Oh, yes, that was very evident from being there. It was weird to see Aretha throw her head back and open wide, but not to hear her voice come out. It was probably a 4 or 5 second delay where I was.

That is super cool. I'll have to pass that along to the SO, he'll love that.

OK, here is a link to really push the point. It's from a well respected colleague who does show control and sound stuff. Watch the video, it's awesome (well, as a sound geek!) [link]

ETA, another colleague commented on my Facebook (where I xposted, cuz I'm such a geek), and she worked the PREVIOUS inauguration, and had this to say:

I remember the delay issus from the last Inauguration. One other interesting note about timing the arrays. The roads between the various sections of the mall don't close until the day of the event... so you can't leave yellow-jackets down to run signal to the the further out arrays (at least last time we couldn't) It was always a team effort to rapidly run the cable pre-yellowjacketed across the streets and check/time the delays. It only took a truck or two deciding to brake while on top of the cable, and the yellowjacket would start to get badly dragged. At each street crossing, two or three of us had to be stationed to guard the cable and run out between lights to fix any problems with the yellow jackets. Fun times :) No stress :) But last time they didn't have video ... so there wasn't the problem with getting the two to line up. I often wondered what it was like to be "watching" the Inauguration and only be able to hear it... and see ants moving around on a platform. video=goods

Oh HELL no. You're the United States government. You want to do this truly massive, glorious setup to allow literally millions of of people be witness to this historic event, and even you cannot let me tech this right?

*sigh*

Something mentioned in that blog post about delay reminded me - one fun thing about working in sound? As he said, for most intents and purposes, our signals arrive "instantly." Signal travels through cable at a very significant fraction of the speed of light. Depending on the type of cable involved, it can be over 95% of c. (100% if you're using optical cable)

But when you start dealing with very long cable runs, even a significant fraction of c becomes detectable. Like he says in the post, even milliseconds count.

100% if you're using optical cable

That's just one of those things that are really neat about physics. Optical sound! Whee!

But when you start dealing with very long cable runs, even a significant fraction of c becomes detectable. Like he says in the post, even milliseconds count.

At c, light travels about 300km in a millisecond. That's a really long cable run.

Seriously. Working in sound can really make you feel like a wizard sometimes.

I just took sound, turned it into electrical current, then I turned it into light for a little while, then back into current... Some of it I turned it radio signal... Then I turned all back into sound.

Oh yeah, and along the way, I displayed information about the sound you never new existed in about seventeen different ways across five or six computer displays while I was at it.

When it becomes detectable, it means there's a problem somewhere.

Ya, 9 seconds later, the back section is starting to hear it! Then they had to time delay the video screens to that, so the lips on screen lined up with audio coming out of the speakers.

It was seriously like watching a dubbed Japanese movie. But who cares! I could hear just fine.