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I wasn't at my computer reading comments earlier in the show so I might have missed this. I'm curious what your opinion is on the Cadets new ending. I'm a huge fan of Cadets this season and my mom said if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all, so I won't out of respect. I will say I was a huge fan of the drill in the original ending. You're a Cadets alumnus so please feel free to ignore this question if it puts you in an awkward position.

Maybe you're not as much of an expert on drill design as I famously am but you really need to have the battery on both sides... ...now.

Yeah, sounds like Norovirus aka stomach bug -- 24 to 72 hours but very contagious I hate to say it but if the kids are going to catch the bug, you'd almost want them to catch it sooner rather than later. Can you imagine if this hit during Finals weekend? It would be a disaster.

In anticipation of tonight's Cadets performance, here is your show prep:

Good heavens, how esoteric can we get? 🤣 From Quora.com: "It is known that if you stare at Cthulhu, you will lose your mind."

I'm going to date myself here but Boston actually reminds me of the second place 27th Lancers from 1980. That 27th guard threw everything into the air but the kitchen sink, with spectacular results. This year's Boston show is the best I've see for tosses since then.

Early on when a thing called an "LP" or "record" was a thing the sound from the broadcasts was just awful. I would put in my VHS tape in which was recorded live off of the PBS broadcast and try to sync it with the record which was an extraordinary failure, but it was the best we could do at the time to get drum corps sound while playing our TV's. Now I've chosen horn loaded speakers to play horn loaded drum corps to reach the Holy Grail of sound reproduction; high quality and LOUD! I'm really happy with how far we've come. The worst recordings now are still better than the best stuff we had in the last century.

I heard a LOT of loud crowd cheering coming from the L/R main speakers. Usually the crowd is more in the background through the side surrounds. I do NOT want to hear high school girls screaming while they cheer. That shrill sound make my ears bleed. +++ I also heard something bad from Boston, almost certainly not Flo's fault. When the solo tuba starts the Wellerman solo you can physically hear the gain being turned up in the subs. Then they keep the gain too hot when the other tubas come in. The board operator forgot to turn the gain back down and it sounded bad for the next 2-3 minutes. It's not that I have golden ears. I have a 3000 watt sub amp that has lights to show me when it's driven to clipping. The lights were lightly blinking on loud sections and when the Wellerman section kicked in the clipping went from yellow to red and stayed on continuously. Eventually it was turned back down. The Boston board operator seriously needs to pay attention to that. It creates a huge distortion and imbalance in the sound, one that I would guess anyone would hear.

I watched my first DCI broadcast as a freshman in 1974 at band camp at West Virginia University. About 100 of us piled into a common room around a 25" Zenith TV. Still, it was a lot of fun watching our band director Don Wilcox watch the PBS broadcast with us and correctly analyze what the corps were doing and picking the winner. I never marched drum corps but it was fun being in the WVU band the next few years playing "drum corps greatest hits." 😎

You have headphones which can dig down to 5 Hz? Wow, that's not just impressive for headphones, that's impressive for anything! I know my subs won't go that deep as I have them set up for mid-bass thump. Think 12 over-the-shoulder tubas. 😎

Or not...🤣

The Blu-rays are mixed in 5.1 with discrete (separate) mics, so L/C/R and Surround L & R. I can hear clearly the separation when the battery for instance is on the left 40 and the horns for instance on on the right 40. The pit has discrete content (not a blend of combining L&R) coming 90% from the center speaker. Applause/crowd noise is (correctly) very light and comes out of the SR and SL. The .1 channel is usually the sub bass and you can hear all the thunderous goo coming out of the subwoofer. For those listening on headphones the sub bass is what you will NOT hear because the headphones don't dig deep enough. Even tubas are mid bass and don't don't go down to sub bass probably because of the way the field is mic'd. For the Flo broadcasts I would say the mix is about the same as the BD (Blu-ray Disc, not the drum corps). If the corps is moving L to R for instance I can hear them move from the L speaker to the C and then to the right R. IMO that's what a quality well thought out set of mic's and mixing will do for your home audio playback.

You answered what I was wondering; what do the results from tonight tell us, if anything? The real qualifier here was the illness which seems to have knocked out significant amount of members from all corps. I would hazard a guess that many of the members marched while sick which would absolutely affect performance on the field.

My local HS is crap for basketball and football programs. However they are wrestling central in West Virginia with 25 state championships. To that end they named the basketball gym building after the wrestling coach. 🤣

I think there are two mics on each of the mic stands. One each pointing 45 degrees towards the endzone, the other pointing in towards the pit. Then two mics in the middle where the dm stands.

I don't think that thing suspended in the tower is a gong. I think it's a huge suspended cymbal because it's flat. Maybe 40 inches? There's a technique to pre-hitting a gong to start it vibrating. The girl who strikes it hits it like it's a cymbal.

Why not do both? 😎 From the other night, Crown on the 55" Samsung in the Mancave (computer room) multi cam on top. Hi cam on bottom, from the computer with 32" monitor. I use the sound from the computer into a sound system. The pic looks strange because the lights in the room are off. Flo allows you to run two streams simultaneously. My Iphone Flo app connects to the Samsung TV. I use a separate Flo program on Firefox to the computer for that feed. Same User ID and password.

I just locked mine into 1080p. We'll see how it goes. FYI: Internet is 500 down, 50 up, copper.

I like Genesis more each time I see them. Lose the stupid narration as it adds nothing to the show and insults the audience's intelligence: "now here is the drum break..." etc. Blech. Oh, keep the ONE part at the end, the pause before the push" "We Are Genesis" 😎

Speaking as a Cadets fan sitting in the seats, I thought so too. Man, I loved that show, the POWER of TEN!

I might agree whole heartedly, except that in the middle of the show the harmonica guy is 20 feet in the air on his platform and the sun is directly behind him, not spinning. I would not normally have noticed but the camera did a phenomenal job of framing him in the middle of the sun's "hole" while it was not spinning. If the sun were spinning it would detract from the musician. Instead it bought focus and clarity to the harmonica guy. I thought that moment was riveting with a laser focus most corps can't achieve with a solo musician standing by himself. I didn't have to look for him all over the field. He was right there on the 50, in the center with the largest object on the field calling attention to him. In that regard, mission accomplished.

Sadly, it’s easily been 14 years since this was true. If anything, Cadets have have more recently had the opposite problem, coming into Finals and dropping over the next few nights. Yikes, too much information! I know you're right. Fortunately, being a drum corps fan enables one to continue to hold out eternal hope for a late season surge despite reality. 🙏 😎

At San Antonio last night the prop started the show turned off, and was later turned on and off for a total of three sections, beginning, middle and end. The harmonica solo with the sun framing him in the background looked pretty cool.

Sorry if someone addressed this in an earlier post but with thousands of comments I might have missed part of the conversation. I noticed (but forgot about) Troopers don't have their sun prop activated the entire time like they did early season. I think it's effective to turn it on and off to emphasize transitions between musical sections. What say you? Why did Troopers change the way the sun prop is used?

Cavaliers have been scoring top points all season long. I watched them very carefully tonight, and it's hard to figure out the dang percussionists, with all their multiple glockenspiels and such.