Sound Reinforment - Westlake High School BOOK!

Kruton

Member
Well I have not posted to this board in a while due to my change in type of work (More television based). But the email that popped up in my inbox inspired a post to give thanks the good advice it has brought on me.

Some of you might know, I was active a few years ago searching for new equipment to is adequate for my theatre. Thinks like a new lighting board popped up and other things. Well a few years later, Myself and my best friend with the help of our boss completely revamped the entire theatre from the ground up technically. From new lighting fixtures to a new lighting board, to a completely brand new sound system that was painstakingly put together piece by piece or more literally, solder point by solder point.
Within this huge revamp I decided that the sound system needed a manual to use because once I graduated, I knew this complex sound system would waste a way.

Remember that I was the only one that knew how everything was wired which took me years to figure out. Don't get me wrong it was a great learning experience but if I had a blueprint where everything went would have been greatly appreciated.

So over the course of a year and a half I wrote a book on my sound system. I contained a brief introduction to sound and I also pieced together multiple equipment manuals and white papers to form a coherent guide. In the back held the wiring diagrams of the theatre on top of other things.
To give thanks, Below I have posted the link to PDF of the book (Which is FREE!!), also if you would like to order a physical copy you can go to the LULU link.
The book 79.2 Mb (Click on the image):

To order the book:
http://www.lulu.com/content/209251

UPDATED FEB 22, Sorry about the dead link I thought it was public on lulu, so I moved the pdf to my own hosting. Link should work now.

Also below.

http://www.krutonproductions.com/Sound_Reinforcement_MAIN_REV3_GOLD.pdf
-Kevin Krautle
 
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Could one of the management team look into this. I tried the link as well and could not down the load the book. I even registered with Lulu but you can't get access to the pdf as a member.

If the original poster can't provide a working link to the free pdf should his post be removed as purely self-advertising?

I am not saying that the book mighn't be good value but I feel it should be reviewed by someone here without the self interest of the author.

Who knows it might become one of the recommended books here on the bulletin board.

What do other people think. Is this kind of post helpful to Controlbooth members or is it more along the lines of spam?
 
I feel the same way. It sounds to me that this may turn out be be highly venue specific, which isn't very useful to most people here. However, I'd wait and see if the link can be fixed before we call this spam.
 
it looks to me that he may have gotten the content id wrong.

"Direct Access — Content is accessible by a direct web link only. This item will not be searchable or browseable on Lulu and may only be viewed by entering the content ID exactly"
 
Not to bad, went a bit far into Physical wiring instead of wiring diagrams, but whatever. This will be a nice piece for you to put in your portfolio if you ever decide to pursue installs.
 
Nice job. What a great gift to your school for years to come.
 
STOP!! Don't download it. If you already have you probably noticed the second page which in par reads,
"No portion of this book may be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or STORED in any mechanical or ELECTRONIC form without the written permission of the publisher."

So downloading this file is illegal? Clever.
 
That is just me trying to put some legal mobojumbo. But since I am the publsiher, me posting this is perfecty legal.
 
Good work. As a professional consultant I'm going to be supervising a similar project with a high school student this spring. One suggestion I would make is that you remove the copyright junk at the beginning and replace it with a more flexible license such as the "Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike" license (google it). This would allow more people to see and build on your work while keeping your name as a contributor which will 1) help get your name out there and 2) advince the art of sound engineering by allowing for people to learn from a good source. I encourage you to look into this.

As an aside I have a domain (productiontech.org) which is slowly taking shape and the idea is to develop just such a freely available online guide to all aspects of technical theater including sound, lighting and stagecraft. It is based on the WPI Technical Theater Handbook but will be edited in wiki style by a number of authors and not copyright encumbered. If you (or anyone else on this board) would like to contribute some to this effort I would appreciate the help, please contact me directly.
 
Woah! Are you from WPI? I am currently a student there and am very involved with WPI Lens and Lights (www.wpi.edu/~lnl), the club from which much of the equipment shown in that handbook was rented.

About that handbook specifically, it is OLD!!! There is a good deal of stuff in there that is flat out wrong, especially with regards to rigging. Much of that rigging was simply what seemed right, not what was actually right. Now we are trained on rigging yearly by a professional rigging company and do things quite a bit differently then is shown in that handbook. I would NOT recommend that handbook as a super accurate source of information. If you want more specific information on WPI and how things are done now, feel free to message me, but please do not take what is shown there as completely accurate, especially in regards to the power / rigging sections.
 
I'm not from WPI and I do realize that a lot of information in that handbook is either wrong, outdated or both. However, it is a good example of the type of document I'd like to create and so I did start with it as a basic outline. I do feel that there is a real need and use for a freely available handbook style document on technical theater. I also like the idea of a peer reviewed and edited document which seems to be a good way of discerning the most accurate information possible. As a full time PhD student and instructor at the University of Minnesota I don't have a lot of spare time in which to write articles (but more time and interest in editing) hence the slow process on my productiontech.org project, but I am looking for help so if you, Kruton or anyone else would like to help please do contact me and I'll get you setup with an account.
 
OK, good to know. I personally am in the middle of persuing dual majors at WPI, which is a very hard school to start wth, so I do not have much of any real free time to spare. That document was the result of what we at WPI call an IQP or Interactive Qualifying Project. It is the equivalent of 3 semester long courses worth of work and is required for graduation from WPI. The IQP is one of three projects each WPI student completes to demonostrate knowledge in the humanities and arts, their major, and the IQP specifically, their knowledge outside their major.

Just a little random WPI background info! :) WPI has a very cool and rather unique system that I personally think is really cool!
 

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