Competition: fair/unfair

Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Per Søvik said:
The established soundpeople complain that gear has become available at such a low price that a lot more people get into the game of providing sound, eating into profits etc. etc. It sounds a bit like protectionism to me.
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Or are the value of the tools of the trade being a perceived perponderance of the value of a service... far exceeding the value of the craftsman? Likey true in a materialistic and largerly abroad disconnected craftsman based society.

But I suspect there's a glimmer of hope that craftsmanship has some re-emerging value (beyond the craftsman's displayed tools of his trade); otherwise, why the emergance of all the upscale resturants downtown? Or is most of what's driving that got little if anything to do with craftsmanship, but rather is atmosphere based on displayed & perceived to be hip material objects in a revitalized (high rent district) area... possibly largely fueled with grants... and basically has little or nothing to do with craftsmanship except as a "maybe inclusion" in the over-all picture? If so... I suspect it's a big mistake to downsize from analogue to digital mixing boards.
 
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Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Per Søvik said:
While the concensus seems to be that in a non-socialist economy, the government should stay out of everything,
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I don't know what the consensus is, but I'm of the opinion that the government should do that which the government is uniquely qualified to do, as in: Establish and uphold standards and laws, devise a currency scheme, construct & maintain public infrastructure, maintain an army & protect our boarders... that kind of stuff... whatever can't be effectively outsourced to the private sector. Managing our public airways should certainly come under the auspices of our govt. A university operating a sound company for hire in the public market for a fraction of the actual cost of doing that business while doing a wet tee-shirt contest at a biker rally in a completely different state than a university's campus and the lifer university employed operators are getting paid in cash under the table and selling "surplus equipment" for cash out the backdoor of the student union building isn't something I think publicly funded (or tax sheltered) higher education dollars should be spent on.
 
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Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Bennett Prescott said:
I moved this to the basement since it no longer has anything to do with professional audio.
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Except for the fact that I'm personally first hand aware that the activity does go on (although maybe not universally in all markets) and it had a hell of a lot to do with my professional audio endeavors.

Eh? My forced changes in dealing with the situation was likely for the better.
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Per Søvik said:
Which may or may not be any worse than limiting public performance to those who can afford to pay for a "real" sound company.
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Is that a realistic argument...? I am kind of relieved that they built a Dollar-General store on the large field in front of the old abandoned HS next to my property. Now I don't have to listen to truly bad country singing, over a certainly loud but not clear PA system, every Hickory day. Now they set up a 1/2 mile away and it isn't so hard to ignore. Watching geriatric line dancers is not even interesting to me at my advanced age. Its still an ewwwwww.:-(
The established soundpeople complain that gear has become available at such a low price that a lot more people get into the game of providing sound, eating into profits etc. etc. It sounds a bit like protectionism to me.
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Profits seem useful for a business that need to buy expensive gear to operate. That gear getting cheaper does lower the barrier for entry for competitors but this is not a bad thing and not new (think Peavey). There has been cheap gear around for a long time. Being able to afford the gear only qualifies you to rent it out, not operate it. You still need to be able to compete to effectively compete.

Protectionism would be more like the old guild system or board certification where the established sound companies would band together and require new comers to pass tests and get a license to operate sound systems. This is pervasive in some lower tech occupations like beauticians, barbers, or any occupation that has been around long enough to consolidate power and protect the privileged position by writing their own regulations. "You can't have unlicensed sound companies electrocuting innocent musicians and damaging children's ears with loud music."
Another issue that just sprang up again is government selling off another portion of the the wireless frequency band. While the concensus seems to be that in a non-socialist economy, the government should stay out of everything,
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Auctioning off and policing the frequency spectrum, a public asset, is some of the right kind of work for government.
I don't think the same sentiment will be held by the sound companies when the governments "stay out of it" and sell of the frequency bands to the highest bidders instead of holding on to the bands for public benefit.
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The highest bidder is kind of the public benefit. The government protects over air TV channels in an archaic (in light of the web) protection of the free press (so they can be critical of government. :-) ). Wireless mics for live sound or anything else is not remotely a public benefit.
(I know that the public probably benefits more from the band being used for mobile devices than wireless microphones, but that is another part of the discussion)
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Seems this is the discussion... We managed to capture sound from microphones and feed them into consoles with mundane copper wire for a long time. One might question why is this RF link such a necessity?

Now if there is nothing better to do with it, then it's all good.

JR
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

John Roberts said:
We managed to capture sound from microphones and feed them into consoles with mundane copper wire for a long time. One might question why is this RF link such a necessity?
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Don't know about the US, but what made legislaturers really wake up to the importance of RF mics/monitors and giving "us" a protected band was when Sennheiser, Shure, AKG and the rest of the manufacturers finally got the message accross that things like modern TV and sporting events would be literally impossible without RF mics.

The people living off of these things in some way entails something like 13% of working adults and a similar number in terms of the total BNP in the EU!
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

kristianjohnsen said:
Don't know about the US, but what made legislaturers really wake up to the importance of RF mics/monitors and giving "us" a protected band was when Sennheiser, Shure, AKG and the rest of the manufacturers finally got the message accross that things like modern TV and sporting events would be literally impossible without RF mics.
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Technology has had a beneficial influence on modern sport. The application of video replay to improve referee decision-making eliminates a lot of bad decisions that teams and player had to live with before. Now even these are still evolving as video reviews, inadvertently give coaches free time-outs, often at the end of close games where they may not have had an unused time-out saved up to use, but they will figure this out too.

Hearing the players, refs, or coaches grunt in real time is not really enhancing the sport. Referees mastered hand signals a long time ago. Giving coaches the ability to whisper into the athlete's ear in real time seems almost un-sportsmanlike... the players are supposed to do some decision making for themselves. While all sports engage in an information competition of sorts.
The people living off of these things in some way entails something like 13% of working adults and a similar number in terms of the total BNP in the EU!
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Well not sure whether that is good or bad, or just is...

JR
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Bennett Prescott said:
I moved this to the basement since it no longer has anything to do with professional audio. It may continue here.
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Well, I guess maybe that's the last time I bring up a question of ethics on the the Nintershnet..........

You can move it to the Attic now.

For anyone interested in the OP, I have turned down the work and am in direct negotiation with the folks who brought me to them to take care of their audio needs on top of the ISDN/Shoutcast service I provide. I may be working along side them on occasion, but only for clients who hire me directly.
 
Dick Rees said:
For anyone interested in the OP, I have turned down the work and am in direct negotiation with the folks who brought me to them to take care of their audio needs on top of the ISDN/Shoutcast service I provide. I may be working along side them on occasion, but only for clients who hire me directly.
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Good to know.
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Per Søvik said:
13% of working adults living off the entertainment and sports industry?
13% working in any industry that might use wireless for some part of the operation?
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or 13% of a population using that wireless technology because it's a path of least reistance for them... as in they can make a phone call or surf the internet while sitting in traffic, but they've never attempted to decipher a garbled compressed and dropping out voice mail message?
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

kristianjohnsen said:
The way I understood the lecturer from Sennheiser: 13% of people work in entertainment that would not happen without wireless mics or monitors.
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Noted, but I'll never believe a number from Sennheiser ever again. While this belong in another topic (I'll crosspost), about wireless microphones, I guess there must be some hesitation in governments selling off the radio frequencies if there are 70 million people in the oecd area whose jobs wouldn't happen if wireless microphones went away.
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

Per Søvik said:
Noted, but I'll never believe a number from Sennheiser ever again. While this belong in another topic (I'll crosspost), about wireless microphones, I guess there must be some hesitation in governments selling off the radio frequencies if there are 70 million people in the oecd area whose jobs wouldn't happen if wireless microphones went away.
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The way I see it, only when the "wireless mic industry lobby" finally got it through to the governments that these are the numbers, did they decide not to auction it all off.

On the way there, apparantly our industry were met with all kinds of "great" suggestions from these same governments ranging from "can't you just make new technology that doesn't use bandwith" to "can't you just rent wifi bandwith from the people we auction this off to"...
 
Re: Competition: fair/unfair

kristianjohnsen said:
The way I see it, only when the "wireless mic industry lobby" finally got it through to the governments that these are the numbers, did they decide not to auction it all off.

On the way there, apparantly our industry were met with all kinds of "great" suggestions from these same governments ranging from "can't you just make new technology that doesn't use bandwith" to "can't you just rent wifi bandwith from the people we auction this off to"...
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Good point allthough I dont believe the figure by a long stretch, it is obviously grossly exaggerated. But this really belongs in this topic
 
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