Thanks, everyone, for the awesome responses! Always impressed by the wealth of knowledge here on
ControlBooth. To answer some questions, here's a
bit of clarification:
The
venue is a high school theater. Originally, a program feed and the feed to the assistive listening
system was provided by six "choir" mics suspended in a
grid above the
stage. These went into the mixing
console, and came out of an aux. When I first became involved with the theater, this solution resulted in an incredibly muddy output, with several dead spots across the
stage, thanks in part to the positioning of
softgoods and the unique architecture of the space. Today, only half of them are operational, due to them being regularly whacked by ladders during light hangs, focuses, and scenic installations. The
stage is incredibly short, with the height of the
proscenium being about 12', a 15'
electric height, and a uninsulated, metal roof at 20' above
stage deck. When it rains, that metal roof did not
play nicely with the choir mics at all, and the feed would just become
white noise. Additionally, there are no traditional
balcony rail positions or catwalks in the space. It's a nightmare for lighting, and I can't see them working for mics.
My options now are to revert back to the previous setup, replacing the microphones with ones that utilize a more appropriate polar
pattern and better placement, or start from scratch and come up with something new. From what I've seen suggested here, I think
PZM or
PCC microphones mounted on the
stage floor may be the best solution for the space. They tend to be fairly rugged, are fairly inexpensive on eBay, and do a pretty good job of picking up audio in the space.
A few other excellent points from
@nomuse and
@RonHebbard :
What I question is putting it into coms. My experience is that you want coms clean -- and many of the people on
headset are already hearing far too much
stage already.
You bring up a pretty good
point. There are four channels of com in the space, so it's possible to remove program audio from the technicians on
stage while still having it on for those in the booth, who really can't hear much of anything. Fortunately, with the MS-704, this is one of those things that's easy to try out and see how it works, and
switch around as necessary. I have a feeling I may end up just using the 70v
system, and not piping program feed into the coms.
Whether to put a volume knob on the speakers is...err...up for discussion. In the booth, yeah, and zoned if possible because some people don't need to hear the
stage and some really need to hear it. But for dressing rooms? I've had too many sad experiences with actors getting annoyed that they couldn't do their important socializing, turning down the
monitor to a whisper, missing their entrance, then blaming the tech staff because "the
monitor wasn't working."
I definitely agree with Ron's suggestion for the
relay on the attenuator, and the one-way security screws. I've actually already speced this out based on some of the other posts I've read through. What I'm thinking will work best for the
venue is to pass the program feed into the Clearcom MS-704, and bring the Announce output into the 70v
amplifier. Combined with the built-in Announce
relay on the Clearcom, this should allow the volume to be adjusted in the dressing rooms as necessary, but also force the volume to full and cut out the program feed when paging the dressing rooms from the MS-704.
Admittedly, this still doesn't fix the problem of actors turning the volume down and not hearing their entrances, but it does allow
stage management to
page the dressing rooms without having to worry about not being heard. If it presents itself as a problem, however, it wouldn't be difficult to add another
switch into the
relay line to disable the volume controls for the duration of the event.
Again, thanks everyone! You've been a huge help.