Tag: drag brunch

Sound System for Magic Show

Nothing drives me crazier than people who run sound that don’t know how to run sound. Let me start by saying that I don’t know how to run sound. I do know how to run it for my show, but that’s my limited scope. I couldn’t be a sound tech for a band, or your magic show, just mine.

A few weeks ago, I was at a drag brunch, and the person running the sound had a soundboard that ran off some strange cord that wasn’t compatible with the venue’s sound system. They had to set up their speakers in from of the venue’s speakers!

live show sound

That’s kinda ridiculous and a lot of extra work that’s not necessary. The industry standard is XLR cords for live sound. You can use headphone style 1/8 inch cords, but you’ll usually need additional adapters to get the sound into a professional soundboard. Just carry the correct thing, which is an XLR, and you’re good to go!

Another thing was the microphone receiver placement, which wasn’t the best place, which led to it repeatedly dropping out. Oh, and the microphone was USB-charged, which sounds like a good idea, except if you’re in a situation where the power on the mic is low, you really don’t have any options for instantly giving it power. At the drag brunch, they kept having to plug the mic to charge it for a few minutes at a time. If you’re using a battery powered microphone, you just swap out the batteries.

I currently have two microphone set ups that I use:
1: My good mic which is a Sennheiser
2: My beat it up mic which is a Saramonic

Both have battery powered receivers as well, so I don’t need to find a plug to use them. Having good audio that works is just one less problem you need to deal with.

-Louie

Know Your Audio!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a “drag brunch” and I’ve always said you can learn a lot from watching any type of performance, not just magic.

drag brunch

One of the things at this venue was the audio. They had two speakers running and the preshow music and host mics were fine, but they act’s music was only coming off of one speaker. That lead to soo much less energy being put into the crowd with the music when you can hear forks clink on the plates.

With my basic knowledge of sound, I can tell you whatever program (or cord) they were using for the music for the acts was sending the signal to the speakers with one side of the stereo output. When I was waiting for the bathroom, I was chatting with one of the acts and mentioned that whoever was running the sound needed to bump their music as it was only coming out of one speaker. The act asked me if I could fix it, I told them that “While I work in live events, it’s not my gig or my place to tell they sound person how to do their job….But if you tell them what I just told you, it would make it better.“

This is why you need a basic knowledge of things like sound, if the sound is bad, or not enough, you need to be able to communicate to whoever is running sound what you need. Frequently a lot of sound companies send out people whose job isn’t as a sound engineer, but more someone whose job is to load in/out the equipment and make sure that no one steals it.

The second half of the show was soo much better as the music filled the room much better. The “sound guy” had to work a lot harder than the first half because they had to turn the volume up for music and turn it down for the mics In reality, it’s barely any work, but a lot more than the nothing they were doing before.

-Louie