A2 & Stage Audio Fundamentals

Introduction

There is a particular kind of quiet that happens on a stage about forty minutes before doors. The band has gone to eat, the console is lit, and one person is walking the deck with a torch checking that every cable goes where the paperwork says it goes. That person is the A2, and if they do their job properly nobody in the building will ever think about them again that night.

That is the strange thing about this role. It is the most visible job on the stage and the least noticed, because everything it produces is an absence: no hum, no dead channel, no wedge feeding back, no cable anybody trips on. Done well it is invisible. Done badly it is the only thing anyone talks about.

What this book actually does

It teaches the job rather than the equipment. What you are responsible for and where that responsibility ends. How to read a stage plot and an input list and turn them into a patched stage. How to choose a microphone or a DI by looking at the source rather than by habit. How to lay and label cable so that the person who follows you can work. How to run a line check that finds the fault before the band does, how to talk on comms without wasting anybody's time, and what the job turns into once the show starts.

Every chapter shows you the thing on a real job, walks you through the procedure, warns you about the failure you will actually meet, and gives you something you can take to work.

Who this is for

Somebody heading for their first audio work, or already doing it and wanting to be the one who gets asked for by name. You do not need to have mixed a show. You do need to be willing to be the person who checks the thing nobody asked you to check, which is most of what separates a good A2 from a warm body.

If you have read AV Fundamentals 101 you already have signal flow and the vocabulary. The Physics of Sound explains why the room behaves as it does. Neither is required here; this book is the shift itself, and the ideas are introduced as they arrive.

What this book will not do

It will not teach you to mix. Front of house is a different job with a different book, and trying to learn both at once is how people end up doing neither well. It will not teach you a particular console either, because the A2 works at the stage end and the desk in the room changes every week.

What it will do is make you useful on a stage from your first call, and useful is the whole currency of this industry. Nobody is booked twice for enthusiasm.

How to Use This Book

Each chapter follows the same shape, and the shape matters more than it might look. You read the ideas, then you see them play out in a real situation, then you get the procedure, then you find out what goes wrong, then you practice, then you get a checklist you can actually take to work.

1. Read the chapter body first. This is the understanding layer, and it is written to be read straight through.
2. Read On the job. The same material as a real situation on a real show, which is where it stops being abstract.
3. Work through How to do it. These are procedures you can follow on a job this week.
4. Study What goes wrong. Experienced technicians are not people who never make mistakes; they are people who recognise mistakes early.
5. Do the exercise before reading the answer key. Recognition feels like learning and is not.
6. Take the checklist with you. Photograph it on your phone. Use it until you no longer need it.

Keep a notebook

One habit is worth starting today, before the first chapter: keep a small notebook and write the details in it as you meet them. This job runs on specifics you will need exactly and will not remember — which input the kick drum was on last time, which venue's wedge sends are numbered backwards, the RF channels that are clean in that room, which band's guitarist always wants more of himself and less of everything else.

Write it by hand rather than photographing a page. Copying a number puts it on paper; rewriting it in your own words is what puts it in your head, and deciding how to phrase it is most of the learning.

Then use it twice. Read a few pages on the way to a call, which takes five minutes and turns things you half-know into things you know. And carry it on the job, because the moment you need to know which channel the talkback is on is never a moment when you can stop and look it up.

A note on the words

Stage vocabulary is inconsistent and regional, and you should expect that rather than be caught by it. A wedge is a floor monitor, and a monitor is also the person mixing them. A snake is a multicore is a loom. Stage left means the performer's left, which is the audience's right, and getting that backwards in front of a band is a rite of passage nobody enjoys.

None of that is worth arguing about. What matters is that you can say what you mean unambiguously and ask when you are not sure. On a loud stage, "the wedge downstage right, nearest the drum riser" beats "that one" every time.

A note on safety

A stage is the most hazardous place most AV people work. Mains power near liquid, heavy cases on ramps, cable across walkways, things flown above your head, and a floor that is dark by design. None of it is dangerous when everybody follows the rules and all of it is dangerous when one person does not.

This book gives you awareness, not authorisation. If you are ever unsure whether you are qualified to do something, you are not — ask. Nobody in this industry has ever been fired for asking whether a thing was safe.

Where this book sits

This book assumes you have read Audio Basics, or that you already know what is in it.

Experience counts instead. If you have time on a stage crew where you already know what mic level is, what a stage box does, and how a monitor send reaches a wedge, start here.

If none of that is true yet, read Audio Basics first.

What pairs with this

• Wireless & RF Systems — most of what you patch on a stage arrives by radio

Where it leads

These are not steps in an order. Take whichever one fits.

• Front-of-House Mixing — the desk end of the same show

The A2 Role and the Stage

The A2 builds and runs the stage so the A1 can mix the show. Learn what you own, the signal path you protect, and how to read the plan.

What an A2 actually does

The A2 is the stage-side audio technician — the person who builds and runs everything that makes sound on the stage itself, while the A1 sits at front of house (FOH) mixing what the audience hears. If the A1 is the pilot, the A2 is the crew chief on the ground: placing microphones, running cable, managing wireless and monitors, and fixing problems the moment they appear. The name simply means “second audio,” and on most shows it is the entry point into a professional audio career, because it is where you learn the signal, the gear, and the room with your own hands.

The job is equal parts preparation and reaction. Before doors, the A2 turns a paper plan into a working stage — every input patched, labeled, and verified. During the show, the A2 watches the stage like a hawk: a dead mic, a flat battery, a performer who can't hear themselves. A great A2 solves most problems before the audience or the A1 ever notices, and communicates the rest in a few calm words over comms.

Because the A2 stands where the sound is made, the role demands a particular temperament: organized, quiet, quick, and unflappable. You are often working in the dark, on a live stage, with seconds to act. The skills in this course — reading a plan, setting up cleanly, checking every line, and troubleshooting under pressure — are the same skills that later make a strong A1, monitor engineer, or systems tech.

The A1 mixes. The A2 makes the stage true. That division sounds obvious and it is worth being precise about, because most of the friction in this job comes from one person doing the other's work at the wrong moment.

The A1 owns the desk, the mix, and every decision the audience hears. They cannot see the stage properly, they cannot hear what is happening on it, and during a show they cannot leave. Every piece of information they have about the stage arrives through you.

So the A2 owns everything from the source to the stage box, and owns it completely: what microphone is on what, where it is placed, whether the cable is sound, whether the battery is fresh, whether the stand will hold. If the desk sees a good signal on the right channel, you have done the job.

What you decide alone: placement within what the plot asks for, cable routing, which spare to deploy, when to walk on and when to wait. Nobody should be asking permission to swap a dead cable.

What you never decide alone: anything that changes what the audience hears. Moving a microphone during a song, muting a channel, repatching. Those are the A1's, and the reason is not hierarchy — it is that they can hear the consequence and you cannot.

And the information that has to travel: anything the A1 cannot see. A performer who has moved. A microphone that got knocked. A battery indicator dropping. A guitarist who has just swapped instruments. Half a second of comms saves a minute of somebody at a desk wondering why a channel changed character.

The signal path you are responsible for

Every sound on stage travels the same road: a source (a microphone or a DI box) feeds a stage cable, which lands on a stage box or snake, which carries the signal to the console, which sends it back out to the PA for the audience and to the monitors for the performers. The A2 owns the first half of that road — from the source to the console input — and shares responsibility for the monitors that come back.

Understanding this path is what turns troubleshooting from guesswork into a method. When a channel is dead, the fault is somewhere on that line, and you check it in order: is the source live, is the cable good, is it on the right stage-box channel, is the console gain up? Knowing the path means you never randomly swap gear — you follow the signal until you find where it stops.

A DI box (direct box) deserves a special mention because the A2 uses it constantly. It takes a high-impedance instrument signal — a bass, an acoustic guitar pickup, a keyboard, a laptop — and converts it to a balanced, low-impedance signal the snake and console want. Without a DI, those sources are noisy and weak by the time they reach FOH.

Reading a stage plot and input list

Two documents tell the A2 how to build the stage. The stage plot is the map: a top-down drawing showing where each performer stands, what instruments and amps they use, and where their monitors go. The input list (or input sheet) is the turn-by-turn directions: a numbered list of every source that must reach the console, in channel order, with the mic or DI each one needs.

Read them together. The input list gives you the channel count and what gear to stage; the stage plot tells you where on the deck each of those inputs physically lives and which monitor mix the performer needs. A drummer at input 1–8 on the plot's upstage-left riser tells you to run an eight-channel sub-snake to that riser, not to carry eight loose cables across the stage.

When a plan is missing or wrong — which happens constantly with support acts and festivals — the A2 builds a sensible default and confirms it fast: vocals down the middle, drums upstage, DIs for anything with a pickup, a wedge in front of each performer. Reading these documents quickly, and improvising when they're absent, is a defining A2 skill.

A stage plot is a drawing of where everybody stands and what they need. An input list is a numbered table of every source going into the desk. They arrive together, they contradict each other more often than anybody admits, and reading them properly is the difference between a calm load-in and an hour of guessing.

Read the input list first, because it is the one the desk is built from. Every line is a channel number, a source, and the thing that captures it — "12, floor tom, e604" — and the numbers are the order the stage box gets patched in. If the list says thirty-two inputs, you need thirty-two lines to the desk, and that is a decision about the snake before anybody unpacks a microphone.

Then read the plot against it. The plot tells you WHERE each of those numbers lives, and that is what decides your cable runs. Two vocal microphones on the list is a fact; two vocal microphones fifteen metres apart on opposite sides of the stage is a plan. Look for the things that are on one document and not the other, because that gap is where the load-in stops: a keyboard drawn on the plot with no line on the list, a talkback microphone on the list that nobody has placed.

Look for what is missing from both. Every plot forgets something, and the usual suspects are the same every time — power for the backline, a DI for a laptop nobody mentioned, spare lines for the guest who is added on the day. Building in two or three spare channels is not padding; it is the difference between saying yes and saying no when somebody asks at four o'clock.

Mark the plot up as you go and keep it. The marked copy is the only accurate document by the end of the day, and on a repeat show it is worth more than the original.

The A2 kit and the prep mindset

A working A2 carries a personal kit so a problem never waits on a search: a roll of gaff tape, a Sharpie and labels, a flashlight or headlamp, a multi-tool, spare batteries, a few XLR cables, a DI, an adapter handful (XLR-TRS, TS-XLR), and earplugs. The kit is small, but it removes the most common reasons a show stops.

Prep mindset means doing the boring things early so the show is calm. Stage everything before you need it: batteries fresh and labeled, spares within reach of where they'll fail, cable runs taped and out of traffic. The A2's quiet superpower is that by the time the band walks on, every foreseeable problem has already been handled.

Finally, prep includes the people. Confirm the plan with the A1, learn the performers' names, and know the running order. When you can hand a performer their mic and say “you're in wedge two, I've got you,” you have done the most important part of the job before a single note is played.

An A2 arrives with a personal kit, and what is in it says more about experience than any qualification. The point is not that the company has no spares. The point is that the spares are in a case at the other end of a room full of people, and the show starts in four minutes.

A torch, and a small one that lives in a pocket rather than a big one in a bag. Most of what goes wrong on a stage goes wrong in the dark, under something.

Gaffer tape and a marker. Not for repairs — for labelling, for marking positions, for holding a cable out of a walkway until somebody can dress it properly.

A multi-tool or a small screwdriver set, because XLR connectors come apart, mic clips seize, and stands lose the bolt that holds the boom.

Barrels and turnarounds: XLR male-to-male, female-to-female, and a short jumper. The cable that is the wrong gender is the single commonest ten-second problem in this job.

Batteries for whatever the wireless takes, in your pocket, not in the rack.

A DI you trust, and a spare vocal microphone if you can carry one. Both get used more often than they should.

None of this is about being a hero with a kit. It is about the gap between noticing a problem and fixing it, and that gap is where an A2 is either useful or standing still.

Prep, and why the day is decided before it starts

Almost everything that goes wrong on a stage was preventable in the shop. Prep is not packing; it is the part of the job where the day is actually decided.

Test every microphone before it leaves. Not a visual check — a real one, through a desk, listening. A microphone that has been dropped sounds thin rather than dead, and thin is a fault you chase for twenty minutes on a stage and find in ten seconds on a bench.

Test cables with a tester and coil them properly. Intermittent cables are the single most expensive fault in this trade because they pass every check except the one that happens during the show. If a cable is suspect, it does not travel; it goes in the bin or it goes for repair, and it never goes back in the case to be found again by somebody in a hurry.

Count against the list twice. Once when packing, once when loading. The channel you do not have is only a problem at the moment it is needed, and there is no shop at eleven o'clock at night.

Charge and label the wireless. Fresh cells go in as a set, not as whatever was left; a pack that reads healthy for two hours and dies in ten minutes is chemistry rather than a fault.

And take spares in proportion to what a failure costs. One spare vocal microphone for a keynote is not caution, it is the difference between a moment and an incident, because the person speaking has no second way of being heard.

Batteries, and why the meter lies

Batteries are the most predictable failure in live audio, which means every one that happens is a planning failure rather than bad luck. Getting them right is mostly about knowing that the meter on the receiver does not mean what people think it means.

ALKALINE cells sag steadily as they discharge. The voltage falls in a slope, so a meter reading two thirds really is about two thirds, and a warning gives you genuine notice. They are the cheapest and the most honest, and they are why the meter got trusted in the first place.

LITHIUM cells hold their voltage almost flat for most of their life and then fall off a cliff. That is excellent for runtime and terrible for warning: a pack showing full can be twenty minutes from dead, and the drop when it comes is fast enough that nobody gets to react. If the rig runs on lithium, you change on the clock and you ignore the meter.

RECHARGEABLE cells sit at a lower nominal voltage than alkaline -- and a receiver's meter is usually calibrated for alkaline. So a freshly charged rechargeable can read two thirds full at the moment it comes off the charger. Technicians who do not know this either replace good cells all day or, worse, learn to ignore a low reading and then ignore a real one.

SO CHANGE ON A SCHEDULE, NOT ON A WARNING. Fresh cells at the top of each performance, as a set rather than as whatever was in the drawer, and a known changeover point at an interval. The warning light exists for the failure you did not plan; it is not a workflow.

And treat the spent ones as spent. A pile of half-used cells that somebody will "use for something" is how a dead pack ends up on a keynote speaker. Out of the pack, out of the pouch, gone.

The A2 is the stage-side audio tech: mics, DIs, cabling, wireless, and monitors, supporting the A1 at FOH. Every source follows one path — source to cable to stage box to console to FOH and monitors — and the A2 owns the first half of it. The stage plot shows where things are; the input list shows what plugs in where. Prep early, carry a kit, and turn the paper plan into a working, labeled stage.

What the paperwork tells you, and what it does not

Two documents run the day and they answer different questions. Reading them against each other is the whole skill, because the gaps between them are where the surprises live.

The A2's personal kit

Small enough to carry all day and it removes most of the reasons a show stops. Nothing here is exotic and every item earns its place by being the thing you cannot go and find at eight o'clock.

On the job

A corporate load-in at eight in the morning. You are handed an input list with sixteen channels and a stage plot that was drawn for a different room, and the production manager wants to know how long you need.

The instinct is to start unpacking. The right move is two minutes with the paperwork, because the plot is already wrong in three places and finding that now costs two minutes, while finding it at line check costs twenty.

Read the two documents against each other. The list has a keyboard on channel 11; the plot does not show a keyboard anywhere. The plot shows a lectern downstage left; the list has no lectern microphone at all. And the list has a talkback on 16 that nobody has mentioned.

None of those are your decisions, and all of them are your questions. One conversation now — "is there a keyboard, is the lectern live, and who is talkback for?" — turns a wrong plan into a right one before anybody has lifted a case.

Then you can answer the manager, and the answer is credible because it is based on the stage that actually exists rather than the one on the paper.

How to do it

Turning a paper plan into a working stage. Do it in this order every time; the order is what stops you carrying a case twice.

1. Read the input list and the stage plot against each other before touching anything. Every input on the list should exist on the plot, and everything on the plot should have a line.
2. Raise the mismatches as questions, not decisions. A missing channel is somebody's assumption, and it is cheaper to ask than to guess.
3. Walk the stage and find your power, your stage box, and where the snake comes from. Know where things live before you need them.
4. Place risers, stands and monitors first, while the deck is empty. Everything is easier before there is cable on the floor.
5. Run the heavy cable next — sub-snakes and multicores — along the back and sides, away from power.
6. Then microphones and DIs, in channel order, from the layout you set out in the shop.
7. Label both ends as you go, not afterwards. Afterwards never happens.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Five questions from a first week on a stage.

Setting Up the Stage

Mics, DIs, cabling, monitors, and wireless — chosen and placed correctly — are the foundation of a show that runs.

Choosing microphones and DIs by source

Most stage sources fall into predictable categories, and experienced A2s reach for the same tools without thinking. Loud, rugged sources — a snare, a guitar cabinet, a lead vocal — want a dynamic microphone, which handles high volume and rejects nearby sound. Quieter, more detailed sources — an acoustic instrument, overheads, a choir — often want a condenser, which is more sensitive and usually needs phantom power (+48V) from the console.

Anything with an instrument-level output — bass guitar, keyboard, acoustic with a pickup, a playback laptop — goes through a DI box rather than a mic. Active DIs (which need power) suit passive pickups like a passive bass; passive DIs are fine for line-level sources like keys. Getting this right the first time saves a frantic swap during line check.

You don't memorize a catalog; you learn the families and a few reliable defaults. The table below is the working A2's cheat sheet — enough to walk onto most stages and choose correctly, then refine to the A1's preference.

Microphone choice on a stage is less about which model is best and more about what will survive the position it is going in. Three questions decide almost every one of them.

How loud is the source, and how close will the microphone be? A kick drum and a guitar cabinet are extremely loud at very close range, which is why dynamic microphones live there — they tolerate levels that would distress a condenser and they need no power. A voice at a lectern is quiet at a distance, which is the opposite problem and the reason condensers exist.

What else is nearby that you do not want? This is where pattern matters more than model. On a loud stage everything is picking up everything, and the microphone's dead spot is the only tool that removes spill for free. Point it at the loudest thing you are not recording, which usually means the wedge or the nearest cabinet.

Will it survive? A microphone on a drum kit gets hit. One on a lectern gets grabbed. One on a guitar cabinet gets kicked. That is a real criterion, and it is why certain unglamorous microphones have been on stages for fifty years.

And for anything with a jack output — keyboards, laptops, acoustic guitars with pickups — the answer is a DI, which turns an unbalanced instrument-level signal into a balanced mic-level one that can travel the length of a snake without picking up the building. A long jack lead into a stage box is a fault waiting to happen and it is entirely avoidable.

Cabling, the snake, and labeling

Clean cabling is the visible signature of a good A2. Signals leave the stage on XLR cables that land on a stage box — the multi-channel input panel that feeds the snake (a single thick cable or digital line) back to the console. On larger stages, sub-snakes fan out to risers and zones so you run one tidy line instead of a dozen loose ones.

Run cable with intention: along the back and sides, away from foot traffic and lighting/power cables, with enough slack at the source for the performer to move. Cross power cables at right angles, never run alongside them, and tape down anything in a walkway. Sloppy cable is not just ugly — it is the cause of buzz, trips, and channels that die mid-show.

Label everything. A strip of tape with the channel number at the stage box and at the source means anyone can find any line in seconds, in the dark, under pressure. When line check finds a problem, labels turn a five-minute hunt into a five-second fix.

The stage is a floor people walk on in the dark while carrying things. Everything about how cable is run follows from that single fact, and none of it is about the stage looking neat.

Run cables along the edges and up the back, not across the middle. Where a cable must cross a walkway it gets taped down flat with a proper tape, or it goes under a mat, or it goes overhead. A cable taped in a hump is a trip hazard that somebody has taken the trouble to make more visible without making it safer.

Leave a service loop at both ends. A microphone stand gets nudged; a performer moves; a monitor is repositioned during soundcheck. A cable run tight is a cable that pulls a connector out at the worst moment, and the slack costs nothing at load-in.

Label both ends of everything. On the stage end, label what it IS — "SL vox" — because that is what somebody asks for. On the stage box end, label the CHANNEL, because that is what the desk asks for. Doing only one of those means somebody walks the length of the stage to find out.

Keep power and audio apart where you can, and cross them at right angles where you cannot. Mains cable running alongside a microphone line induces hum into it, and the fix at the desk is a filter that also removes some of the voice.

And coil properly on the way out. Over-under is not a preference: a cable coiled by wrapping round an elbow develops a twist that works its way into the conductor, and cables that are coiled badly for a season are cables that fail intermittently for the rest of their lives.

Monitors: wedges, in-ears, and sidefills

Performers can't perform if they can't hear themselves, and monitors are how they do. Floor wedges are angled speakers aimed at one performer's position, each fed by a monitor mix tailored to what that person needs to hear. In-ear monitors (IEMs) replace wedges with earpieces fed by a personal mix, which cleans up the stage volume dramatically and protects hearing — but they require wireless packs and careful fitting.

The A2 places wedges where the plot calls for them, confirms which mix number feeds each one, and keeps the stage volume manageable. With IEMs, the A2 manages the body packs, batteries, and ear fit, and is the performer's lifeline if a pack fails. Sidefills — larger speakers at the sides — give broad coverage for bigger stages.

Monitor world is where feedback lives, so the A2 stays alert: a wedge aimed into a vocal mic, or a mix pushed too hot, will ring. Knowing which wedge belongs to which mix lets you tell the A1 (or the monitor engineer) exactly where a problem is the instant it starts.

Front of house mixes for the audience. Monitors are mixed for the people on stage, and the A2 is the person standing next to them when it is wrong.

A wedge is a loudspeaker on the floor pointed at a performer. It is loud, it is shared with whoever is standing nearby, and because it is a loudspeaker in the room it is also an open path back into every microphone near it. Wedge level and feedback are the same conversation.

The placement rule that matters: a wedge goes where the microphone is deafest. A cardioid vocal microphone is dead directly behind it, so the wedge goes there. A supercardioid is NOT — its dead spots are to either side of the rear, and putting a wedge straight behind one is the commonest reason a stage rings on a rig that worked last week.

In-ears change the job completely. The performer hears a mix inside their head with nothing between it and them, so the level is a safety matter rather than a preference and the limiter is set before they go in. They also cannot hear the room, which some performers find unbearable — ambience microphones exist for exactly that, and a performer who pulls one ear out has told you the mix is not working.

Sidefills are wedges pointed across the stage rather than at one person, and they exist to give a general sense of the band rather than a specific mix. On a small stage they solve a problem; on a large one they mostly add spill.

Whatever the format, the A2's job during soundcheck is to be the translator. A singer who says "more me" is telling you something real and imprecise, and standing where they stand for ten seconds usually turns it into something the monitor engineer can act on.

Wireless and RF awareness

Wireless microphones and IEMs are radios, and radios need coordination. Each wireless device transmits on a frequency, and if two devices share — or land too close — you get dropouts, static, or dead audio. On a stage with a dozen wireless channels, the A2 helps make sure every device is on a clean, coordinated frequency before the show.

The practical routine is simple even if the theory is deep: scan the local spectrum to see what's already in use, coordinate the show's frequencies so they don't interfere with each other or with TV and other transmitters nearby, then label every transmitter pack and keep fresh batteries in them. During the show, watch the receivers' RF and audio meters so you see a problem building before it's heard.

RF is invisible, so discipline matters more than instinct: batteries are the number-one cause of wireless failure, antennas need line of sight to the stage, and frequencies set in the morning can be ruined by a news truck that parks outside at noon. The A2 who labels, monitors, and keeps spares ready makes wireless boringly reliable — which is exactly the goal.

The A2 is usually the person who hands somebody a radio microphone, which makes them the last line of defence on everything that is about to go wrong with it.

Batteries are the only failure with a clock on it, and therefore the only one you can plan away completely. Fresh cells at the start of every performance, logged, never yesterday's remainder. Change at a scheduled point rather than at a warning, because the warning arrives during the thing you cannot interrupt.

Mute switches are the second commonest problem and the most embarrassing. Know where the mute is on every pack in use, know whether it is a switch or a hold, and check it is where you think before handing it over. A presenter who cannot be heard because a switch moved in their pocket is a fault with your name on it.

Placement on a person matters as much as placement on a stand. A lavalier under a scarf sounds like it is under a scarf. A headset microphone that has slipped away from the corner of the mouth loses level and gains breath. And a pack in a back pocket with a body between it and the antennas is the commonest cause of dropouts that follow one performer around.

Watch the receiver, not the room. The rack tells you what is happening before anybody hears it: a level that dips whenever somebody walks to a particular spot is a coverage problem you can fix at the break, and a level that was fine yesterday and is marginal today is a coordination problem you should raise now.

Miking a band, source by source

Knowing that a kick drum wants a dynamic microphone is the easy half. Where you put it is the half that decides how the night sounds, and it is learned in inches.

THE KICK DRUM. Through the port in the front head, and how far in changes what you get. Close to the beater, a few inches off the batter head, gives you the click -- the attack that cuts through a loud stage. Further out, level with the port or just inside it, gives you the body and less of the click. Most engineers want some of both and place accordingly, roughly halfway, slightly off-centre from the beater spot. If the drum rings more than anybody wants, that is what the blanket or pillow resting against the head is for, and it is the drummer's call rather than yours.

THE SNARE. An inch or two above the rim, pointed down at the centre of the head, and angled AWAY from the hi-hat. The hi-hat is the enemy of every snare microphone ever placed: it is inches away, it is loud, and it is bright enough to dominate a channel meant for something else. You cannot remove it later, so you aim it out now -- point the microphone's dead side at the hats and most of the problem leaves. Watch the drummer play before you commit, because a stick travels further than people expect and a microphone in that arc will be hit.

THE TOMS. Same idea as the snare: over the rim, aimed at the centre of the head, out of the path of the stick. Clip mounts save stand space on a crowded riser, which is why most kits are miked that way now. And fewer is often better -- two microphones on a four-tom kit, well placed, beat four badly placed ones, because every open microphone is more cymbal arriving on more channels.

THE OVERHEADS. These are the kit microphones, not the cymbal microphones, and the difference decides how you place them. They pick up the whole drum kit as one instrument, which is why the snare needs to sit in the middle of them. Measure it -- run a cable from the centre of the snare to one overhead, hold that length, then check the other. Equal, or the snare pulls to one side and the kit sounds lopsided. That single habit separates people who have miked kits from people who have put microphones near a kit.

THE GUITAR CABINET. First find which speaker is actually working. A cabinet with four speakers may be running on one, and miking a dead one is twenty minutes spent on a fault that is not a fault. Then close to the grille, and where on the grille decides the tone: straight at the centre of the cone is brightest and most aggressive, moving out toward the edge gets progressively warmer and rounder. An inch of movement is an audible change, which makes it worth getting right and worth marking with tape once it is.

THE BASS. A DI is the reliable answer and usually the only one needed -- it takes the signal before the room gets to it, and it cannot feed back. If the player's amplifier is genuinely part of their sound, a microphone on the cabinet adds that character, but then you have two versions of one instrument arriving at slightly different times and the desk needs to know so polarity can be checked. Say so rather than leaving it to be discovered.

KEYS, PLAYBACK AND ANYTHING WITH A JACK. A DI, and a stereo pair if it is genuinely stereo. Check which output you are taking: plenty of instruments have a main output and a headphone output at very different levels, and a headphone socket into a DI set for an instrument is a distorted channel that looks exactly like a faulty DI.

HORNS. A dynamic near the bell, slightly off the centre of it rather than straight down the middle. Dead-on is harsh and extremely loud, and a saxophone player who moves -- they all move -- swings past a tightly aimed microphone and off it again.

AND ONE RULE THAT GOVERNS ALL OF IT. When two microphones can hear the same thing, keep them at least three times as far from each other as each is from its own source. Closer than that and the bleed arrives at two different times and starts cancelling, which sounds like a thin, hollow channel that no amount of equalisation repairs. It is why a tightly packed stage sounds worse than a spacious one before anybody has touched a fader.

Miking a person, which is a different craft

Instruments stay where you put them. People do not, and almost everything that makes micing a person hard follows from that.

A HANDHELD is the most reliable thing you can give anybody, because the distance is short and the person controls it. If somebody is willing to hold a microphone, that is usually the right answer, and a great deal of trouble is avoided by asking rather than assuming they want to be wired.

A LECTERN GOOSENECK is easy and has one failure: it is aimed at where somebody stands, and people back away from lecterns. Set it toward the mouth rather than the chest, and expect to adjust once you have seen the actual speaker at the actual lectern, because whoever set it was probably a different height.

A LAVALIER is the one that gets used when somebody needs their hands and the room needs to forget the microphone is there. It is also the one with the most ways to go wrong, and the next section is about nothing else.

A HEADSET is what you use when the person moves, or when the gain has to be high, or both. It sits at the corner of the mouth, roughly a finger's width out, and deliberately NOT in front of the mouth, because straight in the breath path gives you plosives and wind on every hard consonant. Its advantage is that the distance never changes whatever the head does, which is why it is standard for anybody presenting on a loud stage.

AND FOR ANYBODY WHO CANNOT FAIL: two microphones. A keynote speaker, a broadcast interview, an announcement that has to happen -- two transmitters on separate frequencies into separate channels, one open and one ready at the desk. That is not extravagance. It is the recognition that a radio microphone has several independent ways to fail and the person speaking has no second way to be heard. A handheld sitting on the lectern as a fallback does much of the same job for no money at all, and is far better than nothing.

Where a lapel mic goes, and why

A lapel microphone is fixed to somebody who moves, several inches from a mouth that turns away from it. Every rule about placing one comes from making the best of that.

HEIGHT IS LEVEL. The closer to the mouth, the more voice and the less room, so the higher you can place it the better it sounds -- up to a point. Six to eight inches below the chin is the working range. Higher and you start collecting breath, chin noise and every "p" in the language. Lower and you lose voice while gaining more of everything else in the room.

CENTRE IS CONSISTENCY. On the centre line of the chest, over the sternum. Off to one side and the level rises and falls every time they turn to address a different part of the room, which at the desk looks exactly like a microphone that is failing. The sternum is also a hard flat surface, and the reflection off it adds a little useful level for free.

AIM IT UP, at the mouth, not flat against the chest and not out at the room. It seems obvious and it is skipped constantly.

IF THERE ARE TWO LAPELS, use the one on the side they will turn TOWARD most -- toward the camera, toward the audience, toward the person they are interviewing. A presenter working to their right with the microphone on their left is quieter for most of the talk and nobody can work out why.

AVOID EVERYTHING THAT MOVES OR RATTLES. A necklace resting on a lapel is a percussion instrument. A tie that swings, a lanyard, a badge, an open jacket that flaps, a scarf -- all of them are faults waiting for a gesture. And keep it away from a pocket holding a phone, because a phone reaching for a signal puts a buzz on the channel that arrives from nowhere and leaves again.

DRESS THE CABLE AND LEAVE A LOOP. Run it down inside the clothing, and put a small loop of slack immediately behind the capsule taped down. That loop is strain relief: when somebody stands up and the cable pulls, the loop takes it instead of the microphone moving. Without it, a placement you spent two minutes on lasts until they sit down.

AND IF IT MUST BE HIDDEN under fabric, accept that you are trading sound for looks, use a proper mount rather than tape alone, and test it with the person moving. Hidden and rustling is worse than visible and clean, every time.

Organizing the microphones on a show

A show rarely fails because somebody chose the wrong microphone. It fails because the right one could not be found in the dark, with ninety seconds left, by somebody who did not set it out.

THE GRID IS THE ANSWER, and it is what you will see on any well-run conference or awards show. A table, taped into squares, one square per microphone set, each one numbered.

AND A SET IS THE THING THAT DOES NOT CHANGE. One receiver, one frequency, one channel at the desk, one gain setting -- and both transmitter types tuned to it: a handheld and a bodypack with a lavalier, living together in the square. Speakers come and go against that set all day. The set stays exactly as it was coordinated at nine in the morning.

That is the whole reason the two microphones share a square. Because both transmitters are tuned to the same frequency, they arrive at the same receiver on the same channel, so swapping one for the other changes nothing downstream: no repatch, no re-gain, nothing for the A1 to do, nothing to re-coordinate. You simply never have both switched on at once. A speaker who agreed to a lavalier and arrives wanting to hold something is a ten-second handover rather than an incident.

WRITE THE CURRENT NAME ON THE SQUARE and change it as the day goes. "SET 4" is painted on with tape and stays; "Maria Santos, 10:40 panel" is written beside it and gets wiped for the next person. That is the right way round, because the agenda will change and the coordination will not. When the eleven o'clock session gains a speaker, you assign them to a set rather than building anything.

WHAT THE GRID GIVES YOU is a show you can read at a glance. An empty square is a set that is out with somebody. A full square is a set that is free. You can stand at the table and know the state of the whole room without asking a question, which is exactly what you need when the lights are down and the comms are busy.

IT ALSO SURVIVES OTHER PEOPLE. A stage manager, a runner or a second tech can return a microphone to the right square without understanding the patch, and can be sent to fetch a numbered set rather than a description. Anything that lets somebody else help you correctly is worth the tape it takes.

RUN IT ALL DAY. Microphones go back to their square when they come off, batteries get changed by set, and the square is where you check before you go looking. A microphone left on a chair is a microphone that is missing, whatever anybody remembers about where they put it.

Stands, clips and the things that actually go missing

Phantom power is forty-eight volts sent up the same cable the audio comes down, to run condenser microphones and active DIs. It is switched per channel at the desk, and the reason it gets its own section is that it is the one thing on a stage a stagehand can damage by being helpful.

NEVER PLUG OR UNPLUG A LINE WITH PHANTOM LIVE. As the connector makes and breaks, the pins touch in an unpredictable order and forty-eight volts arrives somewhere it was not meant to go. At best you get a loud thump through the PA, which in front of an audience is bad enough and through somebody's in-ears is worse. At worst you damage the microphone.

So the order is always the same: phantom off, patch, phantom on. And on the way out, phantom off before anything is unplugged. This is why an A1 will ask you to wait before you swap a condenser, and why an A2 who says "killing forty-eight on twelve" on comms is telling the room something useful.

RIBBON MICROPHONES ARE THE SPECIAL CASE, and it is worth knowing even though you will not meet one often on a rock stage. A vintage ribbon can be damaged by phantom power, and always by phantom arriving through a faulty or miswired cable. If a ribbon is in the rig, phantom on that channel stays off and gets labelled off.

DYNAMIC MICROPHONES DO NOT CARE, on a correctly wired balanced line -- phantom sits equally on both signal legs and a dynamic ignores it. That is why leaving it globally on usually appears harmless. It appears harmless right up until a cable with a broken screen turns the same voltage into a bang, so the habit of switching it only where it is needed is still the right one.

AND IT IS A FAULT WORTH SUSPECTING. A condenser or an active DI that is dead, or thin and quiet, is very often a channel whose phantom is simply off. Check it before you go looking for a cable, because it is one switch and no walking.

Polarity, and the two-microphone trap

Polarity is which way round a signal pushes. Flip it and a wave that was going up goes down. On its own that changes nothing you can hear -- but the moment two microphones cover one source, it decides whether they add up or cancel out.

THE SYMPTOM IS THIN, NOT SILENT, which is what makes it hard. Two microphones out of polarity on one source lose most of their low end and sound hollow and distant, and because there is still plenty of signal nobody suspects a fault. People reach for the equaliser and make it worse.

WHERE IT ACTUALLY BITES on a stage is a short list, and it is yours to flag every time:

A snare with a microphone above and below. The bottom one is hearing the head move away as the top one hears it move toward, so it arrives inverted by definition, and it needs the polarity switch on its channel. This one is not a maybe -- it is always.

A bass taken from a DI and from a microphone on the cabinet. The two versions are inches and milliseconds apart, and they may or may not agree. Someone has to check.

A guitar cabinet with two microphones on it, and any source somebody has decided to capture twice for tone.

THE CHECK IS SIMPLE AND IT IS A TWO-PERSON JOB. Play the source, listen to both channels together, and have the desk flip the polarity on one of them. One of the two positions has noticeably more low end. That one is right. It takes ten seconds and it is the entire skill.

YOUR PART IS TO SAY IT OUT LOUD. The A1 cannot see that you put a second microphone on the cabinet. "Bass is DI and mic, both on their way" is the whole contribution, and it is the difference between a checked pair and a thin channel nobody explains.

In-ears, and the responsibility that comes with them

A wedge that misbehaves is loud in a room. An in-ear monitor that misbehaves is loud inside somebody's head, sealed against their eardrum, with no distance and nothing to absorb it. That difference is why in-ears get handled differently and more carefully than any other monitor.

THE RISK IS THE TRANSIENT, not the level somebody is running. A patch pop, a phantom power thump, a dropped microphone, a feedback squeal, a cable pulled from a live connector -- any of them arrives at full level with no warning, and a sealed earpiece delivers all of it. This is a real hearing-damage risk, not a discomfort.

SO THE RULES FOLLOW. Nothing gets patched or unpatched while a performer is wearing them, and if it must happen the mix is muted first and they are told. Phantom is never switched with in-ears live. Packs come up with the level DOWN and get raised to taste, never handed over already loud.

FIT IS BOTH SOUND AND SAFETY. A properly sealed tip gives the performer their whole mix at a moderate level. A leaking tip loses all the low end, so the performer turns themselves up chasing it, and now they are running high with a seal that could close at any moment. A bad fit does not just sound thin, it causes the loud setting.

HYGIENE IS PART OF THE JOB. Tips are cleaned between users or replaced, and universal-fit tips are consumables rather than equipment. Anybody with custom moulds uses their own, always.

AND EXPECT ONE EAR OUT. Plenty of performers pull one side to hear the room and the audience. That is a choice, not a fault, and it means the mix they are hearing is now half a mix against a live room -- worth knowing before you relay a complaint about balance to the monitor engineer.

Power on a stage, and the shock nobody expects

This is the one section in this book about something that can injure somebody rather than spoil a show, and it exists because the hazard is created by exactly the equipment an A2 puts out.

THE CLASSIC IS THE MICROPHONE AND THE GUITAR. A vocal microphone is bonded to earth through the desk. A guitar is bonded to earth through its amplifier. If those two earths sit at different potentials -- because the amplifier has a fault, or somebody has lifted an earth pin to chase a hum, or the two are fed from supplies that are not properly bonded -- then the difference appears between the strings and the microphone grille. The singer completes the circuit with their lips and their hands. People have been badly hurt and killed this way, and it is not historical.

SO THE RULE IS ABSOLUTE: NEVER DEFEAT AN EARTH PIN. Not on an amplifier, not on a power strip, not to fix a hum, not because somebody hands you an adapter that does it. A ground lift on a DI's AUDIO side is a different thing and it is fine -- that lifts a signal screen, not a mains earth. Lifting mains earth removes the protection that stops a fault from reaching a person.

FEED THE BACKLINE AND THE AUDIO FROM THE SAME SUPPLY where the venue allows it. Shared bonding is what keeps everything at the same potential, and it also happens to be the answer to most of the hum that tempts people toward the adapter in the first place.

IF SOMEBODY REPORTS A TINGLE, that is an incident and not a grumble. Stop, get the source powered down, and get a qualified person to it. A performer who says they felt something off the microphone is describing a fault that is about to get worse.

AND KEEP AUDIO CLEAR OF POWER ANYWAY -- separated where you can, crossing at right angles where you cannot. It is the same discipline that keeps hum out, and it keeps you out of the habit of running signal along a mains feed and then hunting for a way to silence what that does.

Choose tools by source: dynamics for loud sources, condensers for detailed ones (with phantom power), DIs for instrument- and line-level sources. Run cable cleanly, separated from power, and label both ends. Monitors — wedges, IEMs, sidefills — let performers hear themselves; know which mix feeds each. Treat wireless as radio: scan, coordinate, label, and watch the batteries first.

Where the microphone goes, source by source

Choosing the microphone is the easy half; this is the other half. Distances are starting points, not rules — but they are the starting points experienced people actually use.

The numbers behind the placement

Six figures that decide most stage-end arguments. They are worth knowing well enough to use without stopping to work them out.

On the job

A five-piece band, forty-five minutes, and a stage that is smaller than the plot assumed. Drums, bass, guitar, keys, two vocals, and a drummer who wants their hi-hat where the snare microphone wants to be.

Start with the kit, because it is the most microphones in the smallest space and everything else is quick. Kick through the port, angled so it is not straight at the beater. Snare above the rim and aimed away from the hats — and here is where you watch him play for ten seconds first, because his stick is coming through exactly where you were about to put it.

Overheads next, and you measure with a cable: snare to one, snare to the other, equal. It takes twenty seconds and it is the difference between a kit and a pile of cymbals.

Guitar cabinet: find which speaker is live before you mic it — this one is a four-by-twelve running on one. Mark the position with tape once it sounds right, because somebody will move it.

Bass is a DI and that is all it needs. Keys are a stereo pair of DIs, and you check the output they have handed you is the main out and not the headphone socket.

Then the two vocals, and then you stop and count against the list before you call it done. Sixteen sources, sixteen lines, all labelled at both ends.

How to do it

Miking and cabling a stage. The order goes from the hardest position to the easiest, because the hard ones dictate where everything else can go.

1. Set out microphones in channel order before placing any of them, each with its clip. A gap in the row is a missing channel found now.
2. Do the drum kit first — it is the most microphones in the least space. Watch the drummer play before committing to a snare or tom position.
3. Measure the overheads to the snare with a cable so they are equidistant, or the kit sits off-centre.
4. Mic amplifiers next. Find the working speaker, choose your spot across the grille, and tape the position.
5. DI everything with a jack output, and check you are taking the main output rather than a headphone socket.
6. Vocals last — they are the quickest and the least constrained.
7. Run cable along the back and sides, away from power, crossing at right angles where you must, and label both ends as you go.
8. Phantom off before you patch anything, on afterwards, and only where it is needed.
9. Count the finished stage against the input list before you say you are done.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Six from a real stage.

Line Check, Soundcheck & Communication

Verify every input, support the A1's mix, and talk to the room in short, clear, calm calls.

Line check: verify every input

A line check is the A2's proof that the stage works: every input, one at a time, confirmed live at the console before the band ever plays. Working in channel order, you make each source produce sound — talk into a vocal mic, tap a drum, strum through a DI — while the A1 (or you, on comms) confirms it arrives on the right channel. It is methodical, not glamorous, and it is the single most valuable thing an A2 does.

Go in order and never skip. If channel 7 is dead, you stop, follow the signal path — source, cable, stage-box channel, console gain — fix it, and move on. Doing this calmly before doors is the difference between a confident show and a frantic one; a problem found at line check is a non-event, while the same problem found mid-song is a crisis.

Line check is also when labels and tidy cabling pay off. When every line is marked, a dead channel is found and fixed in seconds. When the stage is a tangle, the same fault eats the soundcheck and the band's patience.

A line check proves every input arrives at the desk, in the right channel, at a usable level, before anybody musical is in the room. Done properly it takes fifteen minutes and saves an hour. Done as a formality it proves nothing and you find out during the first song.

Work the list in order, one to the end. Not around the stage, not by instrument family — in channel order, because the order is what you are verifying. Skipping around is how channel 14 gets found on 15.

For each one, make the sound the source makes. Speak into a vocal microphone; hit the drum; play the DI. Scratching a microphone with a fingernail tells you the line is live and tells you nothing about whether it sounds right, and the two faults look identical from a distance.

Say the channel number and what it is, every time, out loud on comms: "fourteen, floor tom." The A1 confirms. That confirmation is the whole point — you are not checking that the microphone works, you are checking that YOUR fourteen and THEIR fourteen are the same fourteen.

When one is wrong, fix it before moving on. A list with two swapped channels found at the end takes longer to unpick than two found in sequence, and the temptation to carry on and sort it later is how a show starts with a patch nobody trusts.

Then check phantom power where it is needed, wireless where it is used, and every spare line you built in — an unused channel that turns out to be dead is only a problem at the moment you need it.

Supporting soundcheck

Soundcheck is the A1's time to build mixes, and the A2 is the A1's hands on stage. You move and re-aim mics on request, fix anything that turns up, swap a misbehaving DI, raise or lower a wedge, and keep the performers comfortable while the engineer works. The A2 anticipates: if the A1 asks for “a little more snare in the wedge,” you already know which wedge and which mix.

This is also when monitor needs get dialed in. Performers will ask for changes — “more of me, less guitar” — and the A2 relays or makes those adjustments and confirms the performer is happy. Keeping monitor world calm and clear during soundcheck prevents most on-stage problems during the show.

Throughout, the A2 stays quiet and economical. Soundcheck time is always short. The best A2 makes changes fast, confirms them, and gets out of the way so the engineer and the band can work.

A soundcheck looks like the band playing quietly while somebody turns knobs. What is actually happening is three separate jobs running at once, and knowing which one is in progress tells you whether to speak.

The first is verification, and it is mostly yours. Every input arrives, at the right level, on the right channel, sounding like the thing it is. That is the line check, and it should be finished before a musician touches an instrument. A soundcheck that begins with a dead channel has already lost twenty minutes of somebody else's time.

The second is the monitor mixes, and this is where the A2 earns the day. Each performer needs a different balance, they cannot describe it in the vocabulary an engineer uses, and they are standing in a room that sounds nothing like where the monitor engineer is. You are the translator: standing where they stand, hearing what they hear, and turning "more me" into something actionable. Do it early, because a performer who cannot hear themselves will not settle and nothing after that goes well.

The third is the front-of-house mix, and it is the A1's. Your part is to be findable and to change nothing without being asked. A microphone nudged two inches during this stage sends the A1 hunting for a change they did not make.

The order matters because each depends on the last. Verification before monitors, because a monitor mix built on a channel that is about to be repatched is wasted. Monitors before front of house, because a stage that is still fighting its own wedges is a stage whose spill keeps changing, and the A1 cannot mix a moving target.

Communication and comms protocol

The A2 lives on the comms system — the intercom headset that connects the stage to FOH, monitors, and the rest of the crew. Good comms discipline is a skill of its own: short, clear, specific calls. “A1, mic on channel 12 is dead, checking it now” tells the engineer everything; “uh, something's wrong over here” helps no one.

Different audiences need different tone. With the A1 you are technical and brief. With performers you are calm and reassuring, because they are nervous and you are the face of the audio team on stage — “you're in wedge two, I've got you” does more for a show than any piece of gear. With stage crew you coordinate moves so a changeover doesn't become chaos.

Above all, communicate problems early and honestly. A small issue announced calmly is handled; the same issue hidden until it's heard by the audience is a failure. The strongest A2s are trusted because the A1 always knows what's happening on stage.

Comms is a shared channel and everybody's attention is on it. How you use it is a professional skill, and it is learned fast by anybody who listens to how the people who are good at it speak.

Say who you are and who you want, first: "A2 to A1." The person on the other end may be in the middle of something, and the first two words let them decide whether to listen now.

Say the thing, then stop. Comms carries one conversation at a time and a running commentary blocks everybody else. If a problem needs discussion, get off the main channel or ask for a moment.

Use the numbers rather than the names. "Fourteen is dead" locates it instantly; "the floor tom isn't working" makes somebody look at a list. Numbers are shared vocabulary and names are not.

Confirm what you heard, especially in noise. Repeating the instruction back is not pedantry, it is the only way both people know it arrived: "copy, muting fourteen."

And know when to stay off it. During a show the channel belongs to whoever is calling cues. Unless something is on fire or the show is about to break, the thing you noticed can wait for a gap — and a good A2 is recognisable by what they DO NOT say during a song.

Why a stage rings, and what you can do about it

Feedback on a stage is the A2's problem before it is anybody else's, because almost every cause of it is a position rather than a setting.

The loop is simple. A microphone hears a wedge, the desk amplifies what it heard, the wedge plays it again, the microphone hears that too. If a trip round that loop returns more energy than it started with, the sound grows until something stops it. That is all feedback is, and everything you do about it is making the loop lose.

The largest lever is distance, and it is yours. Halving the distance from a performer's mouth to their microphone gains six decibels of them without gaining anything from the wedge, so every one of those six decibels is headroom the system did not have. A singer on the microphone is a stage that does not ring; a singer six inches off it is a stage running on borrowed time.

The second lever is pattern, and it is also yours. Point the microphone's dead spot at the loudest thing near it. On a cardioid that is directly behind. On a supercardioid it is NOT -- the dead spots are to either side of the rear, so a wedge placed straight behind one is sitting in a lobe rather than a null. This single mistake accounts for a large share of stages that ring on a rig that worked last week with different microphones.

The third is how many microphones are open. Every open microphone is another loop through the same loudspeakers, and doubling the number of open channels costs roughly three decibels of headroom. Muting what nobody is using is free gain, and it is why an A1 will ask you which of the four spare vocal microphones are actually in use.

Equalisation is the last resort rather than the first, because it removes some of the voice along with the ring. Anybody reaching for an equaliser before checking distance and pattern is treating a symptom.

A line check confirms every input in channel order before the band plays — the most valuable thing an A2 does. During soundcheck the A2 is the A1's hands on stage, making changes fast and keeping monitor world calm. Comms discipline — who you're calling, the problem, and what you're doing — in one breath, and a reassuring tone with performers, is what makes the A2 trusted.

What to say, and what it means

Comms is a shared channel and everybody's attention is on it. These are the forms that work, and the reason each one is shaped the way it is.

What is happening during a soundcheck

Three jobs run inside one soundcheck, in this order, because each depends on the one before it. All three are taught in the section above; this is the version to carry. Knowing which is in progress tells you whether to speak.

On the job

Line check, twenty minutes before the band walks on. You are working the list in order and calling each one: "one, kick." "Two, snare." "Three, hat."

At fourteen you say "fourteen, floor tom" and the A1 says "I have fifteen."

That is the entire reason the call exists. The microphone works, the cable works, the channel works — and it is on the wrong number. Everything downstream would have been built on it: a monitor send, a gain setting, a scene the A1 recalls in the dark.

The temptation is to carry on and sort it at the end. Do not. Two swapped channels found at the end take longer to unpick than one found in sequence, and a patch you do not trust is a patch you check twice all night.

So you stop, find the swap — fourteen and fifteen are crossed at the sub-snake, which is a thirty-second fix — and then re-check both before moving to sixteen.

Nobody noticed and nothing was lost. That is what a line check is for, and it only works because you said the number out loud and somebody confirmed it.

How to do it

A line check that proves something. Fifteen minutes done properly saves an hour.

1. Work the list in channel order, one to the end. Not around the stage and not by instrument family — the order is what you are verifying.
2. Make the sound the source actually makes. Speak into the vocal microphone, hit the drum, play the DI. Scratching a capsule proves the line is live and nothing about whether it sounds right.
3. Say the channel number and what it is, out loud, every time: 'fourteen, floor tom.'
4. Wait for the confirmation. You are not checking that the microphone works, you are checking that your fourteen and their fourteen are the same fourteen.
5. Fix anything wrong before moving on, and re-check both channels after a swap.
6. Check phantom where it is needed, wireless where it is used, and every spare line you built in.
7. Then hand over to soundcheck and change nothing without being asked.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Five from a line check and a soundcheck.

Running the Show & Troubleshooting

Watch the stage, catch problems before they're heard, and fix them with a calm, repeatable loop.

During the show: the A2's job

When the show starts, the A2's job shifts from building to watching. You position yourself where you can see the stage and reach the most likely trouble spots, and you scan constantly: battery meters on wireless, performers reaching for monitors, a cable being pulled tight, a mic drifting out of position. The goal is to catch the problem in the gap before it becomes audible.

You move quietly and deliberately. A dead vocal mic during a song means you are moving a spare into position before the next line, swapping it in a beat of silence, and confirming with FOH — all without becoming part of the show. The audience should never know the A2 exists; the A1 should always know the A2 is there.

Between songs and during set changes, the A2 resets: fresh batteries where needed, mics re-seated, cable tidied, the next song's needs anticipated. A show is a series of small saves, and the A2 makes them look like nothing happened.

Fast fault-finding

Troubleshooting under pressure is the A2's signature skill, and it is a loop, not a panic: notice the problem, isolate which channel, check the signal path in order, swap or fix, then verify with FOH. Because you know the path — source, cable, stage box, console — you never flail; you follow the signal until you find where it stops.

Most live problems are a short list with fast answers. No signal is usually a battery, a cable, or a mute. Hum or buzz is usually a ground or a cable run near power. RF dropouts are usually batteries or antenna position. Feedback is usually a monitor too hot or a mic in the wrong place. The table below is the A2's mental flowchart.

Speed comes from calm and from spares staged where failures happen. The A2 who has a spare vocal mic taped under the riser and fresh batteries in a pouch solves in ten seconds what an unprepared tech solves in two minutes — and on a live stage, that gap is the whole job.

Something stops during a show. You have perhaps thirty seconds before it matters and an audience watching, and the method matters more than the knowledge.

First: is it one thing or everything? One dead channel is a microphone, a cable, a battery or a mute. Everything gone at once is power, the stage box, or the desk. That single question cuts the search in half before you have moved.

Second: cover before you fix. If a vocal microphone dies, the spare goes up FIRST and the diagnosis happens afterwards. The audience does not care what was wrong; they care that somebody is inaudible. An A2 who arrives with a working microphone and explains later is doing the job; one who arrives with a diagnosis and no microphone is not.

Third: work the chain from the cheap end. Microphone, cable, stage box, and only then anything further. A cable is ten seconds to swap and the commonest single failure in this trade; starting at the stage box because it feels more technical is how two minutes become ten.

Fourth: change one thing at a time. Swapping the microphone AND the cable AND the channel tells you the fault is gone and never tells you what it was, and it will be back next week because nothing was actually removed from service.

And move like somebody who belongs there. Walking calmly onto a stage mid-song with a microphone in your hand reads as part of the show; running reads as a crisis and the audience turns to watch you instead of the performance.

Changeovers and festival patching

Festivals and multi-act shows live or die on the changeover — the few minutes between acts when one band's stage becomes the next band's stage. The A2 works to a plan: known inputs are pre-patched, line-checked sources are confirmed, and the new act's stage plot has been read in advance so nothing is a surprise.

The tools that make changeovers fast are preparation and standardization: sub-snakes labeled and ready, DIs and mics staged in their positions, and a default patch that covers the common inputs so only the differences need attention. A calm, rehearsed changeover is one of the clearest marks of a professional stage crew.

When time is gone and the plan is incomplete — which is normal — the A2 prioritizes: vocals and the rhythm section first, because those carry the show, then fill in the rest as the act begins. Knowing what to get right when you can't get everything is hard-won A2 judgment.

A festival changeover is a fixed number of minutes between one band leaving and the next starting, and it is the part of the job that separates crews. The time is not won during the changeover. It is won before it.

Prepare in parallel, not in sequence. The next band's stage plot is known; their microphones can be on stands and their DIs wired, staged at the side, while the current band is still playing. A changeover where the first act of the crew is to start unpacking has already lost.

Use rolling risers if you have them, and if you do not, group by position rather than by type — everything that lives in the drum area travels together, because the constraint is trips across a crowded stage rather than tidiness.

Patch to a shared list where you can. A festival input list that keeps common channels in fixed places — kick on one, snare on two, whatever the day's convention is — means the desk changes a scene rather than a patch, and that is minutes rather than seconds.

Line check what you changed and only what you changed. A full line check in a five-minute changeover is not possible; knowing exactly which lines are new is what makes the short version trustworthy.

And agree who does what before the day, out loud. Two people reaching for the same stand while a third input goes unchecked is what a changeover looks like when nobody said.

What a snake is, and why it matters where it goes

The snake is the multicore cable carrying every stage input back to the desk. On an analogue system it is a thick bundle of individual pairs, one per channel, ending in a stage box. On a digital system it is one or two network cables carrying all of them, ending in a stage rack.

The difference changes the job more than it looks. An analogue snake fails one channel at a time -- a bad pair is one dead microphone, and everything else carries on. A digital snake fails all of them at once, because they are all inside the same cable, which is why a redundant second run stops being a luxury on any show that matters.

Where it runs is a decision with consequences. It carries microphone-level signals, which are the smallest and most vulnerable in the building, and it usually runs the length of a venue past everything electrical in it. Alongside a mains feed it picks up hum; across a dimmer rack it picks up buzz that changes as the lighting changes, which is a fault that arrives only during the show and appears to have no cause.

Route it away from power, cross at right angles where you must, and keep it out of walkways for the same reason as everything else. Then leave slack at both ends: a snake pulled tight is a snake that unseats a connector when somebody moves the rack.

And know where the break points are before you need them. A stage box halfway up the deck, a sub-snake for the drum kit -- those are the places a fault gets isolated in ten seconds rather than traced across a venue.

The A2's version of gain structure

Gain structure is normally taught at the desk. The stage end has its own version, and getting it right is what lets the desk's version work at all.

What arrives at the stage box is the sum of decisions you made: which microphone, how far from the source, how much pad, whether a DI is set to instrument or line. Each of those moves the signal up or down before the preamp ever sees it, and a preamp cannot recover what never arrived.

Too little signal is the commoner fault and the more damaging. A quiet source into a preamp turned to its limit brings the preamp's own noise up with it, and everything after that is built on a hiss. Move the microphone closer, remove the pad, and the problem disappears without a single decibel of gain.

Too much signal distorts before the desk can help. A DI fed a line-level output on its instrument setting, or a microphone inside a kick drum with no pad, clips at the stage box, and no amount of pulling down at the desk repairs a signal that was already square when it arrived. That is what the pad switch on a microphone or a DI is for, and it is why it exists on exactly the sources that are loudest.

The test is simple and it is yours to run. Ask for the loudest thing the source will do during the show -- the hardest hit, the loudest note -- and check it there rather than at conversational level. A gain structure set on a soundcheck that was quieter than the show is a gain structure that fails in the first chorus.

Hum, buzz, and the ground

Hum is the fault an A2 meets most and the one most often fixed by superstition. It is worth understanding properly, because the real cause is nearly always one of three things and each has a different answer.

A GROUND LOOP is the commonest. Two pieces of equipment are both connected to earth, AND connected to each other by an audio cable whose screen is also earthed. Now there are two paths to earth, they form a loop, and any stray magnetic field in the building induces a small current around it. That current lands in the audio as a steady, musical hum at the mains frequency and its harmonics.

THE FIX IS THE GROUND LIFT, and this is the switch on almost every DI box that people flick at random. What it does is break the audio screen's connection at one end, so the loop is no longer a loop while the signal still gets through. Try it, and if the hum goes, that was it. Lift at ONE point only -- lifting at both ends of a chain leaves the screen connected nowhere and the cable stops shielding anything, which usually trades hum for buzz.

And to be completely clear, because people conflate the two: a DI's ground lift is an AUDIO screen. It is not the mains earth pin, it never touches safety, and lifting a mains earth to chase a hum is the dangerous thing described in the safety section.

INDUCED NOISE FROM POWER is the second. A microphone-level cable run alongside a mains feed, or across a dimmer rack, picks up the field around it. Hum from a mains feed is steady; buzz from a dimmer is harsher and CHANGES AS THE LIGHTING CHANGES, which is the giveaway and the reason a fault appears only during the show and seems to have no cause. The fix is geometry: move the cable, cross at right angles, get it off the dimmer.

A BROKEN SCREEN is the third and it is simply a faulty cable. The shield is open, so the conductors are unshielded and the cable becomes an aerial. It usually buzzes rather than hums, often changes when the cable is moved, and it is why swapping the cable is an early step rather than a last one.

THE METHOD, when it starts: is it one channel or everything? One channel is that cable, that DI or that source. Everything is a shared earth or a shared power problem, and that is where the loop lives. Then unplug things one at a time until it stops, because the thing that removes the hum is the thing in the loop -- and knowing which one it was is what stops it coming back next week.

During the show the A2 watches and saves — invisibly. Troubleshooting is a loop: notice, isolate the channel, check the path in order, swap/fix, verify with FOH. Most faults are a short list — batteries, cables, grounds, RF, monitor level — with fast answers. Changeovers are won with preparation, standard patches, and knowing what to protect when time runs out.

The fault table

Most live faults are a short list. This is the order to think in, and the first thing to reach for in each case.

What to protect when time runs out

A changeover is a fixed number of minutes and the plan is usually incomplete. This is the order to protect, and it is judgement rather than rule.

On the job

Second song. The lead vocal disappears mid-line, in front of nine hundred people.

What you do in the next ten seconds is decided entirely by what you do first, and the answer is not diagnosis. The audience does not care what is wrong; they care that the singer is inaudible. So the spare goes up first.

You are already moving, because the spare vocal microphone is taped under the riser where you put it during prep. You walk — you do not run, because running turns nine hundred people around to watch you instead of the band — hand the spare across at the end of the phrase, and take the dead one away.

"A2 to A1, vocal is on the spare, channel nine." Now the desk knows.

THEN you diagnose, off to the side, with nothing depending on it. It is the cable: a swap at the stage box brings the original channel back, so the microphone is fine and the cable is out of service with a piece of tape on it before it can find its way back into a case.

One thing changed at a time, so you know what it was. Had you swapped the microphone and the cable together, the fault would be gone and it would be back next week.

How to do it

Something has stopped during a show. You have perhaps thirty seconds and the method matters more than the knowledge.

1. Ask first: is it one thing or everything? One channel is a microphone, a cable, a battery or a mute. Everything at once is power, the stage box or the desk. That question halves the search before you have moved.
2. Cover before you fix. The spare goes up first and the diagnosis happens afterwards.
3. Move like you belong there. Walking on calmly reads as part of the show; running reads as a crisis.
4. Tell the desk what you did, in one line, with the channel number.
5. Then work the chain from the cheap end — microphone, cable, stage box, and only then further.
6. Change one thing at a time, or you will fix it without ever knowing what it was.
7. Take the faulty item out of service with a label on it, there and then.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Six under pressure.

Becoming a Strong A2

Professionalism, a clean strike, and a clear path turn the entry role into a career.

Professionalism, etiquette, and safety

The A2 works in other people's space — the performers' stage — and how you carry yourself matters as much as your technical skill. Be early, be quiet, handle instruments and mics with respect, and never make a performer feel like a problem. The audio team's reputation on stage is largely the A2's reputation.

Stage etiquette has real rules: don't move a performer's gear without asking, don't walk through a shot or a sightline, keep the deck clear, and stay out of the way during the show unless you're solving something. The A2 is present but invisible — always reachable, never in the picture.

Safety is non-negotiable. Tape down cable in walkways, keep clear of rigging and moving scenery, protect your hearing with earplugs, and know where power and emergency stops are. A show that finishes with no one hurt and nothing damaged is the baseline every professional is judged against.

The technical part of this role can be learned in a season. The part that decides whether you are asked back is how you behave two feet from somebody who is about to perform.

Ask before you touch. A performer's instrument, their pack, their in-ears and their space are theirs, and reaching for any of it without a word is the fastest way to become a problem. "Can I move this?" costs a second.

Be brief when they are focused. The twenty minutes before a show is not the time for a conversation about microphone technique. Say the thing that must be said, then leave.

Do not explain the system. When somebody says they cannot hear themselves, they are not asking how monitors work. Fix it, or relay it, and save the explanation for a moment when it is wanted.

Learn names and use them. On a stage full of crew in black, the person who knows the drummer is called Sam is the person the drummer talks to when something is wrong — and early warning is the whole job.

And be visibly calm, because calm is contagious and so is its opposite. A performer who sees the technician looking worried starts worrying about the technology instead of the performance, and that costs them more than whatever was actually wrong.

Strike and load-out

When the show ends, the A2's day isn't over — strike is part of the craft. Power down in order, then coil and label cables properly (over-under, not around the elbow), pack mics and DIs into their cases, account for every wireless pack and battery, and leave the stage and the gear better than you found them.

Strike is where careless crews lose and damage gear, and where good ones protect the inventory that pays them. A labeled, well-packed case at load-out is tomorrow's fast, calm setup. The A2 who strikes cleanly is the A2 who gets called back.

Do a final sweep: nothing left on the deck, nothing live, every road case closed and latched. The discipline of a clean strike is the same discipline that makes a clean setup — it's the whole job, run in reverse.

The end of the show is when tired people handle expensive things quickly, which is why more equipment is damaged during strike than during the entire rest of the day.

Power down before you unplug. Amplifiers and powered speakers off before anything is pulled, because a connector removed under load makes a bang through the system and shortens the life of whatever made it.

Coil as you go, properly, one cable at a time. Over-under. A season of cables coiled badly at midnight is a case of cables that fail intermittently for years, and intermittent is the worst kind of fault there is.

Return things in the state you would want to receive them. Batteries out of packs that are going into storage. Microphones in their cases rather than loose in a box. Anything faulty labelled AND separated, because a fault noted in your head is a fault the next person discovers on a show.

Count against the list. The item that goes missing is found by the person who needs it next, and it is found at the worst possible moment.

And walk the stage before you leave it. Gaffer tape lifted, nothing left under risers, no cable in a walkway. The venue judges the whole company on what the floor looks like at the end, and that judgement outlives whatever anybody thought of the mix.

Your path from here

A2 is a destination and a launchpad. Many techs build a long, well-paid career as a touring or house A2 because a great stage tech is rare and valued. Others use the role to learn the whole signal chain and move into mixing — as an A1 at FOH, or as a monitor engineer running the in-ears and wedges the A2 once managed.

The fastest growth comes from floor time plus deliberate study. Every show you work, watch what the A1 does and why; learn one new piece of gear; ask the monitor engineer how they build a mix. The hands-on instinct you're building now is exactly what the next roles are made of.

Reboot's audio track maps the road ahead: from A2 and stage audio into front-of-house mixing, monitor engineering, and systems work. Set up the stage well, run a clean line check, fix problems calmly, and the rest of the track opens up in front of you.

The A2 is present but invisible: early, quiet, respectful, and safe. Strike is part of the craft — coil and label cleanly, account for every pack and battery, leave it better than you found it. A2 launches into FOH mixing, monitor engineering, and systems work; floor time plus deliberate study is how you grow. Get a mentor sign-off when you can run a small show's stage on your own.

Glossary

Practical sign-off

A2 skill is built on real stages. The learner sets up stage audio, manages wireless and monitors, runs a line check, communicates with FOH and performers, and troubleshoots a live problem fast. A mentor signs off when the learner can run the stage as A2 on a small show.

• Set up stage audio (mics, DIs, cabling) cleanly and labeled
• Managed wireless and monitors reliably on stage
• Ran a line check and communicated clearly with FOH and performers
• Troubleshot a live stage-audio problem fast and calmly

Putting a microphone on a person

This is the part of the job that has nothing to do with audio and decides how the rest of it goes. You are about to walk up to a stranger, stand closer to them than anybody else will all day, and put your hands near their clothing, minutes before they have to speak in front of a room. Whether they feel comfortable in that moment is your responsibility, and it matters more than any placement decision you will make afterwards.

SAY WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO, before you are within reach. "Hello, I am the audio tech, I have your microphone here -- can I show you how it goes on?" A person who knows what is about to happen is comfortable. A person who feels a stranger reach toward them is not, and you will not get that back.

THEN OFFER IT TO THEM FIRST. Hand them the pack and the capsule and explain where each goes, and a great many people will happily do it themselves. It is faster, it removes the whole question, and it treats them as a person handling their own clothing rather than a stand you are dressing. Only when they say they would rather you did it do you do it.

WHEN YOU DO PLACE IT: ask specifically, keep your hands where they can see them, work quickly without rushing, say what you are doing as you do it, and get out of their space as soon as it is on. Warm your hands if they are cold. Do not carry on a conversation while your hands are near somebody -- get it done and step back.

AND GIVE THEM THE CHOICE OF WHO. If there is a colleague on the crew they would be more comfortable with, that is an easy offer to make and it costs nothing. Making the offer is the point, even when it is declined.

THEN TELL THEM WHAT IS LIVE. Where the mute is, whether it is on, and above all that it is a radio microphone and it is listening whenever it is switched on -- including in the corridor and including in the bathroom. People are grateful to be told this. It is also the single most useful sentence you will say all day.

And check they can still move. Ask them to turn their head, sit down, and stand up again. A microphone that works standing still and pulls when they sit is a fault that arrives on stage.

Micing somebody in a dress, and other clothing without a belt

A lavalier system assumes a belt for the pack and a lapel for the capsule. A dress usually offers neither, and it is one of the commonest situations in corporate and broadcast work, so it is worth knowing rather than improvising in front of somebody.

ASK FIRST, AND ASK WELL. "The pack needs to go somewhere out of sight -- would you like to place it, or shall I show you the options?" That question does the whole job: it gives them control, it signals that you have done this before, and it stops anybody guessing.

WHERE THE PACK GOES, in rough order of how often it is used: a thigh strap or garter worn under the dress, which is the standard solution and which many venues carry; clipped to the back of the waistband if there is any structure to clip to; taped flat to the small of the back; or in a small pouch. If the production has a dresser or wardrobe person, they place it, and that is by far the best answer when it is available.

WHERE THE CAPSULE GOES when there is no lapel: the centre of a neckline, clipped to the edge of the fabric; taped to the sternum under a thin fabric with a proper mount; or attached to a bra strap at the centre. Any of these is normal professional practice. What decides it is what the person is wearing and what they are comfortable with, which is why you ask instead of deciding.

GIVE THEM SOMEWHERE PRIVATE. A dressing room, a green room, a quiet corner with their back to the room. Fitting a pack under a dress in a busy hallway is not acceptable, and offering the space before they have to ask for it is the difference between a professional and somebody who has not thought about it.

AND HAND OVER RATHER THAN REACH. For anything that goes under clothing, the normal thing is to hand them the parts, explain exactly where each goes, step away, and come back to test it. It solves the audio problem and the dignity problem at the same time, and no reasonable person has ever objected to it.

THEN TEST IT PROPERLY, because a mic placed this way is more likely to be near moving fabric. Ask them to talk while they turn and walk, and listen for rustle before they go anywhere near a stage.

Micing a person, by situation

Which microphone, where it goes, and the thing that goes wrong with it. The last column is the one worth memorising.

The habits that get you booked again

None of these are audio skills, and they decide more of a career than the audio skills do.

On the job

A keynote. The speaker arrives eight minutes before she is due on, with a publicist beside her, wearing a dress with no belt and no lapel. There is no soundcheck and there was never going to be one.

Everything you can do in advance you did an hour ago: pack charged and on, cable dressed, the whole rig tested on a colleague and working, and a spare handheld already sitting on the lectern in case any of it fails.

You introduce yourself before you are within reach — "I am the audio tech, I have your microphone here, can I show you how it goes on?" — and you ask the publicist the two questions that matter: is there a wardrobe change, and how long have you got.

Then you offer it to her first. You explain that the pack goes on a thigh strap under the dress and the capsule clips at the centre of the neckline, you hand her both, and you show her the green room door. She would rather do it herself, which is the common answer and the easy one, and it is done in ninety seconds.

You come back, ask her to talk while she turns her head and sits down, and listen for rustle. Then you tell her the one thing she needs: it is live from the moment it is on, including in the corridor.

None of that was audio skill. All of it was the job.

How to do it

Putting a microphone on somebody, when it matters and there is no time. The audio decisions are the easy half.

1. Have everything ready before they arrive — pack on, battery fresh, cable dressed, rig tested on somebody else. The fitting itself should take seconds.
2. Say who you are and what you are going to do before you are within reach.
3. Offer it to them first. Hand over the parts, explain where each goes, and most people will happily do it themselves.
4. Ask the handler the practical questions: wardrobe changes, how long you have, anything they will not wear.
5. If there is no belt and no lapel, offer the options rather than deciding — thigh strap, waistband, taped at the small of the back, or wardrobe places it — and offer somewhere private before they have to ask.
6. Place the capsule for sound: centre of the chest, six to eight inches below the chin, aimed up, away from anything that moves.
7. Leave a loop of slack behind the capsule so a pull on the pack does not move the microphone.
8. Test with them moving. Ask them to turn their head, sit down and stand up, and listen for rustle.
9. Tell them it is live whenever it is on, and mute it the moment they leave the stage.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Six about the half of the job that is not audio.

Where to Go Next

The A2 chair is a door rather than a destination, and it opens onto more of the industry than almost any other entry job, because you work beside every department and every one of them sees you work.

• If the mixing interested you most, go to Front-of-House Mixing, and then to monitors, which is its own craft and always short of good people.
• If the wireless interested you, go to Wireless & RF Systems. RF coordination is a specialism that travels and pays.
• If the stage itself interested you, go towards stage management and production, where the A2's habits are exactly the right habits.
• If the systems interested you, go to system tech and audio engineering, where the question becomes why the room sounds like that.
• If the problem-solving interested you most, that instinct is worth more than any of the above. It is what makes a technician the person who gets called.

Choosing without guessing

Those are honest directions and they are not a decision. What decides whether a route suits you is more ordinary than the subject: how much of your week is travel, whether you would rather be judged on taste or on reliability, whether you like the show or the problem, and what you already have that you are discounting because it did not happen in AV.

Start with the Opportunity Map, at https://reboot-opportunity-map-v1.vercel.app, which draws the industry as a transit map and shows what is genuinely next to the station you are standing on. A competent A2 is closer to several well-paid seats than they usually believe. Looking around costs nothing and takes a few minutes, which is why it comes first: it is far easier to judge a route once you can see where it goes.

Then, if something on the map has your attention and you want to know whether it actually suits you, take the AV Pathfinder, at https://reboot-pathfinder.vercel.app. It is a short personal quiz, and what comes back is three AV paths that suit you with a Reboot course journey mapped to each — the specific courses, in order, between you and that path.

Both live inside the Reboot community, which is also where the rest of the course library sits, so you will be asked to sign in.

About Reboot AV

Reboot AV exists because the audiovisual industry has a map problem. The work is there, the pay is real, and the ceiling is high, but almost nobody entering it can see the route from where they are to where they want to be. People do not fail in this trade for lack of talent. They fail because nobody ever showed them what the path looked like.

So Reboot AV builds the thing that was missing: a course library covering the full breadth of live-event and installed audiovisual work, an interactive map of the roles in the industry and the routes between them, and an assessment that helps people work out where they actually fit rather than guessing.

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal