Event is loud, room has bouncy walls, guy goes up on stage, PA is pretty loud, everybody is talking, nobody is paying attention. How do we get attention?
ASKED BY · Andre Delay · BERLIN · 21 OCT 2026 · ▶ 00:48:45
Use the 'clap once if you can hear me' technique; repeat with two claps, then four; creates cascading attention as people physically respond.
Use the universal sound of tapping on a glass; it signals attention and is recognized by everyone.
Add delay speakers or distributed sound to provide more direct sound and reduce echo; single PA pushing loud sound creates fuzzy, hard-to-hear acoustics.
Play an attention-grabbing audio file like walk-on music or a ship foghorn jingle at high volume to immediately capture the room's focus.
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48:45Can we get, I think two or three of you guys had your answers up. Courtney, what was your suggestion? My suggestion is the age-old process of holding up one of these and... That gets everyone's attention. They know the universal sound of tapping on a glass is shut up and pay attention to the moderator. So that's my suggestion. Or the groom will kiss the bride.
49:08Mickey, your input? Yeah, of course, there's how the presenter grabs our attention. But in terms of what can be done on the technical side of things, I would rely less on a single PA that is pushing out loud and give more direct sound, more delay speakers. or if there's no delay speakers, add delay speakers so that there's more direct sound hitting the audience's ear
49:32and less of the echoey, the fused sound that they're hearing. Speed round, Bill. I saw a teacher solve this instantly. She said to everybody in a chaotic classroom, if you can hear my voice, clap once. And she clapped once. If you can hear my voice, clap once. My camera's black? That's weird. Okay, I can see myself, so sorry about that. Anyway, then she said, if you hear my voice clap twice,
49:58it rippled through the audience. And before she got to clap four times, the entire room was paying attention to her. She reached the first and then it spread to the second because there was a physical thing happening with the sound. It was magic. She was brilliant. And Andre, speed round. I'm sorry, Ronnie, speed round. Oh, thank you. So what you tend to do, Chris,
50:23is sometimes when there's a specific person coming live, there is an audio file being played, and we call it just attention grabber. So we hit that volume, and these DNBs, even if they are small, they are loud. So just push out a really, really loud walk-on music or a jingle or something that grabs attention. The coolest one we've done is the sound,
50:47the foghorn of a ship coming in to the harbor in Tromsø, So, and we just, you know, it's almost like brain damage and people were paying attention in the same second. All right, Andre, I apologize to everybody. I know I probably broke a million things by doing that question like that. Next question. All right. Next up is coming in from Guy Cochran in Seattle, Washington.
51:13Any NAB New York news? Nope. No news. Next question. All right. All right, next up is coming in from Douglas Carmichael. With BMD announcing significant price increases, do you think that will drive users to competitors? That's a good question. What do you think, Alexander? Not necessarily. Now, price is always one factor, but not always the factor. What drives people typically to other competitors is some failure of the product,
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