336. Musical Theater Sound Designer, Mixer & Educator Steph Farina (Part 2)

In Episode 336, Sean, Andy and Steph Farina get together again to pick up where their last conversation left off (here), diving deeper into the art and methodology of troubleshooting audio systems. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Steph is a Chicago-based theatrical sound designer, mixer, and educator who heads the sound design program at DePaul University and teaches a dedicated troubleshooting course there. The trio covers systematic troubleshooting methods — working input to output, swapping known-good for suspect components, and changing one thing at a time — before taking a deep dive into managed vs. unmanaged network switches, VLANs, Dante networking best practices, and why backplane bandwidth matters more than port speed.

They wrap up with a candid discussion on troubleshooting the humans around you: managing crews, communicating with actors and clients, and why the golden rule of live audio might just be “don’t be a jerk.”

Episode Links:
Steph Farina, Faculty At DePaul University
Episode 335: Musical Theater Sound Designer, Mixer & Educator Steph Farina
Episode 325: Chris Lapp Of Cisco On ‘Anything & Everything’ With AV Networking (Part 1)
Episode 326: Anything & Everything’ On AV Networking With Chris Lapp (Part 2)
The Art of Troubleshooting By Jason Maxham
Dante Information For Network Administrators
Yamaha Dante Network Design Guide
Configuring A Network Switch For Shure Devices & Dante/AES67
Episode 336 Transcript

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