Ynot

It's generally regarded as good practice to power your amps on LAST when turning on the PA setup, and off FIRST when powering down. When turning gear on/off the 'pop' is just a quick mains spike that can be 'heard' by audio equipment and sent down the audio path and in worst case scenarios (if that path is pre-amp'd enough) does risk blowing a speaker driver. Different gear may sound different, depending on how the gain structure is set up going towards the amps, but rest assured, the way to avoid potential damage to the gear is to be vigilant in your power up/down sequence.

So you've joined a serious theatre tech forum JUST to advertise your alt fringe group to a Facespace page that itself was running out of control with loads of rubbish that wasn't anything to do with tech.... Hmmm... (tm)

If it's going to go anything like the 'dodgy' Facespace group, count me out. Not really sure that there's a serious audience for such things, tbh. If something you come across is at all dodgy or unsafe, it's YOUR responsibility to at least highlight it to the proper AHJ or at best fix the problem so that it's no longer dodgy...

It never ceases to amaze (and concern) me that when things like this happen, rather than follow the properly establish evac procedures, otherwise sensible people think to themselves "I know - I'll stay in this place that's filling with smoke and flame because it would be a good idea to film it...."

Erm...

An odd situation when searching on CPC at the moment - in list mode, I see the preview pics of the items that the search returns OK, but after that every other item is coming up with a sort of broken link/description instead.... Anyone else getting this, or is it just me?

Seriously??? 😮 😮 😮 I don't think I'd ever have managed that! They're about 40 kilos for the 1200W bodies, even the 575W were 33... And the bulkiness would have been an issue, too.

I sincerely doubt that there will be anything practical that will be sufficient for this that can replace a proper talkback setup. People have talked for years about using other methods of comms between stage and other areas, such as 2-way radios, but every other option has its downfall. PMR Radios are only simplex operating and anything using wifi or bluetooth will have lag issues and reliability problems. Personally, I don't see the point in trying to replace a perfectly good system of communication - if you can't afford to buy, just rent when you need to.

I must say that I used to like the different versatilities of moving mirrors, especially the speed of movement compared to moving heads.

I think the OP means the problem is that when he sends a 'black' screen down to the LED wall, the screen does still emit light insomuch as it's a dark grey 'look'. ie not as black as the screens would be if they were powered off. I've seen exactly this on the few occasions I've used LED panels, (also using Novastar) and yes it is a little tiresome when you need a full DBO but are left with a big ALMOST black square shape in the middle of the stage. The reference to the LED screens being black I suspect is him saying that he has the monitors set to black backgrounds etc to try to emulate sending that blackness through the processor/scaler in an attempt to send as black as he can, and not specifically part of his problem 🙂

Me? Short? I've been described as many things, but never that!! 😄

Have to say that I'm with you on that one. I remain a huge fan of the ETC desks overall, but when we moved from Ion classic to Gio @5 I found myself having to use at least a couple of seat booster cushions when at the production desk position in the auditorium just to be able to see the screen and see the stage...

Just watched the video and it's the auditorium that's carpeted - minus the seats - so the space became a dance floor to all intents 🙂

Pop them in the 'FOR SALE' area here, perhaps rather than a general post?

Think they'd prefer to borrow if possible. Only one I've found so far is £45, and not really affordable on a primary school class's budget. 😞

My wife has just asked if I have any idea where to find a Turkish lantern of the type that Florence Nightingale is alleged to have used - my answer was of course 'No, but I'll ask around' 🙂 So - this is me asking... Needed for a school project in a couple of weeks so she's (ideally) looking for a loaner.

Another vote here for hiring rather than buying. The purchase of a dozen GOOD quality radio mic sets is going to set you back several thousand pounds, - DON'T be tempted to go down a budget route thinking that it will be more financially viable - as with many things, that's going to be a false economy. Owning your own mics also means that you will need to keep on top of repairing/replacing the mic heads, too, and whilst there are some fairly decent options in the budget ranges (eg from CPC etc) you're still looking around the £30 per head area for something decent.

Considering that the OP is in am-dram I'm going to conclude that, to be fair, this is likely going to be a director's 'vision' versus what is practicable and affordable for that stage.

From the Strand datasheet... (courtesy Strand Archive)

Not quite sure why you'd want to use helium, tbh... Standard bubble machines produce bubbles that are pretty light anyway, and whatever you use isn't likely going to make the bubbles any more controllable so they're going to go pretty much wherever they want once they're created. In theory, I guess, helium variety may tend more towards going up and not down at all (which of course regular ones will do) but how you'd use helium (on, I presume, any kind of low budget) isn't something I guess that would be easy...

Update - have managed to find a local source of neon transformers, so hopefully will be able to create the effects soon - might even post the results... :)

Not sure how thick you can get EL (Electro-Luminescent) wire these days, but the stuff I have knocking around (about 2mm, I think) certainly can... May very well not be big enough for any large scale project though...

😄 3 minutes too late....

And, sadly, we have ANOTHER incident in a nightclub - this time in Cameroon... 😞 Cameroon nightclub fire: Liv's Night Club in Yaoundé hit by deadly blaze - BBC News You'd think that lessons would be learned in the wake of these things, but seems that no - there's always another ignorant dickhead who thinks they can just risk lives like this. 😞 😞 😞