Yesterday was a great day!

Today was a great day.

See, I even Twittered it. That’s how you know it’s true.

Our revamped audio rack

But in all seriousness, it was a great day. I soldered up some custom cables, pulled out some unused snakes and Mike and I made a ton of progress with cleaning up our audio racks. I wish I had a “before” shot of the rack so you could see how much as been done to it. We still have some more to finish up tomorrow, but not much.

I’m sure some of you are wondering why we needed to reorganize and clean up the rack. Here’s why…

Last weekend was the last week of using the Yamaha M7-CL48 as a monitor console. This weekend we will be running entirely on our new Roland M-48s. So not needing to have Monitor World anymore really allows us to remove and consolidate a lot of equipment. On Wednesday, I removed our 40 channel split which allowed us to run both the M7 and the DiGiCo SD-8. Having that gone should allow a cleaner signal to reach the preamps in the DiGiRack. Our signal chain is now 100% digital from the moment it hits the preamps to the time it hits the main amps. Sweet!

If you have no idea what a DiGiwhatchamacallit is, don’t worry! Mike wrote a post a while back covering what our new system entails here and here… It’s an older article so some things have changed since then.

Okay, back to why we needed to do all this work. Monitor World resides up a flight of stairs and is tucked away in a corner. The wireless receivers, monitor amps and processors were installed in a rack up in Monitor World. It’s a pain in the butt to go up and down those stairs if you just wanted to use a single wireless mic and a vocal wedge. Now that that split has been removed we have room to move most of that equipment downstairs and into the same rack that houses the DiGiRack. I say some, because there just isn’t enough room to house the amps for the wedges. We have nine QSC amps. One will move to FOH, four will be installed in a rolling rack and the remaining four will be left in a rack in Monitor World. Remember how I said Monitor World is a pain to get to? Aren’t we going to have to run up there every time we want to turn on these amps? Nope! We installed four toggle switches that will power on the amps remotely. It’s all about working smarter, not harder! I’m pretty pumped about how much cleaner our install is and how much easier this system is going to be to use.

But what about Monitor World? What’s it going to be used for now?

Storage! We’ll use the lift to get the big/heavy/unused equipment up there which will make room for a workbench in our audio room. W00t! Mike and I have developed a plan that is going to rock my socks.

So now today we have a few loose ends to tie up. Literally. There are loose cables that need zip-tied. We also have to finish building our tactical CAT5 cables for the M-48s. Once those are built we get to play with the newest feature: the engineer surface. This was actually a suggestion that Mike brought to Roland back at InfoComm. I’m not sure if I can talk about it, but what the heck! Basically it allows our M-48 which sits on the desk at FOH to mirror a musician’s M-48. This makes it a lot easier to help them get their mix dialed in. So yeah, pretty stoked.

On a side note:
Most of the equipment we removed and more is for sale! Check Mike's blog for details.

And in other news…

Andrea and I actually talked on a phone for bit last night. And it wasn’t just “business” related. I’m not looking into it as any kind of sign for anything, but it was still nice to just talk. I really do miss her a lot.

Part of me hopes that she won’t read this, yet another part of me hopes she does. I don’t want her to read this because I’m not sure I want her to know how I really feel. But on the flip-side, I want her to read this because I don’t think I have to the stones to tell her I miss her. I’m scared of what she would say if I told her I really want her back. It’s not like life would be honky-dory if we did get back together. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I still believe with every fiber in me that it’s the right thing to do.

I just have to trust that no matter what happens, God has a plan and a purpose for my life… even if Andrea isn’t in it. I understand why God can’t force us to love Him and love each other. Forcing someone to love you isn’t love, it’s coercion. I get it. But wouldn’t it be easier?