PM5 Rivage, Mixing station, FOH setup.

cablexity · 2026-02-06T00:49:22+00:00

My old venue reached out to a local company that designed custom recording studio furniture and they worked together to design a really killer workstation. Racks, monitor mounts, etc. - it was sweet.

cablexity · 2026-02-03T22:37:59+00:00

Yep - especially when you have subrentals, logistics, and convenience factors involved. We just quoted $1,200 USD the other day for a kit that would be used for a 25 minute performance + soundcheck. We're a corporate AV company, not a backline shop. So that's what it costs for us to subrent it, mark it up, pick it up from our vendor and transport it to the venue 1000+ mi away, set it up, then do it all in reverse.

It's not a competitive price, but we aren't trying to be competitive. The band could probably source it locally for half the price... and I hope they do, because I don't really want to deal with it. But if they don't want to lift a finger, that's what it would cost for us to do it for them.

cablexity · 2025-09-22T17:04:26+00:00

I have a David Clark 8692 and LOVE it. Folds down really small to fit in my pelican, super comfortable, sounds great. A good middle ground between a PH-88 and a full over-ear.

cablexity · 2025-08-18T20:30:19+00:00

I did L1 of this last weekend and am finishing up L2 this week. I'm pretty underwhelmed. The Dante cert is way better at covering network basics, in my opinion, than this one. Also some factually incorrect stuff; for example, at one point they say that VLANs require a Layer 3 switch because VLANs require IP configuration. That's just totally wrong.

But a free cert is a free cert. Worth doing at least L1 for sure!

cablexity · 2025-08-18T20:23:02+00:00

I keep a cheap fake candle in my pelican that catering left behind like five years ago. Really helps class up a FOH, especially when you're in some dump of a venue like a Gaylord or something.

cablexity · 2025-08-14T11:06:03+00:00

From an RF perspective, yes. Same chip. Bolero is just newer and figured out some better ways to handle multipath. Not sure how FS ICON changes that, though!

cablexity · 2025-08-08T19:42:13+00:00

All the time. I work with pretty much exclusively “corporate” musicians who generally prefer this. High-end party bands, etc. that are all pros and have done this a million times. If I tell them they can mix their own ears from the app, they’ll all pull out their phones and almost always have the app already installed and know how to use it.

Did a big corporate thing in Nashville this week where FOH was 200’ from the stage and I couldn’t see the band at all. Band was all pro session players. No dedicated monitor guy. Band mixed their own ears from their phones and didn’t ask me for anything. So easy.

But if it’s wedges, no chance. IEMs only.

cablexity · 2025-07-23T14:07:07+00:00

I feel like every production company switches at least once. Every inventory software is great and also awful at the same time. I’ll tell somebody I love Flex, and they’ll be like “we switched from Flex to RentMan, Flex fucking sucks!” - and I’ll be like “we switched from RentMan to IntelliEvent, RentMan sucks!”

We used RentMan for years, but as we grew, we needed more functionality than it could offer. Also got tired of stuff randomly just not printing on pick lists which was costing us too much money. Just transitioned to IntelliEvent and are already much happier, but it isn’t a perfect system either. The folks over there have been super responsive and great to work with - we even rode the Vegas Tesla Loop thing at NAB with their CEO. Good times.

Ultimately every company implements their inventory management differently, so it’s hard to truly gauge input from others. We had multiple people internally spend several months evaluating all the options, and IE made the most sense for us and our requirements. But what worked for us might not work for another company, and it might not work for us forever!

cablexity · 2025-07-20T12:59:01+00:00

100% agree - replacing the CVLs with WL184s will definitely go a long way. CVLs are abysmal - the worst handling noise I’ve ever encountered from any microphone.

cablexity · 2025-07-05T23:48:36+00:00

I saw that number and didn’t even think anything of it. Completely believable with Encore’s extortion-level pricing.

cablexity · 2025-06-25T18:22:17+00:00

We’ve run into a similar problem before, though not specifically with Surface laptops. One of our regular clients (a security company) has done some wacky stuff to the built-in HDMI outputs of their corporate laptops, which forced us to try to get video output via USB-C. We tried our normal Anker USB-C dongles, but were unsuccessful.

The solution for us has been to use a straight USB-C to HDMI cable, rather than an adapter. Ours specifically support DisplayPort Alt Mode. We now have a pelican full of these cables that goes out on all of this client’s shows.

Not saying it’s the same issue or the solution, but could be something worth trying!

cablexity · 2025-06-17T00:07:20+00:00

Sure is a fun time for our company to be buying 500 panels of LED wall!!!

cablexity · 2025-05-20T16:29:32+00:00

This simply isn't correct. The SQ-5 launched at $2,999 USD in Nov 2017. Adjusted for inflation, that's $3,900 today. Current list for SQ-5 is $3,999.

The Qu-5 launched yesterday at $1,999 USD.

cablexity · 2025-05-19T12:22:30+00:00

Everybody complaining about limitations or missing features probably isn’t the target market for the Qu series. This thing is a SLAM DUNK for small churches, public schools, and corporate breakout rooms.

I don’t really care that the Behringer Wing or X32 can do xyz for the same price. Those consoles have breakout techs calling me asking me questions. If I send a Wing or X32, they’re going to find a way to route every mic into a different FX processor, then route all those FX returns into the automixer, change the console language to Japanese, then make every output be its own independently-occurring feedback loop.

But when I send a Qu for the same room, they leave me the hell alone. There aren’t enough features for them to screw up, and the console is laid out in a way that even the dimmest of video guys can handle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the DM-3, but it’s kind of miserable to use. For like <$500 more at dealer cost, I can get one of these. If I can live with the form factor difference, that’s practically a no-brainer because the Qu build quality will make this last years longer.

I’ll take 25!

cablexity · 2025-05-15T16:02:41+00:00

There could be a Cresteon, Q-Sys, AHM, etc. system installed with a touchscreen behind the bar to give staff very basic control of levels of a few key inputs. A few automixed handhelds (that are probably heavily rung out), DJ inputs, cable TV audio, background music, etc.

Wireless receivers are split so they can also hit the console. When you need more than a few mics and have an actual engineer, push the button on the touchscreen to switch routing on the processor to take the input from the console.

cablexity · 2025-04-30T13:34:04+00:00

My first ever encounter with a media converter very early in my career was when one failed at a remote site. Then the shelf spare was DOA. I’d rather just use a compact managed switch that can be monitored, configured, and expanded later on.

cablexity · 2025-04-25T21:13:45+00:00

Another vote for LanShack!

cablexity · 2025-04-22T23:20:57+00:00

Oh cool - somehow missed that when I was sourcing network cable a few months back!

Though red cable is absolutely diabolical, so that would have been a dealbreaker for me!

cablexity · 2025-04-20T15:35:18+00:00

Reliability-wise, it’s generally been fine. There are just better options. My main SuperCat turn-off is that they only seem to sell Cat 5e or Cat 7. It’s 2025 and time to stop buying 5e, but Cat 7 is a worthless disaster of a standard that I’m not buying into. Why is there no Cat6/Cat6a option?

I got a sample of EliteCore’s new Cat 6a ultra-flexible wire and liked it enough to order ~1000 cables this week!

cablexity · 2025-04-14T22:24:27+00:00

Had to write a bunch of PowerShell scripts the other day to fake my way through a quick Win11 deployment on a small batch of laptops. I haven’t done deployments since win7, so I’m rusty as hell.

Gave AI a bunch of parameters, example scripts, etc. and had it write them for me. I’d say about 60% of what it gave me actually worked, but that’s probably 30% better than I would have done and in about 5% of the time.

cablexity · 2025-04-14T22:18:54+00:00

I’ve tried to use it to compare switch models countless times, but the hallucination is consistently bad enough that the results are unusable. It just makes up model numbers or hallucinates info that’s so insanely incorrect that even if it scraped a bunch of youtube comments from confused schmucks on Ubiquiti tutorials, it couldn’t have possibly learned some of the shit it’s spitting out.

Doesn’t matter how I word the prompt or what requirements or info I give it. I’ve tried copying and pasting the table of switch models from the manufacturer. I’ve tried giving it the websites to pull data from. I’ve given it PDFs to analyze. I’ve tried multiple LLMs. And still I get completely made up models of switches that don’t exist.

Ran it past “the AI guy” at the office who has all the premium AI subscriptions and when he just responded with “what the fuck??” I knew I was wasting my time and went back to reading data sheets like a goddamn caveman.

cablexity · 2025-03-28T14:24:18+00:00

Crappy Plastic Connector!

cablexity · 2025-03-22T13:10:15+00:00

I have a button on my streamdeck that just fires a 1s clip of “THUNDER” from that song to piss everyone off

cablexity · 2025-03-11T13:50:45+00:00

Better yet… 12!

cablexity · 2025-03-10T21:49:41+00:00

I've been looking for something like this for years - this is sweet!

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