Check it out, my man! This is the Dominator X-10. Thirty inches of thigh-slapping, blood-pumping, nuclear brain damage!
Ken Kessler — “Ruthless People”
Much as I’ve loved spinning the tunes for the MCHL Ironclad hockey league, one of the tasks to get everything in order for the games that pretty much gets a uniform “zero stars, do not recommend” is schlepping the Herniator 1000 Bluetooth speaker from one side of the rink to the other.
If you’re lucky, you can occasionally cut across the ice before the Zamboni starts doing it’s rounds but the couple of times that I’ve had to haul it round, that was not an option and not just because coordination and my panoramic physique parted ways long ago! 😉
So that means lifting this massively heavy speaker out of the storage cupboard, lifting it a few times to get it past the two benches, and then hauling it the rest of the way round to the power outlet. Then Elements looking upon you with favour, the cord won’t actually electrocute you when you plug it in…
So after a while, my inner A/V nerd would eye the rink’s mixer panel and think of ways to go ahead and use the speakers that are already in place in the rafters and spare the pour soul from schlepping metric tonnes of speaker round.
Enter an el-cheapo $5 USB to 3.5mm stereo connector.
All I have to do is hook that baby up to the mixer, connect to it with the iPad and fire the music at it.
I’ve found it’s *MUCH* nicer on the battery not having to transmit across the rink and the sound is orders of magnitude better.
Don’t get me wrong…the Herniator is a lot louder but when it’s directed against the far wall, it’s hard to actually hear what is being played. The rink’s speakers are far better balanced and I think the performance quality is far preferable.
I don’t think I’ll be getting any arguments that the only thing needing schlepping from the cupboard is the bag of pucks! 🙂
