Sound Reflection: CDNY

May 15th, 2012
contra, sound
The Free Raisins recently played for CDNY. We had a really good time, and I think we played well, but I'm glad I don't have to run sound for that hall.

The hall is half of a gym, with some kind of hanging fabric barrier separating the dancers from the people using the other half. [1] Like most gyms, all the surfaces are highly reflective. There are six speakers in the front and back of the hall mounted near the ceiling with only a slight downward tilt. Like this:

+-----------------------------------+
|  s              s .            s  |
|  |              | .            |  |
|                   .               |
|                   .               |
|      dancers      .    sports     |
|                   .               |
|                   .               |
|  |              | .            |  |
|  s     band     s .            s  |
+-----------------------------------+

Not a sound system designed for contra dancing.


[1] We were lucky to have badmintoning neighbors; when Simmerville played Amy says they were competing with basketball.

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

LLMs roleplay characters

I. I’m going to talk about the persona selection model, which in my opinion is one of the most important concepts to understand if you want to understand large language models’ psychology.

via Thing of Things May 1, 2026

You should try contra dancing

a story of middle school Ben • a not-very-illuminating description of the mechanics • flow, joy, and community • the antidote to the rest of life • how to try contra

via benkuhn.net April 24, 2026

On AI writing in 2026

I use AI to write a little bit: I ask it for high level feedback on blog post drafts, make mechanical edits, and sometimes use it to brainstorm options for wording at a paragraph level. It’s unusual that I accept its wording or changes without modificatio…

via Home April 16, 2026

more     (via openring)