318. Robert Scovill & Geoff McKinnon Of EAW

In Episode 318, audio engineering veterans Robert Scovill and Geoff McKinnon of EAW join the hosts to . discuss the evolution of adaptive sound systems, the unique aspects of EAW loudspeakers like Anya, and the real-world applications of adaptive technology in live sound. The conversation also touches on the challenges and misconceptions surrounding adaptive audio and the importance of technology training and education in the industry.

McKinnon is the senior director of engineering at EAW. With 10 patents spanning acoustics and system design, he has been a primary driver behind the company’s ADAPTive line and the new NTX and NT series. Leading the engineering team out of EAW’s new headquarters in Franklin, MA, he’s at the forefront of the use of DSP and physical design to solve some of the hardest problems in pro audio—basically making sure the signal is “perfect” before it leaves the box.

Scovill, who serves as senior live sound market specialist for EAW, is a 45-plus year veteran of professional concert sound and recording and has mixed over 4000 live events of every scale imaginable over the course of his storied career. His engineering and production talents have been enlisted by a “Who’s Who” of music Hall of Fame acts including Kenny Chesney, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Matchbox Twenty, Jackson Browne, Rush, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Prince and numerous others.

Scovill’s body of live sound and recording work has garnered numerous industry accolades, including six TEC Awards, three PLSN Parnelli Awards, and multiple nominations for the CMA touring award, winning his first in 2022. He’s also been a multi-year nominee for Mobile Production’s “Top Dog” Award along with being an inaugural nominee for the Pensado Award for live sound excellence. In 2018 Robert was awarded the Lindenman Award for excellence in audio presentations at the Norwegian Sound Symposium. Since 2019, he’s served as a first call FOH mixer for television events such as THON, The Latin Grammy’s POTY, The MTV Video Music Awards and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, in which he received his first Emmy nomination in 2023.

Episode Links:
The ADAPTive Advantage: How It Works, Why It Wins Webinar
Robert Scovill Talks ADAPTive Driver Density
EAW Adaptive Series Systems
Episode 318 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 318 - Robert Scovill and Geoff McKinnon on EAW's Adaptive Technology 

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!

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[00:00:58] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss. With me, as always, the steering to my, uh, to my, I I got halfway through it, man. Sean started making the face, that's the thing. I can't even get the joke out. He is already making the face now.

[00:01:16] Sean Walker: Well, now I'm ready for him. Every time I'm like, oh, what's he gonna say this time?

[00:01:19] Robert Scovill: Oh

[00:01:19] Andy Leviss: gotta, I gotta just like put my hand over your camera till I,

[00:01:22] Robert Scovill: having video on is overrated. That is for

[00:01:25] Sean Walker: totally.

[00:01:26] Andy Leviss: At least in that moment. Well, how, how you doing Chung?

[00:01:29] Sean Walker: I'm good man. I'm good. Just, uh, you know, the usual paperwork, sales calls, running a company, you know, the usual, not, uh, not standing behind a console much these days, which, uh, sometimes I miss, gotta be honest with you, you know,

[00:01:41] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[00:01:42] Sean Walker: miss, uh, you know, rocking, rocking for shows, which I think I'm just gonna wedge myself in, not tell the team, just, Hey, by the way.

[00:01:50] Andy Leviss: There's some new guy showing up. You'll see. It'll be a

[00:01:52] Sean Walker: right. Totally. Hey, by the way, I wanna just go do something here, but, uh, how about you, man? Good.

[00:01:57] Andy Leviss: I'm good. I mean, I'm still sounding, you know, my, uh, my, uh, fros, uh, as, as cold and flu season, uh, continues,

[00:02:05] Sean Walker: The NAMMthrax continues.

[00:02:06] Andy Leviss: the NAMMthrax, the daycare doldrums, whatever we wanna,

[00:02:09] Sean Walker: Yeah, totally, dude.

[00:02:11] Andy Leviss: yeah. Who, I don't know if it's the same thing for a month straight or if it's been four different things for a week each, who knows. But

[00:02:19] Sean Walker: right. Fair

[00:02:20] Andy Leviss: CVS in business with, uh, how much saline I'm buying.

[00:02:23] Sean Walker: Okay, fair enough, fair

[00:02:25] Andy Leviss: uh, we should,

[00:02:26] Sean Walker: let's, let's get off that and go talk something cool with the cool guests we got hanging out

[00:02:29] Andy Leviss: Yeah. So we got two guests with us this week. One of whom is, will be familiar to many of the listeners, but maybe not everybody's been on before. Many, many moons ago when Sean and I were still just listeners. Uh, Robert Scoville. What's up Robert?

[00:02:43] Robert Scovill: How are you guys doing? Doing good here? Yeah.

[00:02:45] Andy Leviss: doing all right. Um, for the, for the handful of folks who may not know you, do you want to give us the quick, like, the quick bio of who you are, where, because you've, you've done so many things and been so many places.

[00:02:56] Robert Scovill: Uh, you know, I've been doing this a long time as my gray hair will attest. Um,

[00:03:01] Sean Walker: Welcome to the Club buddy,

[00:03:02] Robert Scovill: yeah, right on. Uh, but yeah, I've been mixing concert sound and doing recording and stuff like that for, you know, 45 ish years now. Uh, I've also done a lot of work in manufacturing. I worked for Avid for nearly 20 years and helped them develop that whole line of consoles and have recently decided to move to the other, into the system and, uh, take some employment with EAW and working with them and, uh, really excited about that.

Currently mixing Kenny Chesney, uh, we just kind of starting to gear up a little bit to get ready to go back and sphere, uh, this June. So, yeah. So no, no shortage of work here, I'll tell you that.

[00:03:41] Sean Walker: That's awesome. And that's a super talented camp, man. Just. A plus musicians and dude, how

[00:03:47] Robert Scovill: The musicianship in that camp is just crazy.

[00:03:49] Sean Walker: makes your job a little easier every day, huh?

[00:03:51] Robert Scovill: They make me look good every night, I'll tell you that.

[00:03:55] Sean Walker: Totally. That's awesome. Well, what are, what are you up to with e aaw and, uh, let's, uh, let's get our other guest in here. Jeff McKinnon from EAW.

How are you, buddy?

[00:04:05] Geoff McKinnon: I am doing well. How are you, Sean?

[00:04:07] Sean Walker: Good, man. Good. What's, uh, what do you guys got cooking at EAW together.

[00:04:12] Geoff McKinnon: Uh, lots of things. Um, one of which is adaptive, which we're hoping to share more about, uh, today in terms of, uh, just talking about the, the, um, uh, what makes adaptive unique, um, how it's different from conventional, uh, systems. Uh, we are still developing conventional systems here as well. Um, got a lot of those, those new products coming out, uh, this year.

So very, very busy. Uh, start to the year for us here at EW. We're looking forward to it.

[00:04:42] Sean Walker: Cool. That's awesome.

[00:04:43] Andy Leviss: and Jeff, real quick, you wanna tell folks what, what your job at eaw is and, uh, how, how you fit into all this.

[00:04:49] Geoff McKinnon: Sure. So I, uh, uh, head of engineering at EAW. Been, uh, here about 16 years now. Uh, started as an acoustics engineer. Uh, went on to be the lead engineer for, uh, Anya and the other adaptive products. Um, so that was, uh, obviously really exciting for me and, and I'm really thrilled to be able to, to lead the, the whole engineering, uh, team here, uh, at EAW.

[00:05:15] Andy Leviss: That's, that's awesome. And then, and, and Robert, what, what, so you mentioned you've, you've gone from like console side to to output side with the a w and what, what is your role at a W these days?

[00:05:26] Robert Scovill: Know, my official title is, uh, a live sound market manager. Uh, which just means, uh, you know, it's kind of ambiguous to some degree, you know, but what I end up doing there a lot is working very closely with Jeff, uh, on doing product definitions, uh, like new product definitions, et cetera. Uh, I came there with the expressed intent to, um.

Kinda reshape and retell the adaptive story to the market. I mean, you know, maybe some people remember this, maybe they don't. You know, I was, I was one of the first engineers, I think I was the first engineer to actually take it out on tour, uh, with Tom Petty and, you know, I think 2014 and 2017. Uh, and you know, it's just one of those things I, I had my head completely wrapped around it and have been enamored with it ever since.

Um, and you know, there was a lot of things that happened in between that, uh, and me getting back to it. But I always felt like that story never got told all the way. And, uh, it went, you know, this whole development thing that EAW did with adaptive has been really kind of an untold story. Uh, it's been kind of unheralded.

The people that worked on it didn't get near the recognition or credit that they needed to do on it. You know, this, this story needs to get told and get people to understand what actually took place, you know, in 20 10, 11, 12, when they decided to go after this thing and. Develop really the, the first full frequency line source that's been available to the market.

You know, so,

[00:06:49] Sean Walker: Cool. Well, tell us the story. What hit me.

[00:06:53] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say we should, we should start there and like give folks an idea of what exactly it is we're talking about. For those who, who aren't super familiar.

[00:06:59] Robert Scovill: well, I'll, I'll go really high level on it, and Jeff, please just jump in here anytime you want to add something here. But, you know, the narrative that I've been trying to shape, uh, around the company, you know, I think really started in my head a long time ago, uh, uh, you know, in that, in those early days of the Tom Petty camp, you know, I, I was working for AVID at the time and I would hold these soundcheck events.

You know, Tom never came in to do, and the band never came in to do real sound checks. We were always doing virtual soundcheck and demonstrating that workflow for people and demonstrating the consoles. We would have, I mean, no exaggeration, probably anywhere from 20 to 40. People come in on a show day and they'd come in at 10 o'clock in the morning and they would see the entire setup for the day.

And, and we used that as kind of a demo purpose for that. And at some point I just made the, i, I just made the decision. It's like, well, I'm gonna start showing 'em what we're doing with Anya too, as well with this adaptive pa, you know? 'cause there was a lot of buzz about it at the time. And, and you know, the, the amazing part is the, the people would come in and there was just this amazing skepticism about it. Like, you know, they, you know, it was very odd looking. This was Aram, radically different approach than what conventional arrays were doing. You know, and you could just see it in their eyes that they, you know, you would tell 'em what was gonna happen during the day. We're gonna do these measurements, here's what it's gonna look like, blah, blah, blah.

And to a man, they would just be like, yo, okay. You know, take your marketing hat off. You know? And I was like, no, this is how it's gonna work. I had a big screen set up in the middle of the arena where we could see any microphone from any position, all kinds of stuff like this. And I would start taking measurements and.

People would see the coverage capability with this pa. You know, they, and, and they were just kind of blown away by it. By the end of it, I, you know, there were 40 evangelists walking outta the building every day with this thing. So, you know, I, I came to it kind of naturally. I, I mean, I'm a naturally inquisitive person.

Like when the first time I was ever exposed to adaptive, uh, as big sound stage in Hollywood, I had just come off of a Tom Petty tour where we were using another PA system. And so I had fresh tracks, fresh console, everything, and started mixing on it. And I was like, okay, I, I need to know what's going on here.

'cause this is. Not like anything I've ever mixed on before, you know? So like I said, I'm, I'm kind of an inquisitive person. I need to understand it. So I started digging in on it right away, and I, and quickly realized it's like, okay, uh, this is not like anything else that's out there. These guys have jumped way, way, way ahead of the curve here with this.

So, uh, I don't know where you want to go with it after that. I mean, we can start digging into the, the details of it. But, you know, one, maybe, maybe we'll start here. You know, one of the things that came out of those soundcheck events, uh, I would always get asked this, and it, it kind of be became the subject matter of one of my first blogs that I did for a w you know, 15 years later or whatever.

You know, 10 years later, somebody would always ask this question, you know, why are they using so many drivers? Like, what's the deal? Why do they feel like they have to use all these drivers? You know, they, it was the question, this real kind of odd question and, and I always loved answering this because it's this path to understanding line array.

And the compromises that were made when we went to line array in the nineties, you know, I mean, we didn't make it all the way with line array in the nineties. We had to stop at the horn. You know, we could keep everything line array up to a certain point. You know, we could meet the line array criteria up to a certain point.

And then we didn't have drivers that were small enough. We, we did, there were all kinds of things that impeded us or impeded us, is that the right word? Uh, from getting the

[00:10:35] Andy Leviss: a perfectly chrom word.

[00:10:37] Robert Scovill: in line source. And it has to do with the spacing of the drivers, the size and the spacing of the drivers.

You know? 'cause if you, like, if you go back to the original intent with line source and line arrays, the idea was that we wanted this thing to act more like a single point source, right? We, as opposed to putting up multiple, multiple, multiple point sources, you know, in these big horizontal arrays. We wanted this mathematically and acoustically to act like one acoustic source.

Well, we, we could make it, we could get there pretty close. Up to the horn. And then, you know, we didn't have high frequency drivers that were small enough and could be spaced closely enough together to be able to complete the picture in terms of the frequency response of the array. Just didn't have the stuff to do it yet.

Uh, so the compromise was made, and, and I don't wanna sound like I'm bagging on this, it was a beautiful compromise that was made was the idea was to come up with an is phasic wave guide on a horn. And, you know, which it does a, a fantastic job of doing what it does, but what it also does that people don't really want to admit or say out loud sometimes is it turns the high frequency elements of your array back into point and shoot. You want, you want high frequency coverage there, you gotta aim it there, you know, and while it does a really good job of that narrow coverage pattern and doing these slices, it doesn't, you can't get away from the fact that if I need more vertical coverage, I gotta add more cabinets. You know, it's why, it's why it becomes kind of counterintuitive sometimes when you're in a shallow, steep place.

You might need more conventional boxes than you would need in a deep, long place just because you gotta be able to point and shoot up those areas, you know? So, you know, long story short, that's kind of where EAW kind of broke through the, the door a little bit. And all of this kinda started with KF 900 in the late nineties.

You know, that's where they started kinda approaching this idea of adaptive, uh, and it kind of morphed itself into this, uh, this concept with adaptive in the late, you know, or the early 2010s, I guess is how I'll put it, where they, they went all the way, like, okay, well, we have driver sizes, high frequency drivers that are small enough to be spaced. like on, you know, on one inch spacing so we can get, uh, the directivity control all the way out to, you know, above 1212 kilohertz. We can get it up to 13 kilohertz and, and also have, have a software package that can take control of it. And, uh, I don't wanna go on too far here 'cause I want to get Jeff in here.

I don't wanna step on all of this, but you know, that's one of the main separators between adaptive and all the other PAs that are out there. Everybody, all the other conventional arrays can use prediction software, right? To be able to kind of predict where they're gonna aim these cabinets, et cetera. But if you actually go to the process of creating this line source and high frequency where you have multiple drivers stacked together and you create this collapse of high frequency information that is really high Q well that's great, but now how do you unpack it into a geometry? That takes software control, it takes discrete control of every driver. It takes discreet, amplification, et cetera. And that was just a bridge that was too far to cross in the early nineties in the development of the, the convention, what we call conventional arrays. Now, you know?

[00:13:56] Sean Walker: Okay,

[00:13:57] Robert Scovill: that Jeff? Was that a nice Reader's Digest

[00:13:59] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah.

[00:13:59] Sean Walker: was awesome. So how'd you cross the bridge, Jeff?

[00:14:02] Geoff McKinnon: Uh, yeah, so I really like the way

[00:14:03] Sean Walker: you put your nerd head on, you got to work right? Like.

[00:14:06] Geoff McKinnon: yes.

[00:14:06] Andy Leviss: for, for folks who don't know it, before we get into the nuts and bolts, should we just quickly describe what like the Anya box is actually look like? Because I know there's some folks listening who may not know what we're talking about, so I.

[00:14:17] Robert Scovill: I'll let you take that part, Jeff. Go.

[00:14:19] Geoff McKinnon: Sure. So, uh, the first adaptive product was Anya, which is a dual 15 inch, three-way, um, array enclosure, line array enclosure. Um, and it has 22 discreetly. Powered and processed, uh, transducers. So that's two roofers, six mid frequency, uh, five inch cone mid-frequency drivers, and 14 compression drivers all in one enclosure.

And that enclosure can be arrayed, uh, vertically to create, uh, longer columns. Um, uh, so continuous line array. Uh, and then we can also displace those horizontally. So that's a trap box, um, on its side. So it arrays on 60 degrees with another column, uh, immediately adjacent to it. Um, and we also, in addition to Anya, we've got a smaller, uh, ana system that's 10 inch, uh, based, very similar otherwise with a, uh, 90 degree trap angle to it.

Uh, and now we also have, um, uh, AC6 which is a columner array speaker, uh, based around six, uh, six inch roofers and 30 dome tweeters.

[00:15:27] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And, and like the distinctive thing when you're looking at an array of like the Anya or the Ana, or is it, it's a, I mean, there's the distinct shape to the cabinet itself that like will almost say it's like half a butterfly, like a butterfly wing, but it is a, a stick straight column of these things.

There's no curvature to it at all. And then it's all being done in steering, right.

[00:15:47] Geoff McKinnon: Yes, exactly. And so the, the look of this as well, so that, uh, shape is actually an open horn you can think of. Um, that's our horizontal horn and vertically we're open, uh, to enable the coverage of plus or minus 90 degrees, uh, for these, these particular systems.

[00:16:07] Robert Scovill: Yeah, I think, I think that's one of the misnomers about it that people have. You know, I, I've actually had people ask me this before, it's like, well, the way we're doing drivers, it's like, well, isn't it better to have it on a horn? Like, don't you get more gain at distance and horn? You know, blah, blah, blah.

It's like it is a horn and it is the horn, right? And so even in conventional array where you have multiple horns in place, while you're also creating multiple acoustic centers, there. Even though that horn will give you some extra, you know, horn width and horn depth in the annual model or the adaptive model, you are just increasing the size of an actual horn.

Like one column of it is one horn,

[00:16:47] Andy Leviss: Oh yeah. Like I'm, I'm looking at a photo of it right now. That makes perfect sense. It's, yeah.

[00:16:51] Robert Scovill: you're basically just creating a horn there, a big horn there that is 70, you know, plus or minus 35 degrees horizontally and plus or minus 90 degrees vertically. You know, it's just a single acoustic source there. I, I mean, we can, we kind of wear this language out at EAW but it's, it's the truth.

You know, a single cabinet of Anya is a single acoustic source, right? And it, it can manipulate that high frequency up and down plus or 90 degrees. I mean, it's almost like having a single point source with a. Wildly vertical range on it. But as you add more of them together, now you build an array. And the array is a single acoustic source as well.

Like the, the entire line source criteria is met in a single cabinet or the array. And there's, I don't think there's any other PE systems that can say that.

[00:17:39] Sean Walker: That's pretty cool.

[00:17:41] Robert Scovill: Yeah. It's meaningful is what it is. You know, I mean, the, the cool thing about it, I, and I do this, I I, I do this in some directivity studies. I'm actually doing this next week at a ES Nashville. I'm gonna be given this presentation next week at a ES Nashville talking about, you know, when you have this kind of density of high frequency drivers, what that actually translates that to sonically, because, you know, with these horns, because of the spacing of the drivers, you actually, I, I call it directivity leakage, like, uh, you know, above a given frequency because of the spacing of those drivers, you're gonna leak directivity out of it.

It's gonna lose some of its directivity, uh, at given frequencies depending on that spacing. And we don't have that happen with Anya. Like it still stays very high in terms of directivity all the way out to 13 kilohertz. So the, what, what the response is in the two different PA systems is that the high frequency elements, let's, let's just call it above 2K in a conventional array, become more diffusive.

They're acting like a little more like multiple point sources coming off of that array. Whereas in, in adaptive it's completely impulsive. It's not diffusive in any way. So when you mix on that, it's that high frequency element is in your face. I mean, it is immediate. Where in the others? I'm, I, I've been mixing on both systems enough now in my lifetime.

I can absolutely hear it. Now. I've, I've, I know the things to key on now, and I've even listened to very modern releases of, you know, conventional arrays, and I kind of go, Nope, that high frequency is not right. Yet. Not right yet.

[00:19:21] Sean Walker: So is that like in, in some simpler or practical terms when you're talking about those, the, the different horn elements and stuff? Like when we're, when we're shading. PAs and you get down closer to the front. No matter how much you're shading that down, you can only get the HF down so much 'cause it's spilling from the rest of the array.

Is that helping in this thing that it's a much more laser sharp cutoff and you've got less of the spill from top to bottom and stuff.

[00:19:45] Robert Scovill: Jeff, I'll let you

[00:19:46] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, exactly. Um, you're exactly right, Sean, that with a, um, conventional line array, um, you are taking advantage of, of those lower elements that are pointed at the front of the audience, you have enough, uh, uh, gain enough SPL contribution from those cabinets to overcome the spill from the upper portion of the array.

And by trimming it down, you start experiencing more of that diffuse sound that Robert's talking about from the, the, they are later time arrivals of the, the cabinets above. Uh, and a key difference with adaptive, we're doing the same thing. We are adding, summing the energy down there. And you do need to overcome the, uh, you do need to have enough contribution in the front.

It's simply a lot easier to do because you have more acoustic isolation. So the, the

[00:20:38] Sean Walker: more

[00:20:39] Geoff McKinnon: are. Right. You have more control. The, um, um, one inch spacing of the elements. Now those are, are either going to add together if we choose to add them together or they're not going to add together if we choose for that portion, um, of the audience not to have alignment.

So we we're just, uh, trying to, we're just in DSP telling the, uh, system where, where's the audience and where do we want sound? And everywhere else naturally does not have sound.

[00:21:08] Robert Scovill: Yeah, I mean it's important to remember, you know, with Annie with the straight column thing, right? There is no physical displacement of the drivers, right? They are they that their physical arrangement to each other is never gonna change other than with DSP in a curved array, you've actually now created physical offset. Certainly with the high frequency elements, but really with all of it. So now if you wanna manipulate where that is, that coverage is happening now, you've created something very complex now to try to do with DSP or anything else, you know, and they, they don't have the discretion in the drivers, you know, they, you know, processing and amplification per driver in a conventional array doesn't really gain you all that much.

You know, I mean, you can still manipulate it. I, I always find it interesting, you know, that people accuse us of having all this DSPI can, you know, there's all this DSP going on and the DSP model for adaptive is actually pretty simple. I mean, it's not, if you look at the, the patent for it, it's not overly complex.

And I think what people are trying to do with conventional arrays to be able to move audio or shift audio a little bit, I mean, it's, it requires way more complex DSP than what we're doing, I think. Would you agree with that, Jeff?

[00:22:18] Geoff McKinnon: Yes. And so the challenges are with the conventional system, you have less control over that interference pattern, um, but mostly outside of, of the audience area. And you're really focused on just trying to make sure you, you get the, um, best profile you can within the audience area and everybody's getting a consistent response, which we generally can do a pretty good job.

Um, uh, with most standard audience geometries. Adaptive makes really complex audience geometries, on the other hand, seem, seem easy.

[00:22:52] Robert Scovill: Simple. Yeah. I give a really good demonstration of that, uh, or I got a really good presentation of that, that I'm gonna give it a s next week. Uh, talking about where, where it really reveals itself, really reveals itself in terms of the, how powerful this kind of control can be is when you're using any PA system as a secondary source, as a delay system.

Right where you have to be specific with the coverage area because you're gonna get one delay time for it. Right. And you know, in conventional array, and especially in some of these big environments, you know, there's so much audio going where you don't want it and not enough going audio going where you do want it, that you know, pick a, pick a place, you're gonna do it.

Do it the lifetime. You're actually gonna be hurting intelligibility in certain parts of that array. You know, it's, it is not gonna do it well And adaptive does that just seamlessly. I mean, just so cleanly you won't believe it, you know? So, yeah. So I'm on that, that I'm flying that flag right now for sure.

[00:23:54] Sean Walker: All right. Sweet dude, that's awesome. I'm, I'm in with that. The help us make the jump from, you know, our conventional minds to how we're, how we're doing this, right? So when, if we show up to an event that has this, or we, maybe we, maybe we're bought in, maybe after this podcast we're stoked and we're like, all right, I'm in.

I, I believe I'm a believer, I'll wave that flag too. How do we make that jump from, alright, I'm doing the audience geometry, I'm doing, I'm deciding how many boxes I'm going to hang or carry based on the coverage and the line length I need and that kinda stuff. Are we still thinking the same way with these boxes?

How are we deciding that, how are we doing, you know, if we just pick something that everybody can visually work on, let's just pick an arena show, right? A standard fricking arena show in the US where that's, we pretty much solved that problem, right? Like, are we still thinking like, okay, I need, you know, 16 boxes aside to have the coverage and the line length I need and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Or is there a new way to be thinking about it kind of a thing.

[00:24:52] Robert Scovill: well, I, I think I would answer that. And really, if you take away anything from this conversation today, take away this thought and try to try to make this work in your brain. With adaptive, the ability to cover vertically is in no way dependent upon line length. Okay. I mean, we just, we could put one box up there and cover the entire geometry.

Wouldn't have enough headroom, but we could absolutely cover the entire geometry. But, you know, so we, we can do a lot more with less cabinets, especially in terms of coverage now. Right. And you know, again, you gotta always remember this important distinction with adaptive versus conventional arrays.

Conventional arrays use prediction software that is physically implemented into the array. Our, our software, which is called resolution, is control software, meaning we're gonna do a prediction and build a geometry for it, and then push those settings to the system and it's gonna build that polar, which means we can adjust it however we want to adjust it.

We could create presets with it, we could use. Half the system in the early part of the day, the full system in the, uh, rest of the day. And I, I shouldn't even describe it that way. The whole system is being used the entire time. You're just reallocating where the geometry is, you know, in the

[00:26:13] Sean Walker: Okay, so now we're thinking not in terms of coverage like we do with standard arrays, we're thinking more about headroom and then I'm sure line length still applies with the low frequencies and the total energy. So you get, you know, like Robert, you mix artists that they wanna rock, dude, right? That, that needs to, that needs to slam it front of house and the rest of the place within reason.

Right? So you need still enough line length and cabinets to have the headroom and that impact, right. Are, we're still thinking about it like that.

[00:26:43] Robert Scovill: Yeah. But it messes with you. I'm, I'm gonna tell you, I'll, I'll give you a little anecdote about this, that. We'll drive this home because, I mean, first off, you're totally right in terms of the line length, right? That absolutely plays to low frequency directivity, whether it's US or conventional race.

That's all in place. Still. On the first Tom Petty tour I did, when, when we got the original dates for the tour, it was all arenas and we, you know, kind of using our standard math, I just thought, okay, that's probably 24 cabinets aside, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we, I think we had it set up, I wanna say it was 12 or 14 on the main array.

A second array was eight, and then an, an outside array was four, is what I wanna say. It was, I don't, I don't remember exactly. So about halfway through rehearsals, the itinerary changes a little bit. And we're gonna do Fenway in Boston, right?

[00:27:36] Sean Walker: That is a different venue than an

[00:27:39] Robert Scovill: are no, there, there

[00:27:41] Andy Leviss: A little bit.

[00:27:41] Robert Scovill: no, there was no more adaptive. It is like you're gonna have to do it with what you have. So it was like, okay. Uh, I mean, we just didn't have a choice. Even though we were coming to Boston, you know, EAW didn't have any more of 'em, you know, we couldn't get any more of 'em. So we, we basically reformed that arena rig into two long lines, uh, for the stadium.

And I, I'm not gonna lie to you, there was some moments of trepidation and the first time I pushed up the fader, I was thinking, man, is this enough pa? And it was like, it just crushed it. It was like, whoa. Uh, you know, I mean, 'cause you could, you didn't have to worry about length. It was just like, you're gonna take that pa and reform it into the stadium geometry.

And we had, I had guys come up to me after that show that worked spotlights. And they, I mean, these guys are crusty guys. They've been to a lot of shows there. And they made their way to the front of house riser to tell me they'd never heard that stadium sound like that.

[00:28:38] Sean Walker: good work, dude.

[00:28:39] Andy Leviss: That is wild.

[00:28:40] Robert Scovill: was the pa. I mean, I, you know, all I did was mix it, you know, so

[00:28:44] Sean Walker: Good work, dude. So was that, when you say you re redid the geometry, do you mean in resolution or you moved, physically moved the cabinets around so that you had longer lines in the cabinets or you still did that with 12 or 14 main elements per

[00:28:57] Robert Scovill: We did it with the same number per side. We just reformed it into two long lines as opposed to three staggered lines. You know, where main Ray was hang, uh, was

[00:29:06] Sean Walker: a two 70 hang kind of a deal going, right, I got you.

[00:29:09] Robert Scovill: So I think we did it, I wanna say we did it at 14 and 10, something like

[00:29:14] Geoff McKinnon: yeah, that's right.

[00:29:15] Sean Walker: No delays.

[00:29:16] Robert Scovill: What? No. Well, they had some delays out for us, but we didn't use them.

[00:29:22] Sean Walker: All right. All right.

[00:29:23] Robert Scovill: And then the same thing happened at Wrigley. You know, we went into Wrigley, which is a really challenging environment there, where they have this big under hangs. You know, I mean, it's tough getting wa in there. Now. We did take delays in there. We took some Anna's in there for delays. Uh, and that's where I got my first exposure to how good adaptive could work with, uh, in this situation.

'cause we used the delays to go get under the balcony. We didn't use it for the top half of the stadium. We used it for the bottom half of the stadium to get under the balcony. And you could be so precise with the coverage. It was like, oh my gosh, this works just absolutely perfect. And similar deal. You know, we had the promoters and stuff coming up as after the show going, what are you guys doing? Because this ain't like the rest of 'em right now. You

[00:30:08] Sean Walker: Voodoo magic. That's what we're doing,

[00:30:10] Robert Scovill: awesome thing. Yeah, it was black voodoo.

[00:30:12] Sean Walker: dude. That's awesome. How cool. What

[00:30:14] Robert Scovill: Yeah. So, you know, I've been, I've been on the bandwagon for a long time. I know what it can do and what it, you know.

[00:30:20] Sean Walker: That's pretty cool. 'cause I mean, nobody in the history of live audio has ever had schedule changes or venue changes or anything comes up. Like once it's set, it's set in stone. Right. So that's a pretty unique story.

[00:30:35] Robert Scovill: Well, the, you know, and the thing

[00:30:35] Sean Walker: cool did, you can adapt though, right? Like, I'm, I'm obviously joking around, but like, how cool that you can adapt from like, something pretty, let's say pretty bog standard, like an arena show to a stadium, which is not as bog standard, right?

So

[00:30:48] Robert Scovill: Right,

[00:30:49] Sean Walker: to be able to take that same rig and go, you know what, that's fine. I'm just gonna, babe Ruth point out here and smash this outta the park. No problem. That's, that's pretty impressive, dude.

[00:30:56] Robert Scovill: to what I would, my mindset would normally be for conventional array. I would've thought, well, we need probably half again, as much pa you know, I mean, we're gonna have to sub rent in, you know, now, now would, I've put more boxes up if they would've been available. Sure.

[00:31:10] Sean Walker: Of course you would have.

[00:31:11] Robert Scovill: fact that it, the fact that it pulled it off was really impressive.

I, I just remember walking away, just going, wow, this is a different day right now. I mean, the other piece of that, during that piece of it, and you know, Jeff will attest to this, we didn't take out subwoofers. That was p that was Anna only.

[00:31:29] Sean Walker: There were no subwoofers on a stadium show, is that what you're telling me right now?

[00:31:32] Robert Scovill: That's what I'm telling you right now. We, I actually, you know, we had the run up to Fenway, I think we had eight gigs previous to that. And I had a set of acoustic subs out with me that, that I had with me. I, I, I didn't even believe my own narrative when I said I, I'm not gonna use any subs. So I had 'em out there and, and we were in the arena shows and I would, I would use them and kind of go, I don't need them.

It's, this is not, it's making it not as good. I mean, just creating multiple low frequency sources in the building. But we still had Fenway to do. And I thought, well, I'm gonna hold onto 'em until we get through Fenway, just to make

[00:32:10] Sean Walker: yeah. Okay.

[00:32:12] Robert Scovill: So they're set up and I'm doing virtual soundcheck in the afternoon and I pushed it up and I'm thinking, wow, this is gonna be okay.

I mean, we're gonna be fine here. I thought, well, let's see what's happening in sub land. And I put 'em on and I was like, I don't need those.

[00:32:26] Sean Walker: And so are you, uh, is that because it is simply not needed with the system or is that because it's not integrated with the, uh, resolution, is that right? Resolution That's the software. Yeah. And so it's not part of the adaptive ecosystem. So if you had

[00:32:47] Robert Scovill: I mean, at, at the, I mean now we have, uh, these subwoofers called auto, right? Which were not available at that time. They hadn't

[00:32:54] Sean Walker: that, that's what I'm asking. That's where I'm going with

[00:32:55] Robert Scovill: that's a fully adaptive subwoofer system as well. Yeah. So it, it plays into

[00:32:59] Sean Walker: you had. Fully adaptive sub four systems, would that have been something you would've added in or thinking back, still going, nah, I'm, I'm, I'm good. You know what I mean?

[00:33:09] Robert Scovill: I probably would've tried it. I think I would've used it very differently though, than a normal subwoofer system. 'cause you know, the thing that came out of that was, you know, I mean because of the coer aspect of it, right? Even when you have three arrays in place, the low frequency element of that is a single acoustic source.

The spacing on all the low frequency drivers and, you know, there's some, actually some manipulation in the software. It actually understands where all those low frequency drivers are and can get rid of the hotspots, et cetera.

[00:33:38] Sean Walker: That's cool.

[00:33:39] Robert Scovill: It like, it just responded from the console so differently than anything I had ever mixed on in the bottom end.

Like I could just go for all kinds of bottom end moves on the console and the PA would just present it.

[00:33:53] Sean Walker: Like we can finally break out all our poll tech moves that we're excited about from the studio and it works.

[00:33:57] Robert Scovill: it's like, you've seen my show file.

[00:34:00] Sean Walker: haven't, but I'm, you know, I'm an old studio pull tech guy myself, so I, you know, we,

[00:34:04] Robert Scovill: what translated the best for me, and I still to this day believe this, it was the best bass guitar presentation I've ever been able to do in lifestyle. And I think it was because we removed those extra low frequency sources in the building. I mean, every day the guys, the people that would come in for those events were just like, man, the bass guitar.

And I'm like, yeah, it's 'cause we don't have all the, I mean, it's just coming from one place now. You know? So,

[00:34:30] Sean Walker: That's pretty cool.

[00:34:31] Robert Scovill: so that's, uh, there you go. There's, there's his memory lane. So, you know, I, I mean, I'm always looking for opportunities to get back to that. That's for sure.

[00:34:39] Sean Walker: Totally. Well, that's pretty cool. You know, thinking about it, I, I own a sound company, right? So thinking about it from a company perspective, if I have to own a hundred less boxes of pa, that's pretty sweet too. Right? Like, if we can

[00:34:51] Robert Scovill: Not for us.

[00:34:52] Sean Walker: Yeah. Right.

[00:34:54] Andy Leviss: Well, Sean, you

[00:34:55] Sean Walker: Way to work your way to work yourself out of a job, bud.

[00:34:58] Andy Leviss: you still have to own the same number of cabinets. It's just different, fewer skews. You can just have all the same,

[00:35:03] Robert Scovill: you go.

[00:35:04] Sean Walker: Right, right, right. No, no, no. You heard it here. It's on record. Robert Scoville just said we can do Fenway with way less speaker. No,

[00:35:12] Robert Scovill: You can, I, I I'll stand by that all

[00:35:14] Andy Leviss: No, no. Robert said he could do.

[00:35:17] Sean Walker: yeah, yeah, yeah. Truth, truth. Okay. You got me Truth. I was, I'm just giving you a hard time. I'm just making jokes. But that is cool though, that you can, you know, especially since we mostly do corporate, right? We get short line links, we get, you know, six boxes. If we're lucky, I can have a little more horsepower than your standard six box regular array.

Right? And you guys make both. So you, so we're, we're speaking the same language here, right? Like the, having a little bit more chutzpah to stay outta the way of video on

[00:35:44] Robert Scovill: Well, I, I mean, let's think of just the, the simple math, right? Okay. So a single, an cabinet is 22 amplifiers and 22 transducers. You're gonna try to compare that, you know, dual 15, you're gonna try to compare that to a single conventional line box. Uh, it's, it's not a race. That's not a race, you know? So,

[00:36:08] Sean Walker: Totally. And, and how many products are in this line? There's the, the Anya, which is the dual 15, and then Ana, right? Or Ana,

[00:36:16] Robert Scovill: why don't you take that, just recap it again here.

[00:36:18] Sean Walker: totally. And, and that's a smaller, is there a small, like a dual eight or dual six or just tens and fifteens?

[00:36:24] Geoff McKinnon: Uh, just tens and fifteens for the three-way more traditional line array, um, type enclosure. We also have, um, the column array AC six, um, which really is a high performance column. It does a lot more than, um, than you expect. And that's, uh, I I think kind of your, to your point Sean, about how do you get introduced to this.

I almost suggest people start with what are you used to? Let's get, get whatever systems closest to your normal form factor and use the same number of boxes and see how you are. Um, what's also nice is that you can, uh, in real time basically mute a number of boxes and tell the software, Hey, recalculate with half the speakers and let, and let me see the result in the room I'm in right now.

Uh, we've done that at a few demonstrations. It's been really powerful and that has helped people, uh, understand that, oh, maybe I don't need, um, as many, or maybe something like. Uh, multiple AC six work in. This is good for venue designs, not necessarily for for production companies, but understand that okay, yes.

Two or three of these work in my room. I don't need six boxes of align array or, or eight boxes of align array. Um, so

[00:37:36] Robert Scovill: that also showcases an important distinction that I just wanna keep rubbing into people here is that resolution is control software, meaning, so you could have, I, we will just, I'll just throw it out there. You have an entire cabinet fail right during the show and ask resolution to recalculate the geometry without that cabinet in there, and it will do it, and you go right back to work

[00:37:58] Sean Walker: Does that have a drop in audio or is it like, oh, I hear this weird thing, recalculate. Oh, fix done. And maybe you're the only one that

[00:38:04] Robert Scovill: in a live show, unless it was, maybe it was a really, you know, like temperate show, uh, no one would notice. I mean, you hear this kind of, and that's about it. You know, I mean, if you, if you know what

[00:38:18] Sean Walker: a rock show, nobody notices at the orchestra. Somebody notices.

[00:38:21] Robert Scovill: it might, yeah, it might, but I mean, it, it would happen so quickly that, I mean, it would, it would just be an anomaly.

Right.

[00:38:28] Sean Walker: That's pretty cool. So that, that AC six looks pretty sweet. I just went and hit the web search and another tab while we're chatting here. And how physically large is that compared to, and I'm sorry, you know, I know we're talking about EAW stuff, but compared to something that we have all put our hands on like a CVA or something else, is it that kind of size or is it physically larger than something like a Siva.

[00:38:50] Geoff McKinnon: It is slightly larger than Ace A, um, but a very similar form factor overall.

[00:38:56] Sean Walker: Got it. Okay, cool. So you could hang that someplace that wants to be elegant and beautiful. And then it also has a lot of horsepower behind it and the adaptive technology. So you can kind of have the best of all worlds with the, the beauty and the, and the, the bra that you need kind of a deal. Right.

[00:39:13] Geoff McKinnon: The exact way end. You like the larger systems. It can be, uh, deployed in multiple, so you can array them in in columns. We've had deployments up to five or six, um, and that are throwing maybe the length of a football field for, um, some college campuses, that type of thing. So you can get some really a lot of power out of something that at that distance is almost invisible.

[00:39:34] Robert Scovill: Yeah. Um,

[00:39:35] Sean Walker: Because of the software. Can I hang it vertically or horizontally? if I need to tuck it under a balcony or do something like that horizontally, will that also work or does it, or must it stay vertical?

[00:39:49] Geoff McKinnon: You can. So, uh, AC six has some, um, accessories that'll allow you to, to tilt it as well. So you can hang it flat or you can til have some down tilt if you wanna hang it really high, for example. Uh, and we also have the ability to tilt it horizontally because we had a lot of, uh, initial interest that, um, uh, that opportunity was obvious.

Um, we've, we've tried it out as some, some front fill, um, um, uh, scenarios, um, where you can adapt. Now you've got maybe you, you put it hard, left hard right on the front of the stage, and you can still cover the full width, the full barricade in the front. Um, uh, so yeah, a number of, of different configurations.

It's, it's only 70 pounds a meter tall, so, uh, kind of

[00:40:33] Robert Scovill: is that what Eddie's doing on Pantera?

[00:40:36] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, so it was tried in a few, this past summer. Um, uh, uh, it was out on the, uh, pant tour. They did, um, end up using Anna as front fills, but they used two tall AC six is where they landed. They tried a number of different configurations.

Um, but we had a stand mount, so basically a base plate that you could stack two AC six on, and they were using that for, for out fills, um, underneath the, uh, the, the hangs of the array. Um,

[00:41:04] Sean Walker: Dude, that's, that's pretty rocking. If you can use that for front fills or out fills on Pantera. 'cause that's,

[00:41:09] Robert Scovill: You should see the pictures of

[00:41:10] Sean Walker: show,

[00:41:10] Robert Scovill: The, the picture is just phenomenal. I, I've seen of

[00:41:14] Sean Walker: dude. That's awesome, dude. How cool. What a fricking cool thing. And, and to have different sizes, like, you know what I mean? You can kind of get it in different, different states of, of companies, right? It's not just top tier shows only, right? With the dual 10 and the, and the six box, you can kind of get that to real people level of affordability and use case, right?

[00:41:36] Robert Scovill: Oh, very much so. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, adaptive in the concert sound circles has this kind of, you know, reputation of being, well, it's, it's not really there. We don't really see it all that much. But don't let that fool you to think that it's not out in the world. I mean, we, we, we put almost a hundred systems, over a hundred systems in the world last year, you know, so, you know, it's still very, very active.

Uh, the development on it is continuing for sure. Uh, you know, Jeff and I have already been discussing, you know, a lot about what, what comes next here. So, you know, we, you know, the part of my entry into the company I think is going to help facilitate. You know, when I, when I decided to join EAWA couple years ago, now, you know, tj, I had a random kind of meeting with tj, uh Smith, the president of the company, and I, you know, I didn't really know where EAW was as a company at the time.

I, you know, they had gone through some really bad equity ownership, you know, in the late. Late 2000 tens. And, you know, from a company perspective, you know, it didn't, I was really worrisome. I was like, oh boy, I don't know where they're at on this. Uh, but since then, you know, it had been reformed, you know, RCF group, uh, had taken ownership of the company, which is an audio company, an audio centric company.

I mean, they are a fantastic partnership with EAW. So tj, tj let me in on that. And, you know, all of the business reforming for the company. And I remember thinking, okay, now this could get really interesting. I mean, this is the, these guys are ready to arc back up here. Uh, this is gonna be really, really fun to be a part of this.

And I, I turned down a bunch of other jobs, you know, that sounded way less interesting in that part of the, the space, uh, than what EAW was gonna be doing. And, and, you know, I, I'm such an adaptive fan, anyway. It was an easy fit for me. So,

[00:43:21] Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. How cool

[00:43:23] Robert Scovill: yeah. Yeah, I'm really excited to be there. I mean, and it's just been a great ride so far.

[00:43:27] Sean Walker: dude. And how, how blessed. This many years in your career to still be excited about going to fricking work, bro. Like how

[00:43:34] Robert Scovill: day, man.

[00:43:35] Sean Walker: That's awesome,

[00:43:35] Robert Scovill: with this guy. Are you kidding? Man? I learned so much from Jeff McKinnon. It's not even funny. It's like having my own personal professor.

[00:43:42] Sean Walker: Alright, speak. Well, I got him at captive, so we got our own personal guide here. Hey Jeff, when can we expect a smaller version of that for us? You know, corporate audio houses that don't get to hang big lines, something in like a dual eight or dual six kind of vibe where I can dodge video and cover an entire ginormous ballroom or convention center with, you know, less than 2000 trillion boxes flying in a grid.

[00:44:05] Robert Scovill: Go, Jeff, go ahead

[00:44:06] Geoff McKinnon: yeah, I mean, I stay tuned. I don't wanna promise anything yet. Um, the, I,

[00:44:12] Sean Walker: Yes, you do, Jeff. Yes, you do promise me

[00:44:14] Andy Leviss: You've got three people who work for manufacturers here. We're all forming that same answer in our head, the same. I can either confirm nor do not.

[00:44:22] Robert Scovill: Right, right. No, I mean, I think it was, you know, I mean, certainly just kind of jumping back to, coming back to Eaw here, you know, one of the things that was really important to understand is, you know, that, I mean, and I, I think every company's of this ilk, you know, you can't really survive on your marquee product only.

Like, you've gotta develop a line of systems to get out there and create some business and help fund your research and development on your marquee products. You know, so EAW is no different there, you know, I mean, they've taken a couple steps back and now we're heading forward again. You see this with the N NT line.

This is our first, uh, you know, four A into, you know, a really, a different approach even to conventional arrays now. Uh, you know, trying to make things much simpler to operate. You know, like we feel like there's a need out there in the market. I mean, the market has told us there's a need for this to have really high performance, yet really simple to use.

It's like, you know, I, I don't need to have. Networked audio every time I go out and do a gig. You know, I mean, let's get back, let's take a step back here a little bit. You know, and it, which is interesting for EAW because, you know, with when, when Anya came out, I mean, this was really the first real attempt at fully active, fully networked pa systems of that scale.

I mean, they were the first one to use, have Dante primary and redundant control and audio transport in a system. You know, I mean, you couldn't have des you can't design that kind of box in a passive concept. Well, you gonna have 22, you gonna have 22 speaker lines running up per cabinet.

[00:46:04] Sean Walker: No,

[00:46:04] Robert Scovill: do that.

You know, so, I mean, they, they really took a big swing at it here. And I, I mean, I'm on record as saying this, and I'm gonna continue to say it till somebody proves me wrong. I think that system was probably 15, maybe 20 years ahead of its time. I mean, that's how far they jumped ahead, uh, in 20 20 10

[00:46:25] Sean Walker: That's awesome. Does the, uh, fear sounded extra dumb in front of a bunch of experts here? Does the technology work in a physically smaller package? I, I know a, the, the, the six, you know, kinda works. But like I'm thinking about as we're coming down in sizes, like you just said, Robert, you gotta have different product lines to support the, the marquee, the flagship. Does it work in a, let's call it a dual eight or a dual six configuration j just as well with obviously less low frequency directivity 'cause it just gets smaller. But can we use that in, in that, is that a product I can keep asking for and hope someday you make.

[00:46:59] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, I would say yes, please do. Um, we see Adaptive as a platform, um, not just for us. We can, we can scale it to, to nearly any size. Um, and I think what we're trying to focus on, make sure that we have the right, um, as we continue to develop, we have the right fit and the right size form factor, um, to, to meet people's needs, what they're really looking for on a day-to-day basis.

And from a platform standpoint as well, software, uh, all these, these products being software enabled, a and Network enabled, as Robert was talking about, this allows us to add features, uh, via our resolution software. So the product you buy today, whether it's an AC six, and Anya and Anna and Auto, um, it'll have new features and only get better, um, five or 10 years from now as we, as we continue to work on it.

[00:47:47] Sean Walker: That's pretty cool because as a sound company, I don't have to go then rebuy a new product line. I just have a software update. Even if at some point that's a paid update, like the, we would expect some, you know, some marginal free update. But even if you're like, Hey man, whole new fricking world to think about here, and it's a, you know, it's a paid update that's still not the same cost or price as having to go buy a new rig and then what do I do with this legacy rig that doesn't work anymore or nobody wants or whatever.

So that's a pretty good value proposition for rental houses

[00:48:16] Robert Scovill: I'll give you the textbook example. I'm sitting in a shop here. Filled with Anna that is still operating today just as, just as much as it did 10 or 15 years ago now.

[00:48:27] Sean Walker: Totally. I see. I see it behind you while we're

[00:48:29] Robert Scovill: I mean, they have, you know, they're, I mean, it's, I mean, it's still viable. I mean, they, you know, they're not out buying new PA systems.

You know, this one's working great. Like I said, it's it's way ahead of its time. I mean, it's, it's gonna have legs for a long time here. I think if you look out on the horizon, I mean, go far enough out on the horizon, everybody's in active boxes, you know, and, and we're starting to see it already. You know, we're conventional arrays are claiming more driver density, et cetera, but I'm just telling you, they're gonna run into the wall at some point with that density where you create that collapse.

It's like, well, you gotta unpack that now. That's gonna require software to do that. EA W's been developing that software and refining it for 15 years plus you got a huge headstart on everybody with that.

[00:49:14] Sean Walker: Dude. That's

[00:49:15] Geoff McKinnon: one of my favorite, uh, uh, quotes was from the crew chief on the Petty Tour, the second tour in 2017. Uh, when I saw him, he said, the new software sounds great because he knew it was the exact same boxes he had on the last tour. And, uh, he had done nothing to them. Just hit upload and,

[00:49:34] Sean Walker: awesome.

[00:49:35] Geoff McKinnon: and it was, it was improved.

It

[00:49:37] Robert Scovill: Yeah, I remember the new features in the resolution software we had for that second tour. It was like, whoa. I mean, who even thought we could actually do this,

[00:49:45] Andy Leviss: Like what? What sort of things

[00:49:47] Robert Scovill: Well, like spatial EQ was a, a big one where you could pick a zone out in space and manipulate tonality there.

[00:49:55] Sean Walker: What

[00:49:55] Robert Scovill: yeah, yeah,

[00:49:57] Sean Walker: to expand on that. Seriously,

[00:49:59] Robert Scovill: Jeff, take it and run with it.

[00:50:02] Geoff McKinnon: Spatial EQ is, uh, E actually EQing the room. So you pick a start and an end of where you want an equalization applied. Um, I think you get one, one filter per zone four zones. So you could do four EQs on the same zone or four different zones in the same, um, column. Um, but you, if you wanna just pick your balcony or if you wanna just pick in front of mixed position, um, you select that zone resolution will tell you, okay, you're, you can either yes, do that exactly in this zone, or it is going to extend maybe 10 feet in front, 10 feet behind.

It'll give you those, those bounds. Um, but now you have, um, EQ that you can just adjust in, in that zone. Um, and yeah, the crew that, um, Robert was working with on that, that tour was really keen on that and they would, um, tune in the room really, really fast, um, uh, using that.

[00:50:56] Robert Scovill: Yeah, that was the amazing part on that tour that the people got to see was just how effortlessly you could really accurately cover a space. You,

[00:51:06] Sean Walker: That's pretty awesome because we're, you know, we're all trying to think about low variance, right? And every seat gets the same show, so to speak, right? Like that's at, at, at some point in your crew. That's what you're getting paid for is make sure it sounds awesome to everybody. Right? So

[00:51:19] Robert Scovill: I had a guy in one of the very first presentations I did, uh, with that accuse me of cheating. He accused me of just capturing traces from the same microphone and we, I mean, I actually had to send somebody up to the seats and have 'em tap on the mic. I was like, see, that's that microphone up there. That's not the one here.

[00:51:38] Sean Walker: wow, but, but now you're saying that you can not only, you know, in, in our conventional thought, we're pointing enough cabinets to the, to the balcony or whatever to get up there. Now we can eq several zones in the balcony, not just the balcony as a whole. It like, I'm not any longer thinking about two, one or two box zones in an array, and I can EQ that zone.

Now we're thinking about. Specific locations in space or in the venue that I can say, Hey seats, you know, the 301 through 314 are a little weird, but everything else is fine. I can make that a zone and pick those seats and EQ that

[00:52:16] Geoff McKinnon: Yes. Yeah, you're working backwards from the room. You define both when you want coverage, you define the room and this is where we want covered. And if you want to EQ the room as well, you pick the space in the room that you want covered and resolution. Again, Robert's point about it being control.

Software controls the system. It figures out which, um, parts of the array that need to be adjusted and makes the adjustment for you.

[00:52:41] Robert Scovill: And, and this is all function of density, right? High frequency density, amplifier density, and DSP density. You have to have it for every component to be able to do that. So why do you need so many? Why do you have, why do you guys use so many drivers? 'cause you have to. 'cause

[00:52:56] Sean Walker: we're control freaks. That's why, right.

[00:52:58] Robert Scovill: If you want that level of control, that's what you gotta do.

So

[00:53:02] Sean Walker: Dude, that's pretty awesome that that is not cheating, but it would be like cheating to be able to do that. That's a killer, dude. That's, that's amazing you guys. How cool.

[00:53:10] Andy Leviss: yeah, so like day to day like touring a rig like this, like obviously we've talked a little bit about the differences in, in what the software's doing versus what like a typical prediction software is doing. And obviously we can hang the array before we have to like figure out angles, which is, gets a kickstart on that part of the day.

But like otherwise, broadly speaking is like the process, well, what's under the hood is different changing. It's still like, I'm still gonna come in, like measure the venue, like shoot it, model it in the software, just, just we're doing other things with that model once we have it.

[00:53:44] Robert Scovill: yeah. The, the interesting thing is I, I, we actually had this happen. Uh, I saw this with both of my system engineers across those two tours. I had two different system engineers where in the early days of it, they just felt like they weren't doing enough. It's like, this is too easy now. You know? It's like I used to have to work really hard to get.

This kind of evenness and you know, this alignment and all this stuff. And I had to just kind of tap their hands and go, you don't, you don't need to do that. Let it, let it do what it's supposed to do. Right. And we had an incident where, you know, it, doing what it's supposed to do was actually revealing in terms of the control part aspect of it.

Right. And say, I, I'll, I'll give you the story. So we were in the forum in Los Angeles and we had put in the geometry, pushed the settings, everything up, and started walking and, and it didn't sound right. And I was like, okay. For some reason, like over in the seats, just up off the floor. I mean it was just screaming loud over there, you know, so we, we, you know, we were all kinda scratching our head, figuring it out only to find out that in the geometry that he put in that piece of the geometry that he put in, he actually put it in about 80 feet farther away. We didn't realize it. Right. So the software saw that and went. Well, those people are farther away. I gotta get more energy over there, you know, and just did its job, you know? So it was kind of this moment of, right, right, okay. Yeah. We gotta really, really pay attention to what we're doing in the geometry or 'cause it impacts what the PA is gonna do, you know?

[00:55:19] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, the verification needs to happen. It's a different type of verification. Did I enter the venue correctly? You're, it's going, you're going to be looking at a nice, consistent coverage in the resolution model. What you wanna be checking is when you're in the venue, walk around, obviously measure a few locations, um, like you normally would, except you're, you're more checking.

Okay? Yes, that's the right distance away. It's not too loud here for, for the reasons. Robert, uh, Robert just mentioned.

[00:55:45] Robert Scovill: Yeah. It was, it was an interesting day where you had to start thinking like the computer a little bit and kind of going, okay. Whatever. Well,

[00:55:51] Sean Walker: That's pretty

[00:55:52] Robert Scovill: we actually use this to our advantage? You know, like if we wanted to turn up a zone, we just push it farther away in the geometry and have it recalculate.

You know? I mean, just, you know, you just start thinking completely different, you know?

[00:56:03] Sean Walker: Yeah, of course you could. That's awesome. What are, in the interest of transparency, since this all sounds amazing, but nothing's perfect, what are some of the things people will notice that are different? What are some of the challenges? Is it. Heavier. Is it expensive? Is it, what are the things that are like, maybe not all sunshine or roses, just in the interest of transparency,

[00:56:24] Robert Scovill: Uh, I, I would say to you, I, I, we used to have this argument, uh, on Petty when I first went to it, where they were concerned about the weight, and I was like, the weight, I was like, have, have you guys not been in this business? Have you ever flown s fours? I mean, you know, I look at some of these pictures where it's, you know, 10 deep, 10 wide.

10 deep, eight wide of s fours and I'm thinking, who's concerned about annual weight?

[00:56:55] Sean Walker: or 16 deep K, one with Ks, 20 eights behind it,

[00:56:58] Robert Scovill: Yeah. I was like, okay. You know, so long story short, I mean, do you concern about it? Yeah. Okay. I would grant him on this element of it. It's a lot of weight in a condensed area. Okay, sure, I'll buy that. But if it's just, you know, overall weight we're talking about, it's like, come on fellas. Okay. Yeah. This is heavier than a passive box, but not by a lot.

Once you get all the cabling on on it and the amplifiers, you know, so

[00:57:22] Sean Walker: we're talking about a little heavier duty rigging package and a little like, maybe one step heavier motor package, but we're not talking about like it's 10 x heavier or something. 'cause that's, you

[00:57:30] Robert Scovill: no, no, no, no. I mean, Jeff could probably give you the real metrics on it. He's probably got it logged in his head, what a Anya cabinet is versus another dual 15 box. I mean, what, what is you.

[00:57:41] Geoff McKinnon: I would say it's, it's compared to, like Robert was saying, compared to what, if you have a reference point, let's look at that reference point and you, we can do some working backwards. If you've got, okay, 12 boxes of

[00:57:52] Sean Walker: I think at this point is like, is K one or GSL right? That's, or Panther. Those are gonna be the biggest competitors to, so maybe not Panther, K one or GS l be the biggest competitors to a, a dual 15 box like that. Right. And neither of those are particularly light either. So, you

[00:58:06] Robert Scovill: knowing and we could fly to Lasan and match it and exceed it performance wise,

[00:58:11] Geoff McKinnon: right. Yeah. So I would say if, what's your metric? If it's weight, okay, let's compare weight to weight. If your reference is space in the truck, compare the space in the truck, um, that

[00:58:21] Sean Walker: really what I'm asking is, is all of it, right? Because there, there in life, there are, are trade offs for everything, right? So what, what are the, we've talked about the huge advantages. Are there trade offs to this system? Compared to what we're used to in a, in a standard system or No.

[00:58:38] Robert Scovill: well, I mean, where do I want to go with this?

[00:58:42] Geoff McKinnon: would say that it's some different thinking. It's what we're, it's what we're talking about. You, you have the opportunity to, like Robert was saying, you can cover your vertical geometry with one box. So think about what do I actually need for SPL at the show? What do I actually need, um, for low frequency control?

What line length, um, uh, do I need? Um, so consider those, um, factors first and then sum up what, what you need to, to do the, to do the show.

[00:59:09] Robert Scovill: It'd be an interesting and halfway complex spreadsheet to put together, right? SPL and coverage possibility per against weight and truck space. That'd be an interesting thing to evaluate because I feel pretty confident we would come out really, really good on that,

[00:59:28] Sean Walker: Sure. Yeah, totally.

[00:59:30] Robert Scovill: you know. So you, you wanna talk about green footprints?

Things like that. Okay. You know, I mean, you know, you don't wanna get, I mean, I mean, we can be transparent about this. I think I, I'm, I'm comfortable doing this now, you know, given when this PA came out right? And how cutting edge it was. I mean, I, I, I use this term all the time. The first one through the door is always gonna get bloody, right.

Uh, you know, you working with, you know, this kind of condensed amplifier, these kind of class D amplifiers that are in each cabinet, you know, where you have 22 channels in a given, uh, thing. You know, in the early days of it, did we have amplifier problems? We did have some amplifier problems. And, you know, that's all part of the growth phase of something like this.

Uh, did we learn a lot of lessons in networked audio? We sure did. You know how to, how to deal with control versus audio. You know, we, we, we've bled the ground red getting through some of those things, you know, but that, that all comes with the territory. That's, that all comes with being first through the door, you know?

[01:00:27] Sean Walker: A hundred percent It does. Yeah.

[01:00:29] Robert Scovill: it, it, it doesn't, you know, you can't use, in my mind anyway, you can't use those things to invalidate it. Matter of fact, in some ways, if it makes it through it and is a better product at the end of it, it's validation for it. We've, we've fought the battle and won it, you know?

[01:00:43] Sean Walker: Please, please don't, lemme mistake my question. I'm in no way, shape or form trying to invalidate what we're talking about

[01:00:47] Robert Scovill: no, no. I, I'm, I'm just throwing that out as, as the conversation piece here, you know?

[01:00:51] Sean Walker: I got it.

[01:00:52] Robert Scovill: uh, but you know, I talk about expense, you know, at the time that it came out. Yeah. It was expensive. And part of the reason it was appeared to be expensive is because people wanted to do cabinet to cabinet comparison.

And it's like, you can't do that with this. It's a, it's a different animal. Well, now, fast forward to where we are in 25, 20 25, 20 26, have you seen the cost of conventional PA systems these days?

[01:01:15] Sean Walker: sure have.

[01:01:16] Robert Scovill: I mean, it, I mean,

[01:01:17] Sean Walker: have

[01:01:19] Robert Scovill: a Anya is very competitive. Anya and AC a very competitive

[01:01:23] Sean Walker: That's awesome.

[01:01:24] Andy Leviss: So, so technology wise, I have one last question that I know if we don't ask, the folks in the discard are gonna, it's the question that always comes up with, with steering stuff is the big boogieman that people always bring up when digitally steering comes up is, what's it doing to transient response? Is it like, you know, is it smearing or how are they avoiding that?

So, so I'm, I'm gonna ask that question, like, take, take that question where you want to, but I know if we don't talk about that a little bit, folks are gonna ask.

[01:01:52] Sean Walker: Totally like compared to a repro or LNBC or those

[01:01:54] Robert Scovill: answer this question, but I want Jeff to answer it. No.

[01:01:58] Geoff McKinnon: Yes. So this is, this brings us back to why density is important. Source density is important if you don't have, uh, sources that are dense enough. So the one inch spacing gets us, uh, so that we have control, we're getting sources to sum together, um, both in and outside of coverage, past 12 kilohertz, so into the top octave.

Um, if you have wider spacing, even just two inch spacing. Um, and Robert shows this in some of his presentations, that frequency drops in half. So now we're talking six kilohertz and above that we're gonna start having multiple impulses, multiple arrivals. And that's really where you start to hear a, to, to have some of that time sear.

So having that source density, we feel the, the EW adaptive systems are unique in that you don't have that time sear, you get one arrival no matter where you are, uh, both inside and outside of, of coverage.

[01:02:58] Sean Walker: That is awesome.

[01:02:59] Robert Scovill: take issues sometimes with it, with adaptive being called steering. It's not really steering in the traditional sense that we think of it, like steered columns and things like that. You know, people wanna conflate those two things with that. This is really much more about. Kind of pole, I call it polar forming, right?

I mean, we're just creating a polar, a vertical polar that's gonna match the geometry. And because our, because the spacing is right, and this density is right, like I was talking about earlier, what you get is impulsive top end. Like in terms of pure impulse response. I mean, this is gonna be unlike anything you've experienced with a conventional array, especially if you look at it in terms of high frequency.

Woo. I

[01:03:38] Sean Walker: That's awesome. And so that give also gives us, you know, like a HyperCard or cardio control in the back and to the side so we can focus out front and also keep the energy off the stage. Question mark.

[01:03:50] Robert Scovill: uh, I'll let Jeff address this for the future, but you know, we currently don't have the cardio or HyperCard capability in the array itself. We, we certainly have that in the auto subs, but the irony of it is, you know, that EAW was an early leader in all of this, uh, this, you know, back. Control and, you know, took it out because nobody was asking for it at that point in history.

So, you know, I, I get, I, I'm just hinting at that. Maybe we'll be heading back toward that here too long here.

[01:04:19] Sean Walker: Understood. But it's already a super well-behaved cabinet as it is, so you, you're, yeah. Yeah. Totally.

[01:04:25] Robert Scovill: When I, when I first ran into it in Hollywood, and I think I kind of, uh, uh, I don't wanna say shook him up, but, you know, Bernie Broderick was the one showing it to me. And, uh, I mixed on it for about 20 minutes, you know, and I thought, okay, hang on a second here, I gotta go. And I started taking polar measurements on it.

I, I got out some tape, got out tape measure, and started measuring behind the pa. And he was like, what are you doing? And I was like, do you know who I work for? I was like, the sound on stage is as important as the sound going out front right now. And I said, you know, I've got two big problems on the petty stage right now.

I have a nine foot grand piano that is miked. On the offstage right side, and I got a bunch of backing vocal lists on the offstage left side. So if there are low frequency, low mid nodes down there, it's just, it's just death. It's absolutely death. So one of the things I noticed with Adaptive was that it was really linear behind it.

Like it just sound it, like back behind it. It just sounds like it does out front, but turned way, way down. I mean, it's almost the same curve behind it that it is in front, but at greatly reduced volume 'cause of the directivity in it, you know? So that was really appealing. I just remember thinking, Ooh boy, that's gonna work out really good on stage.

I'm almost sure of it here, you know?

[01:05:43] Sean Walker: Dude. That's awesome. How cool, how cool fellas is there We're, we're coming up on an hour here. Is there anything that we haven't asked you that you wish we would've or, or anything that you want to be sure to, to bring up before we let these people go and don't bore them to tears nerding about audio for more than an hour.

[01:06:02] Robert Scovill: Well, I'll, maybe we'll both take a stab at this, but I would certainly say to him, you know, all, all the adaptive piece of it is absolutely cool. I mean, it, it's the attractive part of it, but don't fall asleep on EAW with conventional arrays either. I mean, you know, Jeff already holds patents on some of the, the phasic wave guides that we make for our, our horns and stuff that are absolutely fantastic.

So, you know, the NT series is more conventional line array, uh, in that series. Uh, like I said, it's, it's aimed at a, uh, and a much easier operation of the, the systems. But, uh, and they outperform everything in their class, really. I mean, it's really an amazing thing. So, so you can get 'em at good cost. So I would just say don't fall asleep on EAW in terms of conventional products, either.

Uh, don't think that we're adaptive only. We're gonna, we're gonna have a big play here into conventional as well. Jeff, you want to add to that?

[01:06:55] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, and I would add, Robert, that some of the system, whether it's on your Anna, um, even AC six, may feel out of reach to, um, maybe some of the listeners. I'd still encourage, um, you to, to, to connect and reach out. We have, um, education and training programs available. We're trying to, um, uh, just we're looking for participation.

We're looking just to, to, to share the message so people can, can understand and learn, um, that this is another tool, um, in addition to the tools, tools that you have. Um, and, and I think that's, that's one of, that's just as important, um, as, as learning, uh, other types of technology.

[01:07:32] Robert Scovill: Yeah. Probably worth mentioning there. You know, we, I, I think the last metric I saw it was we trained almost 500 people last year in resolution software. And yeah, the important piece to understand is that resolution doesn't just cover adaptive, like all of our products can be handled in resolution, so they may not be able to take full control of the product, but you can put, put it in the geometry and see all the interaction, et cetera, between IT and adaptive products as well.

So,

[01:07:59] Sean Walker: So they only need to learn one control software and you don't have to have a bunch of softwares in your different ecosystem. That's

[01:08:05] Robert Scovill: Mundo. Yep.

[01:08:06] Sean Walker: is awesome. So as you're going, as you're going from NT series or point source series, whatever you've got that has control and then you end up with your first adaptive rig, you're already familiar with the control software and now you're like, Hey, it's no big deal.

We'll just plop this in and it'll do its thing just like it always does. And we're, we're good to go, rather than like, oh, now here's this other 10 headed monster I gotta try to tackle. Right.

[01:08:27] Robert Scovill: for at Infocom this year, we're releasing this new, uh, you know, we, we call it the online array assistant, right? Uh, which is kind of powered by resolution, believe it or not. But, so what can happen is you go to the back of like an NT 2 0 8 or an NT 2 0 6, hit the QR code and it'll take you to the calculator online.

And you put in what cabinets you're using, what your start point is, your stop point, and how high you wanna fly it. And it will calculate all the angles and the pickup point that you need for your array. Right on your

[01:08:58] Sean Walker: awesome.

[01:08:59] Robert Scovill: app, no nothing, just strictly browser. Right. So, you know, just same thing. We're trying to make it where people do better shows and have better control of their audio.

That's our whole thing is how to control audio.

[01:09:12] Sean Walker: That's amazing you guys. That's amazing. Thank you for coming on today and chatting and hanging for an hour. Robert, I know you're prepping for a big show right now and Jeff, I'm sure you're busy af trying to get all this stuff going. So thank you so much you guys. I

[01:09:25] Robert Scovill: to that. Yeah.

[01:09:26] Geoff McKinnon: Yeah, thanks for having

[01:09:27] Robert Scovill: the invite. Yeah. I mean, we loved coming on, so anytime, anytime.

[01:09:31] Sean Walker: Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us yap about audio for the hour. That's the pod y'all. See you next week.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green