Hey everyone,
I have read multiple posts about troubleshooting frequency distribution as well as many of the FAQ's but was hoping for some personal input regarding and optimum sound setup for my space.
As a High School it is hard enough getting quality sound equipment due to budgetary constraints, but now that I have a fairly large supply of quality microphones I am struggling with a substantial amount of RF and element troubles, and was looking for some advice.
To begin with; I cannot for the life of me stop my students for destroying the over the ear elements that I am purchasing. Many of them are quality Shure elements, but I keep getting shorts in the wires, and connectors. Usually just below the ear and right by the connector to the transmitter. I have instructed the students to tape their elements with a little bit of slack right at the neck before the ear so that it doesn't pull tightly in those areas, as well as on their hips with a little slack before the connector but it doesn't seem to help. So my question is, is there really that great of a difference in the quality of pickup and performance of the over the ear mic's verses the lavaliere boxes? I have found the lavalieres to be much more durable.
If there is a big difference, does anyone have any suggestions for minimizing damage to the over the ear mic's, or minimizing the performance quality when switching to the lavalieres?
Second on my list of "Novice High School Tech Problems" is my sound system itself. I know that many forums encourage the testing of equipment before the reconfiguring of the microphone setup, but being a new school our setup is in flux and therefore I would like to try and optimize how the equipment is set up to eliminate problems in future productions. In past productions we had a lot of difficulties with mic's cutting our or random interference within the frequencies, and I was looking for ways to minimize this.
Currently our system consists of 14 Shure SLX4 receivers ranging with a variety of H5's G4's and L4's as well as 4 700 Series Audio Technicas. We have a Single Antenna and Power distro that used to be with four of the Shure's in our tower in the booth, but after our snake shorted to the mixing console snake output in the house we pulled the four mic's out and haven't installed the antenna distributor back into the system....
The theater is set up with a 46' wide proscenium, 23 foot tall and 26 foot deep. The first FOH mixing station (which we usually only use during musicals and main stage productions) is about 35' in front of the house, level with the stage (maybe a foot or two higher than the stage), the sound booth where our tower is, and our current antenna distribution is mounted is about 60' - 70' away, about 20 feet above the stage and doesn't have any real room to place the microphones where they wouldn't be behind a cinder block wall. Whenever we are doing events other than our main stage shows (meetings, conferences, band concerts, choir concerts etc) we often have the sound board back up in the booth.
Now I am wondering what our best options would be; in your potentially professional opinions:
To try and maximize our equipment and minimize our problems should I....
1. Set up all of the microphone receivers in the booth in road boxes so that they can perform their necessary duties from in the booth during normal use and then bring them down to the mixing console in the house during main performances.
2. Set up all of the microphone receivers in the booth and purchase an Antenna Distributor for each set of four to try and amplify and optimize their frequency reception. (Not sure if the amplification in the distributor simply allows the one antenna to work for four, or if it actually strengthens the antenna's ability to pick up signal)
3. Set up a series of antenna distributors that have antenna runs from a series of antenna's in the catwalks (23 ft above the stage) that then have COAX runs down to our 1st FOH mix. I'm not sure if this is a better option, because with the set up of our school, unless we want to have awkward cables strung along the walls it would take almost a 60'-70' run to get from the catwalks, to the basement, and then back up to the FOH mix.
4. We have 6 mic ports back stage on in either wing that meet up with the snake, so we also have the potential of creating two sets of side stage microphones (4 with antenna distribution, and 2 stand alone) as well as a group of 6 mic's at the FOH mix by the board.
5. Or try and purchase a single mic distributor and stack multiple road boxes of mics at the sound area next to the sound board. The only problem I have then is that if I stack all of them above audience height they begin to create significant sight line troubles for the audience directly behind the sound board.
6. As stated in the previous option just without a large sum of antenna distributors to save money...
7. Is there a more reliable kind of antenna I could purchase for each of the units to strengthen their ability to receive signals?
Ok, I realize that I lot of this may be highly questionable in regard to the appropriate terminology, as well as many of the purposed options might be obviously insufficient. For this, all I can say is... "I'm still learning".
Please let me know if you have any other suggestions or questions regarding specifications!
Thanks for all the help!
- James Dykstra
I have read multiple posts about troubleshooting frequency distribution as well as many of the FAQ's but was hoping for some personal input regarding and optimum sound setup for my space.
As a High School it is hard enough getting quality sound equipment due to budgetary constraints, but now that I have a fairly large supply of quality microphones I am struggling with a substantial amount of RF and element troubles, and was looking for some advice.
To begin with; I cannot for the life of me stop my students for destroying the over the ear elements that I am purchasing. Many of them are quality Shure elements, but I keep getting shorts in the wires, and connectors. Usually just below the ear and right by the connector to the transmitter. I have instructed the students to tape their elements with a little bit of slack right at the neck before the ear so that it doesn't pull tightly in those areas, as well as on their hips with a little slack before the connector but it doesn't seem to help. So my question is, is there really that great of a difference in the quality of pickup and performance of the over the ear mic's verses the lavaliere boxes? I have found the lavalieres to be much more durable.
If there is a big difference, does anyone have any suggestions for minimizing damage to the over the ear mic's, or minimizing the performance quality when switching to the lavalieres?
Second on my list of "Novice High School Tech Problems" is my sound system itself. I know that many forums encourage the testing of equipment before the reconfiguring of the microphone setup, but being a new school our setup is in flux and therefore I would like to try and optimize how the equipment is set up to eliminate problems in future productions. In past productions we had a lot of difficulties with mic's cutting our or random interference within the frequencies, and I was looking for ways to minimize this.
Currently our system consists of 14 Shure SLX4 receivers ranging with a variety of H5's G4's and L4's as well as 4 700 Series Audio Technicas. We have a Single Antenna and Power distro that used to be with four of the Shure's in our tower in the booth, but after our snake shorted to the mixing console snake output in the house we pulled the four mic's out and haven't installed the antenna distributor back into the system....
The theater is set up with a 46' wide proscenium, 23 foot tall and 26 foot deep. The first FOH mixing station (which we usually only use during musicals and main stage productions) is about 35' in front of the house, level with the stage (maybe a foot or two higher than the stage), the sound booth where our tower is, and our current antenna distribution is mounted is about 60' - 70' away, about 20 feet above the stage and doesn't have any real room to place the microphones where they wouldn't be behind a cinder block wall. Whenever we are doing events other than our main stage shows (meetings, conferences, band concerts, choir concerts etc) we often have the sound board back up in the booth.
Now I am wondering what our best options would be; in your potentially professional opinions:
To try and maximize our equipment and minimize our problems should I....
1. Set up all of the microphone receivers in the booth in road boxes so that they can perform their necessary duties from in the booth during normal use and then bring them down to the mixing console in the house during main performances.
2. Set up all of the microphone receivers in the booth and purchase an Antenna Distributor for each set of four to try and amplify and optimize their frequency reception. (Not sure if the amplification in the distributor simply allows the one antenna to work for four, or if it actually strengthens the antenna's ability to pick up signal)
3. Set up a series of antenna distributors that have antenna runs from a series of antenna's in the catwalks (23 ft above the stage) that then have COAX runs down to our 1st FOH mix. I'm not sure if this is a better option, because with the set up of our school, unless we want to have awkward cables strung along the walls it would take almost a 60'-70' run to get from the catwalks, to the basement, and then back up to the FOH mix.
4. We have 6 mic ports back stage on in either wing that meet up with the snake, so we also have the potential of creating two sets of side stage microphones (4 with antenna distribution, and 2 stand alone) as well as a group of 6 mic's at the FOH mix by the board.
5. Or try and purchase a single mic distributor and stack multiple road boxes of mics at the sound area next to the sound board. The only problem I have then is that if I stack all of them above audience height they begin to create significant sight line troubles for the audience directly behind the sound board.
6. As stated in the previous option just without a large sum of antenna distributors to save money...
7. Is there a more reliable kind of antenna I could purchase for each of the units to strengthen their ability to receive signals?
Ok, I realize that I lot of this may be highly questionable in regard to the appropriate terminology, as well as many of the purposed options might be obviously insufficient. For this, all I can say is... "I'm still learning".
Please let me know if you have any other suggestions or questions regarding specifications!
Thanks for all the help!
- James Dykstra
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