Loudspeakers Monitors

[pastajoe]

Hi everyone, I work as the sound guy (FOH) for our highschool theater.
Our auditorium holds 500 people and I'm having issues with monitor placement.
Normally I put 2 wedges on the floor in front of stage but with 16 AKG wms 400/450's on it gets really loud.
The only thing coming thru monitors is CD accom music, no actors.
I have to keep it loud so the actors don't get lost. The problem is that the mics pick up the music and doubles the house mix. (way to loud)
How do the pros do it?
Can I fly monitors to help reduce this?

Thanks for your help.

 

[DuckJordan]

Flying may not help you, I've got a list of places I try and get them, Generally my go to is on the stage 45* pointing at center every 1/3 of the way accross the stage. Another go to is if you have 4, one set in the first wings, the 2nd set would go in the 4th wing, allows usage of moving scenery (with proper cabling) but still lets them stay put throughout most of the shows i've worked on... This is one of those "A picture is worth a thousand words" situations. You may have a perfect place for them but I don't know your space or your specific monitor speakers.

Also mic placement may be needing to be addressed as well...

 

[MNicolai]

I usually do playback via side fills. I point four loudspeakers on-stage, each on stands that put them at the same height as the heads of our cast members:

1) one from stage left, just upstage of the first leg.
2) one from stage right, just upstage of the first leg.
3) one from stage left, just upstage of the third leg.
4) one from stage right, just upstage of the fourth leg.

Can't say it'll help your house mix any in comparison to having wedges in front of the stage, but because the loudspeakers play directly at the height of the cast members and shoot straight across the stage, I can keep the side fill mix quieter, whereas I bet with wedges at the front of the stage not being pointed directly at the cast you have to turn them up pretty loud for someone upstage to get decent intelligibility out of them.

 

[pastajoe]

Flying may not help you, I've got a list of places I try and get them, Generally my go to is on the stage 45* pointing at center every 1/3 of the way accross the stage. Another go to is if you have 4, one set in the first wings, the 2nd set would go in the 4th wing, allows usage of moving scenery (with proper cabling) but still lets them stay put throughout most of the shows i've worked on... This is one of those "A picture is worth a thousand words" situations. You may have a perfect place for them but I don't know your space or your specific monitor speakers.

Also mic placement may be needing to be addressed as well...

Thanks so much, as a sound guy I just want to be a safety net for the actors, I never want them to get lost in scene or song.

 

[bishopthomas]

As Nick alluded to, it's more about coverage than volume. Get a nice even coverage over the entire performance space because right now you have two huge hot spots. As the performers are in front of the wedges the bleed will be bad, when they're off axis less so. This probably means that you'll need more speakers, but you can also play around with placement as well. As others have mentioned, try them on stands as side fills. This will get them at ear level and also allow room for the sound to propagate throughout the stage. Also, good job on keeping the mics out of the wedges and only using them for playback. Good luck, let us know how it goes.

Oh yeah, and welcome to Control Booth! There's a ton of great information here if you do a search, but also feel free to ask any question you may have. There are lots of great folks from a plethora of backgrounds, so any situation you find yourself in there's bound to be someone here that's had the same troubles and dug their way out.

 

[Footer]

Also keep in mind that many stage monitors are designed to be put infront of a musician and give a very tight cone of sound to just them. Depending on the quality of your monitor this cone could be very tight. More wedges is the way you want to go putting out less sound.

 

[museav]

The ears hear what hits them and the mic picks up what hits it, the challenge is getting what the mic picks up from the actor to be louder than what it picks up from the monitors while still getting sufficient monitor level to the actors.

Probably the first thing to keep in mind is that the monitors are there for the actors/dancers to get basic cues from the music, it is not necessarily there for them to enjoy. So you may have to adjust the level and/or equalization of the monitors to give sufficient information while minimizing the potential of feedback.

How are the actors mic'd? The difference of an actor being 40' or 20' from a monitor is offset by moving the microphone from being 12" to 6" from their mouth.

As already noted, monitors have a pattern. So do microphones and how the microphone and speaker patterns interact is a potentially significant factor. Is the most sensitive part of the mic aimed at the mouth and not at the monitors? Are the monitors providing good coverage so that you don't end up turning them up in order to compensate for the lower levels where there are gaps in coverage?