Building a Sound System- HS auditorium/theater

[manuallyfocused]

Hi all,

This is going to be one of those "How should I spend my hypothetical money?" type of threads, so be ye forewarned!

I'm a newly minted tech director/designer/teacher at a private HS (also teaching folk dance and stagecraft) and I'm working to transform our aging multi-purpose auditorium into a functional theater space. I've been told that at some point in the future they plan to gut the auditorium and turn it into a "real" theater, but that will be dependent on a donor who wants to put their name on it. So it could happen next week, or 10 years from now.
I wrote out a really long post on the lighting forum here: http://www.controlbooth.com/threads/building-a-lighting-inventory-baby-steps.37679/. It has some more info about our school and the specifics of the space, and a ton of info on what I'm thinking about doing as far as lighting goes.

For sound, I have far less information. While I'm really a set design/build guy, I've played around with lights at least a little bit, but the most I've ever done with sound is laugh at sound guy ponytail jokes and stare in slackjawed amazement at motorized faders dancing their way across massive consoles (while being operated by an awesome sound guy with a ponytail). That's only a little bit facetious, I still think motorized faders are possibly the coolest thing ever.

We rent essentially our entire sound system for our primary musical production every year, and have a pretty minimal (and not terribly functional) system in place as our house setup. It consists of a 24(?) channel analog Mackie mixer, an ancient speaker cluster suspended above the proscenium, two cove speakers that our sound designer says exist only to create feedback, and two small fill speakers in the back half of the house. We have no com system, and no build in networks. Like our in-house lighting setup, all of these things get completely bypassed when we do our larger shows, to the tune of probably $9k in rental charges per year. Even for our smaller shows and events we often end up setting up small PA systems. I'd like to see us do a bit better.

I'm working up both a grant proposal for a full system overhaul (within a roughly $30k budget initially, then $20-25k/yr for the next two years. We're going to ask several donor organizations for $20-50k apiece, and with any luck a few of them will come through)) and a more modest proposal to spend chunks of our regular budget on buying equipment instead of renting it. So figure $75k overall for the higher end, but spread out over time, with the assumption that we'll continue to rent in at least some of the equipment to patch any holes in the setup. If the grants don't come through, then I'll be stuck trying to implement some kind of incremental upgrade plan on a rough budget of $3-4k/yr (but let's be optimistic for now!).

Our basic production needs are as follows. Our auditorium is a multi-purpose space (no fixed seating) that can seat up to 400 for assembly, usually around 240-300 for our larger productions and concerts.

One musical production per year- cast of 24-35, orchestra of 6-12 pieces, sound fx, etc. Our sound guy (no ponytail) usually hangs 4 K10s roughly mid-house plus some other powered speaker for front fill (not sure what model), mixes on an A&H digital console, brings in wireless Clear-com, and had 24 wireless body pack mics for our last show.

One smaller production per year- sometimes musical, sometimes not. Cast of up to 20, orchestra of no more than 6 pieces. I don't think we rent in a package for this, and make due with the in-house speakers augmented by a PA system.

2-3 orchestra/music concerts per year- up to 20-piece orchestras plus choir and vocalists, may grow as the student body shifts and more students become interested in music and arts (400 students total in the school).
We have a different sound guy who does these, and brings in a digital mixer and a couple of PA speakers on stands and a bunch of DJ lighting.

1 dance concert/yr- sometimes with live music, sometimes not

1 all arts evening per year- various acts from all the arts divisions, everything from orchestra to sketch comedy. Same sound guy as the music concerts with a similar setup.

All-school prayer services once a week- usually involving a smaller band (4-5 pieces), projections, and sometimes multiple vocalists and/or choir (these may move to the gym for next year as the school is getting too large for the auditorium). We usually set up a PA system for these.

All school Town Hall meetings once a week- usually at least one wireless mic, and possibly A/V as well as occasional performances from orchestra, choir, and dance

Other various events throughout the year- science fair, media presentations, lectures, dances, and rentals.


We have a lot of different uses for the space, so a flexible system is a must.

Here's what thoughts and suggestions I've gotten so far, and I would definitely appreciate any help or suggestions you all may have!

Mixer- Soundcraft SI Expression 3 with a mini stagebox or two and MADI cards and cable to connect them. Is 66 inputs enough?

Speakers- 4 K10s for over the audience, 1 K12 for front fill?

Wired clear com- belt packs for SM, LBO, SBO, LD, director, conductor, ASMs SR and SL plus base stations and/or wall stations as needed

Enough IEM for our musical orchestras, plus a few extra as needed

Mics- a few more wireless and wired mics to complement our existing setup (and probably some specialized ones for our various instruments). Is it worth purchasing the infrastructure for the wireless body pack mics (rack-mounted base stations, processor, etc.?) but rent the mics, or would it be better to rent the system? Or should we just bite the bullet and plan to buy the whole thing?

We have cam-lok if we need any kind of power distro, but I don't remember sound being hooked up to anything other than wall power in the past.

Anything I'm missing? We have some ethernet in the building, mostly wireless because the building was built long before the internet was a thing, so if I want to incorporate some sort of network (Cobranet?) we would need to have someone run the Cat5e cable on or through the walls.


Thanks for reading through all that, looking forward to any thoughts you all may have!

 

[Max Warasila]

Few basic points:

Number one - This is the big one. Hire an acoustic consultant to work out any installed speaker system. Always always always. Listen to their recommendations, understand the cost of the system, and let them find and hire the sound contractor to do the work.

Number two - This is a conglomeration of sayings we have over at the Sound Forums.
- The wrong piece of gear at the right price is still the wrong piece of gear.
- It's not the gear, it's the ears.
- Buy once, cry once.
And one from DSL's Ivan Beaver in particular - Physics, not fads. I say all these to sum up that being attached or enamored by the gear is the worst thing you could possibly do. Gear are tools in a sound operators tool box. The most important thing is that the sound operator is trained and that the gear reflects their realistic workflow. Don't get attached to particular gear, don't get shiny stuff because it's shiny. Carefully go through your realistic needs and determine what gear best fits your situation. It may not be what you expect.

Number three - Invest in people first, then the gear.

Number four, and final - Don't over reach. You don't need everything to be top of the line right at the start. Fancy mixers and processing are fun and cool, but your front end (microphones and PA) are where you want to put most of the eggs in your basket.


Now, onto your particular questions. As far as the mixer, the Expression is a great console at a great price. Make sure to demo any console you are considering in your space before purchase. I'd also suggest making a list of all of the inputs you need for your typical usage scenario. So far the biggest show I see are your musicals, which when fully miked normally need no more than 24 or so microphones, and with additional microphones for both stage and orchestra if you desire, I don't see you desperately needing more than 48 channels (plus maybe one or two stereo). Speakers should really be designed and implemented by a reputable consultant. I don't know anyone out in the LA area, but I'm sure someone here or on the LAB or Soundfourms sites could help you out. Personally I'm unimpressed with the K array. I'm sure it works perfectly somewhere, however.

IEMs make no sense from my perspective, and should be on the bottom of your list. Perhaps I misunderstand where they will be placed, but with a space your size they should be listening to the stage rather than in ears. While we're on the topic of comms, you've got the right idea. Get the system installed by a reputable contractor, yada yada yada... again I don't know anyone out where you are but I'm sure they are there.

Wireless microphones are an interesting dilemma, and my advice is to either bite the bullet or to slowly by in while renting to make up the slack. Currently, Shure QLX-D and ULX-D are my recommended choices, but for mass quantity and a cheap price, the Audio-Technica ATW-3000 series is always an option. Microphones should be bought. Countryman are the industry standard, but the other brands are certainly usable. My low-cost recommendation is Microphone Madness. I prefer headset microphones, but it's a choice you should make for your style of show as to whether or not you use headset/earset microphones or lavalier microphones. Wireless is expensive to rent, and should most certainly be bought if regularly used. If you have any sister schools or ones that you cooperate with regularly, ask them to borrow before renting. We do that all the time around here, but we are a school system with hundreds of facilities to request assistance from.

As far as networking goes, Dante is the future, Cobranet is my least second least favorite, only beat out by Ethersound... what a useless protocol. Dante is flexible, cheap to implement, and widely supported. However, audio networking likely is not necessary save for a digital snake from a stagebox if you go that route.

Best of luck. If you have more questions, I'll check back on this thread a few times.

 

[manuallyfocused]

Hi Max,

Thanks for taking the time to respond! I actually have an acoustic consultant that I worked with on a completely different type of project a few years ago (a synagogue in San Diego) who I may be able to bring in on this, thanks for the suggestion. The only snag is that the majority of his work experience is in creating screening and ADR studios for the film industry, so I doubt his recommendations would fit our budget, but perhaps he can point us in the direction of someone more appropriate.

As far as investing in people and the right "ears," we're in a bit of a quandary because the sound person we've been using had a lot of trouble with our last show and our director may be done using him (we also had some major difficulties with lighting, so now that it's over we may be in the "let's fix it for next time" phase). Whether that's true or not remains to be seen, but at the moment he isn't returning my calls to ask for his recommendations on what gear to look at purchasing, hence my posting on this forum. My assumption for now is that it's going to either be me, the music teacher, or a TBD student or outside hire who will be setting up and running any gear we purchase, so I'm doing my best to look at simple setup and quick learning curve over latest and greatest. In a perfect world, I'd drag a friend of mine in who's doing a masters in sound design at UC Irvine, but he's been buried under work lately and hasn't made it out to look at the space.

Our orchestra for the musicals moves around, so I think the theory behind the IEM for them was to make it easier for their monitor mixes to be fine-tuned as they cannot always hear what's going on onstage- we always build out from the stage for our productions, which means we don't have a set orchestra pit. For Cabaret last year we built a 2' high passarele out around them and they were out front, which they hated because they could be seen too well. For Spelling Bee this year, the orchestra was shunted off to the side of the house stage left (and we kept the 40" tall barrier I made for future re-use), and two years ago for Rent the orchestra was completely upstage of the rest of the set so we put a video camera on the conductor and sent the feed out to an LCD monitor hanging from the lighting pipe. Along with the idea of the Si Expression, IEM was one of the suggestions I was able to get from our sound guy before he went incommunicado.

I'll cross Cobranet off the list and take a good look at Dante. Since we mix from the back of the house and our microphone base stations are usually backstage, we'd need to be constantly running a cable snake and taking it back apart as the space is reconfigured for different events. If I can run cable either permanently through the wall or semi-permanently through the dropped ceiling it could make patching everything in a lot less frustrating, whether that's a networked protocol over Cat5e or the digital snake itself.

Really appreciate your thoughts!

 

[kiwitechgirl]

Honestly, the orchestra really doesn't need monitor mixes (and brass and wind players will, as often as not, be unable to use IEMs anyway due to occlusion. I work with a trombone player who can't even use earplugs because they make his skull bones vibrate differently causing his eyes to move enough that he finds it hard to read the music!). I've got a show running at the moment with the orchestra under the stage and so long as the conductor can hear the singers, the orchestra doesn't usually need to (we have five sets of headphones in for a 50 piece orchestra). A foldback speaker by the conductor should really be enough.

 

[Max Warasila]

I agree with the fold back monitor for the conductor. It's the universal solution for orchestra monitors; occasionally the rest of the orchestra gets fills.

Running a bunch of Cat5e to and from stage is worth investing in for other reasons. If you ever really get going, it makes an ArtNet transition easier, too. Most digital snakes are Cat5e now, so if you go the digital mixer route you'll likely use it anyway. If you get excited...

If not in someone else's ears, perhaps invest in your own. It will certainly help if you need to teach a student every few years.

 

[rwhealey]

Like others have mentioned, I think you are focusing too much on the gear for a couple reasons. Even system architecture and transport protocols (Dante, etc...) are probably too specific at this point. First, it sounds like you are at least four years out from the end of this project (school construction happens in summers - you have this summer spent fundraising and the next three for construction, assuming you get the money in time and still have time to do the design and start construction next summer). I have no doubt that Soundcraft will have a new board out in four years in the Expression price range, so picking the gear now won't help later. You should focus on requirements - what you need now in terms of I/O and what you will need in the future. Second, as the theater's tech director you should be steering the project goals rather than the project implementation. Instead of thinking exact pieces of gear you need, think about what that equipment does and focus on why you want it. Then, bring that information to a professional acoustical consultant. They might be aware of equipment you've never heard of but fits your requirements better. A good consultant will take your requirements and use their experience to find the best equipment for your project.

 

[manuallyfocused]

Thanks for the continued comments and thoughts!

One of the reasons I'm focusing on current gear possibilities in addition to overall project goals is that I'm trying to proceed on two separate tracks- one, assuming that we're able to get a grant to fund the lump purchase of all the elements we need, and the second if we are unable to secure funding and have to proceed by building the system slowly by using a portion of our current rental budget each year (i.e., run Cat5e cable and buy speakers in year 1 and rent a slightly smaller package, buy stagebox and a few mics in year 2, mixer in year 3, etc.). I'm looking to be as flexible as possible in our gear choices, both for the nature of the use of the space and the potential temporary nature of the system, given that the overall goal is to scrap the auditorium in favor of a purpose-built theater.

I presume that whatever gear recommendations I put into the proposal will change in the time it takes any funding to come through. Luckily, I like doing research .

 

[josh88]

It's a little late to this thread, but for others in this boat reading, it may be helpful. I have a sound upgrade/renovation scheduled for my space this summer and the bid process started with a quote of $100k (this included a new projector and all the wireless we usually rent). We ended up at new speakers, subs, and monitors, an x32 various new conduit runs and racks for all the new gear and got down to $47k. No wireless as we decided the price we get for rental would take around 5 years to recoup and we'd have added maintenance costs.

I think it's worth mentioning lots of people (especially in administration) forget about labor costs for installations. AND we're the perfect example of "do it once, do it right" sound has been terrible from the start and before my time they threw $25k at it with no results, and 13 years later this should finally fix the problems. Though we still don't have any comm system.

Hope everything goes well for you!

 

[manuallyfocused]

Well, it's almost two years later and I wanted to give a bit of an update as to what ended up happening:

We ended up purchasing an X32 console and X32 Rack console last year after having rented both multiple times for musicals and other events. We have not had to rent a console for anything this year, including our musical production (though maybe we should have, more on that in a bit) and that has saved us at least $1000 over the course of the year. We got the X32s primarily for the X32 rack's ability to function as mixer and as stagebox, and for the ease of the AES50 networking between them. The Soundcraft we were looking at just didn't have that capability at the time.

At the end of last year our parent organization decided to give us funds to update the PA in the auditorium, so in December we got our new system installed (JBL CBT70J-E speakers for main LR, JBL AM7212-64 for center fill, JBL Control 28 delay speakers, and a pair of Carvin 18" subs we had previously purchased, driven by 2 Crown CDi-2000 amps for mains/center/delay and a QSC PLX3002 we alread had for the subs). We picked up an extra X32 Rack console to run the system, giving us a clean(er) desk in our tiny sound booth and the ability to easily place the X32 console front-of-house when we have a larger show. The 2nd X32 Rack lives in a portable rack with a couple of amps, and can be either a digital snake onstage or run our events in the gym or offsite. I'm now able to be in the room with a tablet during our events, and have a hugely greater understanding of gain, EQ, system design, networking, and everything else than I did when I first started this thread. I'm still learning a ton as I go, but I feel much more confident in this area moving forward (and my students are getting a much more complete overview of analog and digital sound than they were able to get before. Now when they have their phones out in the back of assemblies, I know they have the X32 app open and are watching the mix!)

I got funds from the IT department to run Cat6 through the existing empty conduit in the ceiling, and now have 5 runs going from the booth to the stage terminating in Ethercon wallplates (3 SR, 2 SL) that I can patch into the sound system, or our lighting console, or anything else we need. During our musical production in January, we ended up using them for the X32 Rack digital snake and bi-directional video for the conductor as we had to put the orchestra on a rolling platform upstage.

We also invested in a decent inventory of XLR cable and speaker cable, and have steadily increased our microphone inventory (we got lavaliers for the Sennheiser wireless from Bodymics.com that performed reasonably well during the musical. Most importantly, the kids didn't manage to break any of them, while they destroyed probably a half dozen of the countryman E6 and B3 mics that we rented along with Shure ULX-Ds). We got Sennheiser e604s and an e609, and a Shure 55 (we did Grease, so we needed a vintage-looking mic for Johnny Casino), along with a couple Bartlett stage floor mics to use for ensembles, choir, and other purposes. We also picked up some Audix ADX51 condenser mics and AKG P170 condensers that have been used variously as drum overheads, choir mics, and area mics for dramatic productions.

So that's all well and good, but we still have a ways to go. I feel like we're in a really good place for our needs 11 months out of the year, but the musical was still a bit of a mess (it's always been a mess on the sound side of things, so most of the audience didn't care too much). Much of this was due to our set design (mea culpa), which brought the stage out 20' into the house and right into the focus of the LRC speakers of the new PA system. And of course, despite it being a thrust stage design with audience on three sides, our director blocked 80% of the show on the first 6' of that thrust stage with the kids' backs to the side audiences, so they were always right in a prime spot for feedack.

It drove our new sound designer crazy, plus we ran out of inputs on the X32 so she had to mix the orchestra on an iPad connected to the X32 Rack (and she came in without experience with the X32). We had a total of 24 wireless mics plus 3 area mics, and the orchestra ended up with at least 20 inputs. On the plus side, the experience of helping her get the system set up got me a full understanding of routing on the X32. Had we perhaps rented a console system she was more familiar with the issues might have been less, but ultimately by the last few performances the feedback was under control and hopefully she'll be back for next year.

Not exactly a great audition for the new PA, but the next month we had a band concert that went really well and the audio tech for that one loved the new PA speakers (he is much more familiar with the X32, so running things with our house system was much easier). Since then we've done a number of assemblies and worship services, including one with 5 wireless sources in the middle of the room (2 handhelds, 1 earset, and 2 wireless guitars) and they've gone quite well with me mixing. Now I just need to learn more about EQ, compression, and effects and I might get things to actually sound good.

So in the future, now that I understand more about the pitfalls I'm going to try to reign our director in on her need to expand the stage out past the PA system for the musical. If our sound designer returns for next year, she's going to get a lot more say in the system design and more budgetary freedom to rent what she needs either exclusive of or in conjunction with our house system, and hopefully come in on the project about 6 months earlier than she did this year. If she wants to stick with the X32, I was thinking of trying to get either an X32 compact or an X-touch so she can have access to more faders (and more DCAs, in the case of the X32 compact). I understand that it's not as ideal as having a single console with more capacity, but it will be an improvement over the iPad experience from this year.

Aside from the musical, we're still falling short when it comes to events in the gymnasium, and having a kit to do events offsite. The gym really needs some major acoustic treatment, but that's going to take some big donor funding that has yet to materialize. As far as a portable kit goes, we have a pair of K10 speakers that we can use wherever we need them and a pair of JBL Eon 612s that I hate, and I'm currently trying to get the school to get us another pair of K10s along with a pair of K12s (we rent them currently for at least 5 events during the year, so I think it makes economic sense to invest in our own). With 6 speakers and our portable X32 rack setup (and maybe a powered sub or two in the future) we should have a pretty reasonable kit for most of what we do outside the auditorium.

Thanks for all of the help along the way, I'm very thankful for the expertise and patience of this community!