You're running behind schedule for a live event setup. Should you focus on audio or lighting first?

I have done many live concerts and lighting and audio are both primary components. You need to set up and optimize. You as the performer, you as producer and you as director want your viewers to have the best experience at your event. So each element has great priorities but if you are running late, I would set up my audio first because you can breathe a little easier knowing that your audience will at least hear everything, even if the lighting isn't perfect. But It will be if you can attend to it before your event. Hopefully you have enough people on your crew to achieve this! Then, if you are the singer like I have been, you can utilize your time warming up for your vocal performance. And trust that your crew can do the rest.

Lighting is symbiotic with Audio. The thing that separates a good performance from a great performance is lighting and additional production quality beyond the sound. For almost any performance audio will always be the priority but being able to troubleshoot even basic lighting will boost the performance. I once had a show where they lighting software failed during set-up. We focused on finishing the soundcheck and audio set up first, then searched for solutions on the lighting. In this case the solution was someone manually activating the lighting the entire show, it limited our ability to be fancy, however, even basic lighting led to a better performance.

If you're running behind schedule for a live event setup, prioritise the audio setup first. Clear audio is crucial for audience engagement, particularly if the event involves speakers or presentations. Without properly functioning audio, the message of the event may be lost, resulting in a poor experience for attendees. Lighting can be adjusted more easily after audio is set, and while important, it typically has a more visual rather than functional impact on the event's immediate success. However, once audio is operational, promptly shift focus to lighting to complete the atmosphere.

Part of managing production is being able to prioritize on the fly. On two occasions, I have had the production company forget motors for the stage that delayed our ability to fly the lighting. Rather than letting folks freak out about the delay, we refocused efforts on getting all the Audio set-up and tested so that once the motors arrived all we had to worry about was setting the lights. Sometimes folks like to fixate on the problem and as a result waste time that could be spent getting other aspects of the event set-up.

While it is hard to make a choice, it can come down to the context of the live experience. But you can segregate them based on "necessity" vs "amplification". If it is an intimate club show with several DJs cued up, you can start off with a basic light programming (just faders and maybe a few sequences) which are near-default these days. You can programme lights during the opening acts (unfortunately experienced this a few times). Without the sound, the DJ is just a person onstage with a desk. If it is however a high-spectacle event (say a product launch), then suddenly lights become part of the necessity as it is integral to the wow factor as much as the sound fx. So you have to prioritise a way to have the best of both.