— From a garage startup to a leading live event specialist, PSI credits RF Venue®’s Diversity Fin® and CP Beam™ antennas, DISTRO antenna distribution systems and COMBINE IEM transmitter combiners for meeting the demands of national and international touring acts amidst industry-wide supply challenges so well that RF Venue is now PSI’s wireless essentials brand of choice —
Walpole, MA, USA, November 19, 2024 — Production Services Industries (PSI) president Steve Vian initially ran the St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada-based live event specialist firm out of his garage with inventory bought from a former employer when that company closed its audio division. Now, 25 years later, based on Vian’s experience and the business expertise his wife brought to the company, “We have approximately one hundred employees on payroll, and we have some really amazing clients and contracts,” he shares. “Although we provide lighting and video and staging, our primary focus and passion is audio. Live entertainment, live bands, touring acts and things along those lines are where we really shine. We deal with a lot of national and international touring artists that can’t have problems and can’t have dropouts.”
For wireless audio, PSI has come to rely on essentials from RF Venue to ensure peak performance from whatever brand or model of wireless microphones or IEMs that a client might specify. During the covid era, “when the world ended for two years, RF products were not easily found,” Vian recalls. Client events, tours and infrastructure projects delayed by the pandemic “all came to fruition post-lockdown. We were challenged not only in getting our clients new wireless microphones, but also in the infrastructure that needed to be added onto and rebuilt.” One exception to the supply chain issue was RF Venue, which Canadian distributor Erikson Audio had in stock and recommended. “We live in a very rider-driven industry where clients are specifying exactly what wireless they need,” Vian continues, “but the artists don’t necessarily spec RF distribution by brand. Erikson Audio and RF Venue had product, so we started stocking it in our own inventory too. It’s funny how availability shifts brand loyalty very quickly.”
Such a shift can’t be made on availability alone, of course. “We were stuck in a situation where we had to make some really smart purchase decisions. If you’re going to go away from a company to buy another company’s product in bulk, you’ve got to make sure that you’re making a good decision,” says Vian. “Reliability, availability, deployment, and the comfort of technicians. That’s what it comes down to for us.” Vian says he had awareness of RF Venue gear prior to PSI’s initial purchase. The concepts behind the Diversity Fin antenna, with its patented cross-polarized design and the ability to deliver true diversity from a single package, seemed logical to him and have been proven effective in use. PSI’s inventory of RF Venue solutions further includes the circularly polarized CP Beam antennas for wireless IEM transmission, along with DISTRO series antenna distribution systems and COMBINE IEM transmitter combiners.
RF Venue wireless audio gear “takes punishment day in and day out,” Vian says. “We don’t get callbacks. When it gets put into a road case and the trucks are bouncing across North America and your racks are moving around, you want to make sure when you pop the lid off and open your racks in the morning and fire up your system, that your antenna distributor is not going to fail on you.” PSI has such confidence in its RF Venue product inventory. When PSI’s RF techs are assembling a system, Vian says, “the RF Venue wireless audio gear goes in. They’ll put it in a rack without even thinking. It’s second nature now.” While price is not the top priority for PSI’s clients, RF Venue’s product line comes in at what Vian calls “a fantastic price point, comparable or sometimes less depending on what we’re buying.”
PSI’s clientele spans entertainment venues and government, as well as performers. “We have three contracts with the city of Toronto as their primary supplier for audio, video, lighting, equipment, staging, and then we deal with a lot of casino properties in Ontario,” Vian shares.
RF spectrum crowding for wireless audio in Canada is similar to the U.S. – and affected by the U.S., “especially where our clients are based,” Vian explains. “The bigger casinos that we deal with are next to the United States – one of them being across the street from upstate New York and the other one being across the street from Detroit – so you can imagine what kind of RF interference we get. There are casinos on both sides of both big bodies of water. And then the city of Toronto is just a big antenna.”
“When RF first came into play,” Vian recalls, “I can remember you would bring out one wireless microphone at an event, one mic, and you put up your antennas or antenna and prayed. Now, every day, it’s ‘More RF. More RF. More RF.’ It’s not just a matter of plugging a mic in and saying ‘Check one, two’ anymore. You really need to know the science behind it, or else you’re putting your client in jeopardy. When we’re making decisions about infrastructure that has to work, we’re not going to roll the dice.” With RF Venue wireless audio solutions, he concludes, “We don’t get any negative feedback from our clients. When you find something that works, you stick with it.”.