Until I stubbed my toe on a sawed-off piece of pipe imbedded in the sidewalk, the day was going fine!
It started off at 8 in the morning with the Apple Consultants Network BYOB (Bring Your Own Breakfast) at the Westin Hotel. Then, I joined the MySpace Crew in the Media Room for a planning session.
At 10, John Nemerovski led the assault on the HP booth to see what was new in their lineup of printers and arrange for some upcoming review items. HP and Epson have their turf war going and they both have a good lineup of inkjet printers. Hewlett Packard, of course, has their line of Laserwriters that are the standard against which all others are measured.
11 a.m. found me in the User Group Lounge with Chris Breen, senior editor of MacWorld.
At noon, Filemaker provided lunch for the Media Room, and 1 o’clock I met with the User Group Bunch and Dave Marra, Apple Engineer.
It was on my way to the Westin Hotel for the Consultants Network event that I tripped over the pipe, sending me sprawling into the street in front of a taxi.
It hurt.
At the First Aid Station, I got some sympathy and a couple of Advil, and pressed on. There is no way I’m going to let a bruised toe dampen my first MacWorld.
I hobbled around the exhibits for a while until joining Nemo at the Harmon/Cardon concert, designed to show off their wireless headphones.
Now I’ve been singing since forever. I’ve performed and been in the audience at performances more times than I could possibly count. To say that I was skeptical of a concert where the entire audience was wearing headphones, would be an understatement. I considered the idea ridiculous on the face of it, feeling that it would separate the audience from the performance.
I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Using headphones brought an intimacy to the concert the likes of which I have never experienced except by being on stage and playing with the band. Even then it was better. Usually, when you are performing, huge speakers are blasting out the sound to the audience. Additional monitor speakers are needed to allow performers to hear themselves above the powerful auditorium speakers.
Not any more.
No auditorium speakers. No monitor speakers. In this case, three guys with acoustic guitars playing in an intimate room to several hundred wireless headphone-wearing spectators. They could sing loud. They could sing soft. They talked together at a normal conversational level. I was right there with them as though I were sitting three feet away from the performers even though I was way back in the back of the room.
This is a winner.
I don’t know if or how Harmon/Kardon can capitalize on this setup in a real-world venue, but I wish them well doing it. This would work in small concerts, with headsets being handed out at the door and collected upon exit. But once you exceed a couple hundred, the process would be so unwieldy, and retrieval so difficult, I don’t see how it could be accomplished.
Technically, it would be simple to have the audience bring their own pocket FM radios and earbuds to a big concert, and broadcast the performance on a low-power transmitter. But I don’t see how that would benefit Harmon/Kardon.
Good Luck to you. I hope you can make it work. I might even start going to concerts again.
—
The Performers
Shaw-Blades
The concert mentioned above was a performance by Shaw-Blades. Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades are accomplished musicians of long standing (Styx, Night Ranger and Damn Yankees are just a few of the groups contributing to the over 50 million albums which Shaw and Blades have participated). Their easy style and obvious joy being on stage together allow them a freedom of expression that is exceedingly rare in today’s music scene. Their technical proficiency gives them the chops to tackle difficult passages with seeming ease, thrilling the spectator with an impressive array of familiar music from over four decades.
Their set last night pulled the audience inward, using the new system of delivery to give every member of the audience an up-close-and-personal experience that is impossible with auditorium-style amplification. Once captured, the listener stayed with familiar songs and new, enjoying the music delivered in such a personal way.
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