I’ll let you in on a little view of what it’s like being behind the camera on the Livestream, at least from my perspective. I work “deaf”…meaning, I always have heavy-duty hearing protection in when I’m swinging the camera. After a lifetime of drumming, rock music, loud cars and years of working under running helicopters, I decided that I’d like to still hear things. This has some downsides, of course…like when everybody and their mother is texting me to inform me that the feed has gone haywire and that I need to fix things NOW, or when some poor, friendly fan is at the bottom of the scaffolding wanting to know if I need any food or drink. But overall, I wouldn’t change my stance on hearing protection. And it’s incidents like what you’ll see here that provide the “why”: when this Pro Mod Camaro’s mill packed it in before blowing it out, it was right where not only I was on the scaffold, but where Sean from Urban Hillbilly Video was…and he tends to be a little bit closer to the track that I am. This was a nice, percussive explosion…the audio does not do it justice in the least. This is the kind of pop that you feel in your chest.
With earplugs in, I was startled enough that I waived the camera around sharp enough that I lost tracking on the car, earning the ire of some viewers in the chat window. Had I not had the earplugs in, I would’ve probably had to have gone and changed my shorts.
Bryan, visit an audiologist for custom earplugs. About $100, worth every penny. About a 35db reduction. For the nitro cars I use those plus Peltors for an additional 31db reduction. AC/DC, Rosemont Horizon, 1982…ears have been ringing ever since.