urban79
Active Member
I'm in the middle of a massive renovation at the school I work at. The auditorium sound system is the last major component that I'm dealing with - we're going on three years without a sound system installed in the space. The project has been spec-ed, re-speced, and so on. I fear I will have to justify, line by line, each element of the system shortly.
Anywho, I did not design the system and I have some questions for the collective CB conscience. First a little background:
My venue is a 750-seat High School auditorium. We do the usual conglomeration of band, orchestra, and chorus concerts, as well as presentations, dance recitals, meetings, etc. We do a school musical every spring, and would like to branch into doing some straight plays.
The designer spec-ed a variety of JBL powered speakers for the system. I'm not sure that I've ever seen an installed system that uses powered speakers rather than powered amps, and the cost of installing electric to each speaker location strikes me as crazy. Any clues as to why that decision might have been made?
Next, we asked to have the ability to have a separate rack-mounted mixer (a "small events system") so that the main board does not have to be turned on and operated for meetings and presentations. I was told that this could cost $8000.00. It strikes me there must be a simpler (and therefore cheaper) way to do such a system, right? The designer tried to get off by saying that the Yamaha LS9-32 could be run very simply from an iPad with the wireless router, but it strikes me that still requires decent knowledge of the board, settings, etc.
I would also love to get your opinion on one other matter: The original design called for 4 AKG WMS450 wireless microphones. I was told that this was cut from the design because of the associated costs... fine, wireless microphones are expensive I know. However, that estimated cost was $12,000.00 for the wireless system!!! I've never worked with external antennas and such, but AKG is not Sennheiser in my opinion. Am I being taken for a ride here?
Any help would be much appreciated! (By the way, the total cost for the Auditorium sound system is supposedly $60,000 in equipment, and $40,000 in installation, and the Board of Ed had a heart attack!)
Chris
Anywho, I did not design the system and I have some questions for the collective CB conscience. First a little background:
My venue is a 750-seat High School auditorium. We do the usual conglomeration of band, orchestra, and chorus concerts, as well as presentations, dance recitals, meetings, etc. We do a school musical every spring, and would like to branch into doing some straight plays.
The designer spec-ed a variety of JBL powered speakers for the system. I'm not sure that I've ever seen an installed system that uses powered speakers rather than powered amps, and the cost of installing electric to each speaker location strikes me as crazy. Any clues as to why that decision might have been made?
Next, we asked to have the ability to have a separate rack-mounted mixer (a "small events system") so that the main board does not have to be turned on and operated for meetings and presentations. I was told that this could cost $8000.00. It strikes me there must be a simpler (and therefore cheaper) way to do such a system, right? The designer tried to get off by saying that the Yamaha LS9-32 could be run very simply from an iPad with the wireless router, but it strikes me that still requires decent knowledge of the board, settings, etc.
I would also love to get your opinion on one other matter: The original design called for 4 AKG WMS450 wireless microphones. I was told that this was cut from the design because of the associated costs... fine, wireless microphones are expensive I know. However, that estimated cost was $12,000.00 for the wireless system!!! I've never worked with external antennas and such, but AKG is not Sennheiser in my opinion. Am I being taken for a ride here?
Any help would be much appreciated! (By the way, the total cost for the Auditorium sound system is supposedly $60,000 in equipment, and $40,000 in installation, and the Board of Ed had a heart attack!)
Chris