PNW Section kicked off its 2025-6 meeting season with a hybrid visit to one of Seattle’s top music venues, the Triple Door, and a talk by its audio engineer, Sam Scheibner. Attendees could come to the venue or use Zoom for Sam’s talk about running an efficient sound check and a tour of the facility. About 10 of 14 in-person were AES members, and about 19 of the 23 on Zoom were members. This meeting was planned by PNW Committeeperson Jayney Wallick, with Dan Mortensen (Dansound) donating the multi-cam A/V setup for the Zoom feed. New PNW Chair Jess Berg presided, assisted by Vice-Chair Micah Hayes.
The Triple Door as a music venue is the most recent in the century-old theater’s history in downtown Seattle. The theater’s audio engineer, Sam Scheibner, a veteran of Seattle live music venues, gave a talk about how to run efficient sound checks, citing many examples of the previous night’s concert by EXTC (a spin-off of the original XTC). After audience questions, a video tour of the facility was achieved by following him with a cellphone camera, as many areas were not able to accommodate more than a few people. The in-house audience could watch the video on the big projection screen.
Door prizes (some Audio Precision swag given at their February AES PNW presentation) were given to Joseph Avila and Jayney Wallick.
Participants then did self-introductions, with Zoom attendees able to stay online afterwards for more chat.
About our presenter:
Sam Scheibner is the primary audio engineer for the Triple Door and has been for a year and a half as of August 2025. Before that, he worked at the venue as a fill-in audio engineer. Sam has worked for years as a live sound audio engineer at many venues around Seattle including El Corazon, The Vera Project, Tim’s Tavern, The J&M Cafe, Highline, Substation and many others.
The Triple Door opened in fall 2003 and is celebrating its 23rd anniversary this year. The venue is owned by Rick and Ann Yoder, also owners of the Wild Ginger Restaurant above the venue. The venue has had 3 previous head audio engineers: Steve Malone, Craig Montgomery, Curt Nelson. Craig is notable for having been the FOH engineer for Nirvana. The Triple Door sound system was designed by Richard Erwin and installed by Morgan Sound.
The historic Mann building that houses The Triple Door was originally home to the Embassy Theatre, a vaudeville house that opened in 1926. Built by the Mann and Gallatly families from Wenatchee, the theatre quickly transitioned to films as public tastes began to change in the late 1920s.
The theatre remained one of the premier movie houses in Seattle for the next 30 years, but by the early 1960s the grand days of the Embassy had come to an end. It struggled to hold its own as an A list theatre but managed to stay on as a blue movie and burlesque house until it closed for good in 1983.
Rick and Ann Yoder bought the historic building from Dave Gallatly in 1999 with plans to build a music and dinner theatre in the old Embassy. In the fall of 2002, renovation began with a simple goal: an intimate, comfortable space that would connect performers to their audience. Every effort was taken to preserve the ornate qualities of the old theatre, such as the original stage proscenium and ceiling fixtures. Rich fabrics, plush seating, and state of the art sound would complete the renovation, transforming the grand old space for a new generation of entertainment.
Their production includes the Yamaha Rivage PM5 Console and DSP-RX Engine, Crown I Tech amplifiers, and Soundweb London Blu sound distribution system, which includes 144×144 digital outputs/inputs to a Dante Network, distributed to several places around the building through their custom Ethernet Cat6/Cat7 patch network. The FOH speaker system includes (8) JBL Vertec 4888 Line Array Loudspeakers with (4) JBL Custom 18” Subs, plus fills. The full tech specs are available via PDF links here.
Reported by Gary Louie, PNW Secretary.
