There’s nothing quite like a festive flight to put a smile on each and every rosy-cheeked face of the travelling masses. Terminals bustle and hustle: two African women and their eight children check in 20 bulging bags; scores of couples jetting off for a romantic New Year’s break; and the grey faces of business travellers all clutter my path. And, here we are, another new year.

What an interesting year that last year was. Everyone tried to go compact, with Sis, PRO1s and more PA with more 8” drivers that still can’t practically deliver what they say they can. Anyway, onwards and upwards. This is the new year, so there will be lots of things for us to raise our eyebrows at whilst a man in a branded insignia jacket skips his way down a cobbled street playing a flute, luring out all our integrity and drowning it the Missisonic River. My new year’s resolution is not to be so susceptible to these flaunts and flings of a more audio variety.

The woman sitting beside me on the Fokker 70 is wearing a scent of smoked badger and throws me right back into my past, to a world very different to the one I live in now, a world that was more innocent, or at least yet to be proved guilty. The engines roar into life and we are pushed back into our seats as we hurtle forward into the pulverising rain and numbing blackness. It’s quite bizarre looking out the window in cloudy, rainy and dark conditions. The light at the end of the wing flashes, revealing the blur of motionless rain drops.

Looking at this, I cast my mind back to Mr. Phillips’ physics classes. Physics was the only class in school that actually made sense to me. Cause and effect; it seemed so obvious. Unfortunately, its chemistry and biology counterparts were more elusive, but that’s another story. These thoughts reveal something I haven’t thought about for a long time, which is my love for physics. During my 20s, passion gave way to arrogance and indolence that is common in people so inept at living. But recently and realistically, through these words that I write every month, I have rediscovered my affection.

I trust your festive seasons were as pleasant, filling and blurry as mine. I had a lovely family Christmas; full of a little too much wine, far too much rum in the custard. You know what it’s like when the family gets together; a few glasses of wine and a couple of board games, then passion and reminiscence get thrown in the pot together. Then next thing you know you are sitting cross-legged in front of a 1930s gramophone listening to a woman warbling away accompanied by a set of laid- back musicians. I realised then that I’ve never heard the sound of a gramophone before. I’ve heard sounds that have been recreated to sound like this, or recordings of this type of sound, but I’ve never actually heard these machines make this sound. Ok, just for the record, it sounded shit. The needle looked more like the wreckage of a nail bomb than a carefully-crafted stylus, and the record itself would have probably survived a nuke. But if this was all you had, it would have been amazing.

As my legs became deader from the cross-legged position, I found myself gawking into the sound hole. This technology seems relatively stone age to us, but the shape is very familiar: it’s the same shape as a horn- loaded PA system. This might seem primitive, but the technology we use today can be traced back to here; and even further back than this one immaculate example.

Technology has been honed and perfected over time, but not reinvented. I think this says a lot for the basic principles of audio physics, which is why it does bemuse me that some people out there know very little about how sound really behaves. They twiddle and fiddle, tamper and tinker to their hearts content, without understanding exactly what they’re doing. Our audio environment can be a very special place to experience a performance – and with the right kind of nurture it will be.

We’ve seen in the last few years the rise of the producer- musician-I-gonna-take-this-on- the-road live shows where they assume that because their tracks ‘work’ in every club round the world, they’ll work really well if they just give the FOH engineer a left and right. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Constantly changing thermodynamics and polished concrete surfaces come together to create a very volatile space. A live environment isn’t a constant, and never will be. Room responses will always change, so a live environment is all about compromise and, hopefully, optimise. Compromise isn’t a dirty word, we do it all the time. The most important thing to think about compromise is how you compromise, not where. Does it really matter if your mic position is off by 8° when half your PA system is pointing towards a wall? Should you really be hacking the EQ on the graphic equaliser, when physically moving your speakers a foot to the right will remove that 180Hz resonance? How much phase distortion do you get from graphic equalisers? What do all these little things do to the overall sound? Understand the physics!

A positive effect on one element will be detrimental to another. That’s the audio paradox.

I like words. I like learning new ones. The best thing about reading the paper on my iPad is the built-in dictionary. When you come across the odd word you might not know, with a tap of a button the full description is in front of you. This year 3000 stuff is quite something else. But, in recent months I have discovered three words that I don’t like, not one bit. They cause offence, and their use bemuses me.

The first word is a name really, but a word nonetheless. Every time I hear it, images of bright red teenagers passed out on a condom-strewn beach with a burnt out fag in one hand, a can of cheap larger in the other pass into my mind’s eye. The word ‘Ibiza’ epitomises everything I dislike about the human race.

The second word that strikes dread into my inner core is the word ‘banter’ – written on so many online dating profiles as if it’s something to be proud of.

The last word, and by far the worst of all, is one that doesn’t make any sense when used in this particular context. Every time I hear it I get a sinking feeling, as if I am aboard the Titanic, casting women and children into the freezing cold waters below in a futile bid to save their lives. It is on the tip of the lips of smug system technicians the world over, and offends me more than any other. That word is ‘flat’!

I was in a venue in Utrecht a while ago. I pushed up the faders of my beloved Chaka Khan. I was presented with the cries of cats as they were cast into the pits of hell. I pondered on this for a moment. I lent over the Midas XL4 and studied the channels strips with fastidious detail. Surely I must have done something wrong – but the answer was elusive. I asked the house tech why the PA system sounded like it was forced through a cheese grater? He responded with the immortal words ‘It’s flat’ and confirmed that we were all present and correct. I suppose if you had an evening celebrating a friend’s thirtieth birthday with a visit to Colombia, then it might just sound flat, but to me it sounded like someone was cleaning my ears with barbed wire. Apparently this, the house tech told me, is the sound that British Engineers like. Which was pretty offensive by itself, but I like to think that he was trying, in some way, to be complimentary. Have we all gone deaf? I thought to myself. How on earth can this be flat?

Flat is what the ancients thought the world was, at least that’s what I was taught in school. Flat is a good sturdy surface for you to iron your boxer shorts on. Flat is a place where you live or a tiresome performance in the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Flat is a boring word, and when someone tells me they’ve made my PA sound flat, are they telling me that they’ve made the PA sound boring? This was far from boring, it was more like a military assault on an unsuspecting audience. Of course, what this man was referring to is a graphical representation of what the PA should look like when run through some kind of real-time analyser.

When we say ‘flat’ we are talking all the frequencies in the audible spectrum being the same amplitude. Flat to what, I wonder: Your ear? My ear? A reference microphone? Aren’t we looking for a natural frequency response? The concept of flat doesn’t have a point of reference at all. If we use a reference microphone, then doesn’t that have a frequency response of its own? I know they are supposed to be relatively ‘flat’, but aren’t we looking for a perceived naturalness? Do these mics take into consideration the Fletcher- Munson curve?

In Manchester a few months later, I walked into a massive brick warehouse with a polished concrete floor. The system tech said: ‘I’ve tried to make it flat. Well, to my ear at least.’ At least he gave me a point of reference for what he meant by the word flat. Flat is a perception. One man’s flat is another man’s sonic devastation. I suppose I’d like someone to come up to me as I enter the venue and say ‘I have created a wonderful, dynamic sonic canvas on which to place the sound of your band’.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate what these system engineers are trying to do, but I have noticed over the past couple of years that when someone tells me the PA is flat, I have 4.5kHz barking at me. This isn’t flat. If the reference mic tells me this is flat, it still isn’t flat. Aren’t sound engineers supposed to trust their ears over any form of Mechanical-Skynet-Computer that tells them how to listen to something? I don’t remember this back in my youth when lugging PA around various South Essex fields. Maybe our reference point has changed.

If there are engineers out there using MP3s and iPods to audition a PA system, no wonder. I’m not saying we should all go around playing vinyl, that would be daft, but at least think about the quality. After all, the first rule of sound engineers club is to make sure our sound on stage is the best it can be. Why should this be any different with the music we EQ to?

Is flat even musical?

On 26 September 2012, I departed Europe bound for the wild, wilderness that is Australia. After four security checks, three flights, two layovers, one prawn curry breakfast, 24 hours’ air travel and a frisking, I arrive in Brisbane. For the next couple of weeks I shall be trundling across this dusty, new frontier on front-of-house duties for DJ Fresh as we play the Parklife Festival. This festival is one of those Australian travelling festivals that visits multiple cities, Brisbane being the first, followed by Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide.

I don’t know what it is about this continent that makes me want to get out and do some physical exercise: I hit the Tarmac, golf course and gym on regular occasions in the futile effort to fit in. Actually, the clientele that frequent this festival would either wear singlets, with reddish, muscular bodies on display, or shorts that exposed the contents of that morning’s breakfast. I was never really going to fit in.

The festival itself was hard work. It seemed like the production was all just a little last-minute, and one thing that really hit home, more than at any other time I remember, is how much we rely on our system technicians. Perth was the only show where I was actually pleased with the result. They had chosen to use a d&b Q series PA. I turned around in the second song to shake the guy’s hand and thank him for not having the same attention to detail as the chap last night. There was another show, in Adelaide, where the result was passable, on a dV-DOSC system, and the others were frankly just well under par.

Unfortunately or not, I am my own worst critic, and can always make craters in what I do and how I do it. I do understand that we all hear everything slightly differently – one man’s screaming mess is another man’s choir of angels, and all that. I am the face of the sound because I’m the one standing behind the console, and if it’s not very good I also become the poster-boy for this mal-sonic display, whether it’s my fault or not. It makes me wonder how many other engineers are in the audience, wondering what this joker is doing.

Paranoia and sonic felonies aside, I should explain what I need to do my job properly. It’s not a so-called ‘flat’ PA system (if someone can offer an explanation of what that is, please tweet me!). It’s not even the whole PA working properly, because if I know what’s wrong, I can deal with it. It’s two things – consistency and vibe. I’m no sound engineer, I have no engineering degree, I’m a Sonic Vibe Master! Actually that’s extremely anal, but my point is that you can have a sonically perfect mix, but if there is no vibe, then it still doesn’t sound right.

Music is all about feeling, spiritually and emotionally. I think the most important part of our job is getting the vibe right. When I have the manager or producer standing next to me telling me that the overhead mics need more compression on them, a little part of me wants to poke them in the eye. What does it feel like? Does it feel right? If it doesn’t feel right, then you spend the whole gig technically listening to what is wrong, and you just end up with a sterile sound that would be great in an elevator, but not at a Rock/Jazz/Punk/Pop show. ‘Technically’ listening in a live scenario is bad – you must listen to the bigger picture.

Is that why we are so hooked on sub? Personally, I think the most important part of the entire frequency range is those low- mids we are so fond of taking out. And I’m not surprised: when you have a PA system that can only produce those low-mids by coupling rather than having a physical driver moving air, you get this cloudy, mushy low-mid that sounds like a flatulent grandmother after Christmas dinner. It’s these frequencies that, I think, provide the intimacy and connection that so many of us miss. Remember the good old days when the guitar player would pound on the guitar and your entire rib cage would rattle right down through your nuts? Where has that gone?

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I don’t actually know my gain pot from my balanced line cable. At another one of our shows I was mixing on a different PA system. The tech explained to me how this, in his opinion, was the best PA in the world and he’d choose it over L-Acoustics any day. Brilliant! I’m glad he likes it so much – there must be at least a slither of truth in there. The show sounded rubbish. Was it me? Was it him? It just sounded like every time there was a movement in the dynamic range, the system changed sound. I’ve only ever had this once before and it was in Terminal 5 in New York. I went through that place three times in one year and every time it was the same; the last time I was there they’d called an expert in to find out what was wrong, because the venue had had so many complaints.

I’ve somewhat given up on the idea of what a good PA system sounds like, I tend to get disappointed. For me, it’s all about the system technicians. They’re the ones who make or break the show, sonically at least.

Well, I can safely say that I didn’t get in a time machine and head 10 years into the future, unless I did and had my memory erased . . . But, I was really pleased with the way the Audiothinktank session at PLASA turned out. I’d like to extend a massive thanks to everyone who braved the LED screens and gadgetry to attend on Monday 10 September. I can’t believe we ran out of time. To be honest, I was a little worried I’d have too much time, so prepared loads of slides so we’d have plenty to talk about. As it goes, we had lots to talk about anyway, so only managed to get through half of the slides.

The panel was fantastic, and I think added a really valuable element to the whole thing. We had Chris McCarron of Silentgig, Tony Andrews of Funktion-One, Chuck Knowledge of Chucknology and Luke Ramsey of Julie’s Bicycle.

Our first discussion on the road to betterisation was on sustainability. Seeing the biggest summer ice cap melt this year since we first started watching, and according to bushy-eyebrowed scientists, it’s quite feasible we’ll see a complete melt in a few years. So our energy usage is something that we should keep looking at.

I suppose, as an industry on the whole, we are pretty bad at looking after the environment, but how can our little audio section help? With the introduction of digital consoles, power consumption at front-of- house and on stage has been reduced, but now we see so many more consoles everywhere. On another power consuming note, we explored the possibility of putting efficiency ratings on audio equipment, including PA systems. Think about it: if you have a super-efficient PA, you require fewer boxes, therefore less truck space and fewer amplifiers.

What about the power consumption from not having your filters in your system set properly? As your DJ turns up the bottom-end pot on his Pioneer in a futile attempt to recreate 13Hz, is this using more power than needed? Your speakers will fall apart at the thought of it and your amps will cower at the amplitude placed before them. Just thinking a little more about your filtering could help conserve power. Also in the high-end: if the PA can’t reproduce it, why have it there? How much harder do the amps have to work, only to be given the shove at the speaker box? I don’t have any facts or figures for you, but it did make me think.

Something I hadn’t thought of before this session was the impact of actually getting to the shows. This obviously isn’t solely an audio problem, but a point well raised. It’s not just the punters but also the way we travel as artists and crew. Every band will have its own means of transport, and as you work your way up the bill, splitter buses become tour buses, then tour buses and trucks, then when you reach the headliners, you could easily be looking at multiple busses and trucks – all in the name of entertainment.

Now, I do understand the practical necessity of having all this in place – you are able to get your gear in and out as you need to – but it’s something to think about. One of the audience members from Copenhagen told us that they run a Facebook group offering rides to and from festivals for those that have extra space in their vehicles.

We then moved on to creativity, which, as some of you know, is quite close to my heart. The question posed was along the lines of: ‘Have digital consoles taken away our creativity’? Being from the old skool, I like my analogue desks, and have my artistic palette laid out in front of me. The younger generation get their heads around the digital much faster then us oldies . . . So is this a problem? Maybe not. Maybe it’s our attitude that needs to develop. One opinion expressed was that teaching on analogue console gives you a much better understanding of signal flow . . .

The sound of digital audio is very different, so the needs of mix engineers are changing, from DSP requirements to A/D and D/A conversation. Maybe this is a far more clinical world than we are use to, but the tools available are getting better and better. The outlook for the future of sound systems, I think, could be really exciting, but we are walking a difficult path that can lead to fixing problems with more processing – which is probably not the way to go.

I put an idea tree in the middle of PLASA. The point was to get questions and comments on all things audio. Obviously, a stand- alone object in the middle of a floor with pens and post-it notes attached to it, it was open for abuse. Yes, I’m sure Liam loves lighting, and thank you Dean and Christian for your lovely smiley faces, but we did have some interesting questions: What do wordclocks do for sound quality? I’ve become a firm believer in wordclocks. I tried one out last year and it was as if a sheet had been lifted off the PA. The choir went from being a choir to lots of voices singing in unison. The brushes hitting the snare turned to individual pieces of brush. So I think they do a lot – but I’m not sure the cost can be justified.

All in all, I had a great time this year. Thanks for your conversations and your input. I’m looking forward to doing this again.