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[Cubitus]

Hi folks,

after attending my first EF ever, I'd like to ask if the Parade as it was (independently of the place/route!) always is like that?

I learnt the marching band was a cool new thing. My impression was: "Great music in the front row - and a bunch of cool fursuiters sneaking behind silently".. a little like a funeral (just happier outfits :-)

Is the EF team thinking about having some music all along the parade (don't blame me if former EFs always had that; I just don't know), either speakers going with the parade, or along the parade route? Would love to see plans about this suggested or discussed. (As a Berliner, I might be participating in preparations either, if wanted).

Maybe it's just that I have been enjoying too many Disney pararades (which are of course bursting from music, TOO much sometimes), but I found this one very quiet and discreet.


Happy singing greetings,
Cubitus ●●●●

[Cheetah]

Is the EF team thinking about having some music all along the parade (don't blame me if former EFs always had that; I just don't know), either speakers going with the parade, or along the parade route?

We've been absolutely thinking of it for years. However, there is no legal, affordable solution for it. Which is why pretty much all fursuit parades world wide are silent. The brass band is actually a pretty novel thing that we're rather proud of - and at least at the stopping point down at the beach bar, everyone had the chance to get a glimpse of them.

[Ralesk]

That reminds me that my friend Desolate has a large iDevice docking boombox and on Budapets (visible for example between 0:24–0:50) (and on EF19 when he could last make it to EF) he provided music from that thing — much to the joy of the surroundings.

If he can make it next year, I'm pretty sure he'd gladly tag along the fursuit parade to make some noise for at least part of the line.

[Cheetah]

If he can make it next year, I'm pretty sure he'd gladly tag along the fursuit parade to make some noise for at least part of the line.

The challenge is not to find someone with a boombox. The challenge is to coordinate the music. If you have four people within hearing distance that play different songs at the same time, all you create is a terrible noise that goes on everybody's nerves - and that would make things worse.

[BluePaw]

If he can make it next year, I'm pretty sure he'd gladly tag along the fursuit parade to make some noise for at least part of the line.

The challenge is not to find someone with a boombox. The challenge is to coordinate the music. If you have four people within hearing distance that play different songs at the same time, all you create is a terrible noise that goes on everybody's nerves - and that would make things worse.

could maybe use those cellphone AM/FM-transmitters and just stream from con-ops or some other place through 3G/4G nets?
that would give all the receivers the same music at the same time?

[Cubitus]

could maybe use those cellphone AM/FM-transmitters and just stream from con-ops or some other place through 3G/4G nets?
that would give all the receivers the same music at the same time?

Yeah I was thinking about these, too. Still it'd need to have several FM receivers plus I think the transmitters (at least those that are legal in Germany) have a very limited reach.

Alternatively we find a local broadcasting station playing "our" music. I once saw this in Munich, when they set up a "radio ballett" with MANY people having small FM receivers with earplugs, and performed a public dance coordinated by that (local/noncommercial) radio station. This would mean "100% coverage" for the parade AND the whole city, too LOL - but receivers easy to set up (every FM boombox would work).

Also a WiFi transmission could work (e.g. AirPlay - well sync'ed, >100m reach in the field with no walls etc., loss of signal would not lead to unsync'd playing, but dropouts. It only would need a proper power supply, so more difficult to construct (battery + AirPlay device + speakers in a wheeler bag, ok a bike, etc. - lots of planning, creating, and carrying these during a parade).

Or it could just be a few (4-5) boomboxes at medium volume, separated from each other with enough distance so they interfere only a little. Think about (e.g. pride) parades where they have many floats, every second playing loud music and in the "mixing area" there are not so many ppl. I wish Disney could borrow us their close-to-perfection system of well sync'd mobile and fixed speakers with perfectly choreographed music mixes *hehe*


Lots of time to think about a doable solution, but I like that this idea already exists!

Cubitus ●●●●

[Atkelar]

Or it could just be a few (4-5) boomboxes at medium volume, separated from each other with enough distance so they interfere only a little. Think about (e.g. pride) parades where they have many floats, every second playing loud music and in the "mixing area" there are not so many ppl. I wish Disney could borrow us their close-to-perfection system of well sync'd mobile and fixed speakers with perfectly choreographed music mixes *hehe*

Just a quick reminder: the way the parade moves is not as organized as Disney(tm/R/c) parades. Its movement can be closely compared to that of an earthworm: parts contract, others stretch out. So the distance between mobile speakers would hardly ever be the same. In my opinion the best bet would be stationary systems - i.e. boomboxes placed at strategic positions along the route. Much easier to take care of and with a bit of tweaking, it should be possible to have them play different tunes without any noticable interferrence. Or, if these are internet-connected devices: maybe even a synchronized "play" command would work well enough. I doubt that the internet around the hotel during EF is reliable enough to stream audio to multiple stations without dropped packets.

[Cubitus]

i.e. boomboxes placed at strategic positions along the route. Much easier to take care of and with a bit of tweaking

Yeah sounds best. And it would even be testable [long] before the event (including volume setup etc.). Let's see what the team says and if there are more ideas. And sorry for the Disney compare.. don't blame me for enjoying them too much :P

[DarkFoxDK]

It seems to me, there would still be a music licensing issue though. A subject which german law seems quite strict on.

As I understand it, you have to pay a license fee for every "stage" you want to play music at. So, is every location there's a boombox be a stage, in the sense of the law? Even if the entire parade is interpreted as one big "stage", the cost of licensing would still be prohibitive.

[Cubitus]

It seems to me, there would still be a music licensing issue though. A subject which german law seems quite strict on.

True, but this is all well regulated by law and not as expensive as we may think. For example: in a parade with live music, every band will accounted at a fixed price (about 26€). A street festival is accounted by area and most other events by no. of participants (starting from 1000). The law still is a pain in the ass, but well it's just part of event planning here in Germany.

There is a chance to play royalty-free music, too. For example nice free jazz music could work during the parade, while for the start/final gathering place the great marching combo from EF20 could rock ... err... jazz up... the masses (I think they were absolutely loud enough).

Cubitus ●●●●

[Cairyn]

True, but this is all well regulated by law and not as expensive as we may think.

Uh, wouldn't bet on it with all the news about festivals, events, and even music joints threatened by GEMA fee increases and such.

[BluePaw]

there are a good number of models of mobile speakers with okey lasting batteries.
just connect a smart phone^^
the parade was something like 30min long?
you don't even need fully charged batteries for that, even less so drawing cables for power supplies.
and i don't think 2k ppl would crash the 3G/4G/Telecom networks as badly as not being able to receive music (at least never seen this problem in Sweden), you don't really need the highest quality either.
it's gonna be for temporary entertainment, not for a fine musical show, some beats and people will dance^^
so 64k or something usual like that, if you take DI-radio (American streamed music with tons of different genres) as an example of band-width needs at least.
i walk around for hours, several times per week some months during summer at the local zoo listening to this, with a monthly limit of 1gb data on my phone, and no problems there either.
and taking something like a small band-width stream from the hotel network would not be as trubblesome? (this though i actually don't know much about).
but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff

[MOW]

but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff

The problem is not so much to play something but rather to synchronize all the devices.
If they just connect to a vlc stream, the time the music starts to play depends on the device's buffer size, wifi/3G signal strength, and wlan congestion, so it'd be worse than everybody just trying to hit "play" on a local file at the same time.

[Fineas]

but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff

The problem is not so much to play something but rather to synchronize all the devices.
If they just connect to a vlc stream, the time the music starts to play depends on the device's buffer size, wifi/3G signal strength, and wlan congestion, so it'd be worse than everybody just trying to hit "play" on a local file at the same time.

Let me attest to that.

Yes this is a real problem. I would normally say you just time code / time sync devices that are told at what time they should play something.
Unfortunately, most or almost all mobile devices these days (smartphone, tablet, mp3 player etc) do not have a real time clock.
They all operate on variable CPU clock speeds and try to determine the time from that while running NTP all the time to try and get closer to the 'actual time'.

Shoutcast even without this problem for some reason can go askew for more then a full minute over a day of play from the actual broadcasted stream because it apparently buffers up and adds like... 2 ms empty spaces every so much time to give itself time to make it work.

The only devices I have heard of that can actually synchronize playing a source of multiple sources of audio is a good old radio (FM/AM)
And these new Sonos speakers seam to do a very good job which are digital as far as I can tell, but have a limited range.

I can not attest to digital radio, but I think that the decoding procedure is so well done by a single chip it will probably perform the same as an ordinary radio.

So the only practical thing I can think of is for someone to carry a 'boombox' radio or speaker and just keep it at 1 or 2 speakers, working on the same line out from a phone/mp3 player or Bluetooth.

But what are we trying to solve here? Was their something wrong with the marching band?
I personally really like it and I would love them to have some variation from year to year.
I would even vote to have it as a default thing for upcoming years. (not for me to decide, but it would just be neat)

I learnt the marching band was a cool new thing. My impression was: "Great music in the front row - and a bunch of cool fursuiters sneaking behind silently".. a little like a funeral (just happier outfits :-)

I guess only the 'local radio station' playing a playlist and then multiple radio's along the road would be sort of an option.
I would opt for a separate fund raiser to pay any fees or some sort of commercial agreement on which they can use the EF name on their station to do a 60 minute music run.

Anything else is just to hard to coordinate:
- The public frequencies are 2.4ghz and 5ghz and have a limited output strength else you already need a license.
- As far as I can find their are no radio's that work on that frequent so you would need to end up solder/program your own stuff to use it.
    - Or agree with portophone quality audio. In which case we could technical reserve a channel on the EF radio network and play it from their but... really... that doesn't sound so appealing to me personally.
- Using FM radio with our own transmitter, you need to buy or rent: a frequency, get a transmission license, rent radio broadcast equipment etc etc

I could give IceCast a go to see if that doesn't have that lagging problem and maybe their are other protocols that are really simple that I can just set up a very small buffer and can get a guaranteed smooth audio output (as long as their is a signal and a connection with the audio source) and it doesn't lag behind more then 2ms maybe 5ms max. (which is already very hearable)

The other option would be is to ignore the offset problem completely and put speakers so far apart that you can't hear them between the 2.
Just let them play in places like the rotunda, leave the lobby in front of the dealers den empty, but play music at the dealers den. Something like that.

But then we haven't touched the whole musical licensing problem. If people bring their own radios that's their decision.
If EF provides it and blasts away music all over the place we need a license.

And I can't figure it out completely, but I guess you can give this GEMA fee calculator (German) a go:
https://online.gema.de/aidaos/index.faces

[Ralesk]

But what are we trying to solve here? Was their something wrong with the marching band?
I personally really like it and I would love them to have some variation from year to year.
I would even vote to have it as a default thing for upcoming years. (not for me to decide, but it would just be neat)

Absolutely.

As for anything wrong with it — well, to also address Cheetah's concerns about a cacophony: They couldn't be heard too far back.   I'd guess having some music for the back half or third of the parade wouldn't cause trouble with the front third (who can sort of hear the marching band).  Especially if the route stays the same, it'll be a very long snake like it was now.