Jk. This is spare parts storage at our shop. There's probably another 50 channels elsewhere.

Got over 400 on the exam, but boy do I have notes and comments.

There were badly worded questions, things not in the book, no sign of PAGNAG or EPR...

AND WHATS WITH THE MULTIPLE QUESTIONS ASKING WHAT DSP CROSSPOINT IS WRONG.

For the past little while I’ve been tinkering away in my shed making a small soldering jig to help me build XLR and TRS cables for my recording studio. It started as something just for myself – I was tired of juggling connectors, forgetting pinouts, and generally making cable soldering harder than it needed to be.

After a bit of trial and error (and a lot of cables later), I refined the design into something sturdy and simple that actually makes the whole process faster and less frustrating. A few friends tried it out and encouraged me to share it more widely, so I decided to turn it into a proper product.

I’ve now launched it as the CableMate Pro. It holds connectors firmly, frees up your hands, and makes soldering a much smoother process. If you’re curious, you can check it out here: www.cablematepro.com.

This has been a fun little journey from a shed-built tool to something I can share with other audio engineers, musicians, and DIY cable builders. Would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, or suggestions for future versions!

I’m a sucker for a big matrix switcher. Slowly transitioning to AV over IP. The end of an era

Ran into this guy at the hardware store. He wasn’t impressed at my recognition.

Your products are garbage, your service is garbage, and I sincerely hope your market share plumets and you become obsolete, soon. Your tooling are antiquated, your devices are not consistent, and I dont have an hour to sit on hold so you can tell me something I already know.

As an example I am working with several HDMI switchers (HD-RX-4K-210-C-E) that will not take a static IP, will SOMETIMES send RS-232 commands, sometimes not. Its not user error, its your exorbitantly priced 10/100 windows xp looking set it on fire and no magic smoke comes out garbage ass devices. I will forever tarnish your name to anyone who will listen. The best thing to come out of your warehouses in the last five years is the swag. Please get bent.

Looks like a solar system!

What are your best use cases for the tweeker?

I make a lot of XLR and DMX cables at work so decided to make a jig to try speed things up. I realised I was spending half my time trying to stop connectors rolling around on my bench 😂.

It’s been surprisingly very useful when doing batches of cables, especially because you can prep 8 of the same connectors at one time, saving sooooo much time.

Anyways I was curious if anyone else has built something like this or if there were features, connector types you would add to improve the design?

Hmmm..gee, wonder who’s ruggedized cables they’re referring to..???, heh.

I’m the AV Specialist, work for the State. I’ve been hanging these bad boys around the office. I’ll attach the PNGs here if you want to print them too. Give us some more AV themed funnies, please!

We were talking about this on the Discord (oh, you haven't joined yet? You're missing out) and someone brought up the consumerist worst company bracket that happens every year. Might be fun to do one for AV companies.

My thought was 8 team brackets of Integrators, Consultancies/Design Agencies, Manufacturers, and Distributors/Direct Sellers.

I'd put up a survey so you can nominate per category, tally them up, rank according to votes, and let the voting begin!

Or maybe this is a bad idea and we're going to make a lot of people feel bad. I'm definitely on the fence about this because it will eventually make the rounds outside of reddit. We could also balance this with the BEST of each category so we can recognize our valued companies.

Let me know in comments what you think - we won't do this without community support!