Features
Clive’s Live Five
By Clive Young
Oct 7, 2007, 00:17

Once upon a time, the AES Convention had a reputation as “a recording show,” with little to offer the live sound community. Well, those days have been long gone for years, and this year’s live sound offerings prove it beyond a doubt.

First off, a grossly self-indulgent plug for the Platinum Road Warriors panel, being held on Monday at noon in Room 1E12. This year’s edition sports its best line-up yet, featuring some of the top FOH pros in the industry: Robert Scovill (Tom Petty, Rush); Howard Page (Van Halen, Sade); Brian Speiser (Indigo Girls, They Might Be Giants); Paul “Pappy” Middleton (Bonnie Raitt, Chris Isaak); and Tom Young (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett). And I’m hosting it (that’s the self-indulgent part).

Robert Scovill is a fountain of knowledge, which is why he’ll be hosting another panel right after Road Warriors. Held at 1:30 p.m. in Room 1E09, “Concert Sound System Design, Setup, Operation and the Creative Use of Digital Mixing Technology” has a pretty self-explanatory title, and sports yet more top live engineers.

Not everyone hits the road when they deal with live sound, of course. Theater productions always need quality sound, and New York—home of Broadway—has a surfeit of theatrical audio pros, as evidenced by Sunday’s Live Sound Seminar, “Musicals—From Broadway to Las Vegas: Differences, and Challenges of Moving Between the Two.” Held at 11 a.m. in Room 1E09, the panel is chaired by sound designer Nevin Steinberg of Acme Sound Partners (The Drowsy Chaperone; Spamalot; Avenue Q) and will include sound designer Jonathan Deans (Taboo, Zumanity, Damn Yankees).

One of the hot demos at the convention is Real Sound Lab’s CONEQ measurement and correction technology, presented on at the top of every hour in Room 3D07, on the edge of the show floor. The demo explains the corrective equalization technology, A/B-ing corrected and uncorrected speakers, capped by a live jazz trio.

It was George Santayana who opined, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” And with that in mind, it wouldn’t hurt to learn a bit about where the live sound industry has come from at “Chaos Begets Order: Live Sound Becomes an Industry” in Room 1E12 at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. Host John Chester, former chief sound engineer at the original Fillmore East discusses concert sound’s formative years with Roy Clair (as in Clair Brothers); Dinky Dawson, 1960s engineer for The Kinks and Fleetwood Mac and author of the entertaining Life On The Road; and Bill Hanley, the original sound man for Woodstock 1969.

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