An email from me, to people

Here's a copy of an email I sent to a certain large, publically traded audio-visual house. The names have been removed to protect the guilty.

Dear Ms ********,

I was recently visiting the National Convention Centre, engineering *********. I have been their Front of House engineer for three years, doing everything from the highest level corporate events in every state and capital of Australia, to large festivals and international touring.

We have been guests of many production companies (************ included, many times), and I have personally never come across a situation like *********** Canberra.

After being delayed by our flight, and having our bags (including microphones and playback CD's) delayed, they we very helpful in providing extra microphones and a laptop interface to accomodate our requirements.

Unfortunately, that's where I started to become dissapointed. I have never entered a venue where the foldback send were run of the Front of House Left and Right sends. Why the reason for this wasn't obvious to everyone in attendance was beyond me.

Secondly, The PA system does not even come close to covering the entire room. The back twenty rows miss out on much of the HF coverage.

Thirdly, I would expect, after arriving twenty minutes late that all the foldback monitors would be plugged in. Unfortunately, they seemed to not have any power run to them, and this was only noticed after I asked why our foldback wasn't working. It was then I was told about how the foldback was being run off the Left and Right channels.

And lastly, the house engineer, whose name I cannot remember, was adjusting the master fader and foldback master while our soundcheck was proceeding. This not only caused distress to myself, but also to the dancers whose ears he was nearly ripping off with foldback volume. I would expect staff members that are obviously inexperienced to be supervised by an experienced staffer, or at least be shown in advance how to treat artists, and especially artists with their own audio engineers. To put it in perspective, it was made plainly obvious to me that he had no idea of proper gain structure, as he was running the master fader at -20dB, and clipping the channel preamps to get the level he desired.

I only send this email because I feel that a nation-wide corporation, and one especially that I have had good experiences with before. I must also point out that these are my own views, and not that of the ***** company.

Yours Sincerely,

Jamie Taylor