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Heya,

kind of a funny thread for me to open. Being the first DJ(?) to play in the main hall at Mekka Symposium. And over the years potentially preventing a lot of people from focusing on their productions, and sleeping (sorry for that!).

I'm posting this to find out if this is a 'me'-problem: I find the average Demoparty more and more challenging to attend. Due to a number of factors:

1. PA's got incredibly powerful
2. The average Demoparty schedule got jam-packed until 6 in the morning
3. Sleeping areas are less separated from the oomph

The first potential me-exclusive-thing is this:

I need about 24 hours to mentally arrive at a different environment. Which is why I prefer arriving a day early (if possible). And prefer sleeping at the venue. Having tested staying with friends and hotels: I just end up in an in-between state. Neither here nor there. Kinda in-between chairs. Which cripples my overall party experience. Can anyone relate to this?

Second: My ears are not getting better. Sure, I can use earplugs. But they do not help with stress level, zzz quality and physical exhaustion. Caused by being exposed to insane dB levels for the majority of a day. For 2-3 consecutive days.

Third: As of today, I consider most sleeping halls to be more like fake-sleeping halls. The skatehall at Evoke for example works very well. Because it's spacially and distance-wise separated good enough. Other venues do not offer this.

Fourth: I want to contribute more to parties. Including working on stuff, alone or with others at the party. I tried this during the last Deadline, after a very long time. And it was physically taxing. I wonder how I was doing this back in the day.

The answer is: I was younger, had more physical resources. And my ears were much more forgiving when it came to just increasing the headphone level until the environment faded away.

Heading towards 50, I'm at a point where I want to take better care of my health. Especially with respect to all the people we have lost during the last years. And Demopartying like there's no tomorrow 'as-is' for 2-4 days, given my potentially exclusive me-requirements, is sth I find more and more questionable.

I remember that at eg Mekka Symposium, there was still a sensible night-time deadline. At around 2?

As much as I love dancing to DJs, and DJing for people: What is the main priority of a Demoparty? Do we really need music acts before the compos? Every night? In venues where the bass directly affects the sleeping area?

How much is too much? And if great entries are our main focus: How can we get better at supporting those who work on stuff again?

PS: I'm curious to hear more perspectives!

me in my twenties: drink loads, sleep next to the speakers, wake up, carry on

me now (in my fifties): if i don't sleep in a nice bed somewhere quiet, I will die.

very good questions! I just want add that sleeping on site can be the only option moneywise.

Have you tried some of the smaller cosier parties with one big massive compo block on Saturday night and only moderate levels of noise throughout the 24 hours before that?

Personally, i think the bigger parties can well remain to have their focus on party.
Party coding etc. were never a truly enjoyable thing, more like an occasional necessity.

+1 for better separation of sleeping areas, though, and some semblance of silence in the main hall during the wee hours. Hotels aren't really an option here yet either, but some of the mentioned parties do have on-premise sleeping rooms that also allow for some release work (and sleep, ofc.) in relative silence.

Which one's do you have in mind?



Don't get me wrong: I'm not vouching for a graveyard atmosphere :) But for more sensibility between venue x modern PA x audience x zzz x schedule-loudness-density. Or: What you wrote in your last two sentences.



In my experience, from the productions I worked on, the last 20% always happened at the party. When we were sitting next to each other. Bouncing ideas back and forth in person.

i keep having this discussion with ronny for a few years now, mostly because we started doing the "discozelt" thing at uc a few years ago, and each year we got better doing this, and learned a few things about music, playback quality&volume vs. fatigue level and all that, which made it possible to create a cozy space for people to express themselves musically, dance, or just socialize around nice music at reasonable volume. at the same time more and more liveacts and djs were scheduled on main stages to a point where i spent almost no time at the uc streaming desk because i just could not stand the constant volume any longer, and just chose to stay "outside outside" for most of the party. my observation (very subjective) over the last few years also has been like this:

* the more dj/liveacts you put on the stage, the smaller the crowds actually going there and dance/listen become, while still blasting everyone in the hall.
* as the world around us gets crazier, it seems like actual physical socializing with friends gets more important, especially with friends you can not easily meet outside of demoparties. brutally loud music does not work too well for actual socializing.
* i always hated finishing releases on site, as the volume made it very hard for me to focus, even with headphones. it has now become impossible. at deadline, working the streaming desk is very taxing as the orwohaus has brutal bass nodes at the foh position.

as a partial solution i started splitting this up, now i help setting up, designing and running the dancefloor at a "burning man"-adjacent local event, which is very art&music-centric, and going to deadline and evoke. (deadline having too much music for me, so i have to leave the hall at some point in the evening, earlier than i would like to, but it is ok.)
for the socializing and productivity needs i started hosting some very small hacker/maker/camping-type event with a few friends in summer in northern germany, which is a lot of fun and can be very productive and very social.

i am also very much interested in hearing other opinions about this. i feel that for me this comes from a combination of getting older and less "acoustical-stress" resistant AND the amount of very loud stuff at parties growing. maybe i am wrong, but at least talking about this and gathering other points of view might be helpful.

Ahhh, voilà!! So that's why I was dying this weekend... Fortunately ressurecting now... ;).
Gimme back my 20ieeeees!!!

On the opposite end, as an 18 year old, I loved the environment at revision, want more of it.

Yes, can relate. Been a party-dweller since M^S 2001. Even though coping with noise and ...erm... less comfortable sleeping/resting situations is the baggage that comes with it.
Mind you, d!rt!e and I literally crashed under the main stage with no sleeping gear whatsoever next to high voltage [queue Electric Six here] powerlines at M^S 2001.
Over the years, and with getting older, more careful planning went into the sleeping comfort portion of the packing order. Most of all: proper ear protection, comfy pillow, proper sleeping bag and a field cot. That setup now works best for me, even when sleeping in the "designated bass reflex area" of Revision, i.e. backside of the Bigscreen ;D

Party coding during concerts/DJ sets.
Challenging indeed. I'm vividly remembering Revision 2015 when we had to finish Quintessence and Charlie told us about a nasty bug in the last(!) effect part. Crudely fixing it way into h0ffman's set of the evening, it was Hell. I took a vow to finish productions to a point where party coding would amount to "twitching knobs" and writing end-screen text, you know, the fun stuff that doesn't need too much concentration and still gives you the old party vibe :)

As a sofascener I'm well aware my opinion isn't that important, but I keep wondering why Revision prioritizes DJ sets and concerts over the competitions.

If you look at Assembly (another big and much more commercial event), they still make sure the main compos get the prime time slot, with other stuff moving out of the way — and these days they even stick to the schedule pretty well.

Revision 2025 release list is about 3 times as long as Assembly 2024's, afaict.

The live performances are good buffers to finalise everything needed for the upcoming compo block, especially with so many entries to show. These slots can't simply be shuffled around.

From what I understand Lynn's dj set made it possible to have the amiga demo compo be "on time" at all due to random technical difficulties with the recordings, including the need to build a new compomachine on the spot.

I can say that this year sleeping in the main hall under a desk on a mattress was unusually quiet, no blasting boombox until 9 am :D

The timetable and entries prove different?! But I'm curious where your impression comes from.

I could never properly work at a demoparty. The only time I remember it being somewhat succesful is that we had one or two empty parts with Fairytale, we whacked them together in a few hours and went off to drink beer.

But as tired mind in an aching old body, I think the only options for me now would be a hotel and a sense of self-preservation. I love the overwhelming, massive wall of sensory experience you get in a party hall, but a party needs quiet spaces too. The concerts and DJ sets are something that I don't particularly find interesting for the most part either, but thankfully there's always earplugs and/or outside. I don't know what would happen if I got my ass to a party again - I might just not enjoy it very much aside from meeting all the people I've missed so much. At least the compos going into wee hours would be a total no no.

I do not want to work at a demoparty ever again. Ok, you can get me to work for a quick just for fun prod on a demoparty, but not a full blown demo which is 25% ready and 75% broken (looking at this for example) ...

X (C-64), GERP (Amiga) and 68K inside (what's on the tin).
(There may be more than one compo block, but the generally cosier atmosphere and less noisy noise applies.)

Now, these are platform-specific unlike the bigger parties, but something like those should exist for PC as well? Can't come up with comparable parties...

I go to demoparties to get away from computers, but i do appreciate having some quiet environments for chatting, sharing ideas etc.

the real party is outside! ;)

but yeah, at earlier revisions when i still went there, i struggled with the loud sound too and subsequent sensory overstimulation from that so i just went outside during liveacts or shader coding things that didn't interest me much to give the ears and eyes some well-deserved rest before the next compo block. which works, so no need to change much around, just go outside more often.

At Zenta there was a nice separate space without any loud PA for people who really wanted to contentrate on working. Probably some other parties have done the same? Not a bad idea IMHO, as long as the space at the partyplace allows for it.

Back in the 9x, one guy brought Cerwin Vega AT-15s to a party. He did not care about people sleeping!

I stopped going to these "parties" a long time ago.

This topic was already discussed a bit in Earlier start of big compo nights. Especially last year's Revision had a fully booked schedule on high volume. Chats inside the hall were barely possible.
In my opinion this was much better this year with gaps between the compo blocks.
And the sunny weather also helped a lot, of course.

I already hated the rave party in the sleeping hall at TP5 30 years ago. Bass levels were too high, also with ear wax, and prevented me from sleeping. So noise-induced stress was definitely also a thing for me when I was 20.

Exactly. To illustrate that, let's have a look at this year's last compo block. Due to unforseen circumstances with our compo Amiga 1200, which broke during recording, the competition was only ready to show about 10 minutes before starting the competition. Those buffers are usually filled with concerts and/or other events because we usually need them to properly finalize the show for the visitors.

We also consider that people need to eat, go to the bathroom and socialize a bit instead of sitting through 8 hours of continuous competitions, which would also put an impossible strain on our teams, which also need a minimum of rest and a chance to avoid mistakes due to being overworked.

And yes, we could have probably started with some parts of the compo block earlier but that would have meant more complicated logistics and a scattered experience for you because we could not have delivered a continuous experience during those hours because of aforementioned uncertainties. Keep in mind that we are 80 people who need to work in unison to deliver this experience to you.

A possible solution would be to put all the deadlines way before the party so we can prepare everything during buildup or even earlier at home but that comes with additional challenges that might not be easy to overcome as the compo team does not have access to all the necessary hardware during that time.

Please consider the effort it takes to deliver an event as large as Revision while maintaining a certain level of comfort for everybody involved. Most of the organizers are already working 16+ hour days (not counting buildup/teardown, where it's usually closer to 18+ hours) and while I get that it might be impossible for some of the visitors to sit through the last compo block, there are also other solutions to "survive" the party like also taking care of proper rest during the day if you want to watch the last block or to plan accordingly for inevitable delays.

As said in an earlier post in the Revision thread, this was one of the smoothest experiences we have had as organizers and the amount of delays was rather minimal considering that we try to accommodate a majority of concerns of organizers, creators and visitors. I myself had not that many tasks during Saturday and Sunday but I still had 2-3 hours of rest/sleep every day so I could watch the last block but I had to cut down on watching other events simply because I do not have the energy to watch and see everything. I decide upfront what I want to see and try to plan my day to fit it in the best possible way.

This is not supposed to be an apology but merely an explanation because issues aren't as simple as "show the game compo on friday to save time". We will _always_ try to stick to the plan and the plan is there for a reason. Demoparty organizing _might_ also be more complex than some of you imagine it is :-)

Good points. Didn’t mean to sound too critical.