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[Hadrien Othnin]

Fellow sound and music lovers, welcome to my quest.

Some Personal and Technical background :  My name is H, I have an education of Aerospace engineer and I've been making illegal rave parties in France and Germany for about 10 years. I currently live in Hamburg, where I have found a playground to experiment with Sound Reinforcement in many positive ways. I am an Optimization nerd and I can't live without Music. I do not consider myself a Sound Professional, but I take Sound, Music and Dancefloors very seriously.

During my 10 years of designing and running dancefloor oriented events, I've been exposed to a lot of very unique conditions and constraints that made me develop Sound Reinforcement practices which behave "out of the box" in some aspects. Even performing parties with highly competent people with professional backgrounds, I often do not find the answer to my questions because the question. As I see more and more that these skills are useful to many, I am currently processing all my findings, tips and tricks to share it to my fellow sound enthusiasts and party makers.

I still test stress my thoughts on my current System, and it is time for me to test stress these ideas within a knowledgeable community. I will make different posts il the coming weeks to discuss and investigate many topics, from gear selection, acoustics and psycho-acoustics, system optimization and many other juicy stuff, but this first Post is simply an introduction from me and my current Sound System to you.

The following document is a simple breakdown of the PA from DJ Deck to Cabinets. It contains some thoughts and information here and there, being only one of many documents at work it must be seen as a work in progress made by a dedicated hobbyist. I'm curious for any feedback, advise or questions regarding it's content.

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https://postimg.cc/8fmRp1fd
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Thank you for taking the time to dive in, I'm looking forward to positive and stimulating discussions with you all 

[Dan Richardson]

I'm looking forward to positive and stimulating discussions with you all 

First thing you'll want to do is follow the rules of the forum and post your real full name.

[Hadrien Othnin]

First thing you'll want to do is follow the rules of the forum and post your real full name.

It confused me for a bit, I thought I did but obviously not. I believe my real name now appears as it should, thank you for notifying this 

[Brian Jojade]

Hmm, I don't know that discussing 'illegal' activities is something that we do around here.  I'd suggest omitting that from the discussion.

[Jeff Lelko]

...and I've been making illegal rave parties in France and Germany for about 10 years...

Hmm, I don't know that discussing 'illegal' activities is something that we do around here.

Especially when your name is tied to it on the never-forgetting internet!

[Hadrien Othnin]

Hmm, I don't know that discussing 'illegal' activities is something that we do around here.  I'd suggest omitting that from the discussion.

Hmm, I don't know that discussing 'illegal' activities is something that we do around here.  I'd suggest omitting that from the discussion.

I was kind of expecting that one so allow me to elaborate. If I would need to compare Illegal to Legal in this case, the only difference would lie in Paperwork and legal authorization. All technical aspects are handled by people with professional background (Sound, light, electricity, transport, ...) with a very high concern for safety, that I am yet to see matched in most "legal" venues all around. Especially, and this is a major factor, when it comes to Sound being absolutely SAFE to listen to.

As a music and event organization, our strategy to convince authorities to tolerate our gatherings is to be absolutely flawless on all safety related aspects, that include being above legal sanitary measures when applicable. We perform "illegal" events because we do not tolerate the official route needed to obtain legal authorization in both France and Germany. We believe that listening to music and being able to dance freely should not be something to ask permission for as long as it is done seriously and responsibly, which we do each and every time 

That being said, this "boundary condition" leads to very unusual constraints to take in account while investigating System Optimization paths. For example, it is quite common to have a sudden need to change the party location entirely, which leads to the whole PA to be taken down, transported and rebuilt within the shortest possible time frame (current baseline is under 2 hrs from Stop to Restart without sacrificing safety). This also means the exact same PA is used for very different crowd size, ranging from less than 30 to above 300, and that the highest sound quality must be reached at various SPL, not only at full capacity.

There are numerous factors impacted by the "illegal" aspect of our music event which is why I think it is relevant to mention it, otherwise I would need to create a fake scenario which would mislead any reader entirely. I hope this is convincing, if not I will gladly dive deeper on that matter.

[Hadrien Othnin]

Especially when your name is tied to it on the never-forgetting internet!

As long as the mentioned event is of the highest quality and technically flawless (especially compared to its legal counterpart which are often far from satisfactory to my personal standards), I do not see any reason to hide. I've always been absolutely honest about this, even towards my employers because it is non negotiable as long as the law remains irrational and counterproductive towards better music for everyone.

I am yet to see any authorities willing to make this a problem without making fools of themselves.

[John L Nobile]

What's the difference between your illegal raves and the legal ones? Are you able to get insurance for your raves?

[Hadrien Othnin]

What's the difference between your illegal raves and the legal ones? Are you able to get insurance for your raves?

This somehow highly differs from country to country. For example, in France any legal music event requires organizers to pay a serious share of all expenses related to police controls which are at the discretion of the local chief of police. So to organize a legal event, you must include a variable part of your expenses that you will only know by the end of the event and highly dependent on how many police units will be deployed to monitor the event. This is a serious financial constraint that forces organizers to overcrowd their Raves to be safer financially. An illegal rave in France would extensively run on collective and individual care, private circles and thorough communication to create an equal sense of safety. we would request guests to attend while behaving to the best of their ability as civilized, responsible adults.

In Germany, you would face less irrational requirements to obtain a legal authorization, however most available areas that would fit our needs for an enjoyable rave would be owned by private entities, leading to insanely time consuming processes and highly variable outputs. Going through 2-6 months of legal talks with the local port authority just to get to use a square of land is a deal breaker. I'd rather use respectfully the unused location without permission and leave it thoroughly cleaned than spending half a year filling up papers and creating attractive concepts to convince some random dude that has no clue about event organization.

So in one hand illegal raves are much more demanding from a personal and collective point of view, while legal is often working on a consumer-service baseline, and on the other hand the legal rave will require loads of administrative work to be allowed to use any given space, while illegal would rely on human interaction and being convincing to avoid being kicked out for stupid reasons.

More than once we've seen police happily allowing us to keep on going just because they could not see anything harmful or disturbing about what we were doing.

[John L Nobile]

we would request guests to attend while behaving to the best of their ability as civilized, responsible adults.

Seriously? Are there drugs and alcohol involved in these raves?

[ProSoundWeb Community]