Overkill?

[scarlco]

Well put, Andy. I wish the sound designers who preceded me at my venue had thought of the "Left Center Right" configuration (where left and right are orch, and center is vocals). Our budget is currently limited, and I'm having a hard time trying to get that past the producers. When myself and my partner took over the design, the theatre's biggest complaint was sound issues. We've gotten a great deal better - props to Jon, my associate and house engineer - but the LCR setup would be so nice. Not enough Apogees to spread around, tho. :roll:

 

[Inaki2]

A lot of sidecars also have dedicated bus outputs and inputs so you can also link the groups, etc, so essentially you can "daisy-chain" consoles and have 2 work as one, one being a slave of the other. MIDAS boards (I doubt the Verona has it though) have multipins for this, as well as something called CAN (Console Area Network) to pass on Mutes, VCAs and automation between them. This is all too much into big consoles like the one in my pic.

 

[freshmantech]

yay verona...:-( $$

While the verona is awesome and will do everything you need and then some, is it really worth that price for your show. Again, as was stated above, I have had very bad luck using sidecar mixers for anything other than a pit orchestra mix. I personally would recomend a mackie large format board or a sound craft - the GB-4 comes in a 44 (?) and 52 ch set-up and sounds decent for a much lower price than the verona. Again, it is how much money you have. Finally, using 25 lav's in any show is usually un-necessary -> can you make up a scene list for actors to (while supervised) "trade" mic's? If so you could probably get down to about 15 lav's and eleminate the necessity for another console.

Hope that helped!

-Michael
Senior Designer
Cherry Creek High School
http://www.creektheatre.com

 

[TassieBogan]

Firstly, the Klark Teknic crossover I had in mind is a digital wonderland with 2 inputs and 5 outputs. Each of the 5 outputs is completely configurable with delay, frequency range and hordes of other useful settings.

Is the Verona worth it for this show?? Well congratulations freshmantech, you've hit the nail on the head. At the moment I'm leaning toward yes. Mainly because our college runs a 600 seat theatre, the second biggest in tasmania, and then only by about 20 seats. The company doing this show is charging about 23 dollars for a ticket, so if we get 1\4 of a full house on only one night, it's paid off!

 

[blsmn]

TassieBogan -

When making your final choice for a console rental take a hard look at what exactly you will need and want for the show. Having mixed on a Venice I know Midas consoles are sweet sounding, but does the Verona have all the features you will want to run the show. I don't want to keep bringing this up, but having a console that has programable mute patches for a show with that many lavs will make life a hell of a lot easier for you. Even if you do manage to whittle it down to 15 or so mics, that still is a substantial number to try to effectively mute/unmute when they are needed to be. As an option (and if it is available for a rental) take a look at an Allen & Heath GL4000 or even something in the ML series. Looking at what specs I could find for the Verona I see it has 4 mute groups but says nothing about any kind of programable mute patches. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but that is one feature that anyone doing large musicals with multiple lavs should have. You might want to take a gander at digital consoles also. I guess what I'm saying is that while Midas's are sweet they may not always be the right choice for the application.

 

[TassieBogan]

I don't think PW have a console with mute scenes. The only other FOH console they have is the venice and an XL 200, which is far too big (and expensive) for our purposes. I have worked a show with 17 mics before (on a venice, without so much as mute groups) , and as long as you attend all the rehearsals beforehand it's fine. :wink:

Getting a console from interstate isn't an option, because being tasmania, we're kind of isolated.

 

[blsmn]

Yea, I can see your isolation predicament - hell, you're one up on me - I didn't know there was a college in Tasmania In that case, you will be very happy with the Verona And for what it's worth, if you do ever use a console with mute scenes for a musical you will never go back :wink:

 

[Inaki2]

Yeah, only 4 mute grous on the Verona

 

[jammers]

>"There's no such thing as a 5-way crossover"<

Yes there is, we hire a five way funktion-one system mainly for dance events (sub, bass, low mid, high mid, high) using XTA digital x-overs. 5way is too much for typical live music events tho! Not a great need for that 30hz extension live IMO, especially as the f218 (2x18 horn loaded) sound so great anyway!

Jammers

 

[Inaki2]

Ohh Funktion One....damn I miss those things. I don't see them too often, but what a great alternative to line arrays when those aren't an option. Cool looking also
U got any pics of the rig?

 

[lxdeptnz]

Firstly, the Klark Teknic crossover I had in mind is a digital wonderland with 2 inputs and 5 outputs. Each of the 5 outputs is completely configurable with delay, frequency range and hordes of other useful settings.

TassieBogan may be referring to a system processor- E.G the DBX Driverack PA or similar (I think Behringer make a unit too)

David

 

[Inaki2]

Ugh...don't say the B word please. Let alone compared to a KT unit. Yes, the KT is a digital system processor. 5 way analogue crossovers, hmm, I've seen 2 in my life, one was custom made, I have no clue what the other one was. I am tempted to say Rane, but I'm not sure.
Digital processors are a whole different breed, but they may be an 8 way crossover is permitted.
Wanna see the beast of them all?

http://www.meyersound.com/616/

Bear in mind that the price is also the beast of them all, the rumour I heard was about U$S7500 a piece!!!!

 

[The_Guest]

Jeff,
In theatre, however, things get much more broken down, with orchestra often in the main stacks or main and center only, vocals only in the center and front fills, and varying mixes of both in the delays depending on the venue, all in an attempt to balance out the pit and the onstage vocals and to keep the vocals imaging to the stage.

Getting back to the specific situation at hand, however, which is not a large scale musical or tour, if he hadn't specifically mentioned that the house console sounded awful, I'd be hard pressed not to recommend submixing the orchestra on one and feeding it into a channel of the main console.

--Andy

This is exactly why I stated submixing works best particularly in theater environments with matrix units. It gives the slave consoles access to the other fills, but with VARIABLE CONTROL. Therefore you don't have to be fettered to the master console's routing. Yes, it's very common to see slaving features on the fancy large scale Cadacs, PM1D, and Digicos alike. But when your dealing with a medium scale console (Disclaimer: Nor the Yamaha PM or the Verona I would consider crap, medium, and such. They're prices aren't as outrageous, therefore declaring in medium) mentioned here, depending on how sophisticated the design is, it's best to look into outboard gear. Esepecially considering these consoles don't offer any master/slave/secondary console features.

Keep in mind there are many other matrix mixers out there, larger ones are often avalable directly through manufactuers. I stated the XL88 because I see it in master drive racks more so than any other matrix mixer. The XL88s accomadations seem sufficient for most applacations. While they're are much larger matrixes avalable on consoles, but do you necessarly need to share all those outputs? Normally, a majority of the channels would be used up by the mains, with a few minor monitor feeds (wing sidefills, dress, backstage, lobby, etc). But if you are talking searious monitoring, each console would feed it's own (eg: orchestra console for monitors in pit, stage reinforcement console for stage monitors, etc). In the extremely rare event (which I have never recalled of) of a concert in which muiltiple band engineers/consoles would share both monitors and FOH loudspeakers, it would seem more logical and pratical to use seperate matrix units to split things up.

 

[jammers]

F1

>"Ohh Funktion One....damn I miss those things. I don't see them too often, but what a great alternative to line arrays when those aren't an option."<

Ohh far better sounding than any line array (contolled dispersion, higher efficency, paper cone upto 6khz, less distortion, easyer to fly etc etc...) dont wana get in that argument tho!

They are scary tho when your mixing a band and you look at the dB meter and your cruising at >120dB at mix position!!!

No i dont have any photos of the system im affraid, think i may of take a couple when the company first got the res5's but cant seem to find them.

 

[Inaki2]

Better sounding than any line array LOL. Depends on what line array and who's designing it. As for paper cone, dude you got ribbon line arrays!
Nexo's GeoT is also worth anote, they use 8" drivers and go all the way down to 40Hz.
But I agree, F1s are a sweet sounding rig

 

[jammers]

Yeah to a point it is all personal opion. I do like the l`accoustics v-dosc line- that does sound sweet! Werent to impressed with the nexo geo tho. But the F1 is the only system that has really blown me away- maybe because our system engineer really does know the system inside out!!

But both line and point source have applications where they will sound better. Horses for courses.

 

[BackEMF]

Yes, it's very common to see slaving features on the fancy large scale Cadacs, PM1D, and Digicos alike. But when your dealing with a medium scale console (Disclaimer: Nor the Yamaha PM or the Verona I would consider crap, medium, and such. They're prices aren't as outrageous, therefore declaring in medium) mentioned here, depending on how sophisticated the design is, it's best to look into outboard gear. Esepecially considering these consoles don't offer any master/slave/secondary console features.

The PM3500 is fully capable of being a master or a slave to another PM series desk. You can control all functionality from the master console (VCA's, cue functions, mix busses, etc).

As far as the Verona, and most other consoles are concerned, you can patch the master outputs from the "slave" console to the corresponding SUB IN on the "master" console. If you are concerned about having two sets of master faders (one set controlling the "slave", and another controlling both the "master" and the "slave") you can patch out of the "slave" consoles insert send. So the patch would be, for example,

"Slave" AUX 1 insert send --> "Master" AUX 1 SUB IN.

Repeat for all remaining busses, and voila two consoles with one set of master faders. Although I am not sure if you can link the mute groups and cue buss.

For the record, the difference between a submixer an a sidecar is that a sidecar has no master section (specifically, no master faders). It is just a bunch of input channels to expand the input capability of the main console. A submixer is just that, a separate mixer that is used to reduce the number of channels required of the main console.

For example if you have a 40 channel main console, 16 channels of RF, 16 Channels of playback, 6 channels of time-based FX for the vocalists and another 24 inputs from the pit. You could submix all of the orchestra on a 32 channel console (including whatever time-based FX you are using on them) and send it to two inputs of your main console. So in effect you are actually SUB-grouping the orchestra using a second console instead of the subgroups on your main console.

Hope that clarifies things,

James