312. Live Sound “Renaissance Man” Danny Abelson

Sean and Andy start off 2026 with a bang, as live sound “renaissance man” Danny Abelson joins the show to discuss a wide range of bold positions, from how to prepare for a career in live audio to whether or not the quality of sound at shows today has kept up with the quality of the gear available to us to use at them. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

With a 50-plus-year career that started as a teenager working in New York City in the middle of “anything and everything” in the live music industry in the 70s, becoming friends and eventually in-laws with one of Clair’s first employees, as well as having one of the Taits as another in-law, if you saw Danny’s life story in a movie, you might not believe it’s real! From touring with the Eagles and Cheap Trick in the 70s to a theatre degree in the 80s and mixing NFL, MLB, and D1 sports, as well as long tenures on the manufacturing/distribution side of the industry for companies ranging from Turbosound to ATI mixing consoles, high-density Wi-Fi and ultrasonic signaling, and installations in venues as varied as Carnegie Hall, the Grand Ole Opry, and Lambeau Field, there’s quite literally nothing in the live sound field that Danny hasn’t done at some point!

Danny has written many articles published in Live Sound and FOH magazines, and currently writes the monthly “FOH-At-Large” column with close friend and writing partner Dave Natale for front of house. He is member of the Parnelli Awards Board of Advisors.

Episode Links:
Danny Abelson Archive On ProSoundWeb
Signal To Noise Episode 57 With Wayne Pauley
Signal To Noise Episode 287 The Return Of Wayne Pauley
FOH Blog Meet The New Guys
Episode 312 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 312 - Danny Abelson

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 Leviss. And with me the horn to my wolfer, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean?

[00:01:10] Sean Walker: Do you keep these in a database someplace, bro? Like how do you, how do you do

[00:01:13] Andy Leviss: I use the dad-a-base it's the, the one that I keep on my dad jokes filed in. It's a DAD-a-base

[00:01:19] Sean Walker: Yeah. Uh,

[00:01:23] Andy Leviss: you can't see. I, I can't move the laptop to show you. There's actually a sticker on there that says I keep all my dad jokes in a dad-a-base on

[00:01:29] Sean Walker: oh my God. DADA or D-A-D-D-A

[00:01:32] Andy Leviss: D yeah. DAD Uh, base.

[00:01:34] Sean Walker: I'm great, man. I'm great. I'm, how are you?

[00:01:37] Andy Leviss: I'm good. We had, uh, we started getting a little, uh, what's the technical term? Wintry mix.

[00:01:43] Sean Walker: All right. Some snow and rain all

[00:01:45] Andy Leviss: some snow. But there was some, yeah, there was some pretty snow. Like spent a minute last night in, in the moonlight under the big evergreen in my neighbor's yard, uh, with the snow trickling down.

It was very, very, uh, classic, uh, you know, I was missing the Coca-Cola to, to be an ad, but,

[00:02:02] Sean Walker: Right. Polar bears and slays and the whole bit.

[00:02:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Oh no, I, I had those.

[00:02:05] Sean Walker: Oh yeah.

[00:02:06] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

[00:02:08] Sean Walker: Those were charging down the street, but everything else like Yeah.

[00:02:12] Andy Leviss: But, uh, yeah, no, just, just winding down from Thanksgiving and up for, uh, Hanukkah and Christmas.

[00:02:17] Sean Walker: Yep. For sure, dude. For sure. Yeah, I get it, man. We we're just raining here 'cause you know Seattle. Yeah, yeah. We don't, we would love a white Christmas someday. You know what I mean?

[00:02:30] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Fair enough. Um, well, we should, I mean, I don't know if you've got anything else you wanna do before, or if we should jump in and introduce our guest and, uh,

[00:02:39] Sean Walker: No, man. He's way more interesting than we are. Let's, let's introduce him.

[00:02:41] Andy Leviss: Uh, so, uh, Danny, you wanna introduce yourself, uh, tell folks a little bit about you.

[00:02:46] Danny Abelson: Hi, I am Danny Abelson. I am, uh, a member of our wonderful professional audio community for some time now. Uh, my background is such that, uh, after foolishly starting as a lighting person, I came to my senses and starting doing audio in, in the New York City area as a teenager in the seventies, uh, I continued on, uh, with an education in both lighting and sound.

Uh, these are very, very early days in terms of sound education. This is a university program, still trying to figure itself out. Uh, but, uh, coming outta college, uh, I leveraged the technical relationships that I still had, uh, in New York City. And I ended up getting a connection to the folks at Turbo Sound, who were a fledgling English loudspeaker manufacturer in the seventies, and had some very interesting proprietary technology that they were developing.

And in proper British colonial fashion, they were here to take over America. And so I joined the firm initially as the VP of sales responsible for sales in the States. And my earliest customers were fledgling little businesses that I would say did pretty well over time, like eighth day sound and,

[00:04:06] Sean Walker: Oh, those little guys?

[00:04:07] Danny Abelson: Those little guys and Tom Marcos still remains a very close friend of mine to, to this day. And I'm in awe of what those folks built, and it takes a village to do it. And Tom built a heck of a village. Uh, and I was also fortunate that I had family, uh, that worked for Claire Brothers, um, back to the early seventies, and that had a lot of, lot to do with getting me into places that I might not have had the opportunity to get before and exposed to a lot of things at a very early age.

Anyway, continuing on, I was involved with two professional, uh, product lines, predominantly turbo sound in the eighties and nineties, uh, which would be the TMS series, TMS three, tms, four touring enclosures, and then moving on to flashlight and floodlight in the nineties. Uh, I was also involved in pioneering the a TI Paragon Console.

To the touring world. So for those of you, uh, who remember that desk, uh, it had its challenges, uh, particularly

[00:05:06] Andy Leviss: for Wayne Polly, it still does.

[00:05:08] Danny Abelson: uh, for, for weight. We haven't been able to change that. But, uh, the bottom line is you can argue that it may have been the best sounding analog desk ever made, you know, clipped a plus 24.

I mean, it was ridiculous. John McBride, bless him, still I understand, uses the desk when he goes out. It just goes to show

[00:05:27] Andy Leviss: Wayne, we've had Wayne on and talk to Wayne's got two, he's got a full size one and he is got a custom like half, or we'll call it two. Third size one.

[00:05:35] Danny Abelson: Fantastic. And so,

[00:05:37] Andy Leviss: out with, uh, Lee Bryce. Right.

[00:05:39] Sean Walker: Yep.

[00:05:40] Danny Abelson: and so, that was a wonderful pair of products to be involved with because my clients were the biggest players in the sound reinforcement business. And so I, you know, just considered myself very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, working with some great technologies that, uh. The various designers have, have come up with

[00:06:03] Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. I, uh, don't have the space for a paragon at my. Little shop here, but I do have three of the a TI pro sixes, which are just rack mount channel strips outta

[00:06:13] Danny Abelson: I know them well.

[00:06:15] Sean Walker: So good.

[00:06:16] Danny Abelson: Yep. I had them for years actually. I installed them at Lambo Field to basically be the front end of the system because, um, we were exploring things like taking what had been used, you know, when people started to use, uh, supermarket doormats to trigger gates, we started to do something similar in that, uh, in stadium environments.

I did a lot of NFL football and stadium environments. We'd put a Pro six in and we basically give a switch to the announcer and we would teach him that he keys his own gate. It cut a lot of noise outta the system and of course gave gave us a, you know, particularly forgiving front end.

[00:06:59] Sean Walker: totally.

[00:06:59] Danny Abelson: So all of that stuff, Chris Drumm and name you don't hear about very often from, from the Portland area originally.

Chris Drumm was one of the great circuit designers are industry, uh, has developed sadly, uh, left us too early, but that was one hell of a desk. I do have one channel strip in that I just keep and take out occasionally and stare at the quality of the board layout.

[00:07:26] Andy Leviss: by rub it, my precious,

[00:07:29] Danny Abelson: Uh, kind of, but, you know, he did some interesting things. He developed what he called an autoformer. It was on a chip. It was on a sip, but it basically, uh, uh, behaved like an input transformer

[00:07:42] Andy Leviss: huh?

[00:07:42] Danny Abelson: at, at less weight.

[00:07:44] Sean Walker: cool.

[00:07:44] Danny Abelson: So he realized he needed a transformer type design. But he didn't want the weight of the transformers.

Now gentlemen, God forbid what that, what that console would've weighed if it actually had iron in it.

[00:07:58] Sean Walker: Right. It's already heavy enough. You gotta have like

[00:08:00] Andy Leviss: Oh my God.

[00:08:01] Sean Walker: people. Its takes a crane to put it

[00:08:02] Danny Abelson: Well, well, well, and the dirty little secret is you can't turn it in a truck. So, you know, it's a very, very naughty little piece of kit to take out.

[00:08:12] Sean Walker: Totally,

[00:08:13] Danny Abelson: I'll just leave it at that.

[00:08:14] Sean Walker: totally. But usually worth it if you've got the space and the ability.

[00:08:19] Danny Abelson: Yeah. You know, we're old fashioned and, and it's an old fashioned play, isn't it?

[00:08:24] Sean Walker: I mean, listening to Wayne Mix Lee Bryce on that desk the first time, I was like, I'm gonna put my console through table saw. Like, what am I doing here? This is like, I should just give this up now. You know what I mean? It's fricking insane. It sounds so good.

[00:08:37] Danny Abelson: in his defense, there's a whole lot more than the desk.

[00:08:40] Sean Walker: Of course there

[00:08:41] Danny Abelson: right, right.

[00:08:41] Sean Walker: ripping. He's incredible.

The PA was kick ass like it. It was a lot of things, you know what I mean? It's not just the desk, but it was still a fricking, you know, it was incredible to experience.

[00:08:52] Danny Abelson: You know, I think one of the, one of the, the, the, the chalice that we're all going for is that combination that you just laid out, where the PA's right, the mixer iss. Right. The band is, right now we have lightning in a bottle potentially, and that is, I think, a pretty good elixir for losing all this fricking sleep We lose in, in doing this work or the fact that we're not with our families.

Or you can fill in, you know, many other blanks here of the sacrifices that the people that are listening to this podcast take to be able to do this work. And I'm just saying I greatly appreciate it when the balance of those elements are right.

[00:09:33] Sean Walker: Absolutely.

[00:09:35] Andy Leviss: Yep. So, I mean, there's, so, it's so, so, uh, Danny, when we were like coordinating this episode, sent us a whole list of like, potential topics that are literally just like a list of fight starters. It's, it's, it was awesome. I was, I was like, any one of

[00:09:51] Sean Walker: start some fights.

[00:09:51] Andy Leviss: any one of

[00:09:52] Danny Abelson: You know, okay. Lemme, I gotta, lemme go.

[00:09:54] Andy Leviss: Danny sitting there like ripping the pin out and thrown into a room full of audio engineers.

[00:09:58] Danny Abelson: Well, I'm, I'm, I'm old and candid.

[00:10:02] Andy Leviss: I, I love it.

[00:10:03] Danny Abelson: and the, and the realities are that I have fortunate enough to be around and taught by some pretty amazing practitioners of the craft and, and was able to see that at a young age. So if people start to trust you, then you get access into more places, of course. And for me, um, that, that's really where I learned, you know, it takes a certain attitude to survive here and a cynicism, a deep and crusty cynicism in my opinion.

But when you have that, they can be incredibly useful assets, you know, personality assets and being effective on a gig.

[00:10:50] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:10:51] Danny Abelson: 'cause my attitude is something's gonna go wrong. You better find it before your client does.

[00:10:57] Sean Walker: A hundred percent.

[00:10:58] Andy Leviss: Uhhuh.

[00:10:58] Danny Abelson: Yeah. And I've even been in a situation, I'll tell you something I knew and, and this can, so that's all about job preservation, right?

Is identifying the problem and hopefully resolving it before your client discovers it, or at least being aware of it before your client discovers it. That's half the battle. So, in a stadium environment, you have people walking all over the stadium who are actually monitoring the audio visual system. So there's 2000 screens, flat panel displays in a typical NFL stadium.

Somebody's gotta walk those and just make sure they're happening. If you go into a club space and there's screens that are dead, you sure wanna be working on that problem before your client. Gets a phone call from the manager of that club area saying, I got two screens that are down.

[00:11:44] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:11:45] Danny Abelson: I think it's very, very similar in any kind of concert environment, which is, you know, I'm sort of constantly patrolling for the things that are gonna trip me up and maybe I can't fix them, maybe I can't resolve everything, but if I at least have knowledge of it before it comes to my attention formally, I just think we're giving a better service to the client and we're increasing the likelihood that we'll be asked back.

[00:12:17] Sean Walker: I mean, that's, that's all we're selling is customer service and trust, man, right? Like, that's it. You can, you can rent or buy black or brown speaker boxes anywhere in the world. The reason we're in that seat is

[00:12:26] Andy Leviss: Or blue or purple.

[00:12:27] Sean Walker: service.

[00:12:28] Danny Abelson: This might be an exception. I'll, we'll come back to that. I, I think this might be exceptionally a good time to launch one of these grenades of which we're referred

[00:12:36] Sean Walker: Oh, I love grenades. Let's do it

[00:12:37] Andy Leviss: Let's go.

[00:12:38] Danny Abelson: All right. So, so I, uh, I am fortunate in that when I started, the industry was just coming into developing products specifically for sound reinforcement.

So I will remember at, you know, probably 17, I saw the first chassis for a Claire Folding console. Okay. So if you think of, if you know the folding console, for those of you who don't, I strongly suggest you go, uh, have a look. It was designed by Bruce Jackson and Ron Borthwick. It had the first meet input meters on every input of any desk, and it had the first parametric EQ on a live console.

Uh. That was the first, in my opinion, really, really deeply designed from scratch to meet the needs of the day. Harry McCune of McCune Audio in San Francisco had designed earlier consoles for live sound. They just didn't have the depth of feature. And so to have that and then to be around the first year when s fours were were deployed, which was 1974, to be able to watch the industry come into its own and start to design its own equipment.

All right, so as we go forward, the equipment is improving and improving and improving, and improving and and improving. And I'm starting to realize that quality sound comes not from the equipment. It is simply a kit. That we have, thankfully, now much greater accessibility to, as, for example, a regional sound company now has, oh my gosh.

Technologies you couldn't co even comprehend having 30 years ago

[00:14:31] Sean Walker: Oh dude, I've got tools in my company that most people would've killed for in the seventies or eighties.

[00:14:35] Danny Abelson: Right. If we understood how to use them.

[00:14:37] Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

[00:14:38] Danny Abelson: Okay. Okay. Okay. You're, you're assuming we,

[00:14:41] Sean Walker: somebody to have the array that I've got

[00:14:42] Danny Abelson: you're assu, you're assuming we did. Um, but I believe that sound reinforcement is an 80% human, 20% equipment activity. And the analogy that I like to, and I realize this and remember, I'm a manufacturer guy.

I spent my life developing technologies. I get it. But what I realize is the degree of entropy that we have in concert sound, think about it. Entropy starts when you walk in, in the, you walk off the buzz, you walk in, in the morning, the entropy begins. What don't I know that's gonna happen in this building that I don't have control over, or perhaps I'm not aware of yet

[00:15:25] Sean Walker: so much.

[00:15:26] Danny Abelson: so much, but that's why we like it.

And it doesn't have a rewind button. But my point is, kit doesn't help you manage the fact that you don't have a rewind button. That's human element. And so what I'm saying is I am, at this point in my career, much more interested in the human element that makes lives sound successful because I think the kits kind of flattened out in a lot of ways for everybody who's participating.

And therefore that puts, as I said in my notes to you guys, that puts a lot of responsibility on the 80 percenters like us. And, and to me that that whole human element and how we manage this is, has been fascinating for, you know, in, in terms of my own study.

[00:16:22] Sean Walker: A hundred percent man. A hundred percent. Like all the, like since we're talking about music, all the top tours in the world only have two or three different speakers. Not even the manufacturers, literally two or three different speaker models on them. So it's not the kit that makes one sound stunning and the other not right.

It's the way that the people have deployed and then operate the kit that make it so fricking good or not good, you know?

[00:16:50] Danny Abelson: And I think it's important for us to find a way to keep helping the younger folks that are coming into this community get all of the resources they need. To be successful. Now I'm thrilled. There are those that have started to address the mental health challenges in touring. That's brilliant. Let me tell you something that was not on the radar screen until only really probably the last 10, 15 years, right?

I mean, keep in mind, my brother-in-law drove the truck, unloaded the gear. When they got to the venue, mixed monitors, did the out, put it back in the truck and drove. There were no drivers and people are gonna go, what? No folks. There were no drivers. The crew drove. So think of the mental health stresses associated with that, and at a very early age, I realized I probably was not cut out for the marathon type touring that my brother-in-law was doing.

I'm just gonna be straight. It's, I realized, wow, that was, that is really hard on him. And so I chose to work in a supporting role as I built my career more on the manufacturer side than being out all the time. But it still gave me a lot of access to large shows and being able to apply my craft, uh, in challenging environments, but not having to be out all the time.

And I'm happy to say I'm, you know, I'm still on my first marriage.

[00:18:32] Sean Walker: Nice. Us too, man.

[00:18:34] Danny Abelson: Good. Keep it up. It's worth, it's, it's, it's worth it. The

[00:18:38] Sean Walker: I'm, I'm on that divorce prevention program.

[00:18:40] Danny Abelson: The word The

[00:18:41] Sean Walker: nice things. I treat her well. You know what I.

[00:18:44] Danny Abelson: Yeah. I just, the, they don't, the alternatives don't seem appealing.

[00:18:48] Sean Walker: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

[00:18:50] Danny Abelson: So, and my wife's tolerant and remember I was fortunate. She grew up in a family where she had a brother that worked for CLA Brothers, so I didn't have to like plow that.

[00:18:59] Andy Leviss: she, she knew what she was in for.

[00:19:00] Sean Walker: Yeah. There was no explaining. You were like,

[00:19:02] Danny Abelson: and she was, yeah. She knew what she was in for. Yeah. And, uh,

[00:19:08] Sean Walker: that's awesome.

[00:19:13] Andy Leviss: Uh,

[00:19:14] Danny Abelson: go man.

[00:19:15] Andy Leviss: go, go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:19:16] Danny Abelson: No, I was just gonna say I saw, so to me, as you know, someone who writes, uh, for front of house, I wrote for Keith Clark and, and Live Sound for a long time, they're wonderful opportunities to be able to sort of pick at a particularly interesting topic. But what I find going forward is I'm not the guy who goes in and writes on on a tour and says, we use this speaker and that speaker and they did this, and they did that.

That really is kind of just executing the table stakes that are required to do the work I'm interested in. Or what are the human elements of these people getting slammed together. I'll give you an example. As I went and heard an Oasis show, really, which they did a great job. Okay. And it was a combination of a regional sound company who had been doing Noel Gallagher.

This is Urban Audio, uh, from I believe Manchester. Okay. And Britannia Row partnering together. Super successful. But was interesting is we had a band, the band had a crew. This is not news. The brothers broke up. For those of you who don't know, they broke up at a gig right before the gig. Nice. And they were the headliner.

Okay. This is well known. Okay. They split. They don't talk for 15 years supposedly. Right. And then. They have their own career. So they stand up to independent crews. So now we have these two crews. So we have an expanded crew. Some of the original guys, they split, they've, they've fortified them with additional people.

They do the work, the brothers decide to come together. I have a theory for why that might be the case, but the brothers decide to come together. It's always, always commercial, isn't it?

[00:20:57] Sean Walker: I mean, everybody's got a mortgage to pay Bud, right?

[00:21:00] Danny Abelson: excuse me, everybody's gotta eat.

[00:21:03] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:04] Danny Abelson: Um, correct. But when they came together, they didn't thin out the crews. They took both front of house guys and two front of house consoles. And they took both monitor guys and both monitor consoles. They didn't have to, it's not that big a band. There's not that many inputs.

Okay. But they realized. The investment. Here's another thing, and this is a peeve. Here's a grenade that we can throw that I think will have a lot of, uh, uh, uh, acknowledgement in this group listening, which is, you know, sets to set designers deciding where loudspeakers go. In the case of Oasis, what I loved was sound got lo location selection first.

So speaker placement came first, which meant that the speaker designers, with all the modeling that we, predictive modeling that we now have for every venue, were able to determine where they wanted things to be. So when you walk into the show, you realize there's significant array arrays in front of video, in sight lines, but the speakers are where they want 'em, and then they make the extra investment to bring on two more engineers to keep the account consistent and happy.

When we look back at this particular tour, it's going to be deemed to have been wildly successful for a lot of reasons. But one of them is because, and I, I actually encourage this in a note. When I reviewed the show, Hey, management, pay attention. These guys did, they spent the money, it didn't pick their pocket.

They got fantastic results. So my point is, there's more than one way to skin a cat and sometimes bringing more people and more kit so that you maintain continuity with the way the touring organization needs to work. Uh, you know, is often called for but rarely done.

[00:23:10] Sean Walker: I bet they had a lot less burnout and a lot happier camp on that whole run, huh?

[00:23:14] Danny Abelson: Well, I'll be able to tell you more. I'm going to, uh, follow up with those both the front of house engineers because I'm sure there's some, some amazing lessons learned. Remember, they all, they were was the biggest thing. And it is one thing to go to a stadium show and you know, the floor is seated. It's a bunch of people, but you know, this is an entire GA floor. So they have a lot of people in the venue and, and, uh, you know, hats off to the partnership between Urban Audio and, and Bertan Row.

[00:23:52] Sean Walker: Totally. And how it sound, was it great.

[00:23:54] Danny Abelson: I thought it sounded great.

[00:23:55] Sean Walker: Awesome.

[00:23:56] Danny Abelson: Um, I thought they did a really good job. I'm gonna, full disclosure, I did not, I was not super familiar with the, with the program, you know, with the material. I've since become more familiar with it, but I am, uh, really in awe of the great job they did with absolutely no drama.

This was an act that had a lot of drama around it. You know, when they, when they went back out. And I think what's happened is the promoters realized, wow, there, this, this just delivered, you know,

[00:24:27] Sean Walker: dude. That's great.

[00:24:29] Danny Abelson: So it's good. It's good. And, you know, our industry needs these acts, you know, because the acts that have been really filling the sta some of these stadium shows, not all of them, but some of these stadium shows are simply not gonna be able to work, you know, going forward just due to attrition. So to see an act from the nineties come up and be able to fill stadiums is good for our industry.

[00:24:54] Sean Walker: Oh yeah, totally. That's a good segue into the next grenade that you mentioned here. Number five. Many folks don't understand how the entertainment industry works, therefore they may not understand their role in it as a business. I really encourage the young people I speak to to learn more about how the live concert production industry works from a financial perspective.

Can you elaborate on that? 'cause I agree wholeheartedly.

[00:25:17] Andy Leviss: This has Sean written all over it. I knew if he had to pick one.

[00:25:20] Sean Walker: Yep. Could you elaborate on that, Danny?

[00:25:22] Danny Abelson: Well, I can condense it, follow the money, um, realize that everybody has a role to play. You have a role to play. And it may be that's not a sexy role, but it doesn't mean that it's not important. You know, I talked about being a 20-year-old ki kid pulling lighting cable. Not a fun job, but it's an important job when that trunk has to be at the truck at that time, ready to go.

So my point is, even the smallest in a touring organization are important, but we live in a business climate and we're all here because people are, are, are in a business to make money. And that includes the. You may be an independent contractor, but you're working for the sound company. You may be an employee, you're working for the sound company.

The sound company is obviously either working for management or for the promoter. I would say more and more these days, that's a direct promoter relationship just because of the sort of natural maturity of the audio business. Uh, and, and, and by the way, the promoting business, if you think about it, if we had, if we still had the network of regional promoters, it would be very, very difficult to do these national tours the same way that we packaged them, the same way we do now.

So all of this, I think, uh, came together, but it's worth studying the history of cons of the concert industry, not related to audio and understand that unlike the national promoter, uh, scenarios that we have now, uh, you know, for example with OnIt and Live Nation. It was a patchwork of independent promoters around the country who were all bought up by Live Nation to create what we have or ons to create what we have now.

But I think it's worth, for those of you who are working in the industry, to have an idea of, of how this metamorphosized into the incredibly condensed, uh, service business with very few players. I mean, I really feel like the industry is, has matured incredibly well. And, you know, a, a tip of the hat to the Claire's who have done a fantastic job consolidating, uh, a series of really fantastic company, uh, companies.

I'm particularly, uh, proud for lack of a better term, that the two. In my opinion, the two principle purchases that Claire made were Britannia Row and eighth Day, which I argue were number two and three in terms of the, you know, overall size, um, globally. And those were both companies that built their business on tms, three's, flashlight and floodlight systems.

And the only reason they might not have a turbo sound system now is because we were not a company that was ready to transition to line source technology. We just weren't there.

[00:28:34] Sean Walker: Totally

[00:28:35] Danny Abelson: Yep. And I, and, and I so admire what

[00:28:37] Sean Walker: I don't know about the line source part, but totally on the business part. Like they're, they're executed the playbook flawlessly right now. You know what I mean? Like, like it or not, from the, from the small people in the industry. Like they're just, they're just knocking outta the park business wise, you know?

[00:28:52] Danny Abelson: well in the, in, in, in fairness, I mean, I, if you ask me who built the sound business, it's a small group of people, but Roy Claire is certainly amongst the. Larger players in that discussion. And Roy did a brilliant job and he is a brilliant, brilliant business builder and have deep respect for him and what, you know, his nephew Troy has done is spectacular.

I mean, Troy's taken the business and just expanded it, supersized it to the point where he really has a global footprint. It's fantastic.

[00:29:29] Sean Walker: Totally,

[00:29:30] Danny Abelson: And,

[00:29:30] Sean Walker: and he is making it hard for other shops to compete at this point, you know?

[00:29:35] Danny Abelson: I would imagine, I'm not involved in those discussions, of course, but I, I have, you know, there's not, when, when you have the, the companies under your umbrella that they have, they're gonna be a natural choice for an enormous part of the production community. Just leave it at that. I mean it so. I would imagine being a smaller player with sort of national aspirations, I would argue that you're pushing a bigger rock up a steeper hill than you were 20 years ago.

[00:30:13] Sean Walker: Totally. That's why we don't do concerts.

[00:30:16] Danny Abelson: It's smart.

[00:30:17] Sean Walker: That's why we stick to corporate

[00:30:18] Danny Abelson: There's corporate work, right? 'cause there's margin.

[00:30:20] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah. There is.

[00:30:22] Danny Abelson: There's margin.

[00:30:23] Sean Walker: Yeah, there is.

[00:30:24] Danny Abelson: Right.

[00:30:25] Sean Walker: And you know, without giving away all the trade secrets here in corporate work, the biggest competitor is not doing a great job. Whereas in concert work, the biggest competitor being clear is by and large doing a great job.

Or, do you know what I mean? Like they, they, yeah, totally. So, uh, as a small regional, it makes privates and corporates a whole lot more attractive and lucrative for us. Right. Which is, you know, much, much less interesting than mixing stadium rock shows, but, you know, it, it pays the bills.

[00:31:05] Danny Abelson: everybody's got to eat.

[00:31:06] Sean Walker: Everybody's gotta eat. Okay, next one that I, that I got. The best thing a young engineer can do to prepare for a long audio career is to learn how to play an instrument. Ideally piano. If you learn piano, you learn how to read music and can talk to the musicians in their language, I think that is fricking awesome. Then you're not coming up on stage.

Like if you're, especially if you're starting and you're in a small environment, you're not charging on stage going, yeah, turn this down. You need to do this, you need to do that. You can, you're also a musician. You can come at them up from the same side of the table, right? You're not like sitting across the table and negotiating, arguing.

You can get on their side of the table and go, Hey man, I get what you're trying to do here, and I, and I, I'm with it. Uh, you know, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever. Right? You can have a more civil conversation and talk to them like humans and like musicians, rather than come at 'em like a grumpy front of house tech, right?

[00:32:01] Danny Abelson: I think you're more one of them. If you can speak their language now, I don't expect you to have the theory basis that they're gonna have. And full disclosure, I mean, I started playing piano as a young kid and I got bored and I didn't wanna learn to read and I went to play guitar. Okay. But sitting here today realizing I would've been a lot smarter if I just stayed with the piano because it would've given me the ability to read and at least I could, uh, speak the language, um, when necessary.

Now, uh, it's interesting. I kind of think the holy grail for a front of house engineer, and this happens so rarely, so rarely, is when a front of house engineer can go up and make a musical change on stage. Doesn't happen very often, but I've seen it a couple of times and you need to be someone who came from, I mean, I think you're probably talking about someone who grew up as a gigging musician and then transitioned to be a sound engineer.

So one, one example I will give of this, uh, not particularly well known maybe in the States, but boy folks, you should, you should know him. Colin Northfield. He's a British front of house engineer. He just finished mixing David Gilmore. He's done Pink Floyd and Gilmore since 94. He's done a heck of a long number of other acts, but he started as a bass player.

He worked in the Orange Amplifier Shop on Denmark Street in London in the seventies, and the guy bought a PA system and needed someone to go out and run this PA system to support, uh, Motown reviews that were coming over to England. And he found he would go out for four days and he'd found, like he learned a lot and he'd come back and like two weeks later he'd go out and do another four days.

But because he grew up as a gigging bass player and continued to play, he kept his musical chops. And he is someone who's been able to get so close to the artist and build such confidence, uh, in terms of how the artist feels about him out front. That he can go up and make musical suggestions and, and the artists are, are open-minded to it.

So to me, I can argue, I, and by the way, I've never had that, you know, I've never crossed that threshold, but I would have to think that it's kind of an indication that, that you've reached the ultimate goal, which is that they see you as a peer.

[00:34:52] Sean Walker: Totally. And, and how cool to like on, on several different planes. Right? But how cool to be able to affect it musically and then hear that and go, yeah, yeah, that is better. Great. Also, selfishly, to get what you need as a front house engineer from the artist. If you're like, Hey man, these things aren't jelling.

How do I get this to be clearer? Like, can we play these different things at different times or help with the arrangements? Like a, it's like having Quincy Jones in front of house. You know what I.

[00:35:18] Danny Abelson: Yeah. Well, I'll give you my own. I have a pet peeve. I'm not gonna name ACT or anything like that, but, uh, uh,

[00:35:23] Sean Walker: I said I was sorry it was one time Danny. Geez,

[00:35:27] Danny Abelson: A major, a major act. No, it was good, but I mean, like a major act. Okay. Where you have three guitar players. It's a rock band, three guitar players, all on hum, buckers, all in regular tuning. Good morning.

You wonder why the engineer can't get any separation out front because you're, you're basically dooming him in the way you've chosen to do your arrangements. I mean, hello. Learn to play in open tuning for crying out loud. Okay. It ain't that hard. You just have to put it in the mileage. I can do it. You can do it.

[00:36:06] Sean Walker: Or somebody switched to single coils, please.

[00:36:08] Danny Abelson: Well, that too. Exactly.

[00:36:10] Sean Walker: Can I get one Tele or Strat in this Les Paul Firebird, whatever we're doing world

[00:36:16] Danny Abelson: my, my point is give your guy a chance. If you hand him schmutz, it's gonna be schmutz. And the truth

[00:36:26] Sean Walker: loud, really focused schmutz.

[00:36:28] Danny Abelson: and it and, and, and right there we talk about why I don't like to go out.

[00:36:34] Sean Walker: totally.

[00:36:35] Danny Abelson: Okay. Because I go out and I go, you know what? It doesn't sound that good. And that's one of the tears that, you know, we're, I'm on, which is, can we please accept the fact that it could sound a lot better?

Generally, I'm not saying we don't have good nights, but the dilemma for me, and this perhaps is the biggest hand grenade, okay? That we, we know that the kit has improved X percent over the past 40 years that I've been observing it. It absolutely has. I talk to my friends who own big sound companies. They all say the kit's gotten better.

Okay? Who would know better than them because they're buying it or they're investing in its creation. God bless them. I'm not sure the end results have tracked that improvement, and that's really where I'm trying to spend my energy is what do we need to do? Is it more education? Is it different education?

Is it a larger crew to do a better job? What is it? I don't have the answer, but I do know that we need to improve on the human side of that 80 20 equation.

[00:37:57] Sean Walker: I would think that it's all three of those things. I would think it is more education about specific things and probably a little more help in crew to do it. So everybody's not spread so thin, you know what I mean? Which you is gonna be a, it's gonna be a budget situation, right. And you can't, you can't pay everybody less so you can have more people.

That's not what I'm suggesting. Right. You gotta go, maybe, you know, maybe charge less for the gear so you can get more people on the fricking road or on the show or whatever to do a good job. And, uh. This is gonna be blasphemous, but maybe charge for your people and make some money on your people. Right.

So you can like go still run your business and have the profit margins you need. 'cause like it or not, freelancers, if we don't make any money, we don't have any gigs to hire you for. You know what I mean? So like, you know, you gotta make your money one way, just move the money around, right? Charge less for the gear and more for the people or whatever you gotta do to make sure your, your profit's where it needs to be, but get enough people so that you're not burning everybody to the ground on each show.

And then more specific in-depth training about different things, right? I, uh, I, my mixes improved a hundred fold when I learned about systems tuning and optimization. When I could, when I could be passable with a, with a smart rig. You know what I mean? It had something to shoot for and could get it beat into submission. The quality of clarity, depth, punch of my mixes went through the roof. I, I suddenly strutted around in my little, you know, regional shows. Like, I thought I was the baddest thing since sliced bread. I was like, this is amazing, and I didn't get any better, man. I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a world class freaking front of house concert mixer, you know what I mean?

There's guys, listen to this podcast just falling outta their chairs at this comment, right? But like, getting a few of those things in order, like we talked about earlier, when you have a great rig and a great person that knows what they're doing and a great band, like it all just comes together like lightning in a bottle, right?

If we can spend a lot more time on system design and optimization and get, and in a, in a way people can understand, I'm not talking about like going elbows deep into the super nerd stuff that nobody can get, but like, how do you beat this thing into submission? Right? And so you can mix on it, right? Where I, I don't think there's a lot of that conversation happening and then have those mixing conversations and have like a, a. Like, here's a decent framework to start with. 'cause there's not a lot of that that I can find yet. And the people that come to me that have come outta school, like when they're applying to work for me and they've gone to some school someplace, like they have no idea what they're doing. They don't know, like they don't know how to mix a show, let alone how to work, right?

So like how do we, how do we balance all that to make people that are coming up, give them a career path? Like, Hey man, here's the things you need to know. Here's a good start. Like, this is a lot of art. It's not all technical, right? Like you were saying, 80 20, right? 20 technical, 80% people in art. So I'm not suggesting everybody's robots, and this is how this is done.

I'm suggesting here's a, a starting framework to build on that will get you results quickly, rather than spending 10 years of your life trying to figure out and feeling like you suck at mixing, but you just needed to tune your PA first and didn't know where to start. Right?

[00:41:19] Danny Abelson: Yeah, so let's unpack that 'cause there's a bunch of really cool stuff in that last statement. So we've talked about this improvement in the technology, and I would argue the single most important improvement is the improvement in measure. Okay. That falls to only three people in my opinion. Okay. And these are gonna be names some of you folks don't know, but obviously Sam Burko.

Okay. Because Sam Burko founded Smart and, but what Sam did was he took work that was started by Don Pearson, who was an owner of ultrasound when I first saw this 1989. And he had a Hewlett Packard dual FFT box, and they had a little train track in front of the console, like in front of the meter bridge.

And they would move the microphone, okay. Back and forth. Like take a measurement here, move it a foot so that you would get some averaging. It wasn't just one station, like they had figured out we can't have one microphone. But they hadn't figured out how to like fill the venue with microphones. And a guy named Alexander Ell Thornton, known as Thorny.

So Thorny. And, and Don Pearson really started screwing around with this because they figured if they understood what they were, what they were hearing better, if they could see what they were hearing, they could do a better job of adjustment. And Sam, in his brilliance, and I do mean brilliance, um, figured out how to put it in everyone's toolbox.

And I will, I say this and I'm just not sure I'm off. There are only two products that have ever been created in the audio business that every single company uses around the world. There's only two, an SM 58, okay? And smart.

[00:43:17] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:43:18] Danny Abelson: Think about that. In an industry where we are so fricking picky and our identities come down to our equipment choices, I'm a X company.

I'm a why console company, because that's the way it used to be before things got more homogenous.

[00:43:34] Sean Walker: like speaker brands and consoles? Like, oh, I'm Acoustics or DMB, or, oh, I'm

[00:43:38] Danny Abelson: That that was your identity, right? It really was your identity. But, but suddenly now everybody can measure. And so the brilliance of your comment, Sean, is that maybe a little more time on the measurement side, the analysis side, understanding what that process can give you, because I've, I've always viewed loudspeaker systems as basically canvases on which we paint.

Speaker system to me is just a canvas, but it does need to be kind of stretched even without like a lot of wrinkles if we can get it right.

[00:44:17] Sean Walker: They don't always show up real beautiful, even with some great presets from the manufacturers and, and great, like they don't show up real beautiful. You gotta kind of beat 'em in submission most of the time,

[00:44:25] Danny Abelson: Yeah. And but, but you speak of a. Uh, a world that's not exact, you just did, and it's not exact. But what smart will do is I've had some unbelievable opportunities to be with Sam, who sure, he should be one of the best measurement guys in the world because he invented the tools we're all using. But to sit with Sam and tune a pa, it's a joy because he knows exactly like he has his means and methods.

And he's not, he, by the way, he's not, uh, proprietary about that. He will show what he does to anybody. Uh, but what he does have is a process that gets you to that reasonably well stretched canvas pretty quickly.

[00:45:15] Sean Walker: That is exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:45:17] Danny Abelson: yeah, and, and.

[00:45:18] Sean Walker: have these processes so that we are like, here's how you do this. Right.

[00:45:24] Danny Abelson: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the, you know, the educational opportunities are getting better, the curriculums have to get better, and I also think there has to be an expectation that, you know, I shouldn't think I'm gonna come outta school and mix. They're teaching me to mix,

[00:45:42] Sean Walker: Yeah,

[00:45:43] Danny Abelson: but I should probably be realistic and realize that I could actually have a longer, better career path if I didn't try to jump that shark and instead I spent time watching people,

[00:45:57] Sean Walker: And pushing boxes and wrapping cables and getting learnt. It's like, it's like,

[00:46:02] Danny Abelson: its strengths.

[00:46:03] Sean Walker: it's like driver's ed, man, right? You go to driver's ed, you learn how you're supposed to do it, 10 and two and this and that and the other thing, right? And then you get your driver's license and you get on the road for the first time and you go, holy shit.

That's not how it's done at all. You know what I mean? Same thing.

[00:46:21] Danny Abelson: It's true. Yeah, it's really true. But the other thing, there's more operating, you know, there's a lot, like you were, you were speaking of budget and paying people correctly in that earlier segment. And you know, the fact is that the salaries are getting paid, they're just getting paid to departments that aren't us.

Right. And you know, to me it never seems to be like a problem when they want more video or they want more set, or they, you know, they need another carpenter or, or whatever. Uh, I think one of the problems is that it's, and you know, the whole nature of the record industry has changed the concert business, right?

Because, and we talked about business models. Hey folks, when Napster showed up, everything changed. Simple as that. So record companies used to fund the deposits. Before a record was, was released, they would fund the deposits that would construct the sets. So the sets would get built, basically paid for by the record companies up front and you know, off we went.

Now it's a completely different animal. And you know, the band is looking at their own investment in, in that kind of infrastructure.

[00:47:45] Sean Walker: And each freelancer is a little company vying for a piece of that pie and the need to be able to show and sell and deliver on their value to that client. And most, uh, most of the time that is not, I mix good, you know what I mean? It's something a lot closer to, I will make sure that there are no problems that you or the audience know of.

I will make sure you look like a rock star every single night and I'll be a good hang in the bus and I won't forget the cigars and the whiskey, you know what I mean? And then, oh yeah, by the way, of course it's gonna sound awesome. 'cause otherwise I'm not gonna be here. Like, why would I be here if for doesn't sound awesome, you know?

[00:48:28] Danny Abelson: I think you're implying there's a lot more to this than just the actual game day stats.

[00:48:35] Sean Walker: Oh my God, dude. So much more. So much more. And, and again, back to literally our first sentences, it's all about customer service and trust. Man, that's like you were talking about with Colin being a musician also. 'cause he gains their trust and they're like, I trust that Colin knows what he is doing and if he says we need to change this part or that key or this, you know what I mean?

Guitar, whatever, that it's for the best interest of us. And he's not just being crabby. He knows what's up. And he gets the reviews of the shows where people go, oh my God, it sounded amazing. And so Pink Floyd goes, fuck Colin's the guy, or whatever, right? Like

[00:49:05] Danny Abelson: Uh, I think it's important to remember everybody's goal here is to have a client for a long time.

[00:49:10] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:49:11] Danny Abelson: I mean, that's what you want.

[00:49:12] Sean Walker: Yep.

[00:49:13] Danny Abelson: And you know, we've, I'm fortunate enough some folks that have had clients for 25 plus years and, uh, boy are they protective of, of those relationships, and they should be because they've got, they've earned trust.

And trust is that fleeting thing that's so difficult to, to establish

[00:49:37] Sean Walker: A hundred percent.

[00:49:39] Danny Abelson: another thing's worth talking about. Another thing I think is worth talking about is sort of from a self-evaluative point of view of your mixes is, uh, this newer phenomenon of, uh. Audience members posting clips of shows from their, from their seats. And so now you have this opportunity to go on YouTube.

'cause if you're not doing it, by the way, the people who hired you are doing it okay to go listen to your work in various places around the venue. And we can have that conversation about, oh, it's only a little mi mems microphone, and all that kind of stuff. And you're right. You shouldn't be gauging low frequency.

[00:50:24] Sean Walker: It doesn't matter. That's how you're getting judged.

[00:50:27] Danny Abelson: how you're getting judged.

[00:50:29] Sean Walker: to it. I remember the first time a client came to me, I was like, dude, like it doesn't sound good on, on the phone. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know what I mean? And it sounded great in the venue, you know what I mean?

Everybody was stoked but didn't sound good on the phone. And I was like, well, where, where, where are they? Like what the, what the fuck? You know what I mean? Same thing. They're always standing in the back. They're never in the front row, you know what I mean? They're never at front of house taking this picture.

They're always front row with the front fills aren't doing it or the back row or, you know what I mean? And so back to systems design and smart and tuning and optimization, right? That's really where it makes a lot of difference. 'cause you know the people that are in the 300 level in the arena or whatever, taking video, it's still outta sound banging up there too.

So that the video sounds great 'cause those are gonna get sent to your client. Those are gonna get sent directly to you, to management, to the record label, to whatever. You know what I mean? So it's important to, if you've got the blessing to have a killer systems engineer with you, right? If you don't, as a front of house

[00:51:31] Danny Abelson: Go get one.

[00:51:32] Sean Walker: Go get one, go, go get a Scarlet solo and a fricking ism con and a smart license and figure out how, what target trace you need to use to get it to where your mix fits into that. And at at least be able to beat this thing into submission in your clubs or theater tours or whatever you're doing. Right? If you're, 'cause a lot of are one person armies or two people armies, right?

A lot of our listeners don't have Oasis budgets, right? Like, you know, like a Bro Finlay is out on that tour right now and so we get cool pictures, but like we're all stoked to see what's happened behind the scenes as we're battling with X 30 twos and CLS and QLS and DM sevens and you know, like that kinda a thing.

So, you know, getting good as a one person army with a smart rig or open sound meter, you know, or whatever, any kinda a measurement rig where you can beat it into submission and figuring out what your PA needs to, uh. I'm gonna say look like, but ultimately sound like to get your mix to translate. Right.

It's not like my, my target curve is very different from Andy's or anybody else's, right? Because it's all baked into my mix already. I don't have as much haystack, right? But somebody else is like, Nope, I need all the haystack or whatever. And that's fine. But figure it out so that you can deliver consistently night after night.

And that's now an afterthought. And the customer service and the trust is the forethought of what you're doing every day. Because the other stuff's on lock. You already got, you already know what you're doing with the fricking PA and the reverb and the, you know, EQs and how the kick rooms gonna sound like all, that's just like second nature.

'cause you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so what's for lunch bud? Like where's this cool coffee stand we're going to, or the things like that that really help. Deep in those relationships with people, and that is how they have 25 year clients, right? That is how those people that you read about in mix or front of house or ProSoundWeb or all the other places are like, oh yeah.

Mix on tour with with Metallica for 50 years, or whatever it is. You're like, yeah, yeah, because they freaking love that dude. You know what I mean? Or whoever, right? Like that's how those people get those gigs.

[00:53:31] Danny Abelson: he takes a department. Sound is a department. This is a touring attraction people. Sound is a department. He takes the department and he makes it a non-issue for management. Touchdown game set match. Thanks. That's it. Hopefully he likes good wine, then Everybody's happy.

[00:53:55] Sean Walker: There you go. Totally.

[00:53:58] Danny Abelson: Not required, but can often be helpful. Um,

[00:54:04] Sean Walker: Andy, you're quiet over there, buddy. You gotta look at your

[00:54:06] Andy Leviss: Uh, no, no, no. That, that look wasn't for you guys.

[00:54:09] Sean Walker: Oh, okay.

[00:54:09] Andy Leviss: was an email coming into my

[00:54:10] Danny Abelson: he's getting some work done. Um,

[00:54:17] Sean Walker: I was like, you got this? Who? Farted face bud. Did I say something extra stupid or just

[00:54:20] Andy Leviss: Nobody, nobody, nobody on this, uh, on this episode.

[00:54:24] Sean Walker: Okay, great.

[00:54:24] Danny Abelson: in thinking about, in thinking about this gents, I mean, what's one skill that you could advise? I mean, we talked about learn how to play piano. You don't have to be good at it, just learn how to do it. Another thing is learn how to listen, which is really interesting because the, the need to be able to listen to find detail deep in a mix, obviously is a critical skill for someone who's, who's like working on the fly in a live setting, right?

Like, duh, I had a friend, a guy named Richard Irwin, who was this guy that was mixing the Eagles when I was a kid. And what he would do is he would take me out to restaurants and he would, we'd sit in the middle of a reverberate restaurant intentionally, and he would say, tell me what they're saying at that table. So now I'm in this totally ambient environment and I've gotta get speech. I'm not like picking up, oh, it's a vi, it's a viola, not a cello. No, no, no, no, no. It's, I gotta get the syllables out and tell 'em what they're saying. He can hear what they're saying. But those kind of skills that. You can develop when you're not working, can be incredibly helpful when you are working because they help you unpack what you're listening to quickly. And getting back to your earlier comment about measurement. Measurement is a skill that as, let's say you start with two speakers on a stick in a church basement, okay? And you want your career to be mixing in stadiums. There's gonna be a set of skills that you can start to develop working in that basement that can apply to each successive larger venue that you were working in. One of 'em is, I mean, example that you gave just EQing a kick drum. You know what. Those kind of relationships are pretty much the same, be it in a small venue or a larger venue. Of course, you're gonna take a lot more of it in a big venue, but my guess is the skillset that you learn in the basement or start to learn in the basement may serve you well, five venues up the up the hill.

[00:56:47] Sean Walker: A hundred percent.

[00:56:47] Danny Abelson: But the one thing that absolutely will mastery of measurement.

[00:56:54] Sean Walker: Absolutely.

[00:56:55] Danny Abelson: Okay. Understanding how a crossover point is affecting what you're listening to and why. Oh my gosh, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm making this EQ change and I'm having to apply a lot more of it. Then I hear in my head, that's usually an indication to me that that PA has a phase problem. How am I gonna learn that it has a phase problem?

Well, sports fans, there may be people who can hear it and just say, this is what it is. I'm not that guy. I need to be able to measure it,

[00:57:32] Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. I'm not that guy either. I'm with you.

[00:57:34] Danny Abelson: right? So.

[00:57:35] Sean Walker: The interesting thing is that you're absolutely right from speakers on sticks up to, you know, stadiums or whatever, but if you look at the measurements in, let's say an arena versus the measurements in a small club or a party tent or something. An arena is already much closer to target out of the box by the nature of having the trim height and the right tools and the, you know what I mean?

Like, there's a lot, a lot less drastic work to be done via EQ than the absolute bananas EQ curves you're gonna have in a small party tent with a band or something. You know what I mean? You got 50 people in somebody's backyard under a party tent and you got a rock band playing the nonsense you're going to do to that pa to make it sound correct compared to, you know what I mean?

Compared to a killer tier one line array flow in an arena is, is unbelievable. You know what I mean? But you can still get there. You can still make it sound awesome, but the measurement's gonna be so fast and so easy to solve a lot of those problems, you know?

[00:58:43] Danny Abelson: I always play this game with myself that what are the 10 best shows? I've heard we all do this, you know, I'm sorry, but if you're in this business, you're, you're probably doing it right? And maybe, and, and, and, uh, in the fullness of time, this becomes more and more difficult. Right? But

[00:59:06] Sean Walker: I love that fullness of time. Totally.

[00:59:09] Danny Abelson: well, it, it, it, sorry, but you

[00:59:11] Sean Walker: As I start seeing the gray hairs and the beard more and more, this gets to be more difficult.

[00:59:15] Danny Abelson: called the fullness of

[00:59:17] Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:18] Danny Abelson: Um, but, but, uh. I heard a Joe Jackson show in a 2000 seat proscenium theater that was mixed by a guy named Roger Lindsay. He was a regional in the uk, Lindsay Audi, Lindsay Sound, but he had just Martin separate bins like, you know, bass and Philly shaves and, and horns, right?

So for those of you who don't know, I mean, god forbid a separate system meant that you had no time alignment between any components at all. You could kinda line the boxes up in a way that you were convincing yourself that the components were time alignment, but in fact, you know, no measurement would bear you out.

But there was no measurement because measurement was a one third of an octave, LED iv. Device that was like 12 inches wide and seven inches tall and had a big mic sticking out of it. And that was the only way you could measure anything. And this guy killed it. He absolutely killed it. And that's one of the things that made me think about the 80 20 is like this kit had no reason to sound that good.

The band was well rehearsed, they were good musicians. That's fine. I consider that a given in any of these conversations, right? We're playing real gigs. We should have real musicians who are prepared. But to hear a guy just use his skillset to get it to sound like that w was a revelation to me.

[01:00:58] Sean Walker: I hope one day to have a skillset like that.

[01:01:00] Danny Abelson: Me too. No, I, I don't think I will. But if I can just, if I could, if I can rub elbows with the folks that do, I'll be pretty happy.

[01:01:10] Sean Walker: Totally.

[01:01:10] Danny Abelson: You know, so,

[01:01:12] Sean Walker: that's awesome. Alright, what's another one? That was incredible.

[01:01:18] Danny Abelson: uh, uh, selfish, somewhat selfish. Pink Floyd, 1970, sorry, pink Floyd, uh, division Belt Tour, 1994, flashlight. I can list a long list of friends, uh, who did not make, who did not make their money from Turbo. Who would tell you that that was the one of the best sounding things they ever heard. Colin Northfield was the assistant mixer on that.

The studio mixer had the main desk, and Colin had the drums. And the drums were ridiculous. Um, so my point is that they can, they can happen. I heard David Gilmore in, uh, uh, all same, you know, some sort of same thread here, but David Gilmore on, uh, an El acoustics pa uh, in the circus Maximus year and a half ago, and.

It gave, and this gets into another one of our points, which is sort of horn loading versus line, line source. I was really pleasantly surprised. It was a line source that sounded about as much, uh, like a horn loaded system as I had heard in ages. And that's just the physical nature of the way the waves propagate.

You know, uh, there's no doubt what line array technology has brought to the industry, but my belief is that everything in audio comes with a price or a cost. That's kind of a squidgy little thought, but it's more cosmic than financial, right? That because of, because we deal with physics. You know, the, what's the, in malleable element here is physics, which is also what makes this the most interesting, right?

There's these forces that are given that you can't mess with. I was raised to understand that when I turned a knob, changes were happening below the face plate of that console. Remember, there's an analog console audio, God forbid, is actually in the console. Okay? That when you turn the knob, it had a benefit. But that benefit came with some other yin yang kind of cost and that one of the skill sets of being a good engineer was understanding what those costs were gonna be.

So the simplest example is how does a filter work? It ttes with phase. Understanding how it works and how it fusses with phase allows you to make the choice is the benefit. I'm gonna get worth the risk 'cause I'm gonna have some other negative audio product I'm creating if I like it or not. Going to, and I think the best folks understand that balance

or they just want to get out of the way. There's a lot, you know, my close friend Dave Natal, he just wants to get outta the way. So he, you know, no, no. Gates generally speaking, no compressors. Uh, he's doing it by moving faders much more than 99% of you are doing. Um, and some people will say, that's not the method I want to use.

And they have every right to support that. In his case, he's got a long list of folks that, that have kept him around for a long time, so he must be doing something right.

[01:04:43] Sean Walker: Totally.

[01:04:44] Danny Abelson: So there's a lot of, my point is, and the great thing about audio is there's no rule book. There's a lot of ways to do this, you know, so the, the point of me bringing up these points isn't to say, this is how you should do it, although I really would like you to learn how to play piano, but.

Uh, it's that there's, there's, there's, there's no given set of rules. And if you're getting to the end and the audience member is benefiting, 'cause we haven't really spoken much today about the audience member, but my belief is

[01:05:18] Andy Leviss: cares about those people?

[01:05:20] Danny Abelson: Fuck man, you want to, did, did we mention everybody's gotta eat,

[01:05:25] Sean Walker: Right. Totally. And they're paying the tickets so we can

[01:05:27] Danny Abelson: They're paying everything.

[01:05:28] Sean Walker: Totally

[01:05:29] Danny Abelson: And that gets based back to our discussion of like, you know, follow the money.

[01:05:34] Sean Walker: right.

[01:05:35] Danny Abelson: So I think if your methods are getting you there and the audience is happy, that's a touchdown. What those methods are, those are proprietary to you. And I think there's a lot of ways to do it. I've seen people with a, a device or a plugin on every channel and it sounds fantastic.

I hear people who have almost nothing in the signal chain and it sounds fantastic. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat here.

[01:06:06] Sean Walker: Totally, totally. We're getting to just over an hour. Is there anything that we haven't asked you yet that we should have asked you before we wrap up and let these people go home for the day?

[01:06:17] Danny Abelson: really good. Um,

well, I think it's important, you know, just working on, on some other things I've been fortunate enough to take out of audio is, um, is understanding that audio is much bigger than just the live concert market we live in. So one thing that I had to pick up very quickly doing NFL is, oh by the way, you're in the broadcast business.

You think you're in the live event business. You actually are not. You're in the broadcast business. Why would that be? Oh, follow the money. They pay for everything.

[01:06:57] Sean Walker: The commercials and sponsors are

[01:06:59] Danny Abelson: so for those folks who don't know, take the, take the sponsorship money out of professional sports. And you know what? You have your regional racketball club.

[01:07:10] Sean Walker: totally.

[01:07:12] Danny Abelson: Okay? So realize, holy shit, I'm responsible for the ref's mic in this NFL game because I have the local crew that's running the PA system in the bowl. Okay, I've got the ref's mic. Who cares what it sounds like in the bowl? There's 65,000 people in the bowl who gives a rat's ass? There's 65 million people on the other side of that cal wreck console in the truck.

Okay. Take care of him. Don't let it feed back. Don't let that omnidirectional mike under the guy's chin in the middle of a stadium feed back, okay? Because it's gonna Roger the guy who's paying for all this, which is someone like a Fred Aldis in the, in a truck, who, if you don't know, is like, sort of the equivalent of our, of, uh, in broadcast sports, what our great mixers are in the, in the concert side.

And, and so it's understanding what's downstream of me and, and, and does that have an economic element that I have to make sure I've got right? And, and so that's why it's like understanding at least mildly, um, a more comprehensive view of, of the way the money moves, um, I think is helpful in in, in doing this job.

[01:08:37] Sean Walker: I think that is. Very wise and excellent and a wonderful place to leave off and reminding people that we are in the entertainment business. And the second word in that is not optional, you know what I mean? And speaking of sponsors, thanks to Allen & Heath and RCF for letting us yap about audio for another week.

That's the pod y'all. Thanks for coming, Danny.

[01:08:59] Danny Abelson: it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, gentlemen. Nice to meet both of you.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green