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[Bob Leonard]

NO F***ING CONSUMER DEVICES!!!!

That's my policy and I'm sticking with it.  If they can't eMail me an MP3 ahead of time or bring their track on a USB stick or CD, they don't get played.  All music to be ripped into one of my computers before the show and verified viable.

No exceptions.

This is my rule as well.

[Milt Hathaway]

I am the sound guy for my church.
Young people give me phones.
Middle age CDs
Old people give me cassettes

The cassettes are the worst

Then there's the time at the county fair when the square dancers showed up without their turntable...

[Scott Olewiler]

I'm doing a High School Talent Show today. I did a run thru last night and most of the act's brought there music on there Phone. The phones have covers and are different brands each phone started and stopped with different ways. also all of the phones would go to sleep before I got the kids going. One phone had a pass code that had to be entered if it went to sleep. Out of about 10 acts only 1 act used a CD. Also 1 of the kids got a call, all while hooked up to the PA, it was her Dad.
I'm not complying and we will make it through the night but it was a challenge, The day of the CD is leaving very quickly and the sound quality takes another hit but that's the price of convenience.
I'm really surprised how fast this has happened and the new challenges we face. Thanks Jerry 

I'd like to ask people to bring their tracks on a thumbdrive but then I'll have to carry a laptop with me.  How long before we can't even buy blank CDs? I play in a band with some oldtimers who don't really use computers. The CD is the only way I have to give them new songs to learn.

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

I'd like to ask people to bring their tracks on a thumbdrive but then I'll have to carry a laptop with me.  How long before we can't even buy blank CDs? I play in a band with some oldtimers who don't really use computers. The CD is the only way I have to give them new songs to learn.

I still prefer being sent MP3's in advance.  I had a young singer come in with tracks on a thumb drive...over a hundred unidentified/unlabeled tracks.  She didn't know which ones...

[Mark McFarlane]

I still prefer being sent MP3's in advance.  I had a young singer come in with tracks on a thumb drive...over a hundred unidentified/unlabeled tracks.  She didn't know which ones...

I always ask for 256K or higher mp3s in advance for review. I always offer to re-purchase the tracks if they sound bad (like the 64k streams captured off a YouTube video) at my expense.  If it sounds like crap the audience thinks its the engineer's or system's fault.  A buck is a cheap way to remedy this.  I tell them there is no guarantee I can read anything on the day of the show.

Still, I have had to deal with some people who can't seem to provide music in advance even though I am often prepping a show months in advance. 

At least I haven't seen any cassettes in 6 or 7 years, when I got a strange look from some kid's mother at a dance event when she handed me a cassette and I said sorry, I simply have no way to play that. She went home and brought back a Walkman.

It's probably best to be prepared to deal with whatever. I sometimes struggle to be helpful and supportive of whatever crap happens at a gig, but it does improve your chance of getting called back, so if that's the level you work at deal with it, keep smiling, and take a moment to educate the customer on how and why their child might sound so much better next time if they would only send the music in advance.  You really want their kid to sound as good as possible...

[Rob Spence]

I was cleaning in the shop last week and found a cassette player in its box. I stacked it with the VHS players :-)

Speaking of sun... I had a gig a few years ago that needed some tracks played for a dance demonstration at a town festival. By the time I needed to play, neither of my CD players, or the laptop would play. Fortunately one of the crew had a MacBook in his truck and that worked.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Tim McCulloch]

I was cleaning in the shop last week and found a cassette player in its box. I stacked it with the VHS players :-)

Speaking of sun... I had a gig a few years ago that needed some tracks played for a dance demonstration at a town festival. By the time I needed to play, neither of my CD players, or the laptop would play. Fortunately one of the crew had a MacBook in his truck and that worked.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

We have one State of Kansas account that still has us record their workshops and public hearings on cassette.  They get used to verify the minutes reporting and put on a shelf.  Technically they're public records but I don't think they've ever been requested.  As long as there is a working cassette deck in the USA, those recordings will be accessible.

So, to turn the tables/spindles, what about *recording* media?  If we're recording for a client we all use whatever they provide or request, but digital recordings on media of dubious storage integrity or eventual technical obsolescence?  As live sound folks we can say "not my problem" I suppose, but right now I'm listening to a live recording (on cassette) I made 15 years ago.  In comparison, almost none of the digital media I have from 15 years ago has a working device to read them  (floppies mostly); or have had enough data loss to render them unusable (CDR, high speed tape backup).

[Canute J. Chiverton]

There have been times that the Thumb Drives may be infected with a Virus, so always run a Scan on it before activating!

[Bill Schnake]

I'm doing a High School Talent Show today. I did a run thru last night and most of the act's brought there music on there Phone. The phones have covers and are different brands each phone started and stopped with different ways. also all of the phones would go to sleep before I got the kids going. One phone had a pass code that had to be entered if it went to sleep. Out of about 10 acts only 1 act used a CD. Also 1 of the kids got a call, all while hooked up to the PA, it was her Dad.
I'm not complying and we will make it through the night but it was a challenge, The day of the CD is leaving very quickly and the sound quality takes another hit but that's the price of convenience.
I'm really surprised how fast this has happened and the new challenges we face. Thanks Jerry 

Jerry, I do a few of these each year and for the past several years my policy is whoever is in charge of the event has to get me all of the music on either .wav file or mp3.  After I have everything I put it on a thumb drive and play it back through my board.  This all makes my life much easier.

Bill 

[George Dougherty]

This.

I've encountered this many times that it's really frustrating & annoying, I've had it with people coming up to me asking to play a particular song from whatever they're handing me. I respond with the same as above "Your device = YOU make it work. We ain't touching it."

it would likely be a different answer on a corporate gig, but for most of the street festival work I've done where people show up with dance tracks it's all moving to ipod/phones and this is IMO the best policy. I don't deal with your electronic device.  If someone is going to look stupid because it's not the right track or they don't know how to work the device, it's going to be you.

Bring me a CD and I'll rip and play it off the laptop as long as you don't show 5 minutes before your set. The worst are when they show and hand you a stack of 5 cd's and want a different track off each.  Hopefully in that case I've got enough advance to rip them and drop them in the playlist. I use Exact Audio Copy and if it can't rip it, then the CD wasn't going to play in anything else either.

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