What usually causes AV problems at live events, and how are they avoided?
What usually causes AV problems at live events, and how are they avoided?
Clients come to us worried about the mic cutting out, the screen freezing, or the moment the room goes quiet because something on stage has stopped working. Fair enough (that’s the bit they’ll actually see). We’re worried about something that happens weeks earlier and never makes it into any conversation with the guests: whether the plan behind the event was solid before a single cable got unrolled.
That gap matters, because almost nothing that goes wrong on the night starts on the night. We’ve run enough live shows across London to know the pattern by heart. The “AV problem” everyone remembers is nearly always the last domino in a chain that started with a booking decision, a missed rehearsal, or a job nobody was clearly given. Fix the chain, and the domino never falls.
The short version: AV problems at live events are rarely a kit failure. They’re a planning failure that shows up as a kit failure. The single biggest cause is treating an event as though it only exists for the hours guests are in the room, when the real risk window opens the moment a venue gets booked. A project manager who asks the awkward questions early catches more failures than any single piece of equipment ever will. Venues get chosen for how they look, not for whether a get-in, loading bay, or power supply can actually support the show, and that’s where organisers unknowingly cause their own problems. And when something does slip on the night, the audience only ever notices if the team lets them.
Where an event falls flat, and where it lands
| Where it falls flat | Where it lands |
|---|---|
| The event is planned around the hours guests are in the room. | The plan covers the whole cycle: booking, build, show, and get-out. |
| Nobody owns the plan, so decisions get made ad hoc as issues appear. | A project manager owns it, and flags the awkward questions months out. |
| The venue gets booked because it looks right on a site visit. | Production is consulted before the contract is signed, not after. |
| A live hiccup turns into a visible pause everyone in the room notices. | The team absorbs it and keeps the show moving without missing a beat. |
| Backup exists on paper but was never actually tested. | Redundancy is quietly built into anything the show can’t survive losing. |
The difference is almost never down to the kit list. It’s down to whether someone did the unglamorous planning work weeks before anyone in the room was thinking about AV at all.
What’s the biggest cause of AV problems at live events?
Planning, every time. Kit failures and communication breakdowns happen too, but pull the thread on almost any live AV problem and it leads back to something that should have been decided weeks earlier and wasn’t.
The mistake most people make is assuming an event only really exists for the hours the audience is in the building. It doesn’t. The risk window opens the moment a date and venue get confirmed, and it stays open through build, show, and get-out. Miss something at any one of those stages and the knock-on effect can be enormous by the time it surfaces, which is usually live, in front of the people you least want watching it happen. As one of our production team puts it plainly: failing to plan is planning to fail. It’s an old line, but nobody’s found a way round it yet.
Is there one pre-event step that saves more shows than any other?
Bringing in an experienced project manager, and doing it earlier than feels necessary. It’s the one line on a budget that people question first and thank us for last.
A good project manager’s job isn’t to hold a cable or programme a lighting desk. It’s to sit above the whole event and question every part of it: whether the creative idea and the technical reality actually agree with each other, and whether anyone’s accounted for the boring logistics that make or break the day. Transition times are the classic example. Clients picture an event moving cleanly from one state to another (dinner to awards, presentation to product reveal) without necessarily thinking through what that shift demands in the real world: budget, time, or simply whether the kit that’s been quoted can physically do it. An experienced project manager spots that gap early, while there’s still time and room to fix it, rather than discovering it during a tech rehearsal with hours left on the clock.
| Planning stage | What gets checked | What it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Venue selection | Loading bay size, power capacity, get-in and get-out windows. | A build that starts late, or kit that simply can’t fit the space quoted. |
| Technical design | Transition times between event states, budget against physical reality. | A moment on the night that looked fine on paper but can’t actually happen. |
| Pre-production | Wireless frequency coordination, backup equipment, a tested redundancy plan. | Mic clashes and single points of failure with no plan B. |
| Technical rehearsal | A full run of cues with the real kit and the real presenters. | Mistakes surfacing live instead of in an empty room beforehand. |
| Live show | One person holding the whole plan, talkback tested and manned. | Decisions made ad hoc, or too slowly, when something shifts. |
| Get-out | Storage space, crew time, and equipment condition checks. | Damage, missing kit, or a rushed strike that sours the venue relationship. |
What’s the mistake organisers make without realising it’s even their responsibility?
Booking the venue before anyone technical has looked at it. It feels like a sensible, ordinary decision, and it’s usually made for entirely sensible reasons: the room looked stunning, the date worked, the price was right. The trouble is that all of those things can be true and the venue can still be a genuine headache for AV.
Small loading bays. Limited power. Barely any time between the technical build finishing and rehearsals starting. Nowhere to store equipment cases once the kit’s out of them. None of these are dealbreakers on their own, and every single one is resolvable given planning and budget, but once production arrives and finds them for the first time, resolving them costs money and time that could have been spent elsewhere. It’s rarely anyone’s fault exactly. It’s just a decision made without the right person in the room, and it’s why we push clients to bring a production-savvy team into the conversation early in the planning journey, not once the venue’s already signed.
Can something go wrong live and the audience never notice?
Constantly, and it’s one of the more satisfying parts of the job. The audience has no idea what was supposed to happen, so a slip only becomes a “problem” if the team lets it show.
At one fashion show finale, the designer was meant to walk out alone once the models had cleared the stage, take his applause, then be joined again by the full collection. He got pulled aside by someone backstage and missed his cue completely. As it became clear he wasn’t coming, the stage management team formed a plan in seconds: the last model exiting was told to hold, and the whole cast re-entered in staggered formation, lining up so the designer could walk down through them to take his applause once he did appear. The stage was never empty for more than a few seconds. With experienced stage managers and models reading the room together, and show callers relaying the revised plan live to their engineers over talkback, the audience never clocked that anything had shifted from the plan at all.
What about the kit itself: mics, power, and communication on the night?
Planning removes most of the risk, but a handful of technical failure points still deserve their own attention, because they’re the ones that turn a well-planned event into a visible problem if they’re skipped.
Wireless mic interference is the one every technician has a story about, usually because two systems ended up fighting over the same frequency in a room neither of them expected to share. Coordinating frequencies in advance and having a spare mic already switched on backstage turns a potential dead-air moment into a non-event. Power is the other quiet risk – a lighting rig, a video wall and a catering team all drawing from the same circuit is a recipe for a reboot at the worst possible moment, which is why we plan clean, dedicated power for anything the show depends on rather than hoping a shared circuit holds. And behind all of it sits talkback – the headset communication that let our stage managers replan that fashion show finale in real time. Without a reliable, tested comms channel between the people calling the show and the people running the kit, even a good plan can’t be adjusted fast enough when something genuinely does shift. If you’re weighing up wireless spectrum for an event, Ofcom’s guidance on shared PMSE licensing is worth a look before you assume any frequency is yours alone to use.
Where AV problems at live events quietly start
The venue gets booked before production is consulted. Loading bays, power capacity and build time only get discovered once it’s expensive to fix them.
Rehearsal gets cut when time runs tight. It’s usually the first thing to go under pressure, and it’s the stage where most real problems get caught before an audience ever sees them.
Nobody owns the whole plan. Without a project manager asking the awkward questions early, decisions get made piecemeal, and the gaps between them are where failures live.
There’s no backup for the one thing the show can’t survive losing. A single mic for a single keynote, a single video feed, a single anything critical, is a bet nobody needs to make.
Comms are treated as a nice-to-have. Without a tested talkback channel, even a brilliant on-the-spot fix can’t reach the people who need to hear it in time.
Our advice if you’re planning a live event
Bring your AV or production team into the conversation before you sign a venue contract, not after. It costs nothing to ask, and it’s far cheaper to fix on paper than on the day.
Ask specifically about loading bay size, power capacity and get-in time before you fall for a beautiful room. A gorgeous space with nowhere to unload a truck is still a problem.
Budget for a project manager on anything with more than a handful of moving parts. It’s the one line that questions everything else on your behalf.
Build backup into whatever the show genuinely can’t survive losing, whether that’s a mic, a feed, or a single piece of kit doing a job with no understudy.
Protect rehearsal time even when the schedule’s tight. It’s where the gap between the plan and reality gets caught while it’s still cheap to fix.
What we handle to avoid AV problems at live events
We deliver full Corporate AV production across London – sound, lighting, video and staging, planned around your actual event rather than a generic package, with our own in-house crew and kit rather than freelancers pulled in close to the date.
Diana Sterck, CEO of Merton Chamber of Commerce, summed up what that looks like in practice: “What I love about the Clownfish team is their can-do attitude. Nothing’s too big a problem, it’s resolved and you end up really with what I would call a perfect event.”
We back every event with our satisfaction guarantee – if the audio isn’t audible or you can’t see the stage, you don’t pay for it. You can see how that plays out across our case studies.
Frequently asked questions
What usually causes AV problems at live events?
Planning gaps, more often than kit failure. Venues get booked before production is consulted, rehearsal gets skipped under time pressure, or nobody owns the plan closely enough to catch a gap before it becomes visible on the night.
What’s the single most common root cause: kit, planning, or communication?
Planning. Kit and communication failures happen, but they’re usually the last link in a chain that started with a decision made weeks earlier without the right technical input.
How far in advance should I bring in an AV or production team?
As early as you’re looking at venues, ideally before you sign anything. Loading bays, power capacity and build time are far easier to plan around than to discover once a contract’s already been signed.
Can AV problems really be avoided completely, or is some risk unavoidable?
Some risk is always there. Live events are live. What changes the outcome is redundancy and rehearsal: backup mics, tested comms, and a team that’s run the show once already before the audience arrives.
What’s the biggest mistake event organisers make without realising it’s their responsibility?
Booking a venue for how it looks without checking whether it can actually support a technical build – small loading bays, limited power, and no time between build and show are the usual culprits.
Do we really need a project manager for our event, or is that overkill?
For anything with more than a few moving parts, it’s one of the highest-value lines on the budget. A project manager questions transition times, logistics and technical feasibility long before they become live problems.
How do you prevent wireless microphone interference at an event?
By coordinating frequencies ahead of time rather than assuming a clear channel, and keeping a spare mic switched on and ready backstage in case anything does clash.
What happens if something does go wrong during our event?
If it’s planned for, it usually never reaches the audience. A tested backup, a clear talkback channel, and an experienced team on the ground mean most issues get absorbed and fixed before anyone in the room notices.
Does cutting rehearsal time to save money actually save anything?
Rarely. Skipped rehearsals are where small issues that would have been caught quietly instead surface live, which almost always costs more in stress and reputation than the time saved.
Can we use a venue’s in-house AV team instead of bringing in our own?
You can, but it’s worth checking early what redundancy, comms and technical oversight are actually included, since those are usually the difference between a hiccup nobody sees and one everybody does.
Written by
Rebecca Wheatley
Senior Account Manager
Rebecca joined Clownfish in October 2025 and has been keeping a hundred moving parts on track without breaking a sweat ever since. Off the clock, she’s a performing arts enthusiast and self-confessed traveller equally at home on a stage, on a plane, or dangerously close to a coffee machine. Ask her about the manatee thing. She has a theory.
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