Aaaaarrrgh!
This is the exact problem we are having at my school. Two years ago, we had a
projector installed permanently into our
hall/
theatre. I recommended that they set it up so that we went with a
projector that had a wired remote over 3mm stereo cable (*cough* Sony *cough*), and then
wire the remote and video cabling into our Control Booth, which would acheive two things:
1) Everything could be controlled from the one place, eliminating communication issues.
2)The 3mm stereo output on the laptop (or computer) could be plugged straight into the
RCA inputs on our audio
mixer
Did that happen? NO!
They went for the "cheapie" option - wired the
projector inputs backstage (beside our dimmers too darnit - don't need too many people treading around there), and we are now stuck with this exact same problem described above - we have been experiencing far less than satisfactory
mono audio resulting from having to convert the stereo output of the laptop backstage to
mono XLR, then sending it via
multicore to our
mixer, then out through the speakers! And to add insult to injury, they are determined to blame it on EVERYTHING except this ridiculous
system we've been landed with - "it's the laptop" or "maybe it's the DVD".
Also it doesn't help when one half of your "team" is backstage holding a remote and starting a presentation at the same time, while somebody else has to tweak the sound up in the booth!
I have found a temporary way to fix the problem though - I don't insert the 3mm
jack all the way into the laptop, obtaining a "tip" signal (I think) - this fixes up all problems. However, in this scenario, it would appear that we only get the left
channel!
Arrrrgggh!
PS
The fact that our
network ports are on the other side of the
stage to the laptop doesn't help either - and there are no
network ports in the Control Booth.