Booth Pictures :)

Just wanted to show off the new booth at my school. This was built with the installation of a new sound system and new spotlights.
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Electrics side, running an Ion 1024. You can also see the new Canto spots in their booths that were built last year. On the right is the SM's center
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Sound side, Brand new Yamaha Cl3 and wireless/processing racks.
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It's an awesome booth that we're lucky to have!
 
Just wanted to show off the new booth at my school. This was built with the installation of a new sound system and new spotlights.
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Electrics side, running an Ion 1024. You can also see the new Canto spots in their booths that were built last year. On the right is the SM's center
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Sound side, Brand new Yamaha Cl3 and wireless/processing racks.
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It's an awesome booth that we're lucky to have!

Nice equipment and space. My only concern would be ergonomics when running a show. Having the patch panels and racks under the counter takes away any potential knee space. How close can you get to the desk when sitting down?
 
Nice equipment and space. My only concern would be ergonomics when running a show. Having the patch panels and racks under the counter takes away any potential knee space. How close can you get to the desk when sitting down?

Yeah, there is hardly any knee space but the sound op has to stand to see the stage anyway, so it isn't too bad.
 
Here's the theater we rent each year. It was originally built as a vaudeville and movie theater, and this was the projection booth. It's not quite as bad as peering out the slots from a WWII tank. The computer on the left desk controls the dimmers, running Horizon. I don't remember what program they run for sound; instead I bring my laptop and use my DJ software.

Until I started reading this website I had no idea that cues are normally called by the stage manager. Our stage manager just supervises the scene shifters and roll drops, since there’s no means of communication between stage and booth. There's a night vision camera we use to watch the scene shifters during a blueout (no curtain) so we know when to fade out the music and bring up the lights for the next scene.

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Our booth 2.0, the previous having been thrown together from pieces of the former checkout kiosk of our mall space 4 years ago. Built by one of our volunteers over our holiday break and housing our new Presonus studiolive 32. Lights are run on the laptop on the left, sound cues on the other and an IR monitor camera for scene changes. Some new toys in the rack as well.


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Here's a picture of a middle school I commandeered for a show my city's community theater put on.

Their setup:

Mackie 3204 (With several bad faders, mute buttons and sends...)
DVD Player and Aux Jack to run sound
ETC Express 72/144
2 Altman Luminator spots (weakest little things I've ever seen)
8 Shure SLX mics

I brought over my sound stuff to replace theirs:

Presonus StudioLive 24.4.2
20 Sennheiser EW100g3 mics with Countryman B3s
Mac Mini with QLab and MIDI interface to run sound and light cues

I called the show and ran mics, lights and music.

Pictured is MY setup. I didn't take one of theirs unfortunately.

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Silly question- is the booth curved or is it the photo? Or are my old eyes messing with my head?
 
I've got one you guys might like.
This addition was built onto the school somewhere between 2007-2010 (based on the architecture and what faculty talk about). They tore down the existing office wing and stuck the Auditorium up there, including a new gym, two Biology classrooms, and about 8 normal classrooms (7 are used for world language classes, the last one is used as a health classroom). They kept the foundation in tact at the other end of the building where the original auditorium was, and just renovated it on a ridiculous scale into the new offices. You can still see the higher-than-normal roof over the offices, despite having normal height ceilings inside.

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Here's some of our mics.

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Here's more of them. We actually got eight more just a while ago this school year. Sadly they're in an OSP instead of Gator rack. I liked the unity there was beforehand.

Don't worry, I fixed it so that what ever it is that's plugged into that power conditioner is actually on the rear now.

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Here's our video receiver rack. Those three little boxes are "Twister 2" receiver units, which are active/powered VGA over Cat5E baluns. The transmitters are located on the front of the stage, and these little powered boxes also send audio and fit a gang outlet plate.

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Here's a slightly different angle.

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Ah, the main booth rack.
From top to bottom: Furman power conditioner, a power relay (it's the master power for the equipment in the booth and in a backstage cabinet, and it turns everything on and off in a specific order, so no loud pops), DVD player, CD player/burner, Telex MS-2002, Tape deck, broken feedback filter (I just need to buy a couple capacitors, some of them bust open in it), our booth amp, and a Mid-Atlantic power conditioner.

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Here we have the main patch panel for the board. It uses six Aviom AN-16 units, which are hooked up to our Mid-Atlantic patch panels. We currently have 5 receivers and 1 send unit in the booth.
Later on after taking this picture, I went and labeled each snake with colored electrical tape. I did one color on each until I used every color I had, which led me to doing dual-tone markings.

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Here's our wall of XLR. It has expanded since taking this picture.

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This is where you start to see how serious we are with our equipment. This is a SoundCraft GB8 48. It's a beast of a board. It's a shame that so few people on my crew know how to manage a board like this, let alone do a proper mic check.
I've also fixed the strange patching. That cluster of yellow spike tape is where the lapel mics are- now there's a nice, clean, single piece of glowtape with black sharpie. Labels never looked so pretty before.

Believe it or not, I'm actually going to be managing nearly 40 wireless mics in a couple weeks on this board for our production of Jesus Christ Superstar. That'll be interesting.

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Agh. The snakes broke out of their enclosure. Better get the tranquilizers.

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It's really a mess behind the racks.

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More mess.

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On to lights!
Here we have our ETC 48/96. Once again, I'm one of the few people on my crew who know how to use the advanced functions on this board properly- let alone basic functions.

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Yay cables.

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Photogenic cables.

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I love that we actually got the official wallplate from ETC.

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Here's a double-edged sword. It's nice not having to go through a crawl space to adjust the front lighting, but you don't get to see what it actually looks like without moving the hoist back up. On the bright side, it's so easy to mount special equipment on these (disco ball, moving lights). We have three of these over the house, and each one has one digitally dimmed 120v circuit, a DMX output, and six 90v analogue dimmed circuits. (And yes, I have operated the genie you see in the back, and held on for dear life while using the cherry picker you see on stage right behind the genie).

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These are nearly impossible to adjust. You can't get the genie lift near them, and if you use a ladder, you need to put some wood under the feet to keep it level, since the floor is on a slope.
Luckily, these haven't really needed much adjusting over the years.

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Now here's the money shot. 7 Crown amps. Three 1000w units, and four 2000w units. You can push a mind boggling total of 11000w of air moving power through our system, provided you don't kill every speaker attempting to do it.
The top 1000w unit looks like it's for two of the three speakers near the ceiling at the front of the house. Then you've got the next two 1000w units driving the delay speakers. After that, I'm not sure what each of the 2000w units drive.
We've got two subs, three normal speakers, and two or three (I never really bothered to look) delay speakers (all of them are JBL, including our three monitors).
 
Damn. Not bad.

Two thoughts:

Don't leave those caps too long; the electrolyte that popped out is corrosive, and will eat the board.

And you might be interested to hear about a failure mode we had in our Element recently: If you *played a cue* from the master fader stack, the levels would oscillate from F to about 50 and back.

Play it from the keyboard? Fine.

Submaster? Great there too, thanks.

The diagnosis was, I think, what I expected: there's a fixed voltage that feeds the submaster faders and is A/D'd to figure out where you are in the fade... and the power supply rail that drives them cut loose and started oscillating -- probably a blown bridge or popped cap.

Just got it back a week or 2 ago.
 
It's a shame that so few people on my crew know how to manage a board like this, let alone do a proper mic check.

Once again, I'm one of the few people on my crew who know how to use the advanced functions on this board properly- let alone basic functions.

Sounds like this is a fantastic time to start teaching people!
 
Shouldn't be too hard to teach others, assuming they are not complete morons, both boards are pretty straightforward.
 
Sounds like this is a fantastic time to start teaching people!
Shouldn't be too hard to teach others, assuming they are not complete morons, both boards are pretty straightforward.
Yup, since since I'm currently a Senior, my supervisor and I have several candidates that I'm going to start to teach the advanced stuff to in a couple weeks. I've got one Sophomore, and two Freshmen- they're all pretty competent, and pretty interested in the stuff. I've also got my contact info permanently fixed in the booth, so whenever stuff pops up down the road people can reach me.
 
I've got one you guys might like.

Believe it or not, I'm actually going to be managing nearly 40 wireless mics in a couple weeks on this board for our production of Jesus Christ Superstar. That'll be interesting.

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Agh. The snakes broke out of their enclosure. Better get the tranquilizers.

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It's really a mess behind the racks.

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More mess.

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On to lights!
Here we have our ETC 48/96. Once again, I'm one of the few people on my crew who know how to use the advanced functions on this board properly- let alone basic functions.
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These are nearly impossible to adjust. You can't get the genie lift near them, and if you use a ladder, you need to put some wood under the feet to keep it level, since the floor is on a slope.
Luckily, these haven't really needed much adjusting over the years.

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Now here's the money shot. 7 Crown amps. Three 1000w units, and four 2000w units. You can push a mind boggling total of 11000w of air moving power through our system, provided you don't kill every speaker attempting to do it.
The top 1000w unit looks like it's for two of the three speakers near the ceiling at the front of the house. Then you've got the next two 1000w units driving the delay speakers. After that, I'm not sure what each of the 2000w units drive.
We've got two subs, three normal speakers, and two or three (I never really bothered to look) delay speakers (all of them are JBL, including our three monitors).
I hope your arm gets better soon.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
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Here's some of our mics.

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I'm curious, what band did you buy? I want to purchase wireless mics but with the proposed auction I chickened out for this year. I really like these mics over the others that I've tried and want slowly invest in purchasing a set. Would be rack mounted with antenna paddles feeding into the distros.
 
I'm curious, what band did you buy? I want to purchase wireless mics but with the proposed auction I chickened out for this year. I really like these mics over the others that I've tried and want slowly invest in purchasing a set. Would be rack mounted with antenna paddles feeding into the distros.
They're the orange band (band I if I'm not mistaken). We also have some slightly older units that we only set up when we really need more mics that run on band D (green).

The new ones we just got a while ago sound phenomenal, crystal clear sound (provided the actor know how to wear it right).
 
My "other" booth, Atonement Lutheran church, Syracuse. I oversee
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tech and run sound and projection 3 times a month.
 
I decided to post the type of lighting controls I had in high school back in the 80's for some history...now these AREN'T my pictures or even the pictures of the actual location, but I thought I post the type of system I USED TO USE back when I was on the stage crew in high school back in the 80's...I believe the dimmers were from the 30's:

The type of dimmer board, although ours had been updated to use modern breakers and all the handles were black...the long handles were "dummies"...you could twist the short handles which would then lock onto the large handle to allow multiple dimmers to be controlled a single large handle:
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The houselights would be the set of four blue ones just above this text...they would be latched to the long handle by again twisting the short handles. If you were on your own, you'd be using your foot on the houselights while bringing up the stage lights with the upper dimmers!


The patch panel...this is where the individual lighting circuits would be tied to the dimmers, or be switched 100% on...our actual panel didn't have the dimmers there, the sockets would be tied to the dimmers shown above, with one row of sockets direct (100%):
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I wished I had actual pictures from those days, but the thing is when you're doing the work you don't think of taking pictures that you'll still have in the future!

Of course compare that to today where the "movie theatre" auditorium I run has a single 2k dimmer like the following:
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And in a month since we're updating to LED lighting we're changing to an electronic dimmer that can be remote controlled at the lectern:
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Once the renovations are done in a couple of months I'll post actual pictures of my current setup...this past summer we had six Cat6 lines put in for HDMI, VGA, USB, and AUDIO extenders, and we just put in the devices "temporarily" to see if they would all work together...now it's time to "tidy up" and make the placements permanent.
 

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