Why Reliable Communication Systems are Critical in Event Production

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Pro AV today. I am your host, Ben Thomas. Today's conversation is a continuing, continuation of our series focused on kind of the live event and venue production, side of the house in our industry. But today, I wanna focus on something maybe that that doesn't quite get the, the praise that it that it should deserve. And that's the intercom and communication systems. And if you're familiar with our industry at all, you're probably saying, well, why are we we having this conversation? I have a very good answer for you. And the answer is not everybody knows everything about intercom, right, especially when we start to to get into the facility side of the world and the security side of the world there's a lot of folks who might not know a lot of these basic technologies and know a lot of, you know, some of the gear and expectations that we have from a from a an intercom and connected communication standpoint. So I wanted to have that as our lens, for the conversation today. And as the guest today, I brought on somebody who knows that world really, really well, which is always great to guess. And that is Brian Grand from ClearCOM. Brian, thanks so much for coming on today. Yeah. Great to be here. Well, Brian, look, the origin of us meeting, actually, ironically enough, was you running, intercom at a stage at a trade show that we were both at. And it was it was cool to see, I think, the application may be off of the show floor and getting to see some of these technologies, as simple and basic as as intercom systems may sound out a little bit more in the wild side of things. You know, but before we kind of dig into maybe the the applications and what the facility side of the world needs to know. I gotta ask how refreshing was it to, to not have to be on a show floor and a suit and tie? It was great. I was a technician for many years, so, getting back under the stage and putting gloves on and running cable felt great. And it was great to get those real world user experiences back as well from, you know, getting hands on the gear and, getting staying connected in the field. Well, look, Brian, I, I gotta tell you it was fun to to get to see you in action because I know that a lot of folks in our community typically are shaking hands on the floor, and it's always fun to get to see folks, actually getting to operate the gear that they, they help sell and manufacture. So that was a lot of fun. But as far as our conversation today goes, I really wanna gear it like I mentioned a little bit more towards the venue side of the house. The facilities, management, even security side of the house. Wanted to ask. Right? We're we're very familiar as a community and even maybe like a touring community. We're very familiar with, hey, I need my intercom so my TD can talk to, you know, my LED, right, to make sure that we need a transition or pyro needs to know when the LED wall is gonna be flowing out I think we understand a lot of those basic concepts, but when we step out of the, what I'll call the production side of the world, a whole different conversation exists. You've got security, You've got hospitality management. You've got all sorts of different folks that interact with these communication systems. You know, on a high level, how are you seeing some of these technologies, specifically communications and intercom being leveraged outside of the the traditional production environment in these facilities. Sure. And I think for a long time intercom was a great source of production intercom, like Clearcom devices, was a great place for a core team of people to be able to communicate in real time on a limited number of channels. But then outside of that scope was users with two way radios or even cell phones trying to communicate with each other. And there was a gap in between those two systems. So what we're seeing these days is a lot more of a second tier of intercom communication. So that might be, virtual applications on someone's cell phone that's tied in directly to the intercom two way radio interfaces coming in and out for security or facilities to be able to communicate directly to the broadcast control room, things like that. Even, SIP lines or, or digital phone systems that can call in and ring on someone's key panel. And we understand that we're gonna be able to leverage existing infrastructure outside of the production intercom system to be able to connect more people and even a larger area together. When one of the the ways that I love to see a lot of these technologies interact is is it's you know, almost the epitome of how I would say the traditional Pro AV industry has found its way into different verticals. Right? I think I think when folks typically think intercom, it's it's kinda like I mentioned a second ago. It's very production heavy. It's very kind of two wire. We've got four or five folks, on a system. Maybe your camera ops and things like that. But we we found it challenging to expand maybe into different verticals and use cases because we haven't always, not necessarily asked the right questions, but not we haven't always known. Right? People have taken our technology and shoehorned it into applications that we don't know, so it's hard to support you know, one of those is security. Right? And and as we, you know, try and prevent some of these things happening, not even just you know, catastrophes, even weather related events, things like that. How do you see, a lot of the community communication technologies evolving to help support some of those folks on the peripherals that that aren't tied into the the two wire or even the phone systems. Sure. And in our world, you know, no matter any kind of response to an emergency action is going to be cross departmental. It's not just gonna live in one zone But I can give you an anecdote from when I used to be a technical director at a university commencement. We had what we referred to as the bat phone in the, in the truck, and that was a phone line tied in directly to the comm system that came from campus security, And so they could give us a ring whenever there was a weather event in the area. And then on the production side, there were already preplanned slides with audio playback of, you know, scenario four. There's a weather event in the area. Please seek shelter. And then the second that that call came into the TD, that could be disseminated over the intercom system to all the different departments video flips that slide up to all the LED walls. We can start lowering arrays that might be, you know, in, blowing around in the wind. We can make an audio announcement over the PA system that's gonna cut whatever else is happening in the house and kind of transition into a response mode And hopefully, all the security and everyone else is familiar with that scenario, and we can kind of quickly move from show mode into response mode. Well, it's such a such a fantastic way to be able to communicate across departments like you mentioned. Right? And especially, you know, it's hard to even say that that's fully just a security issue. Right? There's a lot of guest experience issues that have to happen there as well. And you've got, you know, hospitality advocates on-site. Everybody from your VIP host and hostesses all the way down to you know, maybe your food service managers and things like that that have to be aware to best communicate a lot of those situations and scenarios. But I I had a question kind of on the the the facility side of things. And I know that it probably varies a little bit depending on, you know, if a, if a show crew has brought in their own comm systems and things like that. But you know, think maybe maybe installed venues, like concert venues or, you know, theaters, things like that. Do you normally find that they will have an installed house kind of comms system or is that something typically that comes externally? Yeah. And, typically, you'll see some intercom in house And, you you know, we we made things for a long time very well. So there might be a very old intercom system in a lot of theaters. Running still on analog to wire and mic line throughout the facility. And that's been a big thing in Clearcom's world where we always are gonna have a two wire or four wire interface on all of our modern equipment because we understand, you know, it's just audio that we're interfacing back and forth, but whatever connections are available in house, you always would wanna be able to supplement it easily with a secondary system. And that's as simple as We wanna tie in existing two way radios or existing belt packs that are wired all the way for that one spot up that it doesn't make sense or run new infrastructure for. But also on the other side of things, we're seeing a whole lot more facilities that have a Dante networked infrastructure. And so being able to leverage that with our systems, again, it's just audio. And with Dante audio in some of our base stations now, we can bring intercom lines down the audio, down the Dante system and pop out for green room announce or for front of house, lobby announcements, things like that, to kind of, again, leverage existing infrastructure that's in the facility. I love that you kinda mentioned that that IT and IP side of things because I think it pinpoints one of the the I don't know if the challenges is the right word, but one of the opportunities that we've had is industry is as we've evolved into some of these different verticals and even within the same installations, right, the decision maker has changed a little bit. So it whereas you might have a tech manager or something like that who typically is responsible for, you know, your copper, your fiber, all that, just handling all all of the, you know, your your production side of things. When you start putting things on an IT network, that becomes an IT issue. And what naturally happens is that that decision maker pro changes a little bit, which is the reason we're having this conversation today. You know, what but but sticking on the IT side of things, you know, what are some of the challenges that you've seen where folks maybe have tried to come in and and either retrofit or kind of work within existing systems, I mean, it's a house system, whatever. Where they try and leverage a lot of that IT infrastructure, but also maybe some of that traditional two wire. What what are some best practices there for folks? Yeah. And that's a world where I think across the industry, all live event specialists are now IT professionals as well. And that's come across you know, lighting video, audio. And so a lot of us know enough to be dangerous, but when we start stepping into the system wide infrastructure in a building. There are again different people at the table that may not understand how we use our systems differently than maybe a traditional network system. So in our world, we, especially in our in our new base stations and and matrix frames. We understand that there's a lot of different network protocols, and you're not gonna wanna send audio or your type of systems down every single one of these. And so a lot of times we'll have our own internal network for our systems but then also jump on to existing infrastructure for certain kinds of sends, whether that's an over internet send for something like a mobile device, or, to be able to connect one facility to another. But a lot of times, it ends up being leveraging whatever cable infrastructure that might be there and then swapping over internally to our own internal protocols to make those connections a little easier in our own kinda standalone network systems. On the wireless side of things, it also is another person at the table in that a lot of our systems are operating wirelessly in Wi Fi bands. And again, what was normally a RF coordination that was typically just in the UHF band, and you kinda knew everyone that was at the table, now we have to bring on the IT specialist say, Hey, what five gigahertz band are you using with the WiFi? Can we create exclusion so that we can make some holes in the system for intercom or other video systems to also operate wirelessly in those bands. Well, in one of the conversations naturally that comes up when you start talking about wireless, obviously, you've got your your WiFi and things that, but you start asking questions about cell service and five g and, you know, RF frequencies and things like that because there's a lot of different technologies out there that exist from an intercom standpoint in Dallas specifically, which is where I am, we run into all sorts of different challenges with with RF and and Wi Fi bans and things like that because of proximities to airports and proximities to telecommute telecommunication providers, you know, concentration of population, things like that. Say I'm say I'm someone who who who for the first time maybe is a facilities manager. It doesn't even have to be an arena. Right? Maybe it's a a high school theater. Maybe it's you know, a football stadium, things like that. What are some of the concerns from a wireless standpoint that I need to be mindful of before we ever go to showtime? Yeah. And so I think globally, we are experiencing, less available spectrum now. As the FCC has sold off some of the UHF spectrum, and more devices vying for space in this in this wireless domain. So in our world, we have found the one point nine gigahertz deck band to be, a sanctuary for a lot of devices in that it spread spectrum. There's not a lot of, IT specific devices that are gonna be operating there. But inevitably, every one of these spaces has limitations of how many users can fit there. And so a lot of this comes down to site surveys, understanding the architecture of facilities and how different frequency bands might interact with, the actual architecture and materials within a space. And so there are a lot of great resources, especially from ClearCOM and other manufacturers. To be able to provide site survey and kind of resources of helping to design these kinds of systems in the wireless domain because especially in the spread spread spectrum with distributed transceiver systems, there's there's a lot that goes into designing system like that, not just the infrastructure, but also how many access points might be needed based on coverage and capacity, exactly, you know, where you might need to get coverage in a in a location. So, we're we're always happy to help in those conversations. Well, Brian, and to add to your point too, I was, wanna shout out the Texas Rangers. I was at their, their world series parade. Gosh, it had to have been don't know what six months ago. And what was funny is the TV crews who normally would use bonded cellular for video distribution, comms, they'd run everything kinda down the same pipe. Couldn't even use their cell phones. They couldn't use anything because of of the network saturation and the band saturation, Sure. And ironically enough, you know, you talk about that site survey, that would have saved them so much trouble in in commotion, right, because not only, right, it's very hard to anticipate what what three hundred thousand people is gonna do to available self-service and spectrum and things like that. I bet you they would have found out really quick that they probably needed to go hard lined or or satellite or something like that. You know, one kind of question and one and one wrinkle I wanna ask is this especially when you take things outdoors, right, or maybe, semi permanent setups, what sorts of challenges pop up maybe versus the installed technologies at more, standard venues. Sure. And especially with, something like a live event touring or or festival setup where there is no infrastructure that exists there. It becomes, a little bit more cumbersome. I would say, you know, the days of running hundreds of lines of copper from front of house and around an area are gone And now that we're in a networked world and generally IP based, it's a lot easier to create hops and fiber line fiber runs, but between switches and trunk things together. When we have seen, especially for large outdoor events, What we like to see is, diversification of the RF spectrum that's used. If you put all your eggs in the, five gigahertz basket inevitably, you'll find congestion there and wanna go somewhere else. And so, you know, it's always good to Again, site surveys are great, but also to have some diversification on what frequency bands you're using. And then in the end, especially in the intercom world, there is always the question of, you know, who actually needs to be wireless And how many channels do they need to talk to? Because hardwired lines are going to be much more reliable and especially in, again, a safety consideration having an extra hardwired line available is always great so that you have something to default back to. Well, even power. Right? I mean, that's that's your that's the number one red flag right there for me is, look, I don't I don't wanna have to have a belt pack on for twelve hours and hope that my battery look, I'm sure even though Clearcom's battery technology is fantastic, there's that peace of mind, right, especially when you're at a show, you know, and and you're sweating and it's a hundred and fifteen degrees outside in Texas down here in Austin at ACL, you know, having that resiliency, right? I think it's one of the especially when you talk about audio and even signal flow in general, I think that that folks, you know, we've almost I don't know I don't know that regressed is the right word, but we've almost fallen back to, hey, we should have some of this solid infrastructure. Right? We need wall plates. We need some of these tether points because the the alternative it can be potentially catastrophic, right? We may miss something. Something may happen where we don't alert that there's a fire or something happening backstage. And And and I wanna ask, is that something that you see as well, especially from a lot of people in the the pro side of things, kind of falling back to that, hey, we we really like that wired connection side of things. Yeah. And again, it goes back to that diversification. I think, we've complacency might be the word I'll use of, in the wireless domain things just work generally for us. And so you can think that's the easiest way to deploy a system. But there's always more redundancy that you can build in into hard line systems, whether it's a UPS on switches or additional redundancy of cable lines run between switches, that you're just not gonna get into wireless domain as well. But going back to your point, I think intercom has slowly moved away from a nice to have production addition of, you know, it'd be great if we had more channels so that we can have our side conversations and be able to troubleshoot something on the video screen that's not on the same production line as everyone else, really into a required utility and require kind of infrastructure in a lot of these facilities, that needs to go up even before things are gonna start rigging so that we have safety available for having that kind of real time two way communications. Well, Brian, let's say I I I'm running a facility. Maybe I'm an IT manager who's happen to have conversations, in a vacuum. What are some of the common things that you think folks, maybe not necessarily miss, but maybe come up a little late in the process? What are some of those things that folks can really head off, just from a a potential unknown standpoint? Sure. I think one of the big ones is All switches are not created equal. And especially in the AV world, we are seeing more switch manufacturers that are creating default settings for common protocols like Dante or AES sixty seven And that's been great so that we don't have to worry about digging in and in a managed switch and going, you know, setting by setting and trying to and create the right configuration. So that's really been beneficial for us. Otherwise, it's understanding that, the different protocols that are required in AV infrastructure are going to interact differently than just data that we're using. And the more that we're streaming video and taking up more bandwidth, and, you know, we need, PTP clock in order to sync our transceivers together, there are kind of other considerations outside of just how many ports might be available to someone. Brian, that's fantastic advice for not only people that are building their comm systems, but anybody who's trying to do any sort of, significant bandwidth requirements and signal flow any other installations. I think that that is that is such a massive fail point. And I appreciate you pointing that out. Look, I know we're we're really barely scratching the surface on this, and I I I wanna kinda to keep it a little bit more high level for folks, maybe who were were curious for the first time and were maybe looking to to to retrofit a a building or something like that. Obviously, a lot of technology coming up in the future will save that for another episode. There's all kinds of things that are happening right now in the world of of intercoms and connect communication. But, you know, I wanted to give you the floor, just for the for, you know, a second here before we wrap up. You know, what would you say to to folks really who maybe are typically outside of the AV world who are are having to make a lot of these decisions for the first time on connected communication systems, even video distribution systems, for the first time. Yeah. And I think coming from the Clearcom world, we have a good number of resources available on our website. We try to create case studies of, you know, common solutions that we've created, whether it's for a college campus that wants to interconnect different sports fields together to create a broadcast studio or a house of worship that might need to have, again, some kind of broadcast wing and talk to their camera operators, but also operating kind of a live event. So we have great case studies and training material available, but we also have all the Clearcom sales managers, contact information on the website, and we love to get involved in these projects early on so that we can kind of set the, the standard of what should be expected in a facility whether it's intercom or just the, again, network backbone that might be required to manage all of this. So we do have a lot of great resources available on the website you wanna check them out. Well, hey, that's a fantastic place to go. Clearcom company that I have used their headsets and ecom systems for a long time. This isn't a paid product placement, by the way. This is totally, editorial and and I I support the work that these folks are doing, especially as they crossover into so many different verticals that we have here in the community. Reach out to Brian. Brian, how can people reach out to you if they have any questions? Yeah. You can reach me at brian dot grand at clear comm dot com. And that's probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. Well, look at that. That's a great wrap for today, Brian. I'll tell you what, we we've gotta have a continued conversation. I know there's some stuff kind of in the works from a a technological advancement standpoint. I I won't tease too much on there. I don't know what I'm allowed to legally say and and not say quite yet. Yeah. But there's some good good stuff coming down the pipe, and I've gotta have you back on in the future to talk about that. Brian, grand, we appreciate you coming on the show today. Thanks for having me. Look forward to chatting with you again in the future. Well, thanks, Brian, and thank you all for tuning in today to ProAV today. Be sure to like and subscribe. Check us out next time.