Javier Francisco: Right On The Edge
By David Weiss

Javier Francisco

Is Javier Francisco working in New York City because it’s a great music town? Or is NYC a great music town because Javier Francisco works here? OK, OK, it’s probably the first option, but many a touring act would agree that having the multilingual, multitalented Francisco around makes playing the Big Apple that much better.

Now the manager and part owner of Audio Force Live Sound, Francisco kicked off his professional sound career at the age of 12 in his home country of Argentina. By the time he was 18, he was already in charge of sound company Henrich’s touring sound systems that crossed Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and Venezuela, for clients ranging from Amnesty International to Tina Turner, The Cure, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Eric Clapton. A subsequent move to London and Britannia Row covered Pink Floyd to Pavarotti, before finally going to NYC where he could really put his nose to the grindstone.

“I’m a workaholic, and I really like being right on the edge every day,” the energetic Francisco explains. “I’m always doing different things, and the city gives me the opportunity to go to different locations with different music. The range is so big that it’s beautiful.”

With sound systems at his disposal ranging from an EV X Array, Meyer UPAIC/650R2, and Yorkville TX8/TX9, Francisco has flown rigs in the largest and smallest of venues in the Tri-State Area and beyond. No matter which system he shows up with, he’s guaranteed to be with his XTA DP226 crossover. “That is the heart of the system – that’s everything,” he says. “It’s the way I can communicate between my ears and my brain, receiving and reflecting whatever I feel so I can work like a system engineer, not a sound engineer.

“In a two way monitor where the cutting point is 630 Hz, in most systems, its good to notch down the frequency a little bit so you can’t hear the cutting off of the frequency point. For the highs, lows, mids and subs, a really deep cut notching it down to –8db gives a really friendly feeling. Besides the AudioCore software in the XTA, I like to use SIA-Smaart and the BSS Audio live software. They all work differently.”

For analyzing rooms and outdoor venues, Francisco is generally happy to have the computing power of the SIA-Smaart software on his side. “I like Smaart a lot – it works well with the audio cards,” Francisco says. “It makes me see the cross-over point, all the way from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. I like it a lot using it on the light towers to attach the right delay that I’m supposed to be using. I just put it into the input of the system and get a lot of feedback.

“I use it a lot on delay towers to attach the correct delay – Smaart works pretty fast and gets you pretty close to the point you need. Actually, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I use the software to get it really close, and then I use my ears to notch it a millisecond down or up. After all, Smaart’s not an exactly perfect thing, and ears are ears!”

As a full-service sound company, Audioforce sends a lot of their equipment out the door for rental, often because people have blown their own systems due to a common, fundamental mistake. “Regarding speakers and amps,” he says, “they buy an amp that’s rated lower than the speaker. So if they have a speaker that can handle 450 watts, they go and buy a 350 watt amp because they think if it has more power, it will blow the speaker, and it’s completely backwards! So, if you have a 450 rated speaker, it’s good to buy a 550 watt amp. Going lower when you’re supposed to go hotter is how you blow your speakers or amps – usually I can help them figure it out by going over it on the phone.”

Another fine point that Francisco would like to see corrected is the way compression is often neglected by sound engineers in small club gigs. “Compression is something you really need to put on a good show,” he observes. “A compressed signal protects your speakers through your amps, and keeps vocals in a good range while stopping them from being distorted, but people aren’t using it enough. A lot of the racks in bars or clubs don’t even have any compression – most people are routing the board into the EQ and straight into the speakers. That’s a bad way to go if you want to protect the speakers from any spike from the mic.”

When not handling compression internally through his crossovers, Francisco digs on the Neve 33609, as well as DBX’s 160A, 160X, 160XT, and 166. For people trying to economize money and/or space, he also recommends the ACP 88. “That’s a really good, affordable compressor,” Francisco says. “In a small (2U) rack space, you can have eight compressors and gates together on each channel.”

Unfortunately, there’s no quick way to soak up Javier Francisco’s other secret (besides audio expertise) to getting a lot of work: fluency in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. “It’s very helpful to be multilingual here,” he agrees. “There are people in Manhattan from all around the world that want to see the international bands that promoters bring here. Once you show a client that you speak the same language, it gives them a big feeling of security and confidence, and they’ll trust you on many issues. Like I said, Manhattan is a serious market.”