Ep.8 - Common AV Infrastructure Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Infrastructure isn’t the flashy part of an AV system — but it’s the part that determines whether everything works… or fails when it matters most.

In this episode of Behind the Rack, we break down the most common infrastructure mistakes we see across Commercial AV, Pro Live, Broadcast, and Enterprise deployments.

From poor bandwidth planning and VLAN misconfiguration to IT & AV misalignment, lack of redundancy, and scalability blind spots — we’re talking about the real-world issues that cause instability, downtime, and expensive rework.

If you’re deploying AV-over-IP, wireless microphone systems, IPTV, or live production environments, this episode will help you design smarter from day one.

🎧 Topics include:

• Why infrastructure often gets overlooked
• Network & bandwidth planning pitfalls
• IT and AV alignment challenges
• Segmentation and VLAN mistakes
• Redundancy and single points of failure
• Future-proofing for scalability
• Documentation & commissioning gaps

Strong infrastructure isn’t optional — it’s foundational.

Transcript

Cold Open And Banter

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Oh did you just cat try catching a fly? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

That's I like that. I didn't see the manual coming. Yeah, yeah, I came in. I didn't it came from the back.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

I didn't throw it in. And he laughed like he was.

SPEAKER_05 0:24

I was laughing because you were laughing. Because you didn't see it coming. I was like, oh I'm gonna sneak up with it now. It's gonna be a good thing. So if I'm having a problem, I shouldn't call you. Is that what you're saying? Because you can call me. I'm gonna have an answer quite quickly.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Because you're gonna call me. If my friends are answering if my friends are picking up the phone. Yeah, I'm gonna put you on a conference call. Hold on. With Claude. Claude. Cloud code.

SPEAKER_04 1:01

Oh did you just cat try catching a fly? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Gentlemen. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. How are you, Vince? I'm good. How are you, Hulilo? I'm good. I can't even speak this morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

There you go. There you go. I mean, should we mention that this is the second time or this was this was should we?

SPEAKER_04 1:29

Yeah, yeah. Well, anyways. Did you guys did you guys uh get to watch a little bit of the Olympics over the weekend?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

No, uh as I told you guys, I'm I'm moving. I just uh body condo and moved into it uh like last weekend. So it's a no Olympic, no super bowl for me this year, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05 1:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

You did you catch anything?

SPEAKER_05 1:46

Yeah, I started watching a lot of the Olympics. My daughter yesterday morning wakes me up at 6 30 in the morning, swings open the door to our bedroom, walks in, whispers in my ear, Papa, can I watch the Olympics?

SPEAKER_03 2:00

It's 6 30 in the morning.

SPEAKER_05 2:03

Yeah, but they're hot in the morning. I'm like, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Okay, you're right. You're right. Because the time changed. That's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. Pretty cool stuff. I didn't I didn't get to watch uh a ton of it this year, but um I did start watching a little bit of the um of the uh mogul the the downhill skiing editing challenge. Yeah, and one thing that on the A V standpoint that really impresses me is the replays, like the whole they're the the they're shooting the skiers going downhill on the moguls sideways, then they pause, yeah, and then does like a matrix thing where it like the the camera advances, the skier stays in the air, and then you're seeing it like snapshots, and I was like, and then it just reminded me of the conversation we had with uh the sure guys, you know, about that whole uh I forget what the the software was called where you can track the players and stuff like that. Pretty cool, really cool. And again, I'm I I don't watch sports that often, so this technology must have existed.

FPV Drones And Live Coverage

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, they were also mentioning about the FPV drones that were my favorite part, I think. Yeah, like they have a drone following like someone skiing or bobsleeing or going downhill at like more than a hundred kilometers. Yeah, and have you heard about these drones, the these special FPV drones they call? Yeah, they're super small, yeah. And you don't drive them like normal drones, like you're not watching your drone in the in the in the sky. You you basically wear like glasses, yeah, like VR goggles, and and you're you are the drone, and you're yeah, you're piloting it like you are in the drone. It's pretty insane.

SPEAKER_05 3:36

So I thought that, you know, like I have a DJI drone at home. I thought that they were using like some sort of auto tracking, but then the Olympics posted something on their social media and they actually have like these dedicated drone tents where they're charging the drones, they've got their monitors, and you see the FPV pilots, I guess that's what you call them, like they're in their chairs and they're focused, laser focused, driving these drones. I thought they was auto tracking because even when they were doing the bobsled or the skeleton or the luge, like these guys are taking turns at 80 kilometers an hour, whatever it is, and it's someone that's driving the drone.

SPEAKER_04 4:10

I thought auto tracking, which was it's a whole nother level of like drone drone piloting.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Yeah, quite possibly the most amazing job on the planet right now.

Today’s Topic: AV Infrastructure Pitfalls

SPEAKER_04 4:18

Yeah, it's and it's funny because I'm a huge fan of Red Bull. Um, I watch Red Bull all the time. Like I have the app and I listen to all kinds of sports, and when I'm on the treadmill, whatever, I like watching especially skiing, and then in the summer other sports. But drones was always there, especially FPV drones. But this year is the first time where I'm talking to non-tech people and they're like talking to me about the FPV drones because you can hear them, and they're and I found that really interesting that people were starting to notice like how incredible this this is, you know. Yeah, anyways, I found that pretty cool. Just a little side note. Yeah. Um but um, you know, thinking about the episode topic for this podcast, I was looking through the notes and one topic that that I wanted to um bring forward was uh something that was a lot was very recurring in my old life when I was doing support or pre pre-sales, pre-design support. And it was um after speaking to a ton of customers, uh, especially on new projects, is uh common type of infrastructure mistakes. And um and because of all three of our different backgrounds, I thought it would be a good episode to just touch uh you know a little bit on on those some of those topics and even talk about how maybe sometimes we could even just prevent it, but just even talking about it and some of the the the common points can get people to start asking questions maybe on site and stuff like that. Or before in a project, or before the project. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think uh some dealers may know it already, and some people may not, but it's just I guess every time the customers used to call me, it was always question, question, question. Like, oh, you asked so many questions. Well, that's it's always to give a good idea of try to prevent something to get a call for tech support after after the fact, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

I mean, that there's what they call a discovery call is an important step in all the all projects, like in every project, but in Navy it's especially important. Uh and having what they call a statement of work or scope, uh what what the integrator or the professional that's gonna come on site is gonna do to be clearly defined. I mean, that's that's that's very important. But but there's a couple of uh mistakes and pitfalls that we can uh that we can try to avoid by doing the steps properly.

Network Isn’t Optional Anymore

SPEAKER_05 6:57

Yeah, yeah, and I think no matter the the scale of the event, it's always good to be in a good routine or have a good habit of asking the right questions or at least pre-planning. You know, like uh just an example with my guys and you know the entertainment company on the weekends, you know, we do a run of show before every single event. And like we're talking a show with four speakers, two subs, four moving heads. We're not talking about a full on stage production, but it's important that you meet with the guys before you do your run through, no matter how simple it could be, just because there's that opportunity for them to ask those questions or to bring up anything that's on their mind, or because the second you start hesitating in this industry, that's when people start to notice, right? So if you can just kind of ease the air, make sure everyone's aligned, everything's okay, then you're gonna have a better show no matter the size of it. So it's um it's important that you you get in that routine no matter the type of event.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Yeah. Well, especially in your type of uh in the event, it's high stakes, right? It's especially when it's uh a wedding and stuff. Yeah, there's no take to. No.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

And you know, uh that there's there's a uh a phrase I like is uh uh failing to plan is planning to fail.

SPEAKER_06 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

So and and that's true in a lot of uh verticals. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:14

I tell all my clients it's important to have a really solid plan A, but even better than the plan A is a plan B. That's right. Because it never goes according to nope, nope, nope. People usually stop just at plan A. This is how it's gonna go. Yeah, it's not plan B and plan C all the time.

SPEAKER_04 8:31

It just gives me uh the goosebumps just hearing just a plan A. Yes, it's a bad vibe. Um, all right, let's kick it off. So uh I had a few I had a few points. So number one is uh treating network as an afterthought. And um I think in all three of our specialties, whether it's broadcast or pro live or integration, yeah, network especially today is uh is so important. So important. Yes. Um what are some of the things in pro live on the networking side that uh I know we did a CDJ 3000X uh podcast and now going Wi-Fi, yeah.

Why Wi‑Fi Is Not Your Backbone

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Uh thanks for bringing that up. Like relying on Wi-Fi is a bad idea to get going. Uh no matter uh how how powerful is your Wi-Fi, no matter or how many nodes in your mesh or how many, I mean, Wi-Fi is a bad idea if if if you're doing any type of live thing. Uh I would say except for secondary control, like you have a console and you have an iPad that you can you you can use as a secondary controller. Right. Let's say you're you're FOH, you're mixing a show, but you'd like to hear what's happening in the middle of the room or on the balcony. So you can bring your iPad and just do some small tweaks from there, but yeah don't rely on Wi-Fi for your whole production or or even for controls in a room. Uh you don't want to uh to have the only control it control panel on your desk in a in a conference room being something that relies on Wi-Fi because it of course it's gonna fail. If Wi-Fi fails, is the device gonna come come back up with the proper Wi-Fi? Uh oh yeah, yeah. With the proper s SSID? It's so many things can go wrong where a wire always works. Always works. If the wire's properly wired, obviously, but you'd know from the get-go if the wire's good or not.

VLANs, QoS, And Multicast Basics

SPEAKER_05 10:42

So yeah, I think in in the live space to your question, Vince, uh we're in a very interesting time in the last couple of years because there's this convergence of all the the different systems now happening on the network. Before it was very separate, right? You had your you know, your FOH audio being ran with your snakes and your XLRs, and then you have lighting that's being strictly ran on DMX. Yep. Um, but now everything's residing on a network, right? From you know, Dante audio, for example, to even lighting control. There's a lot of nodes now with their own, you know, static IPs uh to help split the signals and all that. So it's it's a very interesting topic of conversation. I personally don't have a lot of experience with you know big tours and huge productions, but from talking to people in the field, you know, now they have network engineers on site, you know, because everything is running on uh on these networks, so the switches need to be managed properly. Obviously, I say obviously, but uh for those that don't know a lot of networking, you know, very important that the V lines are being separated, are they being separated properly? Um, you know, there's things that I'm not familiar with when we start talking about you know QoS or quality of service, uh IGMP, multicast, like that is so way beyond my my technical scope. But these are things that need to be thought of. Yes. Especially if there's new gear coming into play or there's new uh you know hot swaps happening because something else went down. So you need to have your network guy there or someone that has network chops to be able to identify all these issues and make sure that you have the redundancy that's also working properly, too, right? So it's it gets very, very interesting, and that's something personally that I want to learn more about. And I've said this before, like I I look up to you guys for your network chops, uh, and and I definitely want to learn more about it. But those are just some of the things, and uh even even on the smaller productions, like I was saying, you know, something as simple as a static IP, you know, do people understand the difference between dynamic and static for certain devices? Why is it important? Why do you need it? So there's so many different things now that are coming up that's important that we talk about.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

VLAN is a big one, as as Franco said from the get-go. I mean, yeah, uh, most of the different services should be on separate VLANs.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Control, lighting, video, audio, comms, communications. Yeah. Uh so they should be treated separately, most likely these days in the same switch, but on a different VLAN, just like if they were separate switches. It's just more convenient to have them in the same switch with separate VLANs. And network engineering is a big part of it. I mean, as I said earlier, uh failing to plan is planning to fail. So you need to look at that before. You need to have an IP table, knowing which which uh which service is gonna be on which uh uh VLAN uh and IP addressing and deal with professional people to do this. As a matter of fact, as you guys know, we here at SFM, Midwish, we have we have some uh some engineers for networking. So you if if as an integrator or as a reseller you're not sure about uh your network design, you can uh you can contact uh uh our team uh plus the plus services and and we have a look at your at your uh network design and we can help you uh actually help you with your design. So yeah, yeah, that's huge.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

Uh especially for everybody who uh some dealers that are still on uh the edge of the analog going into the did the digital world, especially on the AV over IP, I think that that's the one that I was um I got to notice um first going and and getting into networking, uh, because just even one transmitter or even just a transmitter receiver on the network, you're flooding.

IT And AV: The Needed Handshake

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Can flood the network depending on depending on the network protocol it's using. If it's UDP, it's gonna flood the network everywhere. So there are some devices, even if there's a network port on it, they're not meant to be in a switch, they're meant to be connected point to point. Yeah, and most of the AV over IP devices, uh some of them like the the BlueStream uh or uh uh yeah, for example, Blue Stream is device, most of their devices are devices that you should connect together or on a separate, literally a separate network, not only a separate VLAN. So yeah, so you're you're completely right on it. This is not because there's a network port on a machine that it's meant to be plugged in a switch and manage. So that's another recipe for disaster there.

SPEAKER_05 15:14

Yeah, and you notice that like a lot of people are, you know, there's a there's a meeting of both worlds now where you have IT and AV having to work together, making that handshake. Do you find that one of the issues is that the A V guys are coming in late, late into the game, number one, so they're not in that planning process, they're utilizing the existing network infrastructure and hardware, which means that for future deployments or future improvements, you know, maybe that switch can't handle that amount of bandwidth or whatever. Maybe it's not even designed to handle multicast without suddenly trying to run video or audio off that switch. So do you find that's a common issue where it's like they're coming in too late and it's like, well guys, how am I supposed to work with this? Yes, I think this.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

I think it's a I think it's a big package, big package deal. I think one DIT guys are not uh informed or trained on the AV aspect, so they don't know that a transmitter will take up, you know, 900 megabits per second of bandwidth. Uh they don't know that some of them need jumbo packets uh uh required on the switch. Uh some people don't realize that to uh what Hugo was saying jumble frames, you know jumbo, yeah, jumbo frames uh or jumbo packets. But yeah, it's it's either they don't know that you should be segregating your AV on a whole separate network. Or VLAN or VLAN and and some guys, some IT guys for the guy for the AV guys who are I think a little bit more knowledgeable bring in their own gear. The the IT guys are like, hey, hey, hey, this is my network. Yeah, so I think and then on the on the flip side, the some AV guys that are just getting into it, sometimes they'll come in with an unmanaged switch. Yeah, sometimes like which is this security, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

It could be a security potential security threat for the whole company, you know. Yeah, uh, yeah. Or I mean some device unmanaged that come from foreign country that are doing stuff on your network. We're not gonna we're not doing politics here, but yeah, uh you need to be careful for that also. Yeah, um, but yeah, uh one of the issues also is not only sometimes the AV guys come late in the game and speak with the IT guys three days before the install, and that causes friction. And uh in in every company I've seen that, uh, even sometimes in in our company. Uh so you you need to be planning that ahead, and and the the the best AV integrator would have IT people on their staff working on their project, yeah uh and vice versa. The uh in the enterprise at the enterprise level or uh in in large campus schools, universities, the IT people most likely have a Navy guy on their staff. So that bridges or or how can I put it or reduce the frictions.

AV Over IP Reality Checks

SPEAKER_05 18:13

I think it's because also like just thinking about it, and I could be completely wrong, but you've got the IT people who you know the business relies on the network, let's be honest today, right? You can't receive a PO, you can't, you know, communicate to the warehouse, everything lives on that network. So there's this such a there's a high regard and a priority for the network, right? Like no one touched my network. Yeah, this is literally the beating heart of the business. And and they're they're right, okay. And then you have you know the AV guy that comes in and says, Well, I'm just transferring audio over the network, guys. I'm not doing anything crazy, you know, and it's not hard, positive and negative, you know. We'll just do it on the network now. It's the same thing, we're just changing the type of cable use. And they're like, uh, no, this is our holy grail, this is our beating heart. You can't just come in here and start doing open heart surgery, however you'd like to do it. So it's an interesting time for sure. But I do think, like, when I look back, even in the last two or three years, it's come a long way. Like, people are understanding the importance of it, and a lot more people have the proper uh uh staff and employees with the IT and technical knowledge that are able to combine both the AV world and the IT world together. So I think it's we're in a better place, but like if we would have had this conversation five years ago, it'd be like, oh man, AV guys don't talk to IT guys. Yeah, at least now we're there where they know the conversation needs to be had. Maybe they're having it three days before the installation, but at least they're having the conversation versus before it was really two separate worlds. So we're in an interesting time right now.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

I still think it gets a bad rap, especially the AV portion, because uh you're like uh I think the first thing that IT got to touch outside of their core stuff was security cameras, especially on the uh when IP cameras started coming, and then shortly after was access control over IP, and then that got on the network, and that's kind of important as well, right? For a business. Yes. Um, so I think that's when IT started understanding a little bit more of the AV.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah, the well, the AV, yeah, because now you're talking about bandwidth, right? Yeah, security cameras is an AV system. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

Yeah, yeah. But I still think they see A V as a maybe a secondary thing because it's it's cool toys.

SPEAKER_06 20:37

Yeah, it's cool toys.

SPEAKER_05 20:39

Let's be honest, A V people, you know, we're not the greatest at reading manuals. Like some technical guys, like I'm sure Hugo reads every single manual.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Uh, you'd be maybe surprised that I don't read manuals.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Okay, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

The thing is, uh I know a lot of people. Uh so if I see a new device in front of me, I'm gonna call someone who has used it before and he's gonna help me figure it out. Yes, sometimes I'm gonna read the manual, you're right, but I don't read the whole manual. I'm you extensively using search in PDFs. So give me a paper manual, it's completely useless to me. It needs to be at least as an index or uh a table of content that I can search into. But you learn something new every time. You know, you can do control F or Command F in the PDF. Yeah, I'm getting there slowly, slowly. I like to, you know, McDermott.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

Oh, learn a little bit. That's how you learn through mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Yeah, mine on someone else's network on your own network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Yeah, my philosophy, uh philosophy was if I can't l if okay, I'm a little bit more technical, but if I can't figure it out without reading the manual, there's a problem. But that's not always the case because then you're not you I I I'm the type now that when I buy a piece of gear, I want to maximize like Every little bit of it. I know you're into like you guys are into the the whole Apple ecosystem, so am I, but you guys are more into it. I think I'm just tired of getting into the whole tech thing. But yeah, I mean that's the only way to uh to really uh get into it.

SPEAKER_05 22:17

Um so if I'm having a problem, I shouldn't call you. Is that what you're saying? Because you can call me. I'm gonna have an answer quite quickly because you're gonna call from me.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

If my friends are answering if my friends are picking up the phone. Yeah, I'm gonna put you on a conference call. Hold on. With Claude. Claude. Claude code. Claude Code.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

Yeah, Claude AI. Um another another common uh uh infrastructure mistake I think that is very, very um not spoken about, very underrated, is uh power. And I we had a whole episode on power. Yes. Uh but power and grounding and uh I think is something that is such an afterthought. What do you guys think?

Power And Grounding: The Silent Culprits

SPEAKER_05 23:03

It is, and and you know what? It's um you know, we're talking about planning and speaking to the right people at the right time before you're doing your integration or your production or whatever. Um the amount of times where you know you show up to a venue and the circuits are being shared with uh using the toaster, yeah, with the the warmer plates, or the guy turns on his vacuum, or even like larger loads, like sharing with an elevator, for example, whatever it may be, but you'd be surprised at how dirty power could be in all these venues, especially when they've undergone lots of renovations, they tried to save a quick buck somewhere. Um, but it's the same type of thing, learning which circuits are where or whatever it is. Like, unfortunately, after too many mistakes uh or or issues, now I go with a circuit tester everywhere, you know, and I know yeah, which which uh circuits are where, even though some of them are labeled and they're labeled improperly, or you'd be surprised how many people switch a face plate because one got damaged. You know what I mean? So uh you you just gotta pre-plan and plan for the worst as well, right? So uh then you get to understand, okay, this venue's power is good, this venue's not. And you know, the days of pulling out the ground plug on your Edison plug, not a good idea anymore, right? Like the equipment's so sensitive nowadays. Uh uh, you know, but now we've got some pretty cool equipment where you could do like ground lifts and stuff like that to reduce the humming noise. Yeah, but people think, oh, you know, it's my speakers or it's this or it's that, and you know, back to that podcast. It's often not the gear, it's the power that's causing all these little issues, right? Will you be able to put the link for our firm instance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll put it up. So um, yeah, power planning is is very, very and sometimes, you know, because you're a temporary visitor to that venue or that location, you don't have as much control as you'd like. So you have to make the best of the situation, but there are ways to remedy it, you know, making sure you have the power conditioners or search protectors everywhere. Um, so it's uh yeah, it's it's definitely very, very important. And balanced audio, like it's all little things like that that are super important.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Uh I need to admit power is not my forte, so I'm I'm gonna rely on you for for those questions. But uh, how are you planning uh power-wise? Are you visiting the venue first with your tester just to yeah?

SPEAKER_05 25:26

So so it depends. I mean, uh working in the same city for so long, you you have an idea of you know what the reception halls look like or the venues look like. Uh before we used to use the venue's distros, you know, out of pure philosophy and you know, you don't have to carry a distro with the out of pure hope, yeah, pure hope. And you know, let's be honest, a lot of these venues, it's a 30-amp plug going into a uh a theatrical panel made by the mechanic's brother, you know, yeah, and you're hoping for the best, and it's the distro. No, you have to invest in your proper distro that'll go from you know a TL4 to your distro, you're using the right plug, the right power, and then from there, at least you can trust your distro. You know, it was well built, it was built to standards, and then from there, wherever you're going. So my audio has a power conditioner in my rack, you know, with my mixer and all that, all my speakers go through it. Same thing with the lighting. So, yeah, it's because I've been burnt in the past. And same thing with the installations. How many times, you know, do we forego the surge protector or the power bar because they don't want to invest in a$300 power bar? Well, guess what? It makes a big difference. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

And when you fail with power, basically, is is this like your your speakers are shutting down, your your whole system goes down? What's what's the yeah, the break. What are the few a few examples that you fail when planning with power?

SPEAKER_05 26:50

Well, number one is is the humming. Okay, yeah. Obviously, for example, I mean, I do a lot of weddings, so I'll use it as an example, but you're in a quiet room, it's a ceremony, it's the most important moment of the person's life, of the people's lives, and all you hear is and then someone's talking.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

But that could be like singing bulls, right?

Dirty Power, GFCIs, And Battery Saves

SPEAKER_05 27:10

Like you're doing meditation nowadays, yes. Surprised at what people do at their ceremonies. People sleep with white noise these days, yeah. But you know, that makes a big difference. You're trying to focus on the beautiful moment that's happening, and all you hear is like is a static humming noise coming from the back, and then you know, ground lift and you're good to go. Um, so making sure you're using the right cables, balanced wherever you can. So it's all these little things that add up. And again, sometimes, look, I'm no, I'm not an electrician, so I'm not a professional, but you're just trying to mitigate the situation as best as possible, right? Sometimes it works really well 98% of the time, and sometimes there's just you know, you you can't troubleshoot it on the spot, and it is what it is, and the power coming into the building is just not good, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

I guess this is where like battery-powered speakers can be useful because they're not even plugged to the to the electrical grid. 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Trying to push uh some electro voice products here.

SPEAKER_05 28:10

It's true, right? Like I mean, exterior plugs too. God knows what happens there and GFCIs. Like, I don't use GFCIs outside in the sense that if someone tells me, hey, there's a cocktail outside there, yeah, and you got to plug into this plug, it's the only one that we have, and it it works. Trust me, we know it works. We do it every single weekend. And I look at the plug and it's a GFCI circuit. Do we all want to guess how many times that GFCI trip or trips? Do we know what happens when a GFCI trips and pops after a hundred times? Yeah, it actually fails. Yeah, like a lot of people don't even know that, but there's often a green light, and if it turns red, the GFCI is smart enough to tell you, hey, you know, my breaker's done. You need to replace me. Yeah, people don't know that. Um, and people might think, oh, it's just momentarily like, oh, it's gonna trip and just reset it. Well, if you're on the last legs of that outlet, you're done. Now your whole cocktail setup's done. So actually, in those situations, I'll always look at the outlet, I'll see what it is, see what else it's connected to if I have that information. But oftentimes I will opt out for battery because you never know. The amount of times where it's a it's a beautiful sunny day and the breaker's tripped, yeah, you know, and or the GFCIs are in series. Like it's things that you would never think would happen to you happen, you know, and all of a sudden the irrigation system for the plants is going off, hits the outlets that's there because it's not planned properly, and now all the GFCIs around the building pop.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:38

I've seen it happen. You know, so it's just it's a matter of of planning properly, you know.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

So 20 years ago, or even more than that, uh, I DJ'd for like three years, and my first gig was at a uh I thought it was at somewhere special. He never told us he DJ.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

No, no, it wasn't because it was very it was a very it was a very small period. That's a pointing. We have all in common. I DJ'd for 18 years. Well, very, very little. Okay, very, very little.

Planning Loads And Modern Gear Efficiency

SPEAKER_04 30:05

But three years is a good good chunk, anyway. Very good. Very little. So anyway, so my first my first venue, my first venue. Um, I get there, and this is I guess a newbie mistake. I was just in charge of uh of the music, right? Uh so I had four towers, two subs, and then I get there, and I went, I got there early to set up, making sure everything worked, whatever. I sure enough, I meet there's a lighting guy. So now the lighting guy has an extensive set of lights. Like it's not just like you know, the washes, but like a lot of moving heads. Like it was uh it was a production, it was a nice production. I was really surprised. Next thing you know, we're doing running tests together. He was there early too. We start popping breakers one after the other. Next thing you know, he ended up making something on a plywood, a distro on a plywood, running it outside another, and again, like to your point, the hall, all the all the outlets were like 15 amps, or they were all in the same circuit. What a nightmare. And and if it wasn't because we got there slightly earlier, that would have been a complete nightmare, you know. And and again, that's uh sometimes it's tough to to know in advance because the guys didn't even know. Like we're talking with the the the booker or yeah, they they they don't know, you know what I mean? Yeah, so it's they don't know.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

But I will say today's technology's gone a lot better. Like the amps, for example, are so efficient, you know, on a powered speaker, like a a K12.2, I think takes less than two amps. Wow. You know, so technically you can put all your speakers on a single 15 amp circuit and you're laughing. Uh a lot of the lighting now is LED, right? Yeah, that's four. You have to really calculate moving heads. You have a you have a 5R moving head with a Phillips lamp in there, and it's taking, you know, eight to nine amps. I I could be wrong, but let's just say it's that that you better not put both moving heads on the same circuit. So you more cabling, more you know. Yeah, I think I've said that a hundred times. More cabling, more labor hours, more. But it's true, right? Like that's what we're trying to reduce. Is we're just trying to make it yeah simpler for everybody. But no, power has to be really looked at. There's better transformers nowadays, make sure your signal paths are isolated. Yeah, all these little things add up, like I said, help you mitigate the situation a little bit better.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

Yeah. And same goes for the integration side. I think um if you look even here at all the desks, yeah, there's like a UPS, there's like a small UPS. I think that's that should be standard in a lot of uh stuff, especially if you're whatever it is, especially projectors. Like a lot of people don't understand, like you can't just shut off a projector without you know uh making cool down because yeah, you you're gonna burn the lamp.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially those laser lamps, like yeah, yeah.

Serviceability: Slack, Labels, Color Codes

SPEAKER_04 33:00

Which there's no replacement for laser lamps. So yeah, power is um super, super important. And um, I think we we we spoke about this a little bit. Um, and this is you I think we're gonna see a recurring theme here, which is networking, but um, you know, bandwidth planning. And I think again, people that don't know or are not haven't really done the switch completely into A V over IP or into the digital side, you know, uh in audio we look at you know efficiency, we look at uh wattage, we look at sensitivity. When we're looking at A V stuff, especially on the IP side, it's bandwidth. You know, and it's um you know, we're not looking we're we're looking, you know, is is one gig enough? Do we need a 10 gig in some in some circumstances? Or you know, I think that's uh that's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

If you don't need to sit down and calculate how many signals again, we're audio is doesn't take too much bandwidth, uh we all know, yeah, unless you work in very, very high resolution like 192. Uh so you can get away with a one gig for most with a one gig backplane. Uh sorry, yeah, with a one gig network uh for most of the your audio needs. But when you get into video, depending on the codec you use, depending on the uh on the the raster size, uh the the the resolution, you really gotta sit down and make and make I mean make some uh calculations. Uh but you're right. Don't don't just hope that it's gonna work, just sit down and how many streams I have, uh what's my the back plane of my switch, what's my connectivity. So those need to be taken into consideration. But we already spoke about network a lot, like early in the podcast. But yes, this bandwidth is is important. Yeah, but you know that goes just like just like electricity, just like power. You need to have the proper uh uh pipe to to carry those signals, yes, yeah, and headroom.

SPEAKER_04 35:18

And you were meant you were mentioning uh I think one thing, uh that big misconception about bandwidth is people realize oh there's 24 ports and shh, I can have 24 ports, so it doesn't work that way. That's a big thing. Uh I I know that uh when I first started in the industry, I was doing a lot of 70 volt stuff, and they're always like, Yeah, you always calculate 20% headroom, and networking is the same thing. You always calculate at least the 20% headroom on the switch, and people are like, I got 24 ports, and you know, and then all daisy chain.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

I'll plug another unmanaged switch in the back, and yeah, I mean expand my switch with like more smaller switch.

SPEAKER_05 36:01

No, that doesn't work that way. The the pipe analogy is actually a really good one. Yeah, that's a very good analogy. But it's the same for the power, yeah. You like you have a 10 gig switch and all of a sudden you're putting one gig, you know, unmanaged switches at the end. Doesn't make any sense, right? So you have to make sure that the whole system is designed properly, and like I was saying, Poe, right? How many types of PoE do we have nowadays?

SPEAKER_06 36:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

Uh or yeah, PoE plus, yeah, plus plus plus, I think now. Um, so you have to also plan for that too. Yeah, and that's huge, and that's huge.

Manuals Matter More Than Spec Sheets

SPEAKER_02 36:33

And those are sensitive switches, and be careful because there are some devices who require PoE plus plus. I'm I'm thinking about a camera that just came out. If you plug a PoE plus in it, you might break it. Really? Yeah, it's for that specific camera, yeah, it's more of a firmware thing, but you need to be very careful when you plug like the wrong type of PoE uh in a device that should accept like plus plus and you plug Red Plus in it. Yeah, sometimes it can be sometimes. But that's so because we we just spoke about power and then we spoke about bandwidth, and PoE is like it's kind of combined together.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

That's true. That's true. I mean since we're talking about switch power and bandwidth, you also need to plan your uh PoE budget. If your switch has a certain budget of of of watts, yeah, you you can't go up, you can't go above that because it's gonna be problematic. I have a question.

SPEAKER_05 37:32

Do you need uh a buffer for PoE budget as well? Like you were saying about 20% for bandwidth, but for PoE, like if it's 100 watts PoE, can you max it out at 100 watts or is it a good idea to have a a little bit of a buffer?

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Sometimes in life you need to admit when you don't know. Yeah, this time I don't know, so I'm gonna defer to Vince if he knows.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

He's gonna call it Yeah, I I haven't I haven't heard anything in all my my professional career about uh having a a uh so I don't know 100%, but I'm almost certain that no, there there is no. And and and most of the time, um some of the products that we see that they require PoE or PoE plus, they're never hitting that. Like let's say it's a 60 watt, it's never 60 watts, it's like 50 watts, 45 watts, being automatically almost like a buffer from in the sense that you're not using max capacity. Well, it's just because there's no I haven't seen a specific electronic device that is rated exactly for the spec. So PoE isn't right 15 watts, it's in the range of up to 15 watts, which is seven and a half watts, 10 watts, you know, 12 watts.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

What I've seen also is typically when you see uh a rating on on a device that requires PoE, it's gonna basically put the max boot, it the max it could take. And I would believe that they put a little bit of headroom there. Yeah, but I don't have the yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:01

Yeah. I I feel like another thing that I like to bring up, another subject is uh planning for serviceability or future planning. You know, we kind of spoke about it in the network uh discussion, but uh a lot of installs, like how many times do you show up and there's no service loop? It's like something as simple as that, creating service loops for your network cables or any of the cables behind the rack. But it's important, right? Not having enough slack to pull out the rack and actually work on it comfortably. These are all little things that when you're in the moment and you're trying to get the problem solved, you're not necessarily thinking about it. But for future calls or future deployments, super important that these things are all thought of and implemented.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

There's nothing more frustrating than to get the service behind the rack. And it's extremely difficult to get it.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Yeah, no, it's it's everything's like I mean, it's good to tie wrap stuff, but don't over-tie wrap things, you know? Yeah, don't leave that amount of like loose to for me to unplug and plug something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bandwidth Planning And Switch Backplanes

SPEAKER_04 40:06

Yeah, got guys that I used to dealers that I used to speak to that are getting into, um, I always thought myself as an educator, and uh, you know, in pre-sales design, there was no sales uh attached to my job, but I always love educating dealers and just having that conversation with them. I love to kind of just promote best practices. And one thing that I love just putting on the code, and it wasn't even that much money, I was like uh uh a rhino label maker just to label. And the most frustrating thing is especially on the both on the resi and the commercial side, I always told customers, you know, they're like, Oh, what should I pre-wire for? Prewire for this and add an extra cable just in case you don't know what gets nicked, you don't know what happens, right? And what's the price of an extra cat six, cat whatever? You know, it's it's not that much money. Um, but then having pulled two or three cat fives and you only need one, which one is it? Well, label it, right? And that just saves a whole bunch of okay. Well, you got to get another guy to test or put a tester and then you know go back and forth to see which one it is. You have to terminate all three in order just to test. Forget it, just label takes.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Big fan of color coding, you know. I think yeah, you can label, that's good, but having different colors for different VLANs or different things is also very useful. Yeah, I'm not saying don't don't label, but if you know that red is for audio and yellows for video and blues for control, that also helps. Yeah, instead of having uh a snake of white cat 5 cable coming out of the wall unlabeled, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:54

Yeah, well, even in the life space, like even for my own productions, I'll have uh, you know, we're always using the same batch of XLRs, right? We're not replacing them every year, obviously. And we test them every single year before our our year starts and all that. But um, I'll make sure that if we have, let's say, even if it's just two speakers, I'm gonna make sure that the two XLRs I'm using will have some sort of uniqueness to it, meaning one of them has red tape on it, one of them has yellow tape on it. Because if something goes wrong and you've got a ton of XLRs for whatever reason, you're doing uh a small band and like your snake is just getting out of control. We've all been there, we have to set up really quickly, and it's not the most organized, but you need to know exactly where that cable starts and where that cable ends. Because if there's an issue, you need to know which one you can't just start unplugging things out of the mixer because you know it's a troubleshooter. So it's important that all these little things, you know, are taking you know, labeling. See, it's what's cool about this conversation is how you realize that all these themes are extremely relevant in all three of the categories. You know, yes, they're different in certain situations, but they're all similar. Challenges are the same, that all the challenges are the same. Yeah, so it's uh yeah, labeling, even labeling.

SPEAKER_04 43:11

Um, you know, we're talking about you mentioned IP fixed addresses and stuff. That was one thing, and I know you and I had a conversation and we were kind of debating on there's certain i uh certain times where you'd want to stay with dynamic and other times you'd want fixed, but when you're doing a fixed install, I always think it's ideal to hide somewhere the IP address. It doesn't have to be where the public sees it. Obviously, you don't want that information floating around, but for serviceability, it's always nice to like pull up whatever uh uh a speaker or whatever, and hey, uh the IP speaker, I got the IP address here. I don't have to look through the MAC address or whatever IP sniffers, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:53

Like, you know, just be organized. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

And and some of the device on the market right now, I'm thinking about the bird dog camera. They have uh an e-ink display on them and they they have their IP address written on it. Very cool. And even if you unpower it, even if it's not powered, you see the last used IP address. Really? Yeah. So if you if you lock it to an IP address, it's gonna remain there. Yeah, that's very cool. Uh every switches I'm using here at SFM Midwish for my demo purpose, I always write the VLAN IPI, VLAN 10 IP address on it. And I shouldn't do this, but because those are my switch, I put the password and the login. Yeah, yeah. So this way, if one of my colleagues has to deal with it, he knows what's the IP address of the VLAN, he knows the uh login and password to get in the switch. Thank you, Hugo.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Yeah. There's nothing more frustrating than to be like, hey, I need your switch. You take it, and you're like, what's the username? A password?

SPEAKER_02 44:49

No, I think to reset the switch takes another 20-something minutes just to get set up.

SPEAKER_04 44:54

Yeah. Yeah. He's a man of the people.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Because he reads the manual. Oh man. One manual I read though, I and it's it's in bookmarked in my notes is the Netgear AV manual. I have it. Yeah. That's the manual I read. This is yeah, maybe an exception.

PoE, Budgets, And Device Requirements

SPEAKER_05 45:19

But the amount of times the manuals has saved us. Oh, yeah. All of us. Yeah, yeah. And you know, the first question I'm sure when you guys troubleshoot are you out of all people is did you read the manual or did you check this? Did you check that? And we all have that friend that's like, hey, read page 18, bottom paragraph. Yeah, it's there.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, when I'm doing troubleshooting in our ticketing system, I'm gonna defer to the manual. If I answer a question, I pull out the manual, find the page, and the page to the customer or the end user.

SPEAKER_05 45:49

So yeah. A lot of guys will start DJing or whatever, and they'll they'll call me, they'll ask me questions, what should I do? How should I set up my uh my road cases or whatever it may be? The first thing I tell them is when you buy your moving head road case, for example, and you want to fit two road cases, uh two moving heads inside, they're like, What accessories should I put? Do I keep the power cons in the case? Do I put them with my power cables? What do I do? Um and I tell them, look, you're gonna find a workflow that works for you. But the first thing you put in that road case is the manual of whatever equipment's in there. And they're like, Really? What do you mean? They're like, just find that on my phone. Trust me, print it out and put it in there. Yeah. Because it's it's personally saved me where you're on a gig, your phone's at the DJ booth or FOH or wherever it is, and you're like, why is it turning off, or whatever it may be? You look at the manual, you're like, Oh, relax last DMX state, you gotta change the setting. And on these moving heads, for example, the menus are not always extremely clear and they're really deep. And they're on a small little yeah, they're on a small little you know, screen and you're on a chair in front of 200 people. Well, you're in the ladder. Yeah, so you want that manual really fast and really easy to access, and not on your phone and your brightness goes down or it locks because by the time you look at it, like these are all little things that are really important. So the first thing I tell them to do is take a Ziploc bag because it's gonna get that much. Yeah, take a Ziploc bag, put the manual in there, and just keep it at the bottom. I don't care if it's covered with all your cables and whatever, or you never look at it, at least you know it's in there if you need it.

SPEAKER_04 47:19

Franco, every time he goes on a road trip, even though he has the GPS, he prints map quests.

SPEAKER_05 47:26

I do map quest, yeah. It's true, and I carry a is it is it true? Absolutely, and I have a little pigeon that sits on my shoulder, and if I get lost and the map quest flies out the window, I send a little pigeon up in the air and it tells me exactly where I am in the scheme.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

So so going back about plan B, I think the next topic on the run sheet is redundancy, right? Well hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_04 47:51

I want to talk about one thing uh the the importance and uh the importance of reading the manual. Oh, we're pigeonic by redundance. No, no, one one more time, one more time. Uh no, but all seriousness, don't like manuals, guys. Come on. I I'm looking at it in the terms of pre pre-design, yeah, especially when we're we're uh thinking looking at specs. Specs isn't always, and we're always quick to look at the specs sheet and says, Yeah, it does that. But then you get to the install, and then you're like, it's not working quite as advertised. Yeah, as advertised, and then you look in the manual, and then there's like a little asterisk that says, Yeah, but this doesn't output to uh the HDMI doesn't output to two channel or whatever.

Redundancy And Tolerance To Risk

SPEAKER_02 48:35

If the SDI is activated, yeah, exactly. NDI cannot work with SDI or stuff like that. Yeah, like they made they made decisions based on the the the CPU power they had in the machine and they can't combine two things together. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. Uh and I'll give you another. But once you're in the field, it's probably too late. Yeah. Or you have to make a decision there.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

Yeah. And I don't want to put down a brand, but I had quoted and it said 70 volts. And I we we assume that both channels are 70 volt, but it's not true. If you want to use 70 volts, it's one channel. Right. So it's not on the cut sheet, right? And it's not on the cut sheet. Uh they just say, you know, 650 watts, 70 volts. But then when you look in the manual, it specifically says as soon as you flip the switch to 70, it's one channel.

SPEAKER_05 49:22

But I I will say that happens to almost every single product on the market. Like there's a very fine line between like the marketing of the product and then the actual usability of it. And that's where, you know, ethically, I do strongly believe the manufacturers need to be true to the more to the spectrum and the marketing of it, because that happens all the time. Yeah. You know, so it's important that yes, you're actually reading the manual to find these little nuggets of information where, yeah, technically the marketing is not wrong, right? It it could do that, but what's the the the not the consequence, but what's the um the opportunity cost of doing it, right? Yeah, something's gotta give, and that happens with every single product. Yeah, um, so that's why I think and I think that also impacts brand loyalty too, right? Like people, yeah, when people are able to trust a product and they trust a brand because what they're reading is is a hundred percent true. You know, we could talk about speaker measurements for days, right? Like there's a lot of marketing that goes into that. Uh who says that they measure at a certain distance, who says that they don't, you know, their speaker all of a sudden is at 139 dB at you know five inches away. Okay. But no, but you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of that stuff that goes on, and and users are not always aware. So I think that's a whole other subject. But the marketing of our of our equipment, yeah, there needs to be a really uh clear ethical way of advertising it because if not, it really impacts the design and everything that comes before and after that implementation of it.

SPEAKER_04 50:53

So it's uh it's a but I get but I get like uh you can't put an asterisk on everything and then have a whole other page on uh conditions that have to be met, you know what I mean? So I get it, but that's another reason why people should or at least use control find or command F to to look or specifically if they're getting that request for that specific feature, yeah, look at the spec sheet, but then take that extra five minutes because it can save you hours and so much money, right? Yeah, then redundancy, like you were saying.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Having a plan B, we mentioned that, or even a plan C. Uh, and when we talk about redundancy, sometimes if you want to go full redundant, you need a a separate network, yeah. Like a second, you know, the the primary and the secondary on a Dante equipment. Technically, if you want to be fully redundant, that secondary should be in a different network.

SPEAKER_04 51:49

And that's just your sorry, and that's just your base level. That's not even with the rest of the network how it should be. Yeah, everything should be redundant. But yeah, I think that's a very difficult conversation I find to have with an end user just because they don't always understand the the potential what we call it.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

I don't know if you've you've been using that term, but I in broadcast it's very important. It's called tolerance to risk.

SPEAKER_04 52:18

Yes.

Cooling, Racks, And Thermal Flow

SPEAKER_02 52:19

If you're on air, like on a national TV, yeah, broadcasting the Olympics, because that's the topic right now, we're in in the Olympics, everything is redundant. They have they have a second line coming uh from Italy, Italia right now, like from a different network path. So if the line number one goes down, they have a second line they can they can a backup line, they still can stream, they still can send the signal. And but it it it serves nothing to have like two ways of streaming to Canada. Everything be before that needs to be uh uh redundant, also. We're talking about redundant power supply, redundant switches, redundant network, everything's double. Uh so how it's tolerance to risk. I mean, if if you can't afford it's gonna cost twice. So you need to be yeah, really depends on your tolerance to risk. So that's right.

SPEAKER_05 53:12

I how I think people also don't know how to talk about redundancy, you know. Uh for example, when you're selling a service, redundancy, yes, it'll cost you more money, but like you said, in the long run, it might actually save you money. You know, so it's uh it's a sales uh how do you have that sales conversation? How do you prepare people to have that conversation? You know, when I was working heavily in the wedding industry, talking about redundancy was actually one of the key topics. Yeah, that's it. You know what I mean? So it's like I I identified it. You know, someone had told me, a mentor had told me, like, talk about your backup options. What happens if, you know, back in the day we were using CD players, but what happens if your CD player goes down? Oh yeah, you're right. Okay, well, I have a secondary source of music. So if you're doing your first dance, flip a switch, bang, the song's still playing somewhere else. Or something else will play, but at least there's no dead air. Oh, really? Okay, that's so smart. See, I never even thought of that.

SPEAKER_04 54:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:08

And then all of a sudden you've gained their trust. Right? So it's like you have to identify why is it important to them, how much money is it gonna cost them. And the best part is if you can offer redundancy at a fraction of what they're expecting, you've you've won the bid, right?

SPEAKER_04 54:22

Yeah, you've won, you know, but I would argue that the both examples you guys used are high tolerance to risk in the sense that we're talking about the low tolerance to risk. Yeah. High budget, low tolerance to risk.

SPEAKER_05 54:36

I see what you're saying. Like if it's a cafe and you're running audio, yeah, exactly. You know, or even an office. You can either spend money on a separate system or run extra cabling, it's gonna cost him X amount.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

And the guy's like, well, I don't care if I don't have music in my coffee, yeah, in my cafe for an hour, yeah, yeah. It's not gonna cost me anything. I mean, people are gonna drink their coffee in silence. Exactly. Uh so yeah, it's you're right. It depends on the situation.

SPEAKER_04 54:59

Yes. And I think that conversations should still be had. Yes, not to dissuade from not having that conversation. Yeah, but the right question is what is your tolerance to risk? I think tolerance to risk is is the good approach, I find.

SPEAKER_05 55:13

Um and redundancy doesn't have to always be expensive. That's what people don't realize. You know, you take the cafe example, you have two hanging pendants running off an app and a media player. You know what? Run some extra cabling and at least tell the guy, hey, look, if something happens or your electrician comes in or your plumber comes in and nicks my cable or whatever, don't worry, I have an extra one in the ceiling. We'll be fine. I'll be able to fix it within half an hour.

SPEAKER_02 55:36

Or having like some type of Bluetooth solution somewhere. It's my plan B. Yeah. At Lozer I'm gonna have to still redundancy.

SPEAKER_05 55:44

Yes, yeah. Yes, it's not a foolproof secondary amp with a a fourth speaker that's never being used in the back, you know, storage room. I agree, there's different levels of redundancy, yeah, but at least you're still offering some sort of redundancy, and that's what's yeah, it goes from let's say backup plan to full redundancy.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Yeah, yeah. And it's gonna depend on your on your tolerance to risk and your budget. Yeah, yeah.

Poll Results And Next Steps

SPEAKER_04 56:06

Yeah, and on that note, I had a dealer, uh, he asked me to come and do an install with him. Um, and uh it was at a high-end restaurant, and uh, we get there, and this goes into my next topic, which was he had no redundancy, but the amp, which was a mole, like I mean, this wasn't even well thought out, it was just put together beforehand, and we were kind of uh he he was mandated to kind of rip everything out and redesign it properly because using the same the same infrastructure or a new infrastructure that he was pulling same infrastructure, uh, but the environment was was redone. Okay, so so in this in this case was cooling in the environment that that was was the inf was the infrastructure mistake, right? He had the massive, massive multi-channel power amp with a mixer board, like a slider mixer board for like audio in the restaurant, but it was in a closed cabinet, and I think he went through like three multi-channel amplifiers just because the no ventilation or anything. So that was like the I think cooling, and I I sold racks, I sold racks at one point, and that was probably um the best training I've ever had on just um airflow thermal, yeah. Learning about thermal, so important, especially for electronics, and we're talking about in the rack, but even if it's a piece of gear in a cabinet, it should be cooled. So it's uh that's another thing that people don't always uh often um is like an afterthought, which is you know, the where are we putting the gear and is it getting proper ventilation? Because it will go, and you're and you're talking about saving money, or or people are like, I don't want to spend money on redundancy. Well, if you don't put it in the right place, that piece of gear that's gonna last last you 20 years is only gonna last you three years, you know, just because of the amount of heat, right? So it's and I'm sure it's like that with uh especially on the broadcast side, and I'm sure it's like the Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:17

I don't know how many people get a 10 U rack and fill it up to the max and they leave no space in between amps, microceivers, whatever. Even if you think it's not getting hot, it is getting hot. Yeah, the second you start putting two electronics together, you're gonna have heat, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Yeah, really having uh you know these small thermometers that you can stick on the on the on the side of or even magnetic, just put one there and and see how how how hot it gets. Yeah, you'll find out leave space between some of those critical components. Yes. Or even if you buy a 16U rack to put, or let's say a 12 U rack to put eight eight rack mount equipment. That alone will help.

SPEAKER_05 58:58

Yes, you fans are suggested and airflow, and you also ambient temperature in the room, right? How many mechanical rooms you walk in, you open the door, and it's like you're walking into a sauna, it's because all the equipment is is generating so much heat. Yes. So a lot of people actually will put a small wall unit to try to cool the ambient air so that the rack is able to perform. But again, like yeah, little things, all little things make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

And by the way, not all racks need a fan, so you have to be careful with that. So learning in thermal uh in a rack, depending on uh the the type of rack that you're putting and the gear and the placement, uh there's a natural flow that happens. Obviously, heat rises, cool enters. So sometimes a fan could also hinder in certain cases, but you have to be careful about that. And then depending on um you're supposed to be calculating at least which one is the hottest, and you don't want to put you don't want to put a uh a 20-inch deep uh piece of gear at the top, like a server, yeah. The top it should be at the bottom, and so on and so forth, right? So there's so many things to to look at. Rack planning is also an important planning too, or you know, rack thermals, and you know, sometimes you have rack mountable fans, you have fans that are at the top, some fans at the bottom, and now there's even like um uh pieces of fans that you put on top of the gear, and that helps uh evacuate the um the um the hot air from let's say the amplifier and it pushes it inwards or outwards, which is really cool. But I still think that cooling and even where the gear is going, especially like in an office. Yeah, people are like, I'll just put the the amp in the in the in the credenza in the boardroom, you know? Get ventilation because it's it ain't gonna last long, you know? And especially if you don't have redundancy.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:51

So it was a it was a dense episode, we but we covered all our topics, that's good.

Wrap Up And Subscribe

SPEAKER_04 1:00:56

I think so. I think so. So we we did um treating network as an afterthought, um power uh and grounding, which was huge, bandwidth planning, um, which uh again there's a whole theme here networking, no redundancy, uh having a no having a redundancy strategy if possible, um cooling, and obviously um serviceability, which is really really interesting. Um now this was our second time recording the podcast because we had some uh difficulty um the first time around. And we didn't have a plan B.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:36

And we didn't have a plan B. We need to admit for our for our operation here, having a full set of everything double would be would be quite expensive. So we can our tolerance to risk is pretty high, correct. If for us here at behind the rack. So we can afford like coming back on the next Tuesday and re-record the episode.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:57

We also had a complete like full-blown issues. I mean, you normally we have redundancies where the cameras are recording locally, yeah, and it's recording through the switcher. This is just nothing was working, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:10

No, nothing was working properly. Um, but I I I I did take the opportunity to take advantage of the little bit of the the delay uh and the time of shooting, and I kind of put up a poll online uh both on YouTube and LinkedIn, and uh want to share. So I said uh what are some of the users' common uh infrastructure mistakes that they they encounter on YouTube? It was uh 50% IT and AV teams not aligned early enough, which is funny. Which is like an IT AV group hug session.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

You know what? It's gonna be okay. We have we have a topic for one of our next podcasts. We're gonna sit uh an IT guy with us and we're gonna we're gonna have a yeah for an honest conversation. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:56

Yeah, let's get both sides of the story.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:00

A debate. Yeah, um 25%, which was tied, so there was two of them that were tied, was no proper network planning and poor cable management and labeling. And it was similar to LinkedIn. Uh LinkedIn came out at the highest IT and AV misaligned. So you can see that um um no net no proper network planning. So networking is a huge, huge thing, and it's uh definitely an episode we should have some networking guides and have it uh I I know a couple of guys that could be on that show, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Awesome. Hey, thank you. That was a great episode. Thanks, guys. Yeah, yeah, read those manuals, read those land the network properly.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:45

Yeah. Uh we got also a couple of good episodes coming up uh that are gonna be really cool outside of uh talking about immersive experiences as well, which is gonna be cool and how it can touch a little bit of all our whether it's events, broadcaster, post-production, and even uh an in-post, which I think is gonna be a really cool, a really cool conversation. So if you guys uh are interested, don't forget to subscribe, uh like and comment on the uh the video and let us know uh what you'd like to see next in uh future episodes. Thank you. Thanks everybody.

unknown 1:06:00

Mm-hmm.