Dave you are an invaluable asset to this industry. A genuine leader and trailblazer, and a keeper of SO MUCH wisdom and experience. THANK YOU for sharing it with the rest of the world.
Well, Im running my own small little business. And Im doing small corporate events, weddings, festivals and concerts. I love PA, live music and Im putting everything I have (time and money) into my small company, so it can grow. A few years ago I started with a few speakers and noticed that you can get pretty loud for a few hundred bucks. Since then I made tons of upgrades and Ive spent a lot of money on my PA. But the further you get, the steeper the gradient (cost vs dB) gets. And its just mindblowing what a big festival stage costs. Thanks for the insights in this video! But tbh this made me doubt if Ill ever reach my dream of having my own live music hall.
Good stuff. Always appreciate your willingness to show how the sausage is made, so to speak. Plenty of the industry likes to pretend everything is a big ole secret, scared to teach someone how to steal their clients/gigs. It's admirable that you'd rather enlighten people, and extend the knowledge to people who aren't exactly clued into the field. It's technical content out of necessity, but still consumable and understandable. The general public rarely understands how much cost goes into performing arts venues/productions. I can't tell you how many people I've talked with who are like, "What do you mean this sound system costs half a million dollars?!" Staying on budget for system design is not a simple task and it's really cool to see you work out these sorts of very real world situations.
Stumbled across this video when it’s totally not my world, but it gives me so much respect for everything you do! I don’t know your title but i know concerts wouldn’t exist without you! Thanks!
Super interesting, thanks Dave! I just finished installing a d&b system (rigging, not design or integration or anything) and I've definitely wondered about the economics of it. I know the client has some very strict requirements because of big events coming down the pike--but making that a reality in a way the accountants can understand MUST have been a real challenge, this system is pretty intense!
Dave, I think you under-valued the costs of cabling and hoists by a significant amount but it doesn't change the logic of your analysis, which is spot on. Thanks for showing the math behind the business of audio.
We just turn down gigs that won't hire adequate systems. But we do work with clients to optimize. And the discussion came up "is there a way to reduce the budget without compromising the sound" And of course there is no right or wrong when opinion and perception is the judge. So this video is an offshoot of the info I presented. 6 box was the minimum that would cover at a reasonable level, 12 box was the initial bid. 9 box allowed a single amp rack rather than two amp racks. The cost vs dB analysis along with audible demo was presented and we went with 9 box delay clusters. All good, not an emotional thing, but rather, working with the client to optimize, quality and budget.
Random thought: Have you ever done a video about how venue shape affects the size of PA you need, and thus the cost of it? My church recently had to temporarily move venues and we had to use a school gym hall that was a long oblong shape. I said to our production manager that if we set the room up in landscape/wide format, we might not have to rent extra PA, because we use D&B Y10s, which have 110 degree angle, but if we go long ways, we'd need to rent in a pair of delay boxes. In the end we were forced to go long ways because of an installed projection screen. This then forced us to rent delays to achieve a consistent (ish) SPL front to back.
Alterations in the horizontal or vertical coverage requirements for drastically increase or decrease the amount of boxes needed. What's interesting is increases in vertical coverage can drive up the box count of line arrays very quickly, I will ponder something down that line if I can come up with a perspective that is interesting and I can present a clear vision of that
This can be really helpful. Ideally, you want enough overhead that you don't have to compress the overall signal and you can set the levels you want, but you work with what you have where you can apply LUFS principles at FOH to get as much out of the system as you can. It seems as though so many FOH processes are being imported from the post-production and broadcast industries already, things like parallel compression or multiband compression, that we can learn other things as well from that aspect of the industry.
Understanding the output levels of the various system sizes when deploying systems versus cost is helpful in optimizing the decisions of how many speakers to use
More of this would be amazing. While your business is way bigger than mine would ever be the financial concepts you outlined here can we scaled down to little guys like me. I've kind of been fumbling around the dark for 24 years with my company. Started out as a DJ then I bought a few SM58s and 57's and a Mackie mixer to start running sound at one of my venues. Never had anyone that could explain how to figure out what to charge. I never worked for a major company and just organically grew by buying, selling and trading stuff on craigslist and eBay. I don't think there's anyone at your level on RUclips that covers the business side of running a sound company. I have so many questions about this video. Weekly rental rate of 2.5%, what is the utilization percentage you expect from your equipment (how often is it rented out)? At what percentage do you invest in more to meet demand? You must factor a few extra components for your rigs in case things break, what percentage would that be roughly? When making a new purchase, how long do you expect to have it in your inventory working? Is there a set time frame or is it dependent on new products being released to the industry? Not expecting answers for everything, just some ideas for potential future content on this topic.
Awesome and thank you!! Take a look at some of the older channel member zoom chats I did. I've done a zoom chats where I've discussed finances and strategies for rental versus ROI versus uptime and such. I also cover things like how long equipment loans should be termed and a bunch of other stuff. Let me know if you can't find it and I will try and search it out for you
@@DaveRat i am also interested in this topic. Can you tell us what number zoom call to watch? Since they all have many different topics its hard to find them unless i watch all of them🥲. Just joined as a member too😊
@DaveRat great topic, would love to learn more from you, about money/business info and investment advice for "independent" audio people, what different bands & venues you worked with require & what programs you prefer to use.. Cheers :)
Dave, this is brilliant- thank you for breaking it down. From a listener perspective it seems like you would see more value in splitting two sixes to handle delay issues and increase spread vs going for db. Ie. What’s the best value to listener if you do have the money?
Adding delays increases cost, complexity and reduces sight lines. That must be balanced with coverage and SPL levels. It's very subjective but what we do is create predictions of coverages based on feasible delay cluster locations and scale box counts to optimize SPL
Without measuring how much you can feel the bass, gig sound level is mostly to drown out those punters that just won't be quiet. For your "what's a db sound like anyway" test, you might have a constant level background sound as a reference for the subject sound.
I think you're crafty enough to derive the information you need from the information provided. If you need more dBs to drown out whatever you need to drown out, this helps with understanding the cost of that adventure. As far as subwoofers I've done a lot of videos on that and I do have a video planned on how to array subwoofers for maximum efficiency versus maximum coverage versus maximum sound quality
Dave, this is great, tnx for the video! In a real setting, how do you control a “renter” from renting less boxes but then abuse them with more spl than they should handle?
We usually get an RFP. Request for proposal. We propose what we believe to be hear that will offer sound quality and coverage that we are willing to provide. If they want less audio than 8s needed, we don't do the gig.
Dave. I'm watching all the videos on your channel, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. One question: what is the setup of the sound equipment installed in your car? Is it a High-End system? I'm curious to know what system (equipment) you use in your car...
Great question. Over the years I've gone from putting all kinds of stereo stuff in there to having trucks with JBL 12-in with JBL fives and bullets. But currently I have a Tesla and I've got the stock Bose system that sounds good enough. I've decided I don't want to bring my work to my vehicle. At home I have all kinds of cool stuff like vintage speakers from Abbey road and if you look at the videos I did on real speaker you can see a collection of cool oddball and vintage stuff that I own. But the system we use could living room is these long tube speakers that I also did a video on
the amount of boxes are mainly according to the balanced spl covering of the audience not the db level. to level up you use a louder system not more cabinets.
While that can be true with point source systems and some setups and with small format pa syatems, with modern line array setups more boxes can be used to increase vertical coverage or used increase SPL level or used to maintain a more consistent volume level over distance such that the volume drops off 3DB per doubling a distance or zero DB per doubling a distance or 6b per doubling of distance.. Furthermore, One can configure multiple boxes to do any combination of the above all the while using a single box type and just by altering combinations of the quantity of boxes, azimuth of the array, and angles between the boxes. This is the beauty of line array systems and allows them to cover venues more evenly without having to haul around a vast assortment of different boxes.
Hey Dave, great video as always! But there might be an error in your spreadsheet, shouldn't the 1/6th total be $27,400? I felt like the difference was too small but at more than 3K of economy per box, it is definitely an incentive to go 3 per amp. Cheers
I would enjoy a follow up video discussing headroom. As audio engineers we all know that it's best to run any system at somewhat less than 100% of its capacity, but how much headroom is actually necessary, and where do you start to see diminishing returns from adding system capacity at a fixed volume level? If you want to mix at about 95dBSPL you want a system that is capable of throwing more than that, but how much more? 105dB? 120? 130? At some point you're just wasting money, but I've always just kind of estimated how much headroom is ideal and never gotten really scientific with it.
Well I'm not really one much known for following the rules. And I love and respect L-acoustics and all the people that make the company great and build cool stuff. It wouldn't be the first time I bent or broke the rules with them. Like breaking the fundamental rule of never hang two line arrays side by side covering the same area and then I did a world tour with two line arrays side by side covering the same area. I went out to L-Acoustics to visit and I had a lot of people telling me that they were not going to be happy with what I was doing. And I had the pleasure and honor of sitting down with Christian Heil, again. And the subject of the double PA came up and the first thing he said to me was "I have been waiting for somebody to do this" The key was that I never sent the same signal to both systems hanging near each other. So the rule applied but didn't apply to how I was doing it And the next visit to L-acoustics, perhaps 5 years later Christian proudly showed me a prototype setup for L-Isa. The sound system configuration based on multiple line array clusters hung side by side all covering the same area. That said, if I get the email or call asking me to take it down I will gladly do so as I have done several times in the past for other adventures where I bent the lines farther than companies that I work with were comfortable with.
5.1 dB, can we just all agree to round up to 6dB meaning twice as loud for sake of what I got from the video? It blew my mind that twice as loud was almost perfectly twice as expensive. That's a powerful rule of thumb if it really works out the way you explained.
@@DaveRatnot necessarily. Intermodulation distortion (which is quite noticeable by ear) is linear with headroom. The more you push a box the more distortion it has even though you might still have 10db of headroom. So having 5db of free headroom is far from being a bad thing. It just depends on the clients need 💪
I still haven’t worked out a way of turning up the _talent_ Someone suggested to use a _fake it until you make it_ plug in, but it doesn’t run on my old hardware….
Very interesting. And don't forget, this is just 1 hang. When you have 2 hangs plus subs, the numbers probably triple. The next question is, in order to cut the budget, is it better to have a slightly quieter PA of the same quality, or go for a cheaper and lower quality system of the same size?
That's an interesting perspective that has many dynamics. Quite often the artists Rider specifies a certain level of sound system and the sound systems they specify within a similar price range. Going outside of the specified systems tends not to be the best way to perpetuate future business with the client. Our approach is to provide police systems that are capable of providing quality coverage and if the budget cuts exceed a level we're comfortable with, we don't do the gig.
@@DaveRat Yes, that makes sense for your business. You have a reputation to maintain and your clients understand the quality of different systems. However there are many applications below the top tier touring circuit where clients come with a fixed budget and not much idea of what's on the market and they just want the "best" sound for their money. It's obviously quite a subjective topic.
Very true. Proper tool for the job. Don't bring a Ferrari to a desert race. Don't drive a dragster on a mountain road, and opening car rental place that only rents Bentley's in a college town with a bunch of seedy bars, may not be the best business plan
You should do a video on the supercat AES50 cable! I'm curious as to what you discovered makes other cables not work at that distance. I've used your purple supercat cable up to about 75m maybe 80m reliably with aes50, but that's about where it starts dropping sync.
Awesome and great you mentioned that. Yes the purple Super Cat is good too about 75 to 80 m as you mentioned exactly. The blue is good to 90 m for 100 m. On the sound tools web site I put together a chart with information on the differences between all of the sound tools cables. Check this video out and let me know what you think. I dived into the reason why various cables work and don't work and compare unshielded versus the Behringer / klark Technik Cat5e versus Cat6 versus the new Super Cat XM cable ruclips.net/video/bQXOXWuxCGA/видео.htmlsi=EVdUm5i9kuNQ6wr5
@@DaveRat That sounds useful. As part of that, it would be helpful if you could mention the pros and cons of adding subs to delay stacks/towers/hangs too (or maybe that's a video in itself).
Not sure if that wants a specific video. Subwoofers at delay clusters not problematic because it's very difficult to focus subs purely forward. And the back energy radiating the wrong direction causes more problems than the forward energy typically helps. That's it there are specific instances where adding a subcluster for a house or in the field can be useful.
@@DaveRat I think you made a typo, saying "not problematic" instead of "problematic". I have never tried it, but I have made test plots using D&B Array Calc and it looked messy. Seemed like it was cleaner to just add more subs at the front.
Typically those costs are not incurred directly by the rental company making the recommendations That said, if scaling up, the added weight can be an issue. If scaling down, the savings on electricity would be in the several 1s of dollars. Labor wise scaling up or dow could add 5s of minutes to each cluster and trucking wise if scaling down a lot of clusters, saving a truck would be of value. All that could probably easestly be added into the calc by increasing the deployment cost by $100 per box or so across the board.
Love your videos Dave. I know you are an L-Acoustics guy, but Im sorry, $15,600 per box is ridiculous. Our 12 line arrays and 4 subs cost less than that 🤣
Fair enough. And many different tools for different applications. And cost is only one factor. The value in L&acoustics is world wide availability of identically aligned systems. We can sub hire in bulk with 100% compatibility. A full line of diverse products with near identical sonic footprints The best prediction software by far Extremely low depreciation. We sold our V-dosc systems 15 years after we bought them for more than we paid. Long working life. K1 was released in 2009 and is still 15 years later, one of if not the top large format system in the world. ROI. Expensive yes and also the return on investment is extremely high as well. Our entire L- acoustics inventory pays for itself every three years or so, over and over again. Some enclosures like K2 have a 2.5 year ROI. So yes, other systems cost less but also that may be a penny pinch pound foolish perspective
@@DaveRat I appreciate the very fair points. I guess I'm just speaking as a smaller, regional company, who will never be able to afford the luxury of multiple $15,000 boxes.
Yes, it does look ominous from the perspective of a regional vendor. I know because I started my sound company with 2 speakers that fit in my car. Worked my way up from backyard parties to clubs, then halls, then regional to national and worldwide. Though we were doing world tours prior to owning L-acoustics, owning L-acoustics is what really drive our growth. Less expensive systems will position you to work harder for less money against more competitors. Providing premium systems to more demanding clients and backing that with extreme quality and customer service can position your company for higher margins and higher quality gigs. It may also be important to point out that we funded our growth internally, we don't have any cash cow outside owners or such. We did borrow money and do leases and loans but our growth is organic
@@DaveRat That is very interesting, and proves you are a smart business man for sure! You also make some really compelling points that I had not considered. Thank you for giving your backstory, Dave!
Great to meet you and yes, I am 44 years in and follow a slow steady growth plan. I enjoy risk and over the years have transitions from max risk to stability and longevity. As far as purchasing gear, the initial cost is a hurdle but the driving force of the decision should be time frame of ROI and residual value of the gear vs money owed. The formula I use is ROI of 3 years or less is a buy ROI of 5 years or more is a don't buy Modified by availability gear that can be sub hired. If we can sub hire easily and below rental rates, don't buy. Buying gear with a high resale value over time insures both it's rental rates will stay stable and gear can be sold in the event of financial stress. Cool cool and keep me updated on your progress and endeavors.
Do the amplifiers / processors in these systems give the user some idea of the percentage of time the signal was limited to protect the speakers / amplifiers as a way of measuring how hard the sound system is being pushed?
I’ve been wondering something similar, let’s say a smaller box that cost half as much like the hdl6a vs having half the amount of a larger box that cost twice as much like the Hdl20. so would a 4 hang hdl20 rig be louder then a 8 hang hdl6 rig? does the maximum spl rating plus 6db every time the amount of cabinets is doubled apply to this?
Very interesting. Are you looking at this as adding dBs with the same effective sound quality ? In other words no added distortion or loss of dynamics ? And could you (soundvision) give a value for the distortion added if you were to push the smaller system to a higher dB ? Thank you !
Yes the system coverage is the same or very close in the system is driven exactly the same and I'm comparing the output levels of different box quantities
Adding loudspeakers does neither of the things you mention. Loudspeakers are also the most non-linear devices in the system, but adding more loudspeakers doesn't increase the percentage of distortion in a signal, as it parallels the increase in output.
My understanding is the question refers to whether the various configurations have the system driven exactly the same. Making sure that when the speakers are added other factors are not being altered like how hard the system is driven which would increase distortion or whether compression is added which would reduce dynamics.
There's not much to that particular spreadsheet, I just made it for the video and what you see is pretty much all of it. But yeah I'll look into posting a link to it on my Google drive or something
Probably a question better directed to your website, but do you have this cable in bulk spools? I may have some installs coming up where I want better cable. I'm still getting some pushback on using higher quality Cat6a that meets the specs., they still want 5e but I think I'm going to be out 50+ meters which is beyond my personal overhead. The cable they use is also going to be lowest bidder, you can see where I'm going. If you published the frequency sweep tests that you've made, I might be able to get them to use the higher quality cable. I think we wanted 2 or 4 runs in this area of the building so we might need 2000 feet to pull and install up to 100 meters per run total. If you can do bulk cable, I'll drop you a message at your store.
What about running the sound system backwards from the back to front, so the stage doesn't get the volume? Also I have been wondering about "circle stages" like where the stage is a circle rather than a square and sound moves from the outside to inside, how does this affect coverage? Could sound be reduced enough not to crossover in the center yet still be loud enough ?
Sound travels quite slowly compared to what we see and the speed of light. Having speakers far away pointed at the stage would create unsolvable problems where the people close to the stage would hear the sound late. Also putting speakers far away shooting inward requires many many more speakers than having the speakers on the inside firing outward. Circular stages are feasible and are not uncommon. Maybe check out the video I did on Bassnectar subs
@DaveRat I find it really interesting that those doesn't really correlate with the traditional power law by doubling speakers (power in wattage of course) adds 3db anymore being the same as cost. It seems you have a sweet spot in adding dB then there is a spot of diminishing returns despite the power law. That's pretty rad. Now how does that translate to cheap speakers?
@@wally7856 He started out by listing ball park prices for the gear, then he said the weekly rental rate is 2.5% of purchase price...so yeah, he told us how much the gear actually costs both to buy and to rent.
the electricity cost would also be interesting.. i read somewhere that rammstein used over 100,000 euros in electricity when they played in berlin recently
The cost of electricity would be interesting though the cost of electricity for sound tends to be minimal compared to the cost of electricity for lighting and video. A 1,000,000 watt sound system which is absolutely huge, will typically pull considerably less from the power service due to the dynamics of music. But let's say it does pull the full 1 million Watts. So that's 1,000 kilowatts and say the concert operates 3 hours at full power That's going to be 3000 kilowatt hours. At my house kilowatts cost between 13 and 40 cents per kilowatt but let's say the venue pays a dollar a kilowatt, That makes the electric bill for the sound $3,000 for the night. I'm guessing that even with lights and video included that Rammstein cost of energy is probably exaggerated unless they're including generator rentals and such like that
@@DaveRat i guess it was just a good headline knowing that most people wont know how to verify any of it.. thanks for shedding some light on the matter
You can power a single K2 from a LAA4x or up to 3 K2 from a LA8 or LA12X. 2 K2 per LA12X offers the most headroom though the rates output level is the same. Running 2 vs 3 gives less cable loss and better damping factor and sounds better and sounds slightly louder
5% per day gives a 100% return on investment every 20 days, With a 30% up time that gives you about 550% ROI per year. with a $100,000 investment, you would make $550,000 per year. If you reinvested 1/2 of the profit the first year you would make $2.2 million year 2 and if you reinvested 50% year 2 you would make 6 million year 3 and another 50% reinvest would put you at $16 million year 4. WOW! Congrats, please send photo of private jet.
@@DaveRat I just downloaded 3.11.1 which added the L2 as a source option, but I cannot find the probes anywhere. Perhaps you have a special edition courtesy of the French?
This gives an example of one possible rental price calculation that is based on a % of purchase price. This calculation is based on the gear paying for itself every 2.5 years to 3 years if it works 12 weeks a year or so. Of course there are many other factors, long term rentals may see lower rates, trucking, labor and other casts may need to be added. Gear rental costs vary over time and different cities and areas have or lower costs based on demand, taxes, fees and exposure environmental damage. As we're as cost of money This is just one small piece on a bigger puzzle and a simple assumption would not be correct. But it is start point
@@DaveRat ah ok! Thanks for the detail! As a young production company, we’re always trying to find the right price to charge. I like the way your brake it down 🙌🏽
Well, I am 44 years in and started with 2 speakers in my car. Keep at it and you can get to where ya wish to be, just work twice as long and twice as hard as ya think it will take and you will hopefully get half way there
How much a Concert db cost? The question is detrimental, paralyzin' my mix Parasites in my laptop keep me with a gut feeling, y'all Gotta see how I'm chillin' once I get this luxury mix
Nerding out with Dave. Best way to spend a few minutes
👍🤙👍
Dave you are an invaluable asset to this industry. A genuine leader and trailblazer, and a keeper of SO MUCH wisdom and experience.
THANK YOU for sharing it with the rest of the world.
Wow and thank you so much! I'm honored
Smart move to figure it as purchase. I thought for a second “no!! Dave’s gonna share his quotes!”
🤙👍🤙
i wanted to see that too🤣
Well, Im running my own small little business. And Im doing small corporate events, weddings, festivals and concerts. I love PA, live music and Im putting everything I have (time and money) into my small company, so it can grow.
A few years ago I started with a few speakers and noticed that you can get pretty loud for a few hundred bucks. Since then I made tons of upgrades and Ive spent a lot of money on my PA.
But the further you get, the steeper the gradient (cost vs dB) gets. And its just mindblowing what a big festival stage costs.
Thanks for the insights in this video! But tbh this made me doubt if Ill ever reach my dream of having my own live music hall.
From a simple sheet to great understanding. Great information and sonic illustration. Cheers.
🔧👍🔧
Good stuff.
Always appreciate your willingness to show how the sausage is made, so to speak. Plenty of the industry likes to pretend everything is a big ole secret, scared to teach someone how to steal their clients/gigs.
It's admirable that you'd rather enlighten people, and extend the knowledge to people who aren't exactly clued into the field. It's technical content out of necessity, but still consumable and understandable.
The general public rarely understands how much cost goes into performing arts venues/productions. I can't tell you how many people I've talked with who are like, "What do you mean this sound system costs half a million dollars?!"
Staying on budget for system design is not a simple task and it's really cool to see you work out these sorts of very real world situations.
Awesome and thank you!!
Stumbled across this video when it’s totally not my world, but it gives me so much respect for everything you do! I don’t know your title but i know concerts wouldn’t exist without you! Thanks!
Thank you Clare!!
Super interesting, thanks Dave! I just finished installing a d&b system (rigging, not design or integration or anything) and I've definitely wondered about the economics of it. I know the client has some very strict requirements because of big events coming down the pike--but making that a reality in a way the accountants can understand MUST have been a real challenge, this system is pretty intense!
🤙🔧🤙
Dave, I think you under-valued the costs of cabling and hoists by a significant amount but it doesn't change the logic of your analysis, which is spot on. Thanks for showing the math behind the business of audio.
I will go back and look but I bet you are right, 8 did not double check the spreadsheet and it did seem the diff should have been bigger
Good catch
Great stuff Ratty. I don’t miss that part of the PA biz at all. “Bring X worth of PA for half the normal price”…
We just turn down gigs that won't hire adequate systems. But we do work with clients to optimize. And the discussion came up "is there a way to reduce the budget without compromising the sound"
And of course there is no right or wrong when opinion and perception is the judge.
So this video is an offshoot of the info I presented. 6 box was the minimum that would cover at a reasonable level, 12 box was the initial bid.
9 box allowed a single amp rack rather than two amp racks.
The cost vs dB analysis along with audible demo was presented and we went with 9 box delay clusters.
All good, not an emotional thing, but rather, working with the client to optimize, quality and budget.
What a cool analysis. Thanks Dave!
Thank you!!
Random thought: Have you ever done a video about how venue shape affects the size of PA you need, and thus the cost of it? My church recently had to temporarily move venues and we had to use a school gym hall that was a long oblong shape. I said to our production manager that if we set the room up in landscape/wide format, we might not have to rent extra PA, because we use D&B Y10s, which have 110 degree angle, but if we go long ways, we'd need to rent in a pair of delay boxes. In the end we were forced to go long ways because of an installed projection screen. This then forced us to rent delays to achieve a consistent (ish) SPL front to back.
Alterations in the horizontal or vertical coverage requirements for drastically increase or decrease the amount of boxes needed. What's interesting is increases in vertical coverage can drive up the box count of line arrays very quickly,
I will ponder something down that line if I can come up with a perspective that is interesting and I can present a clear vision of that
Yeah! very interesting! Never looked at this in this way. Everytime you suprise me, Dave, thanks!
🤙👍🤙
This is excellent info never thought of it like this great vid 🤘
🤙👍🤙
Well-done and interesting. Thanks Dave.
🤙👍👍
This can be really helpful. Ideally, you want enough overhead that you don't have to compress the overall signal and you can set the levels you want, but you work with what you have where you can apply LUFS principles at FOH to get as much out of the system as you can. It seems as though so many FOH processes are being imported from the post-production and broadcast industries already, things like parallel compression or multiband compression, that we can learn other things as well from that aspect of the industry.
Understanding the output levels of the various system sizes when deploying systems versus cost is helpful in optimizing the decisions of how many speakers to use
As someone getting started, this is fantastic!
🫴👍🫴
More of this would be amazing. While your business is way bigger than mine would ever be the financial concepts you outlined here can we scaled down to little guys like me.
I've kind of been fumbling around the dark for 24 years with my company. Started out as a DJ then I bought a few SM58s and 57's and a Mackie mixer to start running sound at one of my venues.
Never had anyone that could explain how to figure out what to charge. I never worked for a major company and just organically grew by buying, selling and trading stuff on craigslist and eBay.
I don't think there's anyone at your level on RUclips that covers the business side of running a sound company.
I have so many questions about this video.
Weekly rental rate of 2.5%, what is the utilization percentage you expect from your equipment (how often is it rented out)?
At what percentage do you invest in more to meet demand?
You must factor a few extra components for your rigs in case things break, what percentage would that be roughly?
When making a new purchase, how long do you expect to have it in your inventory working?
Is there a set time frame or is it dependent on new products being released to the industry?
Not expecting answers for everything, just some ideas for potential future content on this topic.
Awesome and thank you!!
Take a look at some of the older channel member zoom chats I did.
I've done a zoom chats where I've discussed finances and strategies for rental versus ROI versus uptime and such.
I also cover things like how long equipment loans should be termed and a bunch of other stuff.
Let me know if you can't find it and I will try and search it out for you
@@DaveRat i am also interested in this topic. Can you tell us what number zoom call to watch? Since they all have many different topics its hard to find them unless i watch all of them🥲. Just joined as a member too😊
Really interesting analysis, thanks for sharing!
🤙👍🤙
Thank you ever so much for your time and work it takes to share your knowledge Dave,, 💖🙏💖
Cheers from Sweden,, 🍻😎👍
Thank you Irene!
@@DaveRat 💖
Love your videos, Dave! 🤘🏼
Thank you Anthony!
Tank you so much for this wonderful video
🔧👍🔧
as usual great info 🤗🤗🤗
Thanks for sharing Dave
Thank you Hennie!!
I saved a bunch of money not using K2's and instead using K12.2 🤪 i kid. thank you for another informative video!
👍🔧👍
@DaveRat great topic, would love to learn more from you, about money/business info and investment advice for "independent" audio people, what different bands & venues you worked with require & what programs you prefer to use.. Cheers :)
Thanks for the video, God bless
👍🤙👍
Dave, this is brilliant- thank you for breaking it down. From a listener perspective it seems like you would see more value in splitting two sixes to handle delay issues and increase spread vs going for db. Ie. What’s the best value to listener if you do have the money?
Adding delays increases cost, complexity and reduces sight lines. That must be balanced with coverage and SPL levels.
It's very subjective but what we do is create predictions of coverages based on feasible delay cluster locations and scale box counts to optimize SPL
Without measuring how much you can feel the bass, gig sound level is mostly to drown out those punters that just won't be quiet.
For your "what's a db sound like anyway" test, you might have a constant level background sound as a reference for the subject sound.
I think you're crafty enough to derive the information you need from the information provided. If you need more dBs to drown out whatever you need to drown out, this helps with understanding the cost of that adventure.
As far as subwoofers I've done a lot of videos on that and I do have a video planned on how to array subwoofers for maximum efficiency versus maximum coverage versus maximum sound quality
Dave, this is great, tnx for the video!
In a real setting, how do you control a “renter” from renting less boxes but then abuse them with more spl than they should handle?
We usually get an RFP. Request for proposal. We propose what we believe to be hear that will offer sound quality and coverage that we are willing to provide. If they want less audio than 8s needed, we don't do the gig.
Dave. I'm watching all the videos on your channel, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. One question: what is the setup of the sound equipment installed in your car? Is it a High-End system? I'm curious to know what system (equipment) you use in your car...
Great question. Over the years I've gone from putting all kinds of stereo stuff in there to having trucks with JBL 12-in with JBL fives and bullets. But currently I have a Tesla and I've got the stock Bose system that sounds good enough. I've decided I don't want to bring my work to my vehicle.
At home I have all kinds of cool stuff like vintage speakers from Abbey road and if you look at the videos I did on real speaker you can see a collection of cool oddball and vintage stuff that I own.
But the system we use could living room is these long tube speakers that I also did a video on
I’m going with they’ll sell a lot more beer with the bigger system and that will more than justify the cost. And my Drawmers still work!
Perhaps better sound increases the probability of longevity of a band or festval.
@@DaveRat I like your theory better.
I like both theories! Increase profitability and some more beer and as long as everybody's happy we're all having fun
the amount of boxes are mainly according to the balanced spl covering of the audience not the db level. to level up you use a louder system not more cabinets.
While that can be true with point source systems and some setups and with small format pa syatems, with modern line array setups more boxes can be used to increase vertical coverage or used increase SPL level or used to maintain a more consistent volume level over distance such that the volume drops off 3DB per doubling a distance or zero DB per doubling a distance or 6b per doubling of distance..
Furthermore, One can configure multiple boxes to do any combination of the above all the while using a single box type and just by altering combinations of the quantity of boxes, azimuth of the array, and angles between the boxes.
This is the beauty of line array systems and allows them to cover venues more evenly without having to haul around a vast assortment of different boxes.
@@DaveRat that is right too and shows the many possibilities of designing systems. thanks for your work and sharing knowledge and ideas.
🔧🤙🔧
Great Video. 😃👍♥️
👍🔧👍
Very interesting .
🤙🔧🤙
Hey Dave, great video as always! But there might be an error in your spreadsheet, shouldn't the 1/6th total be $27,400? I felt like the difference was too small but at more than 3K of economy per box, it is definitely an incentive to go 3 per amp. Cheers
I would enjoy a follow up video discussing headroom. As audio engineers we all know that it's best to run any system at somewhat less than 100% of its capacity, but how much headroom is actually necessary, and where do you start to see diminishing returns from adding system capacity at a fixed volume level? If you want to mix at about 95dBSPL you want a system that is capable of throwing more than that, but how much more? 105dB? 120? 130? At some point you're just wasting money, but I've always just kind of estimated how much headroom is ideal and never gotten really scientific with it.
I feel like L'Acoustis isn't gonna be really excited to see you posting retail prices :D
Well I'm not really one much known for following the rules. And I love and respect L-acoustics and all the people that make the company great and build cool stuff.
It wouldn't be the first time I bent or broke the rules with them. Like breaking the fundamental rule of never hang two line arrays side by side covering the same area and then I did a world tour with two line arrays side by side covering the same area.
I went out to L-Acoustics to visit and I had a lot of people telling me that they were not going to be happy with what I was doing.
And I had the pleasure and honor of sitting down with Christian Heil, again.
And the subject of the double PA came up and the first thing he said to me was
"I have been waiting for somebody to do this"
The key was that I never sent the same signal to both systems hanging near each other. So the rule applied but didn't apply to how I was doing it
And the next visit to L-acoustics, perhaps 5 years later Christian proudly showed me a prototype setup for L-Isa. The sound system configuration based on multiple line array clusters hung side by side all covering the same area.
That said, if I get the email or call asking me to take it down I will gladly do so as I have done several times in the past for other adventures where I bent the lines farther than companies that I work with were comfortable with.
5.1 dB, can we just all agree to round up to 6dB meaning twice as loud for sake of what I got from the video? It blew my mind that twice as loud was almost perfectly twice as expensive. That's a powerful rule of thumb if it really works out the way you explained.
Interesting and great observation!
Fantastic video! Is 2.5% the norm? - I wonder what the vidiots charge? or the lamp tramps?
🤙👍🤙
perfect thanks !
🤙👍🤙
@@DaveRat BASSSSSSLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEE LFG!!!!!!😄🤣🙃😀
I just pushed my master fader up and got 5db for free!
Rental companies don't want you to know this one simple trick.
If you can push the fader up and get 5 more clean dB then you already hired way too much PA, like near double what you needed
@@DaveRatnot necessarily. Intermodulation distortion (which is quite noticeable by ear) is linear with headroom. The more you push a box the more distortion it has even though you might still have 10db of headroom. So having 5db of free headroom is far from being a bad thing. It just depends on the clients need 💪
Well if you are going to change the parameters of the discussion the yes, things will be different.
I still haven’t worked out a way of turning up the _talent_
Someone suggested to use a _fake it until you make it_ plug in, but it doesn’t run on my old hardware….
🤙👍🤙
The economics of volume is surprisingly interesting.
Very interesting. And don't forget, this is just 1 hang. When you have 2 hangs plus subs, the numbers probably triple. The next question is, in order to cut the budget, is it better to have a slightly quieter PA of the same quality, or go for a cheaper and lower quality system of the same size?
That's an interesting perspective that has many dynamics. Quite often the artists Rider specifies a certain level of sound system and the sound systems they specify within a similar price range.
Going outside of the specified systems tends not to be the best way to perpetuate future business with the client.
Our approach is to provide police systems that are capable of providing quality coverage and if the budget cuts exceed a level we're comfortable with, we don't do the gig.
@@DaveRat Yes, that makes sense for your business. You have a reputation to maintain and your clients understand the quality of different systems. However there are many applications below the top tier touring circuit where clients come with a fixed budget and not much idea of what's on the market and they just want the "best" sound for their money. It's obviously quite a subjective topic.
Very true. Proper tool for the job. Don't bring a Ferrari to a desert race. Don't drive a dragster on a mountain road, and opening car rental place that only rents Bentley's in a college town with a bunch of seedy bars, may not be the best business plan
You should do a video on the supercat AES50 cable! I'm curious as to what you discovered makes other cables not work at that distance. I've used your purple supercat cable up to about 75m maybe 80m reliably with aes50, but that's about where it starts dropping sync.
Awesome and great you mentioned that.
Yes the purple Super Cat is good too about 75 to 80 m as you mentioned exactly. The blue is good to 90 m for 100 m.
On the sound tools web site I put together a chart with information on the differences between all of the sound tools cables.
Check this video out and let me know what you think. I dived into the reason why various cables work and don't work and compare unshielded versus the Behringer / klark Technik Cat5e versus Cat6 versus the new Super Cat XM cable
ruclips.net/video/bQXOXWuxCGA/видео.htmlsi=EVdUm5i9kuNQ6wr5
@@DaveRat Oooh! This video must have slipped by me! I just watched it. Very interesting stuff! Thank you!
🤙👍🤙
Awesome video and breakdown. How about cost per subwoofer?
I am working on a vid looking at optimizing subwoofer coverage vs sound quality vs efficiency
@@DaveRat That sounds useful. As part of that, it would be helpful if you could mention the pros and cons of adding subs to delay stacks/towers/hangs too (or maybe that's a video in itself).
Not sure if that wants a specific video. Subwoofers at delay clusters not problematic because it's very difficult to focus subs purely forward. And the back energy radiating the wrong direction causes more problems than the forward energy typically helps.
That's it there are specific instances where adding a subcluster for a house or in the field can be useful.
@@DaveRat I think you made a typo, saying "not problematic" instead of "problematic". I have never tried it, but I have made test plots using D&B Array Calc and it looked messy. Seemed like it was cleaner to just add more subs at the front.
Yes, I meant are problematic
wow... the economics of the decibel.. im intrigued 😂
👍🤙👍
Do you think the labor cost to hang the boxes and the electricity costs of running the amps is significant?
Typically those costs are not incurred directly by the rental company making the recommendations
That said, if scaling up, the added weight can be an issue. If scaling down, the savings on electricity would be in the several 1s of dollars.
Labor wise scaling up or dow could add 5s of minutes to each cluster and trucking wise if scaling down a lot of clusters, saving a truck would be of value.
All that could probably easestly be added into the calc by increasing the deployment cost by $100 per box or so across the board.
Love your videos Dave. I know you are an L-Acoustics guy, but Im sorry, $15,600 per box is ridiculous. Our 12 line arrays and 4 subs cost less than that 🤣
Fair enough. And many different tools for different applications.
And cost is only one factor. The value in L&acoustics is world wide availability of identically aligned systems. We can sub hire in bulk with 100% compatibility.
A full line of diverse products with near identical sonic footprints
The best prediction software by far
Extremely low depreciation. We sold our V-dosc systems 15 years after we bought them for more than we paid.
Long working life. K1 was released in 2009 and is still 15 years later, one of if not the top large format system in the world.
ROI. Expensive yes and also the return on investment is extremely high as well. Our entire L- acoustics inventory pays for itself every three years or so, over and over again. Some enclosures like K2 have a 2.5 year ROI.
So yes, other systems cost less but also that may be a penny pinch pound foolish perspective
@@DaveRat I appreciate the very fair points. I guess I'm just speaking as a smaller, regional company, who will never be able to afford the luxury of multiple $15,000 boxes.
Yes, it does look ominous from the perspective of a regional vendor.
I know because I started my sound company with 2 speakers that fit in my car. Worked my way up from backyard parties to clubs, then halls, then regional to national and worldwide.
Though we were doing world tours prior to owning L-acoustics, owning L-acoustics is what really drive our growth.
Less expensive systems will position you to work harder for less money against more competitors.
Providing premium systems to more demanding clients and backing that with extreme quality and customer service can position your company for higher margins and higher quality gigs.
It may also be important to point out that we funded our growth internally, we don't have any cash cow outside owners or such. We did borrow money and do leases and loans but our growth is organic
@@DaveRat That is very interesting, and proves you are a smart business man for sure! You also make some really compelling points that I had not considered. Thank you for giving your backstory, Dave!
Great to meet you and yes, I am 44 years in and follow a slow steady growth plan. I enjoy risk and over the years have transitions from max risk to stability and longevity.
As far as purchasing gear, the initial cost is a hurdle but the driving force of the decision should be time frame of ROI and residual value of the gear vs money owed.
The formula I use is
ROI of 3 years or less is a buy
ROI of 5 years or more is a don't buy
Modified by availability gear that can be sub hired. If we can sub hire easily and below rental rates, don't buy.
Buying gear with a high resale value over time insures both it's rental rates will stay stable and gear can be sold in the event of financial stress.
Cool cool and keep me updated on your progress and endeavors.
Do the amplifiers / processors in these systems give the user some idea of the percentage of time the signal was limited to protect the speakers / amplifiers as a way of measuring how hard the sound system is being pushed?
Actually yes, there is an exportable log that can be analyzed to research failures
Hey Dave, great content as always! How did you get all the measurement probes? I didn't know that was a thing for soundvision.
It's only uncertain unlocked versions of sound vision. The version I have is the L2 capable version
I’ve been wondering something similar, let’s say a smaller box that cost half as much like the hdl6a vs having half the amount of a larger box that cost twice as much like the Hdl20.
so would a 4 hang hdl20 rig be louder then a 8 hang hdl6 rig?
does the maximum spl rating plus 6db every time the amount of cabinets is doubled apply to this?
Very interesting. Are you looking at this as adding dBs with the same effective sound quality ? In other words no added distortion or loss of dynamics ? And could you (soundvision) give a value for the distortion added if you were to push the smaller system to a higher dB ? Thank you !
Yes the system coverage is the same or very close in the system is driven exactly the same and I'm comparing the output levels of different box quantities
Adding loudspeakers does neither of the things you mention. Loudspeakers are also the most non-linear devices in the system, but adding more loudspeakers doesn't increase the percentage of distortion in a signal, as it parallels the increase in output.
My understanding is the question refers to whether the various configurations have the system driven exactly the same.
Making sure that when the speakers are added other factors are not being altered like how hard the system is driven which would increase distortion or whether compression is added which would reduce dynamics.
@@DaveRat Thank you !
🤙👍🤙
wow Dave, can you release that spreadsheet? we should all be using this for pricing for client.
There's not much to that particular spreadsheet, I just made it for the video and what you see is pretty much all of it.
But yeah I'll look into posting a link to it on my Google drive or something
My man!
🤙👍🤙
Probably a question better directed to your website, but do you have this cable in bulk spools? I may have some installs coming up where I want better cable. I'm still getting some pushback on using higher quality Cat6a that meets the specs., they still want 5e but I think I'm going to be out 50+ meters which is beyond my personal overhead. The cable they use is also going to be lowest bidder, you can see where I'm going. If you published the frequency sweep tests that you've made, I might be able to get them to use the higher quality cable. I think we wanted 2 or 4 runs in this area of the building so we might need 2000 feet to pull and install up to 100 meters per run total.
If you can do bulk cable, I'll drop you a message at your store.
What about running the sound system backwards from the back to front, so the stage doesn't get the volume? Also I have been wondering about "circle stages" like where the stage is a circle rather than a square and sound moves from the outside to inside, how does this affect coverage? Could sound be reduced enough not to crossover in the center yet still be loud enough ?
Sound travels quite slowly compared to what we see and the speed of light. Having speakers far away pointed at the stage would create unsolvable problems where the people close to the stage would hear the sound late. Also putting speakers far away shooting inward requires many many more speakers than having the speakers on the inside firing outward.
Circular stages are feasible and are not uncommon.
Maybe check out the video I did on Bassnectar subs
Interesting. Love it.
👍🤙🤙
@DaveRat I find it really interesting that those doesn't really correlate with the traditional power law by doubling speakers (power in wattage of course) adds 3db anymore being the same as cost. It seems you have a sweet spot in adding dB then there is a spot of diminishing returns despite the power law. That's pretty rad. Now how does that translate to cheap speakers?
@twistedmovies8782 it will vary greatly. Self powered speakers will have a more linear increase.
I knew pro gear used for large venues was expensive, but I didn't realize quite how expensive it is. Interesting.
Note that these are rental rates, not purchase price.
@@wally7856 He started out by listing ball park prices for the gear, then he said the weekly rental rate is 2.5% of purchase price...so yeah, he told us how much the gear actually costs both to buy and to rent.
US$10k - $20k per loudspeaker, plus amplifiers/DSP, cabling, rigging, cases, training, etc. VERY expensive.
Yes it's mind-boggling how expensive the sound gear is. And these aren't even this expensive ones. The K1 big brother to the K2 cost even more.
nice
👍🤙👍
the electricity cost would also be interesting.. i read somewhere that rammstein used over 100,000 euros in electricity when they played in berlin recently
googling this only shows numbers of up to 10,000 kWh and that would be about 2,000 euros with german electricity prices for venues
The cost of electricity would be interesting though the cost of electricity for sound tends to be minimal compared to the cost of electricity for lighting and video.
A 1,000,000 watt sound system which is absolutely huge, will typically pull considerably less from the power service due to the dynamics of music.
But let's say it does pull the full 1 million Watts.
So that's 1,000 kilowatts and say the concert operates 3 hours at full power That's going to be 3000 kilowatt hours.
At my house kilowatts cost between 13 and 40 cents per kilowatt but let's say the venue pays a dollar a kilowatt,
That makes the electric bill for the sound $3,000 for the night.
I'm guessing that even with lights and video included that Rammstein cost of energy is probably exaggerated unless they're including generator rentals and such like that
@@DaveRat i guess it was just a good headline knowing that most people wont know how to verify any of it.. thanks for shedding some light on the matter
👍🤙👍 cool and yes. Also it's good to unravel misinformation
What amps are used for the K2 rigs
You can power a single K2 from a LAA4x or up to 3 K2 from a LA8 or LA12X. 2 K2 per LA12X offers the most headroom though the rates output level is the same. Running 2 vs 3 gives less cable loss and better damping factor and sounds better and sounds slightly louder
@@DaveRat ok thanks Bro Appreciate it I was just curious about it
👍🤙
That pricing is interesting less that 1000 a day for a 100k or did i read that incorrectly? We are charging 5% a day
5% per day gives a 100% return on investment every 20 days, With a 30% up time that gives you about 550% ROI per year.
with a $100,000 investment, you would make $550,000 per year.
If you reinvested 1/2 of the profit the first year you would make $2.2 million year 2
and if you reinvested 50% year 2 you would make 6 million year 3
and another 50% reinvest would put you at $16 million year 4.
WOW! Congrats, please send photo of private jet.
how do you get the probes in soundvision?
It's the L2 version of soundvision. Don't think it's public at this point
Always wanted that, opens up many possibilities for pre-tuning
@@DaveRat I just downloaded 3.11.1 which added the L2 as a source option, but I cannot find the probes anywhere. Perhaps you have a special edition courtesy of the French?
Yes, you need an unlock code
Wow, I can"t believe the costs of that gear. I knew it wouldn't be cheap.. but..
Did you take into account the increase in chiropractic costs as you increase the number of boxes? 🙂
✨💖✨
🤙👍🤙
so your renting gear for $800 on a one day rental?
This gives an example of one possible rental price calculation that is based on a % of purchase price.
This calculation is based on the gear paying for itself every 2.5 years to 3 years if it works 12 weeks a year or so.
Of course there are many other factors, long term rentals may see lower rates, trucking, labor and other casts may need to be added. Gear rental costs vary over time and different cities and areas have or lower costs based on demand, taxes, fees and exposure environmental damage. As we're as cost of money
This is just one small piece on a bigger puzzle and a simple assumption would not be correct. But it is start point
@@DaveRat ah ok! Thanks for the detail! As a young production company, we’re always trying to find the right price to charge. I like the way your brake it down 🙌🏽
🤙👍👍
Gee, I didn’t know this was so complicated 🤣
Concert sound gets big, expensive and complicated very quickly
where are you getting a motor for $800 bucks?
These are rental rates.
Maybe watch the vid more closely and listen and you will see that 800 is the fractional cost of the motor based a per box calculation
im so disillusioned with all this stuff I have to setup and mix bands every week but I'm still so far away from this
Well, I am 44 years in and started with 2 speakers in my car. Keep at it and you can get to where ya wish to be, just work twice as long and twice as hard as ya think it will take and you will hopefully get half way there
So .... 8-9 units are the best bang for the buck? So 40-45box deployment for me 😎🤙
* Sunn O))) has entered the chat *
🤙
How much a Concert db cost?
The question is detrimental, paralyzin' my mix
Parasites in my laptop keep me with a gut feeling, y'all
Gotta see how I'm chillin' once I get this luxury mix
Average: 3db at this level is double the sound power.
can I internship with you