303. Robert Kuijpers On “Guerrilla Audio” For Festivals

In Episode 303, Sean and Andy are joined by Robert Kuijpers, coming to us straight from the Netherlands to share stories and tips from his extensive experience in the “guerrilla audio” world of fast-moving music festivals.

Robert has been immersed in the live music industry since age 10, starting playing guitar and working in a guitar local shop where he developed a passion for electronics and signal flow. Over the years, he played in various bands while honing his technical skills to make himself sound better, which led naturally into live sound work.

A chance encounter with the band Flairck inspired a career shift into professional audio, eventually leading to a co-ownership role at MPS Audio, supporting international music theater tours. Since COVID and Brexit, Robert has been freelancing, specializing in troubleshooting, FOH/MON mixing, and complex corporate productions.

Episode Links:
Robert Kuijpers On Instagram
Motherclass #2: Audio Monitoring – Engineer Insights With Paddi Krause
Sprudge’s Map to Good Amsterdam Coffee
Episode 303 Transcript

Connect with the community on the Signal To Noise Facebook Group and Discord Server. Both are spaces for listeners to create to generate conversations around the people and topics covered in the podcast — we want your questions and comments!

Also please check out and support The Roadie Clinic, Their mission is simple. “We exist to empower & heal roadies and their families by providing resources & services tailored to the struggles of the touring lifestyle.”

The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.

Want to be a part of the show? If you have a quick tip to share, or a question for the hosts, past or future guests, or listeners at home, we’d love to include it in a future episode. You can send it to us one of two ways:

1) If you want to send it in as text and have us read it, or record your own short audio file, send it to signal2noise@prosoundweb.com with the subject “Tips” or “Questions”

2) If you want a quick easy way to do a short (90s or less) audio recording, go to https://www.speakpipe.com/S2N and leave us a voicemail there.

Transcript

Episode 303 - Robert Kuijpers

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

[00:00:00] Voiceover: You are listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb Podcast Network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, whose new D-Live Rack Ultra FX upgrade levels up your console with eight next generation effects racks, putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at Allen-Heath.com. 

RCF and its premium brand, TT+ Audio. Hear the power of precision with TT+ Audio's GTX line array system, powered by the RCF XPS series of DSP amplifiers, featuring RDNet 5. Visit RCF at RCF-usa.com for the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

[00:00:58] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to. Episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss. With me as always, the Heritage to my 3000, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up buddy?

[00:01:07] Sean Walker: Why do I gotta be the Heritage asshole?

Why do I gotta, why I gotta be old, the guy? Why am I the old guy?

[00:01:12] Andy Leviss: I mean, and see if I said 3000, you'd be like, oh, I'm 3000 years old. Is that what I look like? There was no winning there. There was absolutely no winning on that one. I debated it till the moment I said it, which way I should go.

[00:01:26] Sean Walker: Uh, funny dude.

[00:01:28] Andy Leviss: All right. How you doing,

[00:01:29] Sean Walker: great, man. I'm great. How are you?

[00:01:31] Andy Leviss: I'm good. I mean, I, I got this one later in the day for you. I figured we'd let you sleep in a little

[00:01:34] Sean Walker: Thank you.

[00:01:36] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah. Uh, yeah, I, I mean, kidding aside, part of the reason we're doing this, uh, at what is a relatively weird hour from us is that our guest who we might as well just jump in and introduce right away.

Uh, Robert is coming to us from way over in the Netherlands. What's up, Robert?

[00:01:52] Robert Kuijpers: Uh, morning

[00:01:54] Andy Leviss: Is it, is it

[00:01:54] Robert Kuijpers: you. It's morning for you guys. It's morning.

[00:01:56] Andy Leviss: Hey, it's, yeah, I mean, it's like 3:00 PM for me.

[00:01:58] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

[00:01:58] Sean Walker: Noon,

[00:01:59] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

So vaguely morning-ish.

[00:02:02] Sean Walker: Eight or 9:00 PM

[00:02:03] Robert Kuijpers: Uh, nine,

[00:02:04] Sean Walker: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Robert Kuijpers: nine.

[00:02:06] Andy Leviss: Yeah. So,

[00:02:07] Robert Kuijpers: the

[00:02:07] Sean Walker: So I'm at coffee and you're at whiskey. I got it. I'm in.

[00:02:10] Andy Leviss: and, and I'm at watermelon Mint Lemonade, so I'm right in the middle.

[00:02:13] Sean Walker: Yeah.

[00:02:14] Andy Leviss: Um, so Robert, I don't, I'm not, I'm not gonna try and butcher it's, uh, what pronounce your last name for me.

[00:02:22] Robert Kuijpers: uhers. Yeah. Or the English version is Cooper.

[00:02:25] Andy Leviss: Cooper. Okay, so lots of, lots of making barrels

[00:02:29] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

[00:02:29] Andy Leviss: far, far enough back in the,

[00:02:31] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. Some, somewhere in, uh, a

couple centuries ago. Yeah.

[00:02:35] Andy Leviss: cool. So, yeah, so Robert's somebody that if, if you guys are on the Discord, which after you know, our last call after episode 300, uh, hope more of you are. Um, that you probably know him from there. And we had like, I think it was in office pics like what, a month or two ago? Probably three months ago at this point. Like you were posting about some of the, like some of the like run and gun kind of gorilla style festival stuff you were doing and had some great advice and thoughts on that. And we were like, you

[00:03:01] Robert Kuijpers: audio. Yeah.

[00:03:02] Andy Leviss: yeah. Combat audio. And we were like, that's that. That's our jam. We should come on and talk about this.

So, uh, uh, here you are, but I don't, why don't we zoom out a little bit? Uh, you wanna like introduce yourself a little more, like tell people your background and how you, how you got into audio and that kind of thing.

[00:03:18] Robert Kuijpers: yeah. My background, uh, when I was around 10 years old, um, I had my first proper, proper life experience of a concert. A bit backstory behind it is my dad, who was a project manager for a new payment system here in the Netherlands, and they did a sponsorship with a up and coming Dutch act that exploded. And they did this massive show in their first was this stadium, Rotterdam, O 70, 17,000 something people. Um, that was a weekend and. My mother was working with, uh, as a medical advisor for a foundation that, uh, helps, uh, down syndrome and other syndrome syndromes. And they were like, they, she asked the, uh, the band, can we do something for the employees and the clients? And they came back five minutes later. Yeah, we can do it in a month in a hoy because we booked for the full weekend and we had, we can do the general big rehearsal with the audience. So we had a couple of weeks to fill a 17,000 seater by emailing I'm, I was, I was 10 years old at the time in paint, making a poster and.

I walking around there for three days, seeing bits of rehearsals and seeing the show and hearing the crowd roar when played a new big hit. And it was like, this is me. later on I started playing guitar, uh, when I was 14. IW uh, I was hanging around in guitar shop a lot and, uh, one Saturday I was like, gotta work here. And then, so I said, yeah, fine. Come next week and we'll start packing. Web orders and later on doing string replacements. And I, I had this fascination for electronics, schematics, signal flow and that kind of stuff. So did, and it teach me a lot about electronics for guitars, amps, pedals, and that's where it all started. Started playing more, but it was more working on my sound instead of playing. And yeah, I was, I thought I was a good musician until I did an audition for, it was not, not conservatory, but a similar version of that. I was like, Nope, nope. Even a janitor is a better musician than me. Screw it. And I was helping a

[00:05:41] Andy Leviss: Andy's better at mopping too.

[00:05:44] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. So from there, it's all started, uh, helping other bands befriend the bands with their sound. There was one time I was helping a band had like booking concerts. 'cause yeah, a management base is also a thing I'm naturally not good at, but comfortable with. And I was helping and one guy, one time sound engineer didn't show up for, uh, an evening, but for bands, bands with eight or 800 or 900 tickets sold like. Okay. I know how to work a really old PV desk without fades and rotaries. I can make this, uh, work. And I had to because otherwise we didn't have sound. And that's where like, this is me and a

couple of

[00:06:33] Andy Leviss: by fire.

[00:06:34] Robert Kuijpers: th trial by fire. That's I think my motto for the past 20 years. Th trial by fire.

[00:06:41] Andy Leviss: I think so many of us have made a

[00:06:43] Robert Kuijpers: yeah,

[00:06:43] Andy Leviss: yeah,

just was it failing upwards?

[00:06:46] Robert Kuijpers: yeah.

Failing upwards. Yeah. And. Whenever I was around 20, I went to show Flair. The Dutch instrumental folk complex music, uh, really loved the sound. It's so amazing musical sound, uh, for just a ba acoustic bass guitar and a violin and a flute. It sounded massive and complex and all good. A couple weeks later, I was doing a show in a venue and the girl that did lights, I had the logo of the band. Of the flag. I'm like, no, I'll talk, uh, chat. Uh, apparently she was an intern for that show. So that's how I got in touch with, uh, Richard, um, the sound engineer. And I started as an intern and now I'm co-owning the company with him. that's, uh, where a pretty good run up until COVID and Brexit hit, we did 200 to 300 shows per season, a theater season here in the Netherlands for September until late May. So we had three, four tours running at the same time. Pretty chaotic. And then when Govin Brexit hit, it all went downhill on that aspect. It's getting better now. But then I started, um, I started actually hard, uh, active freelancing two years ago, and I came in a lot of comment audio.

[00:08:09] Andy Leviss: Yeah, so I mean, I think everybody knows what we mean by combat audio, but do we wanna get a little more specific about the type of stuff you're doing and.

[00:08:15] Robert Kuijpers: Um,

[00:08:17] Andy Leviss: type or is it whatever comes your way?

[00:08:18] Robert Kuijpers: whatever comes away.

Uh, I used to do lots of bands and tents. That's a Dutch thing. Uh, we have cover bands with way too much production in a really small tent with pa stacked, I think a foot underneath a plastic roof, and then blasting away with an audience that's already chatting at 98. 90 90 B.

[00:08:39] Andy Leviss: Love me. A good high-end trap.

[00:08:41] Robert Kuijpers: Oh crap, it's so crap. But I learned a lot mixing from the side of states 'cause there were no barriers in front of ours and everything. I learned a lot from mixing vans from the side, and it's a playground because the first 10% of the audience could actually hear it properly and the rest just there to drink beer and chat. So I had a lot of fun playing around with stuff. And that's where I started a bit of combat, Dalio going into clubs with crappy PA, trying to make it work, trying to make it as sound as good as possible. So I try to avoid those kind of gigs. 'cause it's usually Loadout starts at 6:00 AM so that's pretty crap.

But yeah, especially when they did, once they did German shows, I left my house around 2:00 PM and got home around 10:00 AM. Yeah, that's not good. So I try to avoid that. But the rest, uh, as an operator, I prefer anywhere quality is, uh, how say the quality is wished. So high, higher end corporate theater. I love mixing theaters where people sit shut up or sing. Uh, listen, that's where I like to mix, where people listen complex music. Uh, yeah, well said corporate. But the last year or two years, uh, most of the companies found out I'm pretty good at making something work that shouldn't, hence the combat audio. I think my explanation of combat audio is like making most of having not the best of the best possible equipment. Uh, without any information, uh, without any, without any prep time. I think that's a proper guideline of

[00:10:36] Sean Walker: everybody else's shows, because very few of us on the planet actually get the best equipment

[00:10:42] Robert Kuijpers: no I don't

[00:10:43] Sean Walker: you know what I mean?

[00:10:44] Robert Kuijpers: the best equipment I own Inger Wings and 30 twos and whatever. Um, I mix some Quantums, but I own, I don't own them, so I know the difference between. The best equipment, but having the most ideal equipment for scenario. Like, okay,

we don't have subs, snakes, we do have a big box of a lot of XLRs. Let's make, make our own subs, snakes, that kind of stuff.

[00:11:11] Sean Walker: totally.

[00:11:11] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. So that's, uh, yeah, I've been, uh, really having a lot of fun with it and doing festivals. I think the reason why we started this. Uh, the LA discussion we started was, I think it was one of the beach festivals I did concert at Sea. It was a massive fest. It's a massive festival in the Southwestern Netherlands or main x play big stages and do a special gig on the beach. It's like we don't have any riders 'cause it's all one-offs. And we do have some equipment with a pretty, uh, pretty decent trick. And so like. We knew what to do with bands the moment it showed up 45 minutes before it was showtime, it's can be pretty interesting.

[00:11:57] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:11:58] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. So it was, uh,

[00:11:59] Sean Walker: Yeah, I think we, I think we saw pictures of that. That was pretty cool. Right. You're literally on the beach, like with a killer view the whole time.

[00:12:04] Robert Kuijpers: it was great.

The first show day was canceled though because of the wind, but it was, uh, it was WindForce eight or something. It's just too dangerous on the beach. Now we had like, uh, broadcast coming in halfway during changeover. Yeah, we need to record in 20 minutes. Okay, crap, we need a muddy split.

Uh, let's make this work. All that kind of stuff. I did an African festival a couple of days ago. It was like nobody really knew what was going on. We had bands coming in saying they changed their rider, but their own front house engineer didn't know changes or guest musicians. That kind of stuff. Um, what is it in corporate end? Um, there's one annual event that has main stage and or eight sub stages, but all the, it's all one room. So we had the infrared, uh, system with eight or 10 channels that's used with translators usually. And that was the amplification for, because, uh, for the audience. So everybody had their own channel on infrared, on 25 cent earbuds with the company logo on.

Its tried to make that sound good. My IQ look like, uh, the Alps, but everybody was happy with it.

[00:13:30] Sean Walker: Right.

[00:13:31] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I'm trying to remember what the, is it max base or arb base, which is the waves one that's made for like, making like earbuds sound like they have more bass than they do. Only gets you so far. It's not, it's not gonna make miracles.

[00:13:43] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, yeah. That's, uh, those kind of, uh, plugins can help a lot. But we were mixing on SQ fives and I was like. Playing around for 10 minutes with eq, trying to make my own

voice sound good on a, on a headset. Like okay. And then I'll send a picture to everybody, try to use this eq. So wave roughly the same sound for everybody, for all the channels.

Yeah. And it's, uh, it's pretty fun. Yeah.

[00:14:07] Sean Walker: Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:14:09] Andy Leviss: So like when you, when you're doing one of these festivals where like you've just gotta act after act, drop it in like 45 minutes before they're hot. Do you wanna like walk us through like what your process is and like some of the like tips and tricks you figured out to make that go smoother?

[00:14:20] Robert Kuijpers: Usually what I do, if I know what act is coming up, um, I'll look what act is it? Um, look social media content, look at video clips at live performances. Uh, presume they have a writer or. Probably not correct rider, but uh, it gives a rough indication or a phone number and I can call them and then we'll see from there.

And created this setup like a, not really a festival batch in a sense of this is always progression or this is always, uh, drums. Uh, ear drums is roughly always the same 12 channels. Um, but I work okay. We got a few sub snakes or bundled Lars. Okay. This is all the line signals and this is all extra instruments, so it's either percussions or horns or whatever. So is roughly in my head. And usually, usually these scenarios I found out what gear I completely have. They, we show up for the loading, then I'll make. Grab, uh, my laptop, make a spreadsheet on okay, what's the patch gonna be? What gear do we have? Okay. And pretty quickly setting up a basic pullout and we'll see from there. So as soon as the band comes in, okay. Um, okay, we got six horns. Okay, great. We do drop this substack over there. And because we don't have time to make show files for each act, it's like, okay, a guitar is gonna be a guitar. Or if we change from a percussion instrument to a horn. Gain wise, there's a small difference, but it's not completely, uh, changed from keyboard to a horn or line signal to a horn, that kind of stuff, just to make it easier to have the minimum amount of, uh, correction and usually with doing this kind of stuff and mixing monitors. But I do the same for monitors front of house and make sure my PA or monitor sounds as neutral as possible. That's what I learned. Doing theaters, doing system checks. Just grab a 58 and talk because I didn't know anything about smart. I didn't know anything about digital, digital desk or delay or whatever.

Just have a graphic EQ and make it sound as neutral as possible. So it's what comes in, comes out. That's how I got into this podcast because of Howard. Page is the same, have Neutro, pa, what comes in, comes out so that it makes it really easy to do combat. To do quick stuff 'cause you don't have to fight EQs, the last festival, I don't only touch the EQs on vocals, not even guitars or drums or whatever, just have hopefully the correct mic on the correct position with a neutral system that save a lot of time chasing a sound. So far, everybody's been really, really happy with, uh, the sound, uh, just ring as it delivered, as it, uh, is pretty, uh, brought to you.

[00:17:26] Andy Leviss: I mean you were, you were mentioned that you like mostly do monitors. Do you wanna talk a little bit about, I know everybody's got their own little way on, like, particularly on quick one-off gigs like that to kinda get mixes dialed in quickly for folks. Do you want to maybe dig into that a little more

[00:17:39] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

[00:17:39] Andy Leviss: are you a, like everybody put your hand up kind of guy?

Or are you like, we don't even have time for that?

[00:17:43] Robert Kuijpers: It really depends on the situation. Um, depends on what kind of music it is, what kind of people it is, uh, or what kind of culture it is. Because Americans work different than South Africans or Cubans, it's sometimes there's a big language barrier. Orders and time. What I usually prefer, I don't like, okay, kick drum, uh, doing okay.

Do fourth or whatever. Just makes music. Start with if you don't have time, start with uh, basic drums. Kick their head, add a bass, expand a bit of drums, add a guitar, and slowly build up. Um, Deb makes save a lot of time because. Most drummers have different sound playing when they're just playing a snare drum than instead, instead of playing a beat. That kind of stuff just saves everything, saves a tiny bit of time. And even for the audience that's waiting, it's more fun to hear music then. Yeah, kick drum, snare drum. Okay. Uh, so in that way, I think the last weekend we were all of a sudden. We had, I should have another 20 minutes of DJ acts before the band started and I just heard, okay.

The DJ X was pulled because we're running out of time. 'cause the timetable was incorrect. Okay. We have, what is it? Two minutes? Okay. I'll do the live a thing, just everybody to make noise, make sure all the inputs work, gain it, and quickly they go into their first song. Mix. I think that's the best way. And just listen. Try to be in a position as a musician, especially when mixing monitors. Try to be during, if you have time during the day, stand in the vocal position, talk to a mic on a watch with the PA on. Listen, how does it sound? So you can translate it and just deliver. Know what the bass player prefers, know what the drummer prefer.

Uh, prefers everything just to save time, to avoid having musician come to you. I need this and this, and this and this. Just let them make music. I think personally,

that's my preference.

[00:20:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, I'm, I'm a big advocate of that. Like yeah, if I can get a base mix going to start in, before, you know.

[00:20:10] Robert Kuijpers: I.

[00:20:11] Andy Leviss: Before they dial in, rather than having them like, oh, I want some of this and some of that. Like if you can just get them to play a song and then tell you what they have too much or too little of, it's gonna be a totally different vibe than if they're in there trying to like piece it together from parts.

[00:20:22] Robert Kuijpers: yeah. And of course we have scenarios where we got a bit of time. We'll do a line check and I'll tell everybody, I think it was discussed a few episodes ago. Okay, we're doing everything channel per channel. Raise your hand if you want more or less, or look angry if you don't want it. Usually that's the third backing vocal.

Nobody wants on a wedge, but it's like raise your hand. Uh, at the end of the line check. We have a rough mix going on that usually works with a lot of line instruments, for example. Lots of keyboards and sequencers and campers and that kind of stuff really need that. It's difficult to just make the music and within ears, I think. I learned this from, uh, do you guys know Petty Krauss, a German monitor engineer, petty Kraus. He's a German monitor engineer. He, I think he

does

[00:21:12] Andy Leviss: the name.

[00:21:13] Robert Kuijpers: in flames. He's now touring with ghosts in the US and he did a couple of YouTube videos when he was mixing engineers for todo, how he sets up an in ear mix. When I make in mixes, I have. All the inputs at minus 20 for every mix except their own vocal and their own instrument at minus five or zero. So as soon as the band comes in, put the in there sound, especially on a festival situation. But also when doing the first sound check of a tour, that's the other end I'm doing, I'm doing some pretty intense theater tours, but first time Jake is like, as soon as they put their ears and their hear sounded, ah, they're relaxed. They don't have to wait. You can communicate. It can work quick and then to relax, and then it's more about not waiting and just having fun and making music.

[00:22:05] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's a big one. Worth flagging. 'cause I feel like everybody like always starts to go down, like in publicist in order early on in their career. And just start with kick drum. Like, I feel like it's important to remind folks like, no, no, start with vocals, start with talkbacks. If you have nothing else in monitors, those will at least get the rest of soundcheck going.

[00:22:22] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, because I do the same in front of house. Uh, everybody know roughly knows where to gain on. The 58 is on, on, on their desk. Usually it's around

[00:22:31] Sean Walker: knows it's a 28 db.

[00:22:33] Robert Kuijpers: 28, 30, 28, a starting point,

[00:22:37] Andy Leviss: I say I'm, I'm almost up at 40

[00:22:40] Sean Walker: Jesus, really?

[00:22:41] Robert Kuijpers: they need more PA

[00:22:44] Andy Leviss: I trim it back later.

[00:22:45] Sean Walker: Are you, are you really? At 48 Dbn? 15. I'm sorry. I, I,

[00:22:48] Andy Leviss: I said four 40, not four 40, not 48. Like in that like 35 to 40 range depending on the,

[00:22:55] Robert Kuijpers: Depending on the kind of act and, um, well, when I'm in front of house, the first thing I open up is vocals and overheads and all, starting from all the ambient mics to close micing and line signal. 'cause yeah, you can have best sounding drum kit. As soon as you turn the vocal up. It's just the next row. One, two, sometimes 14.

Extra, extra. Walking over it, you're screwed. So first just put the vocals in. And work from there. 'cause these days with silent stages, it's easier. But I did tours where I had theater tours where I had seven vocals all on wedges with a band behind it on wedges with guitar players standing a meter away from drum kit wanting snare in the monitors and that kind of stuff.

Like that's pretty messy on stage when you're doing 500, 600 theater theaters.

[00:23:48] Sean Walker: Dude. That's

[00:23:49] Andy Leviss: You're, you're giving me flashbacks to, to doing a, a salsa musical with a nine piece salsa band on stage and a 400 seat theater with wedges.

[00:23:58] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah, my, I think my loudest stage volume was actually a flamenco show. We do, we were doing the Royal Theater in Amsterdam and that's,

[00:24:08] Andy Leviss: I

I love that theater. I've

[00:24:10] Robert Kuijpers: ah, it's great. Especially the new PA is amazing, but

[00:24:14] Andy Leviss: It covers all the way to the front now.

[00:24:17] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, it's a hybrid Lights L two system

now with a lot of surround and whatever. No, but we are doing a show there. The story behind the show was crazy anyway, but we had 18 or 1900 people in, and there were bars where the dance floor was off in the hall because it so bloody loud on stage. I think that was the loudest stage. We had flamenco music,

which, which.

[00:24:43] Sean Walker: but what a fun show.

[00:24:44] Robert Kuijpers: It was great. It was interesting. It was interesting because it was part traditional flamenco musician, part bask street musicians, so there were big battles between the two. I think the total call was 24 or something. Musicians

and constantly changing on mixing on analog on. Sounds craft GB 24. So we had like an input per musician and they had like clip mics and then do Velcro to guitar and then Velcro through their cap for flute and constantly changing 'cause we didn't have the budget to do, have digital desks and do automation, that kind of stuff.

It all knew by hand having like a script, okay, now it's gonna play the fleet muted and that second change cue to that and go. Um, but. The street musicians want really soft, relaxed, and then the flamenco com, uh, musicians comes in and have it cranked with loads of reverb and the wedges and that kind of stuff.

So yeah, they're

[00:25:45] Andy Leviss: I mean, that is a loud Andy genre of music,

[00:25:48] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it.

but there were some great spots in the show. Great spot, great goose created goosebumps. Unfortunately, that production doesn't run anymore, but I think we did the last flamenco production. We decided never to do flamenco again. It's fun to listen to, but not the fun us to tour with. It's

different. Yeah. It's just dif different, uh, culture, but,

but I

[00:26:13] Andy Leviss: And that, so like if, if I, I am assuming a lot of listeners haven't been to Amsterdam and haven't been to the Cray, but it is just this like stunningly beautiful theater that was, or originally built for circus.

So it's like a, it's like a bowl basically, and there's what could be the circus ring, like thrusting out of the stage, but then

[00:26:30] Robert Kuijpers: They're still doing circus in there.

[00:26:32] Andy Leviss: Nice. And, um, and yeah, and then, and then they like flatter it out and put seats on it. And like, I was there in 2015 when Pippin came over from the US

and, uh, it was, yeah, back then, it was before that sound system. And it was one of those, like, the system was designed really well to cover the bowl, but when you put that flat ring down and the seats there, it just fell off really fast down

[00:26:53] Robert Kuijpers: was it Origin? Well, when was it? 2015.

[00:26:56] Andy Leviss: 2015.

[00:26:58] Robert Kuijpers: there was already an improvement for the, I think it was a Cara Rick back

[00:27:03] Andy Leviss: That sounds, that sounds right. And I, I just remember having to like work with them and like, we like cranked the motors to get like as much down tiled on the center cluster as we can. So our front fills weren't doing quite as much 'cause we're like, we're doing theater, we're not doing a rock show. We don't want cranking front fills.

And we made it work and it sounded good in the

[00:27:18] Robert Kuijpers: I, with the FLAME show, having coverage of sound of first few rows were not an issue with that stage volume, though.

[00:27:24] Andy Leviss: oh my god.

[00:27:26] Robert Kuijpers: No, but the,

[00:27:26] Andy Leviss: My ears are hurting. Just thinking about it.

[00:27:28] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, but the story of that show was the only time, time I've mixed there and it was like, uh, back then their house PA was just center, mono center, just all, pretty much all Dutch theaters have center hopefully covering everything.

But they had a center array with a few 12 inch tops and a single sub side. And that's it just covered through the bowl. And they were like, okay, this is crap. And there was another production coming day before and day after they had their own GBL Vertech, uh, whatever it was. And we just got, can we use that pa?

But it was way too expensive to use it for a day, so, and the ticket sales weren't that good. So it was like, well, we're not using their pa so if they take out their pa, put the house PA in, and then we run it, it was like we had just the floor covered. Oh, we'll make it work. Then it was like during the day, oh, we sold a bit more tickets.

Bit more tickets. Bit more tickets. A hour before doors. Yeah, were sold out. That was

[00:28:33] Andy Leviss: I

[00:28:33] Sean Walker: Oh no.

Now you're like, I wish I'd kept the other PA in.

[00:28:36] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. Uh, luckily I was on recording duties that day. Uh, mixed monitors from most of the tour. And few times front of house, but we also made a recording of it with video, whatever, and I was on the recording end of it, so I was really happy. Didn't have to mix there because luckily they have a pretty decent mono center array, so we had a mono mix that day.

[00:29:00] Andy Leviss: All right.

Yeah.

that was that one of the scar. So I was the associate designer for that, that visit of Pippen to there, and the scariest thing I've ever had to do, live in front of an audience as like basically an se was they, because it's, it's a fairly bright sounding room, or at least it was back in 2015.

[00:29:20] Robert Kuijpers: Still

[00:29:20] Andy Leviss: we, yeah, and we had very, you know, we had very little time to get the show up and running. It was a tour that had been out in the US and came over and basically brought our control package and, you know, used the house pa and it was one of those, like, it's really bright, it's also really empty and there's lots of hard surfaces, so it might be better when there gets an audience and you, I don't know, we had one invited dress and I was like, we'll see.

And like by like two scenes into the musical at that invited dress, I was like. Bodies did not soak up enough. I need to do something and I couldn't get to it. 'cause that front of house position is tricky to get to from anywhere else in the theater because of how the bowl is constructed and how the boxes are constructed. So we had Galileos on everything and I sat there like out in the lobby during the first act, building a screen on, you know, on the, you know, Meyer iPad app to put a true shape EQ across literally every single input in the system. 'cause we already had output go queing. And then I snuck into the back of the venue and just very slowly on a giant full screen iPad eq, just slowly rolled a high shelf

down as careful as I could, praying my finger didn't slip too fast, and suddenly I took all the high end away. 'cause I didn't wanna like suddenly kill all intelligibility. But I also had no way to communicate to my mixer that I was doing this for him,

but it was gonna be the lesser evil. And like finally in intermission, he is like, whatever you did, thank you. But it was, I'm sitting there like sweating.

[00:30:45] Sean Walker: dodge that bullet.

[00:30:46] Andy Leviss: Yeah, every t, every ti, every time I sweat, like, you know, my finger would slip a little bit and I'm like, Nope, nope, slow down.

Okay, pause. Pause. Because like I was one finger away from like taking the show down. It was frightening, but it, it sounded great in the end. And the rest of the two weeks there were awesome. So

[00:31:00] Robert Kuijpers: why I'm always scared mixing on the LV one. It's like,

okay, I need

[00:31:05] Andy Leviss: frightened, I've, I've done corporates on like, where it's like a, you know, a c or a QL buried in the back and you have to do it on the stage mix app, and I'm like. I one person talking. Maybe if everything goes well, as soon as it's two or more like four person panel, like fuck off.

[00:31:22] Robert Kuijpers: It, it reminded me of the first TV gig I did. Um, I was gonna ask, I think my gig was canceled, sold for something, and I got a phone call in the morning. Are you available today? Because, uh, the front of house engineer is sick, so we had the recording, I think it was the Mark Singer. And the front of house position was below behind the stands in a small mixing booth that didn't send anything as the house did. And it was quite a lot of inputs going on, pretty much chaos. And you got this tiny view and no proper reference, what you hear. So it's just running back and forth during rehearsals, like very good. And of course there was the season finale live recorded.

[00:32:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah, no pressure at all.

[00:32:05] Robert Kuijpers: No pressure at all and or, and another company did to monitor.

And so it's like we heard this frequency close to feedback. Is it monitors? Is it front of house? We don't have any communication between the two. Fun. But you learn a lot from that kind of stuff.

[00:32:28] Sean Walker: Totally dude. And without those kinds of shows and events and experience, when you get to the, you know, when you're not doing combat audio anymore and you get to shows that have less combat in the audio, you're just ripping. You're like, yeah, piece of cake, dude. No big deal. I mean? You look like a superstar.

[00:32:43] Robert Kuijpers: The fun part about the, the contrast I have with my work 'cause freelancing, it's, see it when you get there. I'm always trying to. Do a lot of pre-production. You have my paperwork in order calling bands and just certain festivals. I do all the advancing and have batch lists and equipment lists and everything on hand, but sometimes it's just not possible because we don't know what there is.

It's all last minute, oh, we'll see you. We wanna get there. But from our own productions, I'm doing maybe got solid, I'm making this massive, massive wreck that's touring for six months, doing 116 shows and a couple of tech rehearsals. I know the input batch and the power distribution for the tour, it starts in April. So the contrast is pretty big. 'cause I know pretty much what I'm doing in April, but I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next weekend on a festival.

[00:33:37] Sean Walker: Dude. Totally.

[00:33:38] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah,

[00:33:40] Sean Walker: Which keeps it kind of exciting. You know what I mean?

[00:33:41] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, yeah. And having doing both makes it easier. 'cause our, when we're doing touring, our soundcheck, initial soundcheck before the entire rehearsal, usually we don't have a lot of time for check rehearsals. Usually we come in on a Monday morning and have the first show on Tuesday evening for a new production. We have to do all the sound, all the lights, videos, everything. It's like you have to be quick and all the combat audio things help making. Really decent basic structure for the show and then gradual building up. And then it's like, okay, we're gonna tour for six shows a week, every day, different city for eight weeks go.

[00:34:29] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, that's kind of the thing because it's like anybody who's halfway decent with like all the time and all the planning can pull off of. Good show. It's the folks who have that experience to be able to just fly with all the curve balls that come at you to be like as American as I possibly could be for my analogy.

[00:34:46] Robert Kuijpers: I had this discussion, I dunno where, what engineer it was, American guy, their actual pre-production time and Ben rehearsal also longer than my entire tour. It's like, yeah, I don't have time to, before the first show to work on a snapshot for a change in a Hi QM. Nope. Just gonna make music work

and

[00:35:07] Andy Leviss: can say Ryan's name. We just have to make people drink.

[00:35:10] Robert Kuijpers: No, no, no. That was bef before. I'm uh, uh, I start, started to talk with Ryan before somewhere. I dunno

what it

[00:35:18] Andy Leviss: love you, buddy.

[00:35:20] Robert Kuijpers: I told you he is gonna be mentioned today.

[00:35:22] Andy Leviss: Yeah. That's why it was like we already made it half an hour in. I gotta drop his name somewhere.

[00:35:26] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, uh, I send you guys the, the reason why how I came into this podcast was through Howard Page because I heard Sting Him, mix Sting a few times just sounded amazing, really good. And I heard Sting before. It also sounded good, but not as good. I'm like, okay. I'll look into him. Then on the ProSoundWeb there was this article Go Rhythm with Michael back then about linearity, like this is how a wrote do, make use.

Anyways, this is getting more fun. Then it came into the episode. Then this snowball started with all kinds of tips and tricks also from you guys, uh, from uh, what I think I've listened to every single episode by now. Some of them multiple times. Like there's a lot of tips and tricks I've learned over the years thanks to this podcast. Help with combat audio standard corporate stuff, especially standard corporate stuff. Um, and mixing, uh, just mixing theaters and pre-production and how to talk to people and communicating all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

[00:36:40] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I've. Friends, they're like, oh man, you're a genius. You knew so many like cool little tricks. And I'm like, I stole them all, man. They're not mine.

[00:36:47] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

[00:36:47] Sean Walker: A hundred percent. Dude, I'm just a conglomerate of

everybody else's tricks that I've

[00:36:51] Andy Leviss: I steal from the

[00:36:51] Sean Walker: into One workflow.

[00:36:53] Robert Kuijpers: yeah. That, that's, that's one of the upsides of the COVID time back then. 'cause a lot of engineers, like, were gonna share everything, especially Boots. And Bel did a lot

[00:37:05] Sean Walker: That was a great show, dude.

[00:37:06] Robert Kuijpers: that was great for. Fortunately, that's their, their schedules doesn't allow it anymore, but we'll see

[00:37:14] Sean Walker: If you guys haven't gone and listened to Pooch and Re Bull's podcast, you should totally do that. Andy,

what was the other one you hit that you were just talking about? It was like 20,000

[00:37:22] Andy Leviss: Oh, 20,000 Hertz, which is, which is not an our kind of audio pod. It's, I'm actually, I gotta reach out to them 'cause they've been starting to do like, share episodes on other shows. So there's one or two episodes of theirs. I wanna try and see if we can drop into the feed to introduce folks. Um, but yeah, there, it's a, so it's run by, um, shit, I'm blanking on his name right now. He owns a defacto sound, which is like a post-production and like scoring and effects studio,

and it's started with that, but it's, he covers every aspect of like sound and sound design from like the sounds in, in iOS and how those evolved to like, you know, the sounds that like, you know, a washer dryer makes to movies.

Like they did a whole episode on the Wilhelm screen. They did one on the V sound in every movie trailer, ever. And, um, yeah, they did like, there's, there's one on, they did on the Sound of Hamilton that they had Anna Lee Craig on who's, um, the A two and mix cover in New York. Um, and she came out and talked and I think that one I might, I'm gonna reach out and see if they'll let us kinda drop it on the feed for folks.

And then, yeah, we were talking earlier, they did a, they re just a week or two ago did an episode with the front house and Jake, who, uh, mixes a wolf pack. Talking about what it was like to mix a show at Madison Square Garden, um, for the first time. Um, and it's, I, if I encourage everybody to check it out, uh, the first 20 minutes of the episode, you're gonna be like throwing things at your radio or like pulling your EarPods out.

'cause you're like, this is like this very like foreign, normal person explanation of what we do. And you're gonna like. Either be bored or like roll your eyes at like simplifying stuff down. Although they do a pretty good job of explaining it, but it's worth sticking out. 'cause like once it gets closer to showtime and shit starts going wrong and Jake's wearing both the tour manager hat and the front of house engineer hat, it's just like, by the end of it, you're just like, you're, you're sitting there like, you know, biting your knuckles with him.

It's, it's worth listening to the whole episode.

[00:39:12] Robert Kuijpers: That's gotta be on my list for the long drive tomorrow.

[00:39:15] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

[00:39:17] Sean Walker: Dude.

[00:39:20] Andy Leviss: All right, so we've been talking about tips and tricks. Why don't, uh, do you have any favorite tips and tricks you wanna share with folks?

[00:39:25] Robert Kuijpers: Um, yeah. What first and foremost, when whatever is it's touring or combat audio or corporate or whatever, know your signal flow in and out. Know. That's one of the reasons why I have this main

[00:39:42] Andy Leviss: Testify.

[00:39:43] Robert Kuijpers: Main bets in the back of my head. 'cause especially when you don't have time and there's an issue, I don't want to think about, oh wait, where this bet labeled everything, uh, prep everything, just put everything on paper, has to break my leg or whatever.

And so anybody could see, oh, on paper, oh wait, it's there and there. Or make sure you know all tools inside out. Don't. Experiment at home or in rehearsals or with virtual soundcheck or whatever, but not at festivals, not at geos. Just make sure you know your craft because there's always something going wrong out of your hand.

You need to fix really quick I a scenario. Okay. All of a sudden, yeah, we have three horns horn players coming up for the next song's like nobody discussed that we don't have. Okay, wait, I have these and these input free go. So that kind of stuff is just know your tools, know the music end of the, especially when it's music.

Know the music. I think that's the two core things that are most important to me. To me know what the musicians expect, know what the audience expects, and know where everything's plugged in, how it works, and double check if everything works before anybody come in. If you have the time.

[00:41:07] Andy Leviss: Yeah. I, I, I was gonna say, I think that's worth like, digging into a little bit on, in, in terms of like trying new stuff out. Like at a certain point you're gonna end up like having to try something out like that. You've tested as much as you can before the show, but you're gonna have to test in front of an audience. But it's important to be very conscious of. Only have one thing like that on it. Like don't have like 20 new things you wanna try throwing at the same show and have a backup plan. Like if you're trying some crazy new effect, have a quick way to route it or have a your standby, like go to reverb ready if you're trying this new wacky thing.

So if it doesn't work, you can just keep on going with the show and not take the show down. 'cause you gotta experimental.

[00:41:44] Sean Walker: A hundred.

[00:41:45] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. I've went, I made the mistake. Everybody made the mistake of, especially in the early years, ah, I wanna try this and this and this, and just. Completely screwed it up in my head, maybe it wasn't as bad, but in my head it was sucked completely. I'm like, oh, not doing that again. But then it's the like, how do you get out of this rabbit hole? If you drastically change something you're not really into, then people notice it because a lot of the audience does, doesn't actually know what we're actually doing. Doesn't hear it. It's like we hear a sound, we hear everything. We're good, and then really. Care if it's 1176 or just a stock compressor, whatever. So

if you make the, we care as we

but the

[00:42:31] Sean Walker: else cares, but we care. Right.

[00:42:32] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, we, we care. So if there's an engineer coming by, I never try anything. It's like this, know I knows how this work. I'm not changing anything today. But I had this before, what is it? I starting using a wave surf with an LS nine. 'cause I was doing a bandwidth LS nine like this. Doesn't sound good. Cranked a lot of

wave on it or, uh, and on

[00:42:55] Sean Walker: one tour on LS nine. Shoot me in the face, bro.

[00:42:58] Robert Kuijpers: the tools you have. Yeah, I get the tools, I

[00:43:00] Andy Leviss: I say it was not designed for doing tour.

[00:43:03] Sean Walker: No, it sure was not, bro.

[00:43:04] Robert Kuijpers: I, I was using that for the festival, for the, that the cover band, they did a lot of festivals and clubs and whatever. Like I had, I bought this secondhand server with a 16 general, uh, card for sound grid. Uh, to Polish third,

[00:43:21] Sean Walker: That would actually help a ton, I think.

[00:43:23] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because it was an ideal situation because I had line six handouts where the LS nine, where the game knob that was broken.

[00:43:31] Sean Walker: Nice.

[00:43:32] Robert Kuijpers: course. 'cause that's the first thing

you hit when you take off the lid. Yeah, of course.

[00:43:36] Andy Leviss: I forgot they made handhelds.

[00:43:38] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, it was interesting. At least.

No, but

[00:43:43] Sean Walker: You earned your day rate those days. Dude,

[00:43:45] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, and that was the worst part of it. But, um, I was like using waves and like playing stuff and all of a sudden mid shows all of a sudden was gone. Everything was gone like crap.

Just taking all the inserts off. What if trying everything, maybe wavecrest or whatever. Actually it was a power outage on the DPA group. But what happened when BA went back on makes kind sound completely different because I disabled all the waves. Like, oh crap, not doing that anymore. Just make sure, okay, this is wrong before you change anything and if you change it, make, try to change it in a way.

The audience doesn't really notice it unless it's really horrible, then you have to do it. But if it's something, I don't like this, leave it.

Maybe in the next song or the James, slowly, as you said, with eq, just do gradually or between songs, make it a different sounding song or whatever. Choose your moments to James.

[00:44:51] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Just because you find the solution now doesn't mean now is the moment to fix it.

[00:44:55] Robert Kuijpers: yeah, same, uh, mixing analog and like. Disco press on a vocal. It's just not doing it right. It's looking right. It's doing this thing didn't work. And I look at the back of the mix. Oh wait, the insert cable isn't plugged in properly. It did pass sound roughly. I like no. And then okay, between songs, plug it in.

Yeah, we're good to go. But don't do that in middle of a song. 'cause then people actually notice it.

[00:45:24] Sean Walker: Yeah, do that shit in the guitar solo, bro. Don't do that in the middle of a verse.

[00:45:30] Andy Leviss: Well, that's like, I like on like playback rigs or stuff like that, you know, where there's like those multi-channel switchers that have like pilot tone, auto switch, and I am like adamantly religiously against any sort of automatic switching between a main and a backup

because I always want a human to be making the choice of when it's least, you know, at least, um, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like, I can't think I totally lost the word I meant, but like when it's least offensive to, to make that switch. Um, yeah, and that's, I I've gotten into loud arguments with, I know me, shocking argue, but,

[00:46:03] Sean Walker: What nonsense

you?

[00:46:06] Andy Leviss: yeah, or like in music, in musical theater a lot where we're doing line by line mixing, like, look, ideally you never miss a mix, uh, you never miss a pickup on, you know, somebody's microphone.

But if you do. It's the immediate instinct in like, you know, young engineers and like I did it for a long time, is just to like, oh shit. And like throw the fader up. But then they're gonna come in loud and clear on a word in the middle of a sentence and it's gonna be very obvious,

like way more than it already was that the mic was out.

Whereas if you like cheated in, you know, then you can kinda slowly get it in and it just becomes much less egregious. That's the word I was looking for, I think was egregious.

[00:46:42] Sean Walker: And look at your big word for the day, buddy. You

get, you go.

[00:46:45] Robert Kuijpers: yeah. Score. Oh, it is. That's, that's actually thing. Try to look for a solution. Always have a backup. Always set. Always have a backup plan. Um, know your, you know, it's cables. It's really easy. I learned soldiering cables on tour because the first tour I did as an intern back then the budget was really crap, really crap.

But we did great shows musically, so it was really interesting and a good vibe. But every load out, I set up my work a little workstation with a soldiering iron because I knew one cable, at least one cable was broken and we didn't have enough spares to constantly replace everything. And we did really interesting split combination. I'm trying to explain the split situation, and this explains why I'm pretty good at troubleshooting these days. First, to our data as a monitoring engineer, there was no budget. Whatever we, we have this gear in front laying around, we'll use it, and we had a 24 channel substack coming from the stage with everything patched in. We had 16 little stage cubes that split iso split, and it was patched into the monitor desk on one side, color coded with, I think a yellow tape goes through the monitors. Uh, yellow tape goes into the split that goes into monitors, purple goes, or it, we had another loom going to the house, patch on stage, left stage right. Then the house mode score was patched into the front of house desk. So every mic has eight or nine patch points between the desks and everything. So, and there was always something wrong. Either it was a house loom or one of our own cables or whatever. So, and there was this constantly soldiering trying to find issues.

And then it's like, okay, oh wait, the input is okay over there. It's not okay over there. Maybe it's this. And just trying to learn all the pinpoints where you can troubleshoot. And know what's most likely going wrong. If a 58 sounds bad, it's highly unlikely it's a 58 gone bad, probably a cable. What's cable does mean used most? The first cable or when you look at cable of the substan? Yeah, let's looks dodgy or swap. And all that kind of stuff just helps getting quicker and quicker with troubleshooting and avoiding actually a tendency avoiding issues. What I do these days, I have a sound bullet and just test all the cables before you even patch them. If I have the time when I don't know the cables, double check everything before I loom it or whatever. Just double check. Double check, double check.

[00:49:33] Sean Walker: Dude, I can't tell you how many times when I was freelancing, just having a rotary cable tester with me and testing XLRs before he passed them in, found bad cables and saved me freaking hours. I mean, first I got my ass kicked to not doing that until somebody was like, Hey man. Why don't you just bring a $60 freaking tester with you and save yourself hours?

I was like, oh shit. That's a great idea. So literally every show I would just test every cable before I put it out. 'cause it takes you like, like you just said, like two seconds. A cable. It's no big deal. Like click, click, everything's good.

[00:50:00] Robert Kuijpers: yeah.

[00:50:01] Sean Walker: That's genius, dude. Great job.

[00:50:02] Robert Kuijpers: Same with, uh, the polar cables, because. Are you sure? Pin two, two and three are wired correctly on all the cables.

[00:50:13] Andy Leviss: Nope.

[00:50:13] Robert Kuijpers: It happened. I was like, Ooh, this drum says the overhead sounds. I wanna put off left. Sounds good. Put it right. Sounds good. Put it both together. I was like, oh wait. Cable on the substack was the wrong way around, or that kind of stuff.

Just knowing that the possibilities of risks can help in this case.

[00:50:35] Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. That's awesome. Is there anything that we should have asked you that we haven't asked you yet? Are, is there anything you're like, man, I was hoping we'd talk about blah, blah, blah, that we didn't get into?

[00:50:47] Robert Kuijpers: Um, Ooh. Oh yeah. It's interesting going

into this episode. Okay. Yeah. Going into this episode, I can wondering, okay, combat audio, what I cannot talk about, what's not already been discussed before, and what can I talk about? Not putting a bad name on certain vendors. That's also a tricky subject when it comes to combat audio.

[00:51:10] Sean Walker: I gotta get better at that too. Sorry.

[00:51:12] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah. I, I made this list. Don't talk about this, don't talk about this, don't talk about this. And try to have a more positive atmosphere to it. No, but. It's, yeah, discuss. I'm happy I'm here anyway, so,

[00:51:30] Sean Walker: Andy, anything you needed to, to talk about? 'cause like we're, we're rocking on 50 minutes. We should let these people go and get on with

[00:51:35] Andy Leviss: I mean, we should, I mean, as long as we're gonna, let's do the, the last two wrap up question. Which one of one of them was, I, I was gonna start this with, uh, I don't know. I'm gonna. This to Sean, 'cause I sprung it on him last episode with the coolest thing in arm's reach. But I just gotta flag, Robert has the most awesome headphones I've seen on any guest,

[00:51:52] Sean Walker: Hell yes.

[00:51:53] Andy Leviss: like in the, in the a hundred and something episodes we've done.

So you wanna describe these for folks?

[00:51:58] Robert Kuijpers: Um, I don't know the type actually.

[00:52:01] Andy Leviss: Are they, are those

[00:52:02] Robert Kuijpers: the Audio-Technica 50, Audio-Technica fifties.

Uh, buddy of mine suggested the thing is a pretty big head and pretty big ears and pretty warm head and like friend of mine suggested you have on Amazon, you have WC pads. I don't know what the correct term is, so, but it's a, he has the, it is a custom cushion on it.

It's

[00:52:23] Andy Leviss: Is it like a velo on the inside?

[00:52:26] Robert Kuijpers: It's all a big, big foam cushion.

It's so

[00:52:30] Sean Walker: Instead of the like plastic

that comes with it. It's like cushy and foamy. Yeah, but it's, the important part is that it looks cool. It's like purple and blue

[00:52:38] Andy Leviss: Yeah, he's got, he's got

[00:52:39] Robert Kuijpers: it's like a,

[00:52:40] Andy Leviss: the

[00:52:41] Sean Walker: as fuck, bro.

[00:52:42] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

it's a purple headphone with a blue, pink camo

cushion for, Yeah.

pretty happy. I'll send you a link for the, an Amazon link for

Freud. I

[00:52:51] Sean Walker: it

[00:52:51] Andy Leviss: keep looking at, because that's the thing, audio technique, it does those like custom color runs of the M 50 X every year. And I don't need, I have four pairs of those headphones here. I have one that I made into a single ear. I do

[00:53:02] Sean Walker: are you starting a recording studio? Shit, bro.

[00:53:06] Andy Leviss: dude,

[00:53:07] Sean Walker: You know what? You need some more gear dog.

[00:53:09] Andy Leviss: I, my name's Andy and I have a headphone problem. I've, I've Pou, I've posted, I posted that photo to the Discord a couple years ago where I like annotated the shelf in my closet with all the headphones, and now I've only added more.

[00:53:22] Robert Kuijpers: Actually did store my headphones ever since I bought this one. Just

[00:53:26] Andy Leviss: Yeah. I, those, the fifties are my go-to. And I actually, I, I have a pair over there that I keep in my kit that are just the, I broke the one ear off it in the cable and I actually. Made a little mono sum plug for the cable from it, so I don't have to deal with that in whatever console I'm on. I can just plug it in and anything I solo, it's stereo, just 'cause I'm big on like that, like DJ style.

When I'm at front of house, I'll just kinda cock it between my, you know, elbow I'm, I'm really good at the bouncing it off my elbow and catching it. It's the one athletic thing I can do or bounce it off my shoulder. I'll just drop it and catch it one hand and put it down while I'm mixing. It's the only time I look cool when I'm mixing. Meanwhile, Sean's sitting here like, you don't ever look cool when you're.

[00:54:03] Sean Walker: You said it, not me, bud. You said

it

[00:54:04] Andy Leviss: I, your face said it loud enough. I just had to translate for everybody else. Um, I was gonna say the cool gadget I have, which I, I was actually gonna share last episode and then we didn't get to it, is I've got an arts and crafts project for folks.

'cause we talked about sound bullets and this is my version of a sound plug, which is the thing that, um, company called Visier used to make. It was, uh, David C. Smith, who used to teach at North Carolina School of the Arts, made these, and he's gone outta business since then. So the original one was an XLR, which is a little pizo tweeter across pins two and three. And this one is just, I forget the pizo tweeter. Just get like a little one of those $9 like barrel style earbuds that you get at like a pharmacy. Cut the end of that off. Stick a little foam in the back and solder the earbud across pins two and three. And it's a little line level speaker now, so like you can have your sound bullet on one end, Pou and tone out. And then you just plug this on the other end and you can just listen to what's coming outta the cable. It's totally passive. And instead of having to have like two sound bullets or a sound bullet in a Q box, it's a really handy way to troubleshoot signal flow real quick.

[00:55:03] Sean Walker: That was.

[00:55:05] Andy Leviss: Um, and then the last thing, so we're go, we're going to Amsterdam.

Where should we go eat? I know I've got my thoughts 'cause I've been there like three or four times. But you're the local,

[00:55:13] Sean Walker: more importantly, where are we going for coffee?

[00:55:15] Robert Kuijpers: Uh, I don't

[00:55:16] Andy Leviss: coffee or coffee.

[00:55:18] Robert Kuijpers: No, I dunno. I don't drink coffee and go, don't

[00:55:21] Andy Leviss: I actually, I, if they're still in business, I have a Google map of coffee spots from last time I went. I'll put that in the show notes.

[00:55:27] Robert Kuijpers: Now the last time I bought, bought coffee, I sent a message, uh, to a few buddies. There were coffee geeks. I bought coffee. Cheapest coffee it was 'cause I can burn it to, uh, have to smoke to get wasps away on holiday. So that's my coffee experience now. It, um, there is, I'm not sure what street it is. It is, uh, it's a place called New Obina.

It's Sur Asian Fusion.

It's really, really

[00:55:56] Sean Walker: I'm in.

[00:55:57] Robert Kuijpers: Uh, I prefer to go somewhere where locals, whenever, wherever I'm, especially in the Southeast Europe. I look around where all the vans of construction workers are. Look for plastic seeds, fluorescent lights,

[00:56:12] Andy Leviss: Smart approach.

[00:56:13] Robert Kuijpers: that's always the good

place. And new will be.

[00:56:15] Andy Leviss: That's like in the, in the, in the Southern US. You find the largest local you can and just follow them for lunch.

[00:56:21] Robert Kuijpers: Yeah.

[00:56:22] Sean Walker: A hundred.

[00:56:22] Robert Kuijpers: Or otherwise we'll have a barbecue or whatever in my place

[00:56:26] Sean Walker: Yeah,

[00:56:27] Andy Leviss: That's been the theme. This, that's been the theme the last couple

[00:56:30] Robert Kuijpers: oh, it's a good plan. Good.

[00:56:31] Andy Leviss: I would say my two places that I always tell people to go in, in particularly in Amsterdam, are the the Bird Thai snack bar, which is like some of the best Thai food I've ever had. Um, there's like a restaurant and then they have what they call the snack bar across the street.

But like, it's usually hard to get a seat at the restaurant. And then, I shouldn't say this as a New Yorker, 'cause you know, it's, it's a matter of religion here, but some of the best pizza I've ever had was in Amsterdam at the Pizza Bucker.

[00:56:55] Sean Walker: How stoned were you and.

[00:56:57] Andy Leviss: I was not, it was actually on a dinner break from, from doing Pippin and, um, Nathan, Meredith, our front of house engineer and I just wandered around looking for food and we found this pizza spot.

I went in and there was like one of their like. You know, one of their pizza specials San and I bought that and I like, we were hungry enough that, like we stopped on one of the bridges over the canal, like halfway back just to eat a slice before we got back to the theater. I was like, I'm gonna do one slice and then we'll go sit down at the dining room in the theater and, you know, and go from there.

And like that pizza didn't make it back to the venue.

[00:57:26] Sean Walker: A hundred percent.

[00:57:27] Andy Leviss: good.

[00:57:27] Robert Kuijpers: Good score. Good score.

[00:57:29] Sean Walker: That's awesome. All right, cool. Well, Robert, thanks for hanging out for the hour man and telling us all about combat audio and get letting us get to know you, man.

[00:57:37] Robert Kuijpers: yeah. Thank you for invite.

[00:57:38] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Thanks to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us Yap about audio. That's the pod y'all. See you next week!

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green