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[Kevin Unger]

I'm just north of San Francisco.

I own and operate a small CNC machine shop.
I do production machining, product development and invent stuff.
I'm in the process of going legit (but small) with my sound business.

I have always loved music, but didn't get into this until my 40s.
I pretend to play bass for fun.

We're almost the same!


Detroit here.


Day job is shift supervisor at a machine shop, doing production in custom plastic mold bases. 15 years between manual machining and CNC. Love making chips.

....and playing some bass, and Dj'ing.


Weekend warrior with my own rather small sound company, DJ on occasion. Just formed an LLC in the past month or so. It's been a blast!

[Nitin Thakur]

1. India from a city Chandigarh

2. Oh yeah full time. I wish to learn more of this industry and also spread the knowledge around.

3. This is a family business and I am the second generation so started early as a DJ while graduating. Did my post grad in audio school. Entered business and fell in love with it. Currently working on ideas like audio workshops in India for live applications by different manufacturers so more brand awareness is created. Incite the ideology of audio ethics in the industry with a motto that If I am giving my life to this industry I need to do right by it. Not to follow the popular choices blindly but first try to understand the vision and engineering behind the products.

[Steve Mason]

1. Newport Oregon.

2. I am a total cliche'. Bartender 4 nights a week and part time cover band rock star part time. "sound guy" when there'should not a gig to play

3. Severe G.A.S. with my band. Before ya knew it I had enough gear to do a small "festival". Then my friend who runs the County Fair asked me if I wanted the sound gignore when his provider "outgrew" our small county fair. Invested the first years money into some more gear and now I am mostly a weekend warrior on the sound stuff.  Built my fair rig so I could break it down onto smaller sized rigs for corporate or small band stuff as well. Pretty bare bones and ground based, but people seem to like what I get out of what I have to work with. Debating whether to take it next level. Glad I found this site. Have learned a ton. Best PSW moment .... my first Dave Rat video link.

[Marc Sibilia]

Old thread, but some new faces and voices:

1) I live and work in Princeton, NJ.

2) I have been a mechanical engineer for 30 years and still love it.  Currently, I work on developing nuclear fusion as a future energy source working for the Department of Energy and Princeton University.  Over the years, I have worked on all kinds of things.  I worked on developing natural gas engines for transportation use.  I designed the propulsion system for an unmanned atmospheric research drone to fly to 90,000 feet over Antarctica to sample the ozone layer.  I helped develop an alternative air conditioning system that cools the air by over-drying it.  I have done CNC machining, welding, performance plastics processing, microcontroller programming, CAD and finite element modeling and worked in nuclear power plants.

3) But audio is my passion.  I built my first speaker and amplifier in seventh grade.  I DJed dances at my church during high school.  When I was at college, I built a 4 way, analog active crossover and speakers.  I was the technical director of our mime company and built speakers that we dragged around when we went on tour.  I built more speakers for the music at my wedding.  I took a bit of a hiatus while we raised our children, but they are out of the house now.

I began the slippery slope of "hobby out-of-control" PA gear accumulation when my buddy volunteered to play some music at our rowing club holiday party.  He didn't have enough "rig for the gig", so I added to his home speakers.  I used a found Bose 801 and a double 12" sub loaded with old Speakerlab woofers and a bit of DSP magic the first year.  The next year I added one 18" and a couple of CBT like arc segment speakers.  The following year, I had 4 18" DIY subs and had reconfigured the 8 x 5" tops to two way and added a Driverack PA.

I decided that having all that gear sitting in my basement 363 days a year was a bit of a waste, so I contacted a youth circus run by a friend of mine.  They use a big old factory in Trenton to run a program for the kids in the city and really needed a better PA.  I loaned it to them except for the two days a year I need it and they love having it.  I have since donated it, since they need it and I don't anymore.

That's when I found ProSoundWeb and began lurking and learning.  I started thinking about extending my DJing to include mixing for bands, but I really needed a bit more capable system if I wanted to do that properly.  I designed and built eight 15" subs (very similar to Chris Grimshaw's) that are easier to carry up and down stairs and louder and lower than my four budget 18's in big boxes, and some lightweight horn loaded B&C 12" + Eminence and RCF 1.4" tops (loosely inspired by Peter Morris' DIY 90) that should do fine for any bar around and for smaller festival type events.  I haven't done my first live sound event yet.  I need to build some stage monitors and buy some mic stands.  I can stuff the whole rig including a Honda generator in my SUV.

Other thing I need to get before I do this for real is some liability insurance (I have definitely learned some things on PSW).

I have some friends in bands that might help me get my feet wet.  More than likely, I will be doing benefit type events for organizations I support in the beginning.

I am also hoping to find someone not too far away with a passing interest in DIY that might spend an afternoon listening to and comparing my system to a commercial equivalent.

Marc

[Scott Holtzman]

Old thread, but some new faces and voices:

1) I live and work in Princeton, NJ.

2) I have been a mechanical engineer for 30 years and still love it.  Currently, I work on developing nuclear fusion as a future energy source working for the Department of Energy and Princeton University.  Over the years, I have worked on all kinds of things.  I worked on developing natural gas engines for transportation use.  I designed the propulsion system for an unmanned atmospheric research drone to fly to 90,000 feet over Antarctica to sample the ozone layer.  I helped develop an alternative air conditioning system that cools the air by over-drying it.  I have done CNC machining, welding, performance plastics processing, microcontroller programming, CAD and finite element modeling and worked in nuclear power plants.

3) But audio is my passion.  I built my first speaker and amplifier in seventh grade.  I DJed dances at my church during high school.  When I was at college, I built a 4 way, analog active crossover and speakers.  I was the technical director of our mime company and built speakers that we dragged around when we went on tour.  I built more speakers for the music at my wedding.  I took a bit of a hiatus while we raised our children, but they are out of the house now.

I began the slippery slope of "hobby out-of-control" PA gear accumulation when my buddy volunteered to play some music at our rowing club holiday party.  He didn't have enough "rig for the gig", so I added to his home speakers.  I used a found Bose 801 and a double 12" sub loaded with old Speakerlab woofers and a bit of DSP magic the first year.  The next year I added one 18" and a couple of CBT like arc segment speakers.  The following year, I had 4 18" DIY subs and had reconfigured the 8 x 5" tops to two way and added a Driverack PA.

I decided that having all that gear sitting in my basement 363 days a year was a bit of a waste, so I contacted a youth circus run by a friend of mine.  They use a big old factory in Trenton to run a program for the kids in the city and really needed a better PA.  I loaned it to them except for the two days a year I need it and they love having it.  I have since donated it, since they need it and I don't anymore.

That's when I found ProSoundWeb and began lurking and learning.  I started thinking about extending my DJing to include mixing for bands, but I really needed a bit more capable system if I wanted to do that properly.  I designed and built eight 15" subs (very similar to Chris Grimshaw's) that are easier to carry up and down stairs and louder and lower than my four budget 18's in big boxes, and some lightweight horn loaded B&C 12" + Eminence and RCF 1.4" tops (loosely inspired by Peter Morris' DIY 90) that should do fine for any bar around and for smaller festival type events.  I haven't done my first live sound event yet.  I need to build some stage monitors and buy some mic stands.  I can stuff the whole rig including a Honda generator in my SUV.

Other thing I need to get before I do this for real is some liability insurance (I have definitely learned some things on PSW).

I have some friends in bands that might help me get my feet wet.  More than likely, I will be doing benefit type events for organizations I support in the beginning.

I am also hoping to find someone not too far away with a passing interest in DIY that might spend an afternoon listening to and comparing my system to a commercial equivalent.

Marc

I will be back in Parsippany in 2 weeks glad to get together.

I am also an engineer/entrepreneur spent my mife in Telecom/cellular and always had some hand in production. 

My first gig was running the bogen 5 input amp our church used at 13 yrs old. 

I am headed into semi-retirement and my little production company stays pretty busy with 5-6 gigs a week and a dry rental business that is growing like crazy.

Let me know, may not get a rental but can Uber.  Will be at the Marriott in Morris Plains I think is the name of the town.



Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

[Ed Taylor]

I'm still pretty new here on the forum and as I peruse through the posts I find myself wondering where this person is from or what do they do besides post on the forum . Meaning are you full time employed in the audio/entertainment field or is there another "day" job rounding out your dance card...

If you are full time in this field, what are your specialties? Are you a mixer, system designer, speaker designer, stage tech, product rep, etc...

1. Where are you located
2. Is this all you do or do you have other business
3. How'd you get into it

I'll start with less than mindblowing info:

I'm originally from near Chicago but since January 2011, I've been a Tennessean. I live in Cookeville, well Livingston actually but Cookeville line is literally right across the road.

I am/was employed full time within my own company that specialized in corporate events needing sound and lighting but we also have a DJ side of the biz too, although that's pretty much in Chicago as my DJ still lives there. I've been involved in the industry for most of my life, in one way or another... Growing up my Dad was in bands and also had the business I now own. He was also a partner in one of the very first karaoke clubs in Illinois...

I tried my best to avoid this line of work I went to school for business and graduated with a BA in Marketing. I was drawn back in when I had to cover an event for my Dad as he was recovering from his quadruple bypass. He was scheduled to sing and provide the entertainment for a wedding and told me I had to do it. Unfortunately I CANNOT sing, at all, and I agreed if I could just play music (DJ) the event. The clients were ok with this and off I went. I gathered my CD collection and a pair of CD players and talked a family friend into going to the event to MC the event, I was scared to death to talk on the mic.

The night went great and I actually revived my love for the entertainment industry. I started taking over my Dad's biz and grew a pretty profitable DJ business right off the bat. Sadly, even with my marketing degree, I never really promoted the sound side of biz and subsequently, we kept getting more and more DJ events and less and less sound jobs.. That, along with the fact that my DJ doesn't like the live sound side at all, so I went with the flow and focused on the DJ biz. Only after years of a small sound show here and there did I start to turn things back around to sound and lighting. Former and current clients would call to inquire about names to call for their other events and it hit me like a ton of bricks, I had NEVER even discussed my ability to do it with them.... I took advantage of those opportunities as best I could from then on out.

Opportunities that I never noticed, or weren't there, began to arise for me to return back to my true love, live sound. I was just getting traction back home when the opportunity for us to move to Tennessee came about. After a lot of thought and prayer, here we are.

The first year I sat back and surveyed the area as to what opportunities there were and what needs there were and who could fill them here an hour East of Nashville. The second year I started engaging a bit but, I still kept busy with business in Chicago so not a lot materialized here in Tennessee. Now we are starting year 3, literally our anniversary of moving was just 5 days ago, and it's time to kick it into high gear. I'm fighting a small town area in which I'm clearly an outsider or newcomer so it's been a bit challenging but I like a good challenge.

So there it is, I'm from Cookeville, TN and I own a small event production company and I tried to escape this line of work only to realize, it's what I love and always have.. So I'm back and trying to make up for lost time.

Just thought it'd be cool to learn who some of you are, what part of the world you live in and what it is that you do.

Next.....

Carolinas...have always had a "day job"  in Information Technology..so the bills are covered. Owned a pro backline biz for a little over 15 years...simple choice was that I'm a gear head and felt my stock market investment could do a lot better in an industry that I knew and had some control over..and it did...made a lot of good $ through the years and "talk about time"..sold it to a larger concern about 3 years back...but did keep my longer running private party biz going...that's been running since 1989..mostly weddings, corporate parties...so a reasonably capable semi-pro level audio/lighting/common backline supply...intended to provide some side income for home improvements, vacations, etc over the years and give me something to do when I retire from the day job. so while I've missed the work during covid, it's not crushed me financially...it's just hybernated for now.

[Guillermo Sanchez]

I'm probably going to be one of the outliers here.

I'm from Venezuela. I had been in the audio business all my life. I started with a mobile DJ when I was 11. While having my own, people started to hire me to install and tune their DJ sound systems (and I mean big systems, not speakers on a stick stuff but dozens of 18" sub boxes, JBL 4560's or Altec VOT boxes, 2441 loaded horns and 2402 Tweeters, all active 3 or 4 way depending on the particular system). That work lead to do live audio pretty quickly and I was mixing my first show at 14.

I kept on working on install/tune system while I morphed my business to audio system rentals. Long story short, I built what was a sizable SR company in my country, doing mostly international acts and big venues, plus a lot of corporate jobs. At some point, when my beloved country politics turned for the worse (Leaning to "socialism" which in reality was an excuse to steal and squander our immense resources), I decided it was not in my best interest to have so much hardware, so I sold the system and started working as an independent designer/tuner again. While going to that transition, I met Crown's president at the time and was hired as Business developer/application support for the LATAM region. I worked at different positions within Harman Pro for 7 years, mostly doing systems setup, training and tuning for our SR partners in the region until it didn't align with my goals, so I quit, moved back to my country and started working independently again. I worked for a brand representative which had Martin Audio at the time, then worked for a consumer/pro audio representative that had some interesting brands with it, while also doing independent system tuning. Currently I do system design and tuning for some big local Production companies and do system tuning and sound design for a lot of cruise ship lines through a company sell and install such systems. That is what keep me busy now, after 45 years in the business.

Sorry for the long winded post. is not easy to sum up 45 years of audio in a paragraph

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