Refitting a condo clubhouse

Jay Ashworth

Well-Known Member
So, I might be in just over my head here... :)

As a favor to a friend, I've spent an hour this morning looking at old, bad gear (largely old Behringer Euro and Nady wireless; that kind of stuff) in a condo complex's clubhouse auditorium. The master condo association has decided it's time to upgrade and clean stuff up a bit, and one of their board members is also a board member of my community theatre, so I was asked to consult. My expertise, such is it is, is mostly in the booth, so there are some things I'm not certain about enough to charge someone for them, largely on the amplification front. Since this is a paying gig, there's probably some space in the budget for subcontract advice. :)

Their usage is -- as you'd expect -- varied; it includes bingo and other 10-round table settings, with announce and possibly some BGM; yoga/aerobics/exercise classes with headworn wireless and music; TV with sound from the TV set, possibly to inlcude VHS or DVD/BD playback (there are players in the booth); board meetings around a big rectangular table with auditorium seating for other residents -- they're presently doing this with their Octavo wireless mics without desktop stands. Since the mics aren't handheld, there's lots of handling noise involved.

And finally, they'd like to dabble a little bit harder in light theatre, within the constraints of the space and equipment.

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The room is 100x60x12 with painted gypsum walls, acoustic tile ceiling, and vinyl tile flooring. They presently have JBL what-appear-to-be 18" two-ways, one in each corner, driven by a pair of (very loud) Europower EP1500s. They've got a small semi-proscenium stage at one small end, lifted about 3 ft with a ceiling that's level with the room; no grid space at all. Stairs up from the floor downstage right, ADA lift downstage left, and a pair of dressing rooms with access at each end on stage left.

Lighting is 2x2 flurorescent, a bunch of 6" CF dimmable ceiling downlights, and 3 10mm color LED cans of 2 different sizes on what I will humorously call the front electric, run by a Chauvet Obey 3.

There's a powered screen in front of the stage, but presently no permanent projector mounting for their BenQ.

On the opposite small wall, they have a 75-80" LCD TV with some video games.

They have a Nady Octavo UHF 8 channel wireless mic set with external diversity antennas, and a pair of EV R300s. Those have lavs, on tini-Fs, and are supposed to have headworns as well, but they weren't in evidence.

Board is a Behringer 16x4x2 with some effects.

They are smart enough not to be married to any of the present gear, and have about a 12k parts and labor budget to make a stab at replacing it properly.

They'd like to end up, he tells me, with 6-8 channels of wireless; that's enough simultaneous channels for any given use, assuming some channels could be swapped between handheld and beltpack, which of course they can. *My* inclination is to handhelds with SM58 capsules, like the L2. Also, to system receivers with antenna combiners. But that may blow the budget.

The booth is about 5/8 down one long wall, closer to the stage, off stage left.

They have echo and EQ problems with intelligibility in the room, partially due to the speaker complement, partially due to the surfaces, and partially because they have no EQ in the mains. My initial instinct was to go mono, possibly with Soundspheres. Then I looked up the prices on Soundspheres, new. Holy crap, Bat Man. (I've installed some, but I got them used off eBay for an order of magnitude less money.)

They're clearly not getting the coverage they need, and probably need more speakers, but delay will become an issue, and since the room's reversible...

I could, I suppose, do that with the matrices on an x32, and set up scenes for each direction...

Finally, as is so often the case in this part of the market, they can't *guarantee* that any given event/usage will have a trained operator; the more that can be automated the better; I note the new X-AIR has Dugan automix either included or promised; dunno if the other x32's are lined up for that.

Any thoughts on any parts of this, people-who-are-much-smarter-than-me? :)

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It was. There are half a dozen questions inherent in the post, I thought, but the speakering one is most important to me. I'm comfortable speccing pretty much everything else.

Well, maybe the wireless too.
 
According to the photo, there are four wireless mics on channels above 944 MHz, in the Part 74.500 aural broadcast auxiliary band. Those channels are not legal for your use. While it isn't all that likely for you to cause interference, the fine could be hefty if you do. Speaking as a broadcaster, those four systems need to be retired now.
 
do you really need microphones that have receivers with dante outputs (or you mean wired dante mics)? You would need new mixers or a breakout box that takes the connection. I would focus on digital microphones that can be encrypted or at least run on the newer frequencies that are legal to today frequencies.

In addition to the mics, I would look at a dsp like a biamp or bss soundweb london unless you really need a full fledged mixer. with a dsp you can use a control system (either using bss/biamp controllers) or a full control system (I stick with their wall controls). It makes control simpler for day to day.

Also if you wanted I know the soundweb london has dante connection (and others in addition to blulink) not sure about biamp lines so if you want to bring a dante mixer for your "light theatre" then you can pull the sources and feed it back into the dsp.
 
I had meant "WL mics with Dante over wifi built in", yes. That way I wouldn't need receivers at all.

I'm musing on an x32Rack, since I can get OSC capable PoE control button stations which could
be programmed to select preset scenes for the various uses. That leaves me still with full control for those occasions that need it.
 
unless I'm misunderstanding the documentation but the microflex is not wifi but uses their own access points that are more like the receiver instead of it being up in the rack. The access point then gets tied to the shure network interface. It similar to if you look at revolabs newer solutions. So it solves the problem of requiring special antenna cabling to be ran back to the av rack and instead just need network runs. But the microphones don't just go over wifi, that would be too easy :)
 
Yes, I found that out. But I also discovered that while the mic prices are decent, with support it's my whole budget. :)
 

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