Thirsty 2007: Day 2 – Afternoon

The Thirsty crew finished around noon and headed back to their hotels to hurry up and wait for kick off tomorrow. This afternoon I played a bit with the PA. I was going to A/B it with our existing PA, but their tech didn’t tune the PA flat so my mix didn’t translate. I did spend some time mixing on it, and I have to say that after spending a little time on it I was enjoying it. The rig is a D&B with J series arrays–6 per side. There is a ton of gas in those boxes. I hit 102 dBA with a ton of room left to go. It was nice and in your face. However, I still prefer the Meyer rig I had back in Chicago.

The system tech, also named Dave, was showing me some of the ways he can control things via that tablet PC. I hung out with him this morning while he timed everything in. He shares my view that fills shouldn’t be “heard”. I was loving the way he had the front fills dialed in so that they pulled the focus back to the stage, but didn’t draw attention to the fact that you had a couple of speakers in front of you. Cool stuff.

This afternoon, I got to take the tablet PC for a spin after Dave left and 7|22 was setting up. Dustin, 7|22’s FOH engineer, and I did some tweaks to get the PA to play nicer with the a live band on stage. It took some getting used to since the stylus is a special pen that works with the tablet, but I think if I spent another couple of days with it I would be an ace with it. I will definitely be adding one of these for system teching at some point.

Tomorrow morning we start soundcheck first thing. I think it’s Charlie Hall in the afternoon with David Crowder Band tomorrow night. I’ll try and get more photos and maybe even some more extremely low definition video with my Treo if I get a chance.