Story time ...

Authored by:

William J. Lawrence, Jr., CTS-D, CTS-I, CQD, CQT, CQA

Executive Director

The Association for Quality in Audio Visual

A reasonably long time ago, I was working for a medium-sized company as an Engineer. 

The project was a House of Worship that was acoustically challenging. A “pie-shaped” space, raked seating, and a rear wall made completely of brick and arced in a manner that nearly perfectly reflected reinforced sound right back at the Minister’s position. A feedback generator. The budget was not infinite, and expectations were high. Microphone for the acoustic baby grand piano, choral mics, and the ability to make it all spring into action with just the touch of a button when an Operator wasn’t there (which was most of the time). 

We put a lot of thought into the design, acoustically modeled the space, and determined a steerable line-array configuration that would deliver incredibly high stability with excellent tonal performance. The install commenced, and I spent my days commuting two hours to the site to ensure that everything went to plan and that I could tune it to perfection using calibrated instruments and real science! The system turned out to be fantastic. Just as good, if not better than, the predictions from the model. 

As we finished commissioning, it began to snow heavily, and everyone at the training wanted to get through it and head home (myself included, with the two-hour commute parallel to the storm track. Demonstrations were made, hands shaken, and we all headed out happy with the result. The 5-hour harrowing drive home (some of which was spent stuck in the snow in the median of the highway) is a story for another time. The following day, I received a call from the Owner of the company with the five words that no one ever wants to hear: “They are saying nothing works. I was dumbfounded. As I traversed the still slick route back to the site, my mind reeled through hundreds of possible causes. Equipment failure, meddling by a parishioner, stray meteorite strike, EMP, Dave Matthews band had blown it up during an impromptu jam session… so many things. What could have possibly failed in such a cataclysmic manner as to take down the whole incredible system that everyone was delighted with just hours before?? When I arrived and started to investigate, the Architect of my misery was immediately obvious. 

It was me. 

In the mix of impending weather, last-minute close-out items, and sheer satisfaction of everyone involved, I had neglected to save the Audio DSP Profile to the “Power on” default slot. The snowstorm blipped the main power, and the DSP went back to being an unpainted palette of infinite silicon impedances and deafening silence. 

Fun Fact- if you look through the AV9000 checklist, you might find an item that directly addresses this action. Yep, that’s me.

What could have taken 10 minutes to review and prevent using a QA checklist cost me 320 miles of driving, a lost day of time, an annoyed (but loving!) wife, a serious blow to the owner’s confidence, and what felt like 16 dozen eggs on my face. 

We all have similar stories, from varying (or the same) origins. “It only takes as long as it takes to do it right the first time”.

What's your story?

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