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Shez

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    Working in the industry
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    Freelance sound engineer and lighting designer
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    Sheriton Swan

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    Leicester

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Production Manager

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  1. I'm looking to commission the construction of a replacement prop but as this is somewhat outside of my usual sphere, I'm a little short of ideas of companies to approach. (Basic prop details below). I'd be grateful for any recommendations of companies that might be able to undertake this. It's essentially an OSC controlled paper thrower. It has to drop single sheets of A4 paper from over stage - one sheet per OSC "fire" command. Sometimes single sheets, sometimes flurries. We get through nearly a ream of paper in each performance. The current version is built from the innards of a laser printer with a new speed controlled stepper motor to drive the rollers and a solenoid to kick each sheet to the rollers. There's a mac mini attached (slight overkill!) to receive OSC and control an arduino that drives the mechanics. It's several years old now and is starting to become unreliable / worn out.
  2. On cameras with built-in IR LEDs, if positioned above audience e.g. on a balcony front, it often looks like it's snowing upwards. Whilst in IR mode, dust rising up, carried by the heat from the audience is lit very brightly by the LEDs and becomes very visible. A separate IR floodlight, positioned slightly away from the camera, reduces that effect. Two cameras, one permanently in IR mode, feeding two monitors is a good solution. Single cameras take time to switch modes which is rarely ideal if you need to see what's happening immediately after a B/O.
  3. I enjoy a challenge 😉 Plus I did my homework - I seem to be increasingly expected to use kit I've not used before so I'm well versed in learning the essentials before arriving on site. I also took along a four channel amp of my own just in case. I always have contingency plans. The amp was hired so just on reset factory settings from the hire co. Default login. I had the hire co's phone number just in case. And a laptop so I could access it directly if needed. I didn't have access to the venue or the hired kit until I arrived there. Not ideal but it was a fairly unique situation. All went well in the end. Easy to access the amp via wifi with a tablet and all settings pretty much as I'd seen in Armonia. A bit more fiddly to set up the crossover using a touchscreen than a mouse & keyboard but perfectly manageable. Everyone was very impressed with the power and DSP in a box that small!
  4. Any users of Powersoft's X series who could help steer me in the right direction? I have a gig coming up where I'll need to get a PA up and running within a matter of minutes - two tops, two subs, one X4 - and I won't have access to the amp in advance to configure it. I've installed ArmoniaPlus and had a look through the virtual web interface for it. Am I right in thinking that I can just connect a tablet to the amp's WiFi network and access enough parameters through there to configure all the important settings? Inputs (two analogue), matrix routing (One input to two amp channels, the other to the other two channels), speaker selection (there are presets present for the speakers in question), and crossover (there are curves within the presets although presumably designed around individual speakers rather than specific combinations as they overlap considerably). Is there any means of linking channels so that what you configure for the left sub & top will copy over to the right channels too or is that a manual job? I'm sure I could save a setup within Armonia but I don't really fancy battling with potential network connectivity issues if it's easier to just use the amp's WiFi.
  5. You'll also usually have a "blinder" - a full black cloth - immediately upstage of the gauze to completely block the view through it and prevent any projection passing through it and hitting the set behind it. That would be flown out just before any reveal through the gauze needs to occur. Many gauzes are printed with their show logos rather than projected but unless you can find an appropriate one to hire, that would be an expensive undertaking.
  6. File system and size are the key factors. FAT32 and sub 32GB should work fine. As you've discovered, older sticks tend to meet those requirements whereas newer ones are often larger and tend to be hit or miss. For saving scenes, you only need a tiny stick so dig out an old one and you'll be fine.
  7. I'm fairly sure that desk has pins 2 and 3 swapped on the DMX output
  8. Sorry - I must have missed my cue here Tony ;) I don't have any experience of arena scale sound - I'm wondering whether the designers / specifiers of that type of system are quite a different breed to theatre sound designers. In theatre, a key driver is making the PA transparent - i.e. you shouldn't know that it's there (for spoken word at least). That often means keeping levels low enough that they don't draw attention to the PA. Like Tony, I don't think I've seen any high level theatre shows with distorted or excessively loud sound. It's interesting to note that there is a very small number of theatre sound designers who between them seem to have the West End / national touring market almost completely cornered. Perhaps that helps to keep standards as high as they are. Six is an interesting hybrid in that it sits somewhere between theatre and rock gig. Chatting to the fit up crew, one of the aims of the design of that show was to recreate the sound of the original album of the show. That means there's a lot of compression and other processing going on with the vocals to get that "studio" sound. A lot of additional instrumentation on track too. An almost silent band with all performers on IEMs helps keep the sound very clean. It was loud enough to be powerful and punchy but not in any way too loud. It was the usual d&b line arrays plus assorted fills & delays configuration that most shows on this circuit use, albeit rigged in slightly less common positions.
  9. I have a pair of Turbosound IQ10s which are pretty nice. They also do an IQ8 which is even smaller.
  10. Is wireless control essential? I know trusting cast members to operate props correctly is a whole other discussion topic but it would be vastly cheaper if it was feasible.
  11. Shez

    Deleted topics...

    The certificate has expired - see some other current threads about that.
  12. Shez

    Deleted topics...

    I had a deleted topic called "circus accident". I can say with pretty much 100% certainty that I never posted a topic with that title. I assume some spamming was going on somewhere. Any security issues we should be aware of? Worth changing passwords?
  13. Pre-heating the gobo in the couple of cues before it's needed is a good idea to lower the thermal shock it experiences if subjected to a sudden 100%.
  14. Have a look at the BMD Web Presenter and the Epiphan Pearl Nano. If you want web browsers to easily pick up a stream, you may need a web server running on the network. NGINX is small, free and great for streaming.
  15. Worth checking the supply voltage in the venue if you can. If it's at the higher end of the tolerance, it'll stress the (24/7) PSUs more than if it was a bit lower.
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