I am a keyboard/vocalist and have a small MIDI/computer band, Guitar, Bass and Keys with Computer as our drummer and background group. All of our equipment fits into a medium rack on wheels and I have several speakers on stands. This info is all to set up the disaster.
My significant other’s father was a Navy Seal in the 1960’s and even recovered an Apollo craft crew, taught the original Mercury and Apollo astronauts to swim at Kennedy Space Center, and he did three tours in Vietnam. All together, a hell of a man. Carla, his daughter and my signifigant other, we have been living together 23 years to see if we are compatible and are not quite sure yet, and his current wife asked me to DJ and MC his 75th surprise birthday party. I figured I could do this with my band equipment and use all of the MP3 files I had on the computer. BTW, I had never DJed any event ever, but figured how hard would it be with Windows Media Player and Set lists. I got everything ready, traveled from Jacksonville to the Villages, (outside Ocala Florida), and set up the equipment with about 10 minutes till the start of the event.
Then Disaster occurred. See, I turned on all the power, played an MP3 and NO SOUND. NOTHING. NADA. ZIP. Tried the mike, no joy. I started to freak. I checked the drivers for the USB Fast-track Pro, checked and changed the USB cable, changed the audio cables into the Mixer. Adjusted the amplifier power to the speackers and subwolfer amps. Adjusted the crossover, played knows and buttons on the mixer. All to no avail. Meanwhile, the event organizers are coming up to me with questions like, are you ready to start, he is almost here, we need the into music and your mike hot. Etc, etc, etc. I am freaking and getting really, really irritable.
Enter Significant Other. Carla calmly takes off the back of the rack and realizes that the power cable to the mixer has slightly pulled out of the power input slot, thereby denying power to the mixing board. Gee, I wondered why I wasn’t seeing LED lights on the input or output channels. See, takes a woman to fix a man induced problem. She pushes in the cable, power flows to the unit, sound magically appears, and we gave a 75 year old navy vet the party he deserved, with not a minute to spare.
Maybe we are compatible.
Howard.
once in a while i do video conferences in hospitals form the surgical room to a big audience for their workshops. live...
so we did set up everything day before, checked all, and went home. now we are all set up in our places, suddenly there is no sound form the surgical room, just humm in the cable, so i check all connections, inputs, outputs, D.I. ground lifts, etc. nothing. 10 min to go live, enough time to run a temporarily cable, which I did - the same problem. the solution was simple - as operating doctors have to use radio heads sets and the auditorium was one floor down, so I moved the receiver, with a hope that this would work. why? the operations that time were angiography (fancy real time X-ray using contrast liquids in blood vessels or other cavities) & endoscopy (tube with camera at the end you swallow) assisted, so that means the room is sealed with 5mm thick lead witch is grounded. the signal was marginal, but thank God, had no dropouts in the live session.
I tested all the cables and connectors after - did not find any problem with them, tough I, as preemptive measure, did cut of 10cm of the ends and re solder them.