Live Sound - what dirty tricks do other engineers play?

[John Willett]

I loved the one in the old analogue days........

TRD recorder.

My friend recorded a reel of tape with 900Hz tone - he then disabled record so it "looked" as if it was recording but wasn't.

He then asked a trainee to record 1kHz tone and sort out the problem on the machine.

Poor chap - recording 1kHz and hearing 900Hz off-tape.

Took him ages to suss it.

[fifthcircle]

Besides pitch shifting monitors (or in-ears), you can also really mess with people by putting delays on them. Singing or performing with a latency can be really rough...

--Ben

[justpushplay]

Originally Posted by fifthcircle

Singing or performing with a latency can be really rough...

--Ben

In my experience, 55 ms is the magic number. How do I know? Many many years ago, I was doing the safety announcement from monitor world before the start of a show, and my FOH guy ran my vocal back into my cue wedge with the 55 ms delay. It not only stopped me dead in my tracks, it's actually disorienting. I was reading from a script I was holding, and I not only lost my place, I forgot exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Very strange sensation, indeed. Of course, this was just one in a series of pranks we pulled on each other, and other crew members.......