy Leviss: It's similar to stadiums in that way.

[00:49:07] Sean Walker: yeah. Right. Totally.

[00:49:08] Jason Crystal: Um, no, I think, I mean, I think that that covers it. I mean, I don't, I don't know. Um. I didn't, your discord seems so active. I'm like super curious. Uh, I'm gonna have

[00:49:19] Sean Walker: Dude. Come party.

[00:49:20] Jason Crystal: I'm gonna have to go, I'm gonna have to come figure out what that's all about,

[00:49:22] Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, you should drop in and we'll see if people have ques, because I'm sure folks will have questions about like any or many of these gigs. I mean, yeah, there's, uh, I'm trying to, I know you've gotta go in a couple minutes too. I'm trying to think if there's anything else we want to touch on before you go.

Um. I said the only question that comes up, like I think could rapidly get into a much larger question, which is just how much, if any, involvement did you guys have on the filming of Hamilton?

[00:49:47] Jason Crystal: Oh, uh, that's actually a pretty, that's a pretty short answer

in that, uh, I was, I was part of getting it. Captured, like get all of the rehearsals and performances that were done to record the show. Um, I was involved in like making sure they had proper mixes and splits and, and backups and multi-tracks and sort of helping the technical implementation of the actual recording.

On those days. We did the taping, um, the actual eventual mixdown. Um, I was not involved and Nevin I think certainly was, um, I just got to, you know, enjoy.

[00:50:22] Sean Walker: Did her.

[00:50:23] Jason Crystal: Yeah, it was cool.

Um, they did a, they did a pretty good job with that. That was pretty amazing.

[00:50:28] Sean Walker: That's awesome. Well, Jason, thank you for hanging out for the hour, man. I really appreciate it, dude.

[00:50:32] Jason Crystal: Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I felt, uh, I felt we, we, we bopped around a bunch, so I hope, I hope I didn't, uh, you know, scatter scatter things too far,

but,

[00:50:41] Sean Walker: man, it was

[00:50:41] Andy Leviss: that, that, that's the, the way we live here.

[00:50:44] Jason Crystal: Okay,

cool.

[00:50:45] Sean Walker: And, and mostly man, to be really candid, the audience is just looking for perspective like. What I mean, we're all just, all of us are all, don't tell anybody, but we all got a little bit of imposter syndrome going, you know what I mean? And so to hear about

[00:50:58] Jason Crystal: Tell me about it. I'm, I'm Right,

there with you all,

[00:51:00] Sean Walker: right.

[00:51:00] Andy Leviss: still alive.

[00:51:01] Sean Walker: Oh shit. Sorry dude,

[00:51:03] Jason Crystal: every, every gig for me is that I, I know, that feeling.

[00:51:06] Sean Walker: Yeah. but when you just hear about other people, you're like, oh man, cool dude. They're just people doing people stuff and it's, it's really cool. And then that's what a lot of people are looking for. So it was perfect, man.

Thanks for hanging out and being candid and funny and you know, just being cool, man. We appreciate you.

[00:51:20] Jason Crystal: Absolutely. Thank you. Uh, thank you guys for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:51:23] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Well thanks to, uh, Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us yap about audio for another week. And that's the pod y'all. See you next week.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green