As a sound
system designer this is a situation of which I am acutely aware. The reason I say that is that when I design a
system I can either take the functional goals you define and be responsible for a
system design that supports those goals or I can take a list of equipment and be responsible for using that equipment. However, I cannot be responsible for meeting the functional goals someone defines while using an equipment list someone else developed.
I'm not saying not to develop general ideas of what is wanted or even specific models where there is reason for it (tech riders, compatibility with existing gear, user familiarity,
etc.), but I see situations with people expecting the
system designer to provide a
system with a certain
level of performance while giving them no choice in the components used.
This issue is not limited to Owners either, when I worked as a
system designer for a Contractor it was initially common for the salespeople to simply provide us a list of what equipment they had sold. We would often have no idea of what the
system was supposed to do or what the Owner expected. We ran into so many cases of putting the equipment together in a completely logical manner only to have it not be what the Owner expected that we got our management to require the sales staff to provide a written narrative of what the
system would be and do for each project and that became the basis for the
system design and eventual acceptance, including our being able to modify the equipment list from sales if necessary to achieve the result defined. I still see this all the time with Contractors, their bid is an equipment list with no definition of what they are providing other than that equipment (which
in one case I know of was, much to their surprise, actually all the Owner got, a pile of equipment on a
pallet).
Put more simply, if there will eventually be someone responsible for the
system performance and result, then they should have a major
role, and probably the final say, in selecting the equipment. If there will be no such entity, then the parties selecting the equipment probably want to develop enough of a
system concept or design to verify that their equipment choices can provide the desired results. In either situation, there has to be some basis for assessing what is the desired/acceptable result.
Another common challenge in these situations is that people without
system installation experience often tend to overlook aspects such as
power,
conduit and all the other issues related to actually getting a
system installed. They also often fail to incorporate ancillary items such as cable, racks, hardware and so on into budgets. The result is too often budgets that reflect the major equipment items but not a
practical installed
system.
It sounds like you input may be invaluable in the assisting the
theatre in figuring out what they conceptually need or want but that everyone should be
clear on just what your input is and is not.