TomHoward

HDCP can often be 'solved' with a Chinese Aliexpress/Amazon HDMI splitter just after the laptop - using just one output - if you have one to hand

I agree with the bin bags but some of these events can be unattended or we're returning later to get them. The hot covers were a custom order I presume with a mesh front - was the price about the same as the standard cover on the web site? I'll give them a call Monday. I'm assuming I'll need a bit of slack in the back as I'll have to get the covers on for covering connectors anyway - which is on the same face as the vents.

Apologies, I meant more to do with the rating and testing than actual suitability for use. I'd use gravlocks in the vertical plane for light loads - and also according to this rather dated spec sheet Gravlocks appear to be rated for slip vertical use anyway.

On outdoor events , sometimes our speakers get a little showered on. It used to be with SX300s or whatever you’d just plough on, but they’re all active these days. Specifically we have EV ZLX12P, many of, which sometimes get showered on. Is there a product or rain cover anyone uses or a manufacturer of cases/covers to cover the back electronics etc from smaller showers? Or umbrellas on the stands etc ?

That was our conclusion.. we found the licence was more expensive than buying the licence free mics. We found we couldn't hire Ch70 anywhere for less than we could buy them.... so now we have 12of Ch38 and 4of Ch70 licence free. The Ch70s are G2s which are a bit long in the tooth but it's what we found locally at the time.

Generally speaking I probably wouldn't mix manufacturers, especially as the TX212S has sub settings for specific Alto top speakers, it may make sense to pair it with one of those. In terms of high passing, I personally always use it in the sub, and don't apply it twice - although I have colleagues who do, I can't see the reason for applying a high-pass on the top cabinet as well as using the filtering on the sub - where the outputs will already have had the lows that the sub is covering removed.

I would concur with Chris that if they made a 10" version of the EV we would buy it... but depending on your lifting abilities the ZLX12 is at the larger end of a 12" box. The ZLX doesn't have a fan as far as I can see, the TX310 I think has a fan I can't say I've heard it running - most of these active boxes I would expect the fan to be temperature controlled - so only comes on when it's needed - compared to an old school power amp fan that would whirr away and be more problematic. You might get an Alto tops & subs system in your budget - I haven't actually had to repair our Altos at all yet but it is right we've had parts for our EVs and the power supplies / amp boards are easily available - we have actually had to replace a few parts in our EVs but we have ten of them (5 pairs) - and they get a horrendous life being ragged for discos, left out in the drizzle for outdoor uses etc - and they are all very early models where they have been upgrades and have been ragged this way since 2014 - so that doesn't mean they are weak as such ours just have a really, really hard life and we do have a quantity of them so it's probably about par for the course.

Active speakers! that way if you only want to take one, you take one and don't have to take one side of an amp you're not using. If you want to plug a microphone directly into one for a small welcome speech, you can and don't need to take the mixing desk. Plus all your cable is XLR so no messing about with Speakon/Jacks on the speaker side. EV ZLX12P are our standard active speaker but also have some Alto TX310s as a smaller option. I'd probably look at a 12" eg a pair of Alto TX312 as a budget starting point if you are wanting to put guitar and keyboards through it, the 10"s might be okay if it were only vocals but they may struggle will full range. Are you keeping the 01V, or is the £500 just for speakers? You could go higher quality / more respected manufacturer / add a sub if needed if that's just for FOH PA - but Alto would be about comparable to what you're currently running - no offence but the QTX 10" is seriously budget so although others will come along and say Alto 12s" are terrible and you need HK or RCF - they're going to be about in line as the next step and realistically an upgrade I expect.

We usually use an off-the shelf domestic wall bracket, and where you'd be expected to put screws into a wall on the back plate, drill the holes out if necessary and bolt a couple of half couplers on instead. I've attached a picture but it's not rocket surgery It does have the advantage you can hook the TV on separately rather than taking the TV weight whilst doing the bolts up. When selecting TV brackets from Amazon/CPC usually the heavier package weights are sturdier... if it weights 500g it's rubbish.

I don't think you'll be that likely to find a clamp rated for vertical attachment based on friction alone... I'd have more faith in practice in the Gravlocks than unistrut as it's a much bigger clamp even though it isn't rated. I think your next option would probably be drill & bolt as suggested... You could also use the gravlocks or similar vertically in a risk assessed way (ie it's massively under it's working load) and then add a safety chain back to something existing (drop a wire from the top, fix to an existing bolt hole or a eye on the wall in the masonry)

The simplest way might be to use Gravlock couplers, (you need to use them in pairs each side of the RSJ) and add a short 2ft-3ft length of 48mm pipe. https://www.scaffolding-direct.co.uk/scaffolding-fitting-forged-girder-coupler-gravlok-12-.aspx However these are not usually rated for vertical attachment as they could slip down the beam... If you wanted to do it smaller you could also use Unistrut - the grown up Meccano - again probably worth fitting in pairs both sides of the beam but would give a channel to bolt into on the face side

Here's what's going to surely be the least popular suggestion in this thread: we are using iPads with Luminair (other packages are available) for this sort of thing. They are easy to program scenes, powerful, work seamlessly with dimmers & LED fixtures. If your users are basically computer/tablet literate they can be picked up really easily as people don't seem as scared of them as other devices. (If they aren't though it will probably be a nightmare). We set them up with an ArtNet node on the venue wifi, program up the generics and RGB and people seem to take to them so quickly. If you have an iPad they can be much cheaper than a lightly console, if you don't frankly they still work out cheaper in the end. I know that's a very left field suggestion, and we're usually working with students and primary school teachers / staff who tend to be slightly more computer literate, so it may well not work for you, but if you already have some of the equipment it can work in some situations.

The presentations are often on laptops from visiting speakers, so recording the HDMI stream is preferable to screen recording / software on the presenting laptop. I could use a dedicated laptop with an Atem/capture card but to be honest my preference is a hardware solution if possible - just as I tend to find computers take so much admin time keeping them up to date etc… something I could either keep in the rack or deploy in a 1U case between venues would be ideal - the Extron looks good with an SSD in or recording onto USB stick.

Thanks for this - I hadn't thought of streaming basically being the same thing as recording but writing to disk instead, but of course that's what the ATEM approach would be. Looks like I would get away with an even simpler SMP but I'll have a look at the eBay one for sure

Thanks , both venues have Kramer splitters / matrixes so I can do an HDMI feed straight for recording so splitting the image on to the projector isn’t a problem. We have Atem minis but not pros or ISOs but that is a thought, they would record direct. The camera is usually standalone though so there wouldn’t be a camera feed available. I’d say presentations are usually around 1hr. I wouldn’t have thought the audio is likely to be a problem as they’re mostly silent, unless I was unlucky enough to have a file split of that usual 1min of video in a 60min presentation.