As a professional speaker, I of course travel around and talk to people in all sorts of venues. Sometimes it’s a little company conference room, sometimes it’s a restaurant, sometimes it’s an auditorium or the main ballroom in a fancy hotel. And of course I do all kinds of events where they have fabulous food, decorations, and music. But the one thing that is almost always problematic, one way or another, is the audio.
I am not trying to browbeat anybody. This is a universal problem. We had problems with audio in Symphony Hall in Boston, and that’s arguably one of the top 5 acoustic spaces in the world. A space that works well for music doesn’t necessarily work well for the spoken word. And sometimes the sound that comes out of the speakers sounds great to the audience, but no one on the stage or backstage can hear any of it.
When I did recording sessions for Bose, we had a team of 5-10 guys working on the audio, and they were never satisfied with anything. Sometimes we would have as many as 88 microphones on the stage, and it would take 3 days for the engineers to get it right, and even then they were constantly tweaking.
As I travel around the world seeing my theatrical programs produced in concert halls, consistently, the biggest problem is the audio and amplification of the speaking parts. Usually someone either on stage or offstage cannot hear what’s going on. Sometimes people just forget to speak into the microphone. It goes on and on. Audio is something we tend to take for granted, so no one wants to spend any money on it.
When one is presenting, the only time audio is not a problem is when a) the room is small enough that there is no need for a microphone or 2) the event is in a high-end hotel ballroom/meeting room, and there is a guy sitting in the corner with a bunch of black boxes, and his sole job is to keep track of the microphones and speakers and the audio levels. That doesn’t guarantee that nothing will go wrong, but it’s by far the most preferable situation.
Just to give you a few examples of audio gone bad:
I recently donated my time to a local nonprofit to be the MC for their awards banquet. It was at a country club in a large carpeted room, and the acoustics were such that it unless you used the microphone, no one could hear you. Less than a minute after I started handing out awards, the battery in the microphone went dead. Like the old saying, “for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.”
Many companies have these little mobile audio setups that they use for presentations. It’s a mike, an amp, and two speakers on stands. Typically, the wires are not long enough to run the speakers very far away from the lectern. This is not an immediate problem, but if you walk around at all, the moment you come within 6 feet of the speakers, the audience is assaulted with a vicious 130 decibel feedback. This can really kill the mood and the flow.
I was offstage at a recent talk, and as they were introducing me, I turned on the little switch on the wireless lav microphone, not realizing that I was standing near one of the many speakers they had installed invisibly in the walls. BZZZZHHT major feedback, again, assaulting the years of the audience with a huge unexpected nasty noise.
I was just attending a gala fundraiser, and to save money they decided to use the live band’s microphones for the live auction. Granted, the acoustics in this hotel ballroom were awful anyway, but you couldn’t hear a thing as music amplification is different, apparently.
Speaking of music, there is a tendency of musical acts to want to crank the volume up right to and beyond the edge of ear-splitting. HIgh volume is no substitute for a good performance, but that’s another blog post.
Another problem I consistently run into is, they will give me a little clip-on microphone, and the clip has these razor-sharp jagged edges. Now I don’t want to sound like a sissy, but I spent an awful lot of money on these very fancy Italian suits and ties I wear when I speak, and I’m not terribly real thrilled about risking a hole in the lapel. I have learned to always bring a little bit of gaffer tape to wrap around the teeth of the clip.
Anyway, I’m sure lots of people can tell you their audio horror stories. I have learned to never ever ever take the audio and mikes for granted. I rehearse with the equipment to get used to the echo. I will walk around and locate the feedback spots. I put a spare mike on the lectern if they have it. Sometimes I will even do sound checks with the actual audience to make sure they can hear me.
For what it’s worth, here are a few little things to bring in your audio disaster avoidance fix-it kit:
1) Have batteries on hand. A little package with four AA’s, four AAA’s, and two 9 volt batteries might save your entire event.
2) Carry a few extension cords. I cannot tell you how often I’ve seen people doing mobile audio setups, wishing they had an extra extension cord. And I don’t mean those little sissy extension cords, I mean the big heavy duty ones with the three-pronged plugs. And finally
3) Buy a roll of gaffer tape. By this I don’t mean a roll of duct tape. I mean go to a professional theatrical-video lighting shop/web site and spend the big bucks on the most expensive roll of black gaffer tape they have. Once you have a roll this in your production kit, you will wonder how you ever lived without it. You can use it to tape down cables on the floor so people don’t trip, you can use it to tape cables inside of suits so they don’t go dangling all over the place, it can hold tripods in place, the list is endless. It holds tight and leaves no residue.
It is a sad fact of our general aesthetic life that we have come to expect very basic audio just about everywhere. Now to be fair, good audio is both difficult and expensive, but if you do a fair number of events where people get up and talk, it behooves you to do some research and invest in a good system, and the only way to really get it right is to have a dedicated engineer running the board. Expensive yes, but your guest speakers and your audiences will be eternally grateful.
© Justin Locke
Justin Locke is an entertaining speaker. Call him at 781-330-8143 to discuss having him appear at
your next event.
