Backstage sound systems

ccfan213 said:
[quote="JasonH"
"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"
ahhh i dont even wanna get started on my soundchecks yesterday... the bands ignored my calls to come to the auditorium and we ended up doing soundchecks up till the minute the doors opened.[/quote]

just do what i do...if they're late they've waived their right for a soundcheck. hell, i only check the opener anyways..just to get the levels set right. and if they don't load in on time, then screw em....no soundcheck...i'll do it on the fly.

of course i don't know what kind of bands you're working with. i'm talking about locals. the bigger bands...you kinda have to give them a soundcheck...and it usually is quite helpfull to you. but the local bands i get...half of them don't even know how to play well...so a soundcheck is just a waste of my time. of course, it always gives me a chance to tell those darn guitarists to TURN DOWN!
 
We have a total of 4 amps on our system. 1 for the house, one for the onstage monitors, one for the stage manager's monitor, and one for the backstage monitor.

We use Aux Sends on our Mackie board to feed them the live sound from onstage and use the talkback channel on our board to direct a mic only to the Aux Sends. This way, the house is completely ignored from it (unless we push the button to go to the Main Mix). This works pretty well...The actors just have to listen so they don't miss their cues....They're good at missing cues. We're good at yelling at them.
 
JasonH said:
Who has got one? What speakers do you use? What amp and what pickup mic?

I'm going to be installing my system starting this friday. I'm using all 12" square baffle 6" 70v paging speakers. I've got two of them in the hallways SR and SL hallways, one of them in the changing room and another in the backstage room used to cross from SR to SL. I've got a 60 watt 6 channel TOA mixer/amp i'm using to drive the system. I've got an old sony unidirectional mic hanging over the stage to feed the system. I patched the microphone into a channel on my console and i'm feeding aux 6 into the TOA mixer amp. Its going to work pretty well I think :)

thats exactly waht i do exept,

i use a mx202 instead of that sony mic

i made a little patch bay of 4 xlr jacks, 1 1/4" jack to feed the toa mixer as well as my aux 4 line

i had an old shure cb like mic that i pluged into that patchbay so i can talk directly backstage.

my aud was already wire for the speakers, i just had to hook them up and send them signal
 
JasonH said:
"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"

I remember those days. IMO, multi-band events are the worst. The way I solved the problem was to have a contract with each band. It specified that each band would arrive between X and Y times. They would load in their own stuff at Door Z and be assembled off Stage Left at time P. They understood that if they were late (late meaning missing any players or equipment at their appointed times) they were cut from the program. Plus, the times listed on the contract were always 15 - 30 minutes before I needed them there. Worked like a charm.

As for backstage sound, most places we work don't have them, so we have to run clearcoms. Usually, we do one for stage manager/dimmer beach and one for green room, if there is one. We used to run one to the monitor mix, but then we figured out that you could just run a mic line from FOH to monitors and signal monitors via laser pointer, which takes a lot less time than running another clearcom backstage.
 
JasonH wrote:


"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"

I work in a dinner theatre. Our doors open to the public 2 hours before the performance begins. Even though they are all told in advance, you'd be suprised how many acts come in at hour call and expect a sound check. Sorry - you can still go on, but we'll be adjusting your sound on the fly. :roll:

For backstage monitoring, we have a system we refer to as ILS (independant listening system). There's an old unidirectional mic hanging over the stage that feeds an independant 70 volt pa system, which runs ceiling speakers backstage and 70v monitors in the booths. It's great to have the system independant for work calls and load-in / out's, when you can hear someone calling you on stage from back in the hallways... regardless of the current state of dissaray the sound board is in at the time.

We also have a video monitor system, both standard FOH and infrared... as well as a conductor cam (our orchestra isn't in the house - they're backstage. We have video monitors attatched to the bottom of our catwalk so the actors can see orchestral cues.

As far as deck cues and automation, we have a cue light system (just a bunch of switches in the SM booth which turn on lights backstage) and a clear-com system. I'm actually re-thinking the whole cue light setup, as the current one is incredibly unsafe... an electrical accident waiting to happen.
 
With my advice the drama/theater department, we have put a kabosh on crappy bands (student bands. if someone reserves the aud. and asks for pa then i give it to them) using our pa. the last talent show we had, 2 58's, 3 boom stands, and a 30' XLR cord "Walked Away". so i get to point and laugh at them try and set up thier crappy pa's. they usually end up being way under powered and the singer usually hooks into and extra guitar amp instead. it's so funny
 
Just stumbled onto this site today. Way to go. A great idea we had was to use this great program called Skype. We just ran through our submix a cable directly into a line in input on our computer. Skype made a phone call to our other computers in dressing rooms and backstage. We just got by with small amplified computer speakers to reproduce the sound and tell everyone to get ready for the next number5.
 
Hmm cool idea!! I have heard of skype, but never actually used it. It is an interent-phone type program right? I belive you can buy a subscription to make phone calls to regular phones, or you can just call other skype users for free, am I right? I would be interested in looking if that audio stream actually goes all the way out over the interent and then back into your building (potential for delay) or if it is more computuer-to-computer and if it could be run on a network instead of over the interent (for buildings without interent or with very slow internet).

Oh ya, hey, Welcome to Controlbooth.com! Please dont be a stranger! You obviously have neat ideas and I am looking forward to hearing more! and I hope we can help you out too!

Welcome to Controlbooth.com
--The Official Welcome Wagon (part 2)
 
Yea we used Skype over the Internet. Of course it is connected to a T-1 so the Internet speeds were fast. There was a delay at first of mybe a second, but after running long enough the delay went away. We just set up multiple account for the other computers and made a group call so everyone could get the feed!
 
"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"

Yes. Last years battle of the bands (@ my school) was hell. The last band's frontman/bassist, right after soundcheck, started complaining to me about the "crappy mics" I was using (they were not, I was using Shure Beta 87's for vocals, Sennheiser E609's and Shure SM86's for guitar, AKG D112 and Shure SM86 for bass, and mostly Audio Technica drum mics. He started insisting that I use his Behringer mics for vocals. I told him that these were top of the line mics that we paid good money for to rent, and that he sounded better on the 87, anyway. I just tried it with the behringer, but after one note switched it back to the 87's (His mics were the crappy ones, not ours!). Then he brought out this el cheapo Kustom PA system and said he was using them for monitors. I told him we already had 10 Electrovoice stage monitors set up onstage and backstage, and his 100w system (which i was doing my best not to burst into laughter about) would have no use, and we could crank up our monitors more. He apparently liked to complain, because he gave our LD and lighting engineers an earful for no apparent reason, too. The show went well, but the soundcheck was certainly one to remember!

Our backstage system is basically the EV monitors running on an aux send. I also have an SM58 as a talkback mic. FOH was 4 EAW speakers and two Bose subwoofers (I dont know why they get such a bad rap around here. I do sound at a local baseball stadium with Panaray LT's, and with the right EQing, they sound amazing.) Our board was an Allen and Heath GL3300 and a Mackie 1604VLZPro.
 
When you do concert audio like i do, or even just a battle of the bands at you school be prepared for sound chackes to last at least till doors or later(pushing doors back) its a fact of life.
 
oh yeah on annother note the only people who complain about equipment are the up and comming local acts lol i had a local that insisted we bring in a yam ga32 instead of the spirit5m we had and a midas siena rather than the PM4k oh well they paid for it as for crappy equip i had a guy ask for a mackie 32x4 over my personal a&h gl3800 40 chan
 
well ive had bad expierences, with singers screaming into a mic telling me its not working, when the reason its not working is because they were standing infront of a drum set and thus couldnt hear them selves, eveyone else could thou...to much. For a while we ignored giving actors mic lessons, but im tired of it so from now on they all are gonna have to sit down and learn how to use a mic. For monitors ill just run an aux send to the stage in our patch from the booth(we have a 25 channel snake running through the atic that come out on stage) and hook up a pair of jbls or a pair of unpowered peaves, but usually we dont need monitor systems, because our myer MTS-4s along with center cluster work really nicely, and can be heard in the lobbie, and if i want for all surrounding buildings. so i dont often use backstage speakers, but if i do ill wire up an aux send.
 
PA system. what are you talking about you want something done on stage or anywhere near it, you send a tech up there, even better when you have a total of three techs only one of which is usually working, me.
 
We used to just send a tech back to get performers, but then we just hooked up an unused wireless unit from our sound system to the dressing room computer speakers. This worked except you had to use batteries in the transmitter. Now we have a camera set up so we have a video monitor and use the microphone on the camera.
 

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