My name is Joey Donovan. I am the proprietor
of Donovan Audio Designs (Sounds OK to Me, LLC), and this is my page tIs o vent about my frustrations and aggravations pent
up in over 20 years in this business. These are my views and mine alone. Do not hold
any of this against my friends, family or employees. If you think you are reading about yourself in any of these scenarios,
perhaps you are...
MY FAVORITE PET PUPS ARE MAYA AND CALEB (Maya's the brunette, Caleb is the redhead)
MY FAVORITE PET PEEVES ARE AS FOLLOWS:
IS ANYONE AS OFFENDED AS I AM WITH THE TERM "for well-qualified buyers"?!
This is a relatively
new "consumer identifier phrase" used by car dealers that I won't be buying my next automobile from. I'm
not sure that I'm qualified to give them my money.
DECEPTIVE INQUIRIES "Customers"
who invite us to "bid" on systems that haven't been designed, when they are actually looking for a free design
service. Once the system has been designed (a totally necessary step in order to provide a price quote), they put the "free"
design up to bid, or purchase all the components on eBay, using our proposal as a shopping list. This is a very common practice among schools, churches,
community cultural centers and other municipal facilities that have a hard time going through the red tape involved in getting
the budget approved for someone to design a proper system.
A close second place frustration is when requests go out for system designs and multiple
disparately different systems are submitted. Typically they are evaluated solely on price or preferred contractor with no
regard to the fact that the designs are "apples to oranges".
The Carrollwood Cultural Center comes to mind.
WANNABE LAWBREAKERS IN CHURCH
Church committees who think that their sanctuaries are immune or exempt to the laws of physics.
They don't want to see any speakers, microphones or acoustic treatments but expect perfectly intelligible sound in all seats.
In one sanctuary, the pipe organ committee knowingly and willingly prioitized the reverberant
sound of the pipe organ over the intelligibility of the pastor's voice by enlivening the room acoustics to such a degree as
to make the room virtually useless for anything but pipe organ.
I have a hard time understanding the priority system that values the intelligibility of the
spoken word less than an arbitrary aesthetic notion that speakers should be "heard and not seen".
Engaging committee members in discussions of "critical distance" and "inverse square law"
is futile, and frustrating at best.
RELATED TO "WANNABE LAWBREAKERS IN CHURCH" ISSUE (above) .....
CHURCH COMMITTEE WISELY
SPENDS THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS HIRING A CERTIFIED ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT TO ADVISE ON ACOUSTICS BEFORE CONSTRUCTION BEGINS. THEN
(not so wisely) DISREGARDS 100% (yes, that's all of it!) OF THE ADVICE, AND PRESUMES THAT THE SOUND
SYSTEM WILL WORK JUST FINE WITHOUT ANY OF THE ADVISED ARCHITECTURAL MODIFICATIONS OR SURFACE TREATMENTS
The committee presumed that the sound system contractor would make the system sound the
same in a room that sounded like an airplane hangar as it would in an acoustically ideal concert hall.
The committee rejected of every square inch of absorption and diffusion, every
recommendation of acoustical correction or adjustment, and every recommendation of correct speaker placement by the independent
consultant they hired (who evidently made the mistake of not telling them what they wanted to hear). The committee
fell deaf to the sound system contractor's assertions that it would not sound at all the same as a concert hall.
The sound system contractor reluctantly agreed to proceed with the installation, based upon
the committee's understanding that surface treatments would have to be made after the system was operational. In this manner
they can treat surfaces until the sound is to their liking.
THEN only weeks before opening the new sanctuary, the committee (in all its wisdom) determined
that they would not allow the main speaker system to go where it was originally contracted to go (and it needed to be)
despite the sound system contractor's assertion that in order to make the best of the horrendous acoustics, the specified
location would be the most desireable location.
AND after the installation is completed, the congregation (rightfully)
wondered why there was so much "echo". Why did they have a hard time understanding the pastor when he spoke? They wanted to
know who was responsible. Obviously, it must've be the fault of the sound company, right?. Well, in a way, yes... the sound
company should have walked away from this job as soon as all the recommendations were disregarded.
The congregation knew nothing about the change in speaker location, or the recommended acoustical treatments, or of the
plan to add treatment a little at a time to their liking. They simply knew that, after waiting almost 2 years through demolition
and reconstruction and service in temporary locations, that the sound in their beautiful new sanctuary wasn't as
good as they wanted it to be for their first service. And they knew who their sound contractor was. And they knew other
people who were building churches. And they talked amongst themselves, and it cost jobs!
Of course, the committee that
made all the decisions was long gone, replaced by this year's committee. Ultimately, the responsible parties had moved
on, and the sound system contractor was left holding the bag.
Sound like sour grapes? It is. Want to see a really
nicely prepared set of acoustical recommendations (unused)? Come on by the office! We would love to show you!
CHOIR MEMBERS WHO THINK THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO PICK OUT THEIR INDIVIDUAL VOICES IN THE MONITORS
when in reality, it is against all laws of God and nature to run any choir vocals into the
monitors at all!
UNSCRUPULOUS COMPETITORS and the PURCHASING DEPARTMENTS THAT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH STUFF
Fair competition and free trade are good things. But in dealing with large scale clients,
there is so much legal red tape, a company can get by on legal manipulation and technicalities without ever having to actually
design a sound system. The story below happened to us.
USF was the client, the contractor shall remain nameless
due to my lawsuit allergy.
With large municipalities, schools or government projects, multiple bids are often required and it
is out of the hands of the person who requests the bid.
One of the projects we designed for the University of South Florida was put out to bid a few years
ago. Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for the University, the State of Florida and its taxpayers), we did not provide
the school with a design plan, only the equipment manifest for 17 different classroom/auditoriums.
We submitted the lowest bid. The second lowest bidder ($18,000 higher
than our bid) protested our bid and our low bid was rejected on the basis that we were outsourcing 3 digital mixers to be
used in 3 of the 17 classrooms. Although the difference in cost would have paid for at least 6 spare mixers, the second lowest
bidder won the entire project.
Ironically, they provided equipment that did not meet the specifications as written. 50 watt amplifiers
were installed where 200 watt amplifiers were specified. Molded plastic speakers were installed where real sound reinforcment
speakers were specified. Yet the University did not acknowledge my protest of their bid, and the deal went to the out-of-town
contractor.
Adding "insult to injury", the contractor didn't do their own contracting. They subcontracted the
installation to a local company (another violation of the bid's conditions, as I recall). The local subcontractor called us
to ask if we'd be interested in subcontracting under them! (We were not.)
The "winning" bidder, using their loose interpretation of the equipment specified, subcontracted
the entire installation without a clue of how the systems were intended to operate. Without the original design plan, the
systems were never properly installed and the systems never performed satisfactorily. This contractor closed their regional
office that had subcontracted the installation and was never held responsible for their work.
These systems have been breaking down regularly (lotsa blown speakers! lotsa fans running
full-time in the amplifiers!) over the years and are currently being replaced, one room at a time. The digital mixers that
caused us to be disqualified from the bid we deemed too complicated for classroom operation and were never used. Yes, I said
never.
In 2006 a project was initiated to effectively replace these systems, component by component. We
the Floridians are paying for that, and the contractor who won the bid is no longer in business.
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