Welcome to HT-2, one of the most technologically advanced, state of the art (and cost-efficient) submixing horse trailers in the business. During the work portion of my winter vacation this year, this high tech horse trailer is my home. Fortunately, all the straw has been removed.

Just to clarify, there are two audio mixers for each X Games venue. Submixers are responsible for capturing all the sounds of the course. All of those fantastic swishes, curses and crashes heard on the course are all mixed together into an amazing sonic masterpiece. Then the incredible effects mix is sent to the main show mixer, who usually buries it under announcers, graphics sound effects, music and other stupid noise until it is barely audible. (Unless of course that main mixer is Pat Cassidy, who reads this blog… then it all sounds excellent! Great job, little buddy!)

This year’s X Games is divided into three separate venues, each with a dedicated TV truck. The two cost-efficient submixing horse trailers supply all three venues with sonic masterpieces. HT-1 submixes all the snowmobile and motorcycle racing. HT-2 covers everything else, including the downhill snowboard and ski racing, as well as slopestyle, (a kind of skateboard park for snowboards), and the halfpipe.

Submixing sounds like a relatively easy job, and even better in a swanky town like Aspen, right? Why, then, does my smile in this picture, taken in the luxurious interior of HT-2, look so unconvincing?

Well, it COULD be the fourteen hours of travel to get to Aspen, through Detroit and Memphis, cold cuts and lousy soup for lunch every day, the awful three day case of the touristas (look it up) from that lousy soup, scarcity of bottled water to combat altitude sickness and dehydration, insomnia, bloody noses, imported New Zealand-ese shuttle drivers that get lost every single day.

Or it could be the asshole truck engineer shoveling snow off the roof of his TV truck who looked right at me, then sent a shower of fresh roof-snow down on my head anyway yesterday morning.

And of course there’s that inexcusable lack of Guinness at the beginning of the week.

It’s not any one of those things specifically, its the combination of ALL of them, especially the lack of a proper Winter X-Games Guinness hangover, that make my smile so forced.

Uhh… so where was I? Oh yeah… Sorry.

My time share trailer.

This next picture is highly technical. Fortunately, it was recently declassified. We in the submixing industry call this a BFM (Big Fucking Mess) or alternately, if it’s part of a really big show, it is called a HCF (Huge Cluster Fuck).

This spaghetti-like mess is how every microphone signal is distributed throughout HT-2. You’d think in five years we’d have found a better way to do this… But no, this BGDFSM is what we use.

After six days of working, setting up, finding and replacing way too many broken pieces and parts, chasing down mysterious hums, buzzes, pops, clicks and other various annoying crap, the shiny, happy, temporary inhabitant of HT-2 is as ready as can be for the upcoming tremendously exhilarating competitions.

More X Games fun and frivoloty can be found here.

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