alistermorton

Slower rotor - refers to the fans in the fixture. If the fixture has very small fans, the rotor - the bit with the fan blades on - has to spin fast to move the air. This is noisy. A bigger fan, with a bigger rotor, doesn't have to spin so fast to move the air, and a slower rotor makes less noise. Less noise is good. Dimming curve - the relationship between how you move the fade level and how it affects the light output. A linear curve attempts to be be equal - adjustments at the dim (bottom) end and the bright (top) end have the same accuracy or response. You can get curves which give better, finer control at the bottom end (so called square law) with control coarser at the top end. Inverse square law gives you more control at the top end with less fine control at the bottom end. S-curve gives you fine control at the extremes, with coarser control in the middle of the range. You also see people referring to "steppy" dimming. This is because the LED responds immediately to a change in level. A modern, DMX controlled fixture has a fixed number of levels, and a typical budget fixture will have 256 different levels (8-bit resolution). This means that at the dim end, where your eyes are sensitive, you can actually see the difference between say 2% and 3% brightness, it "steps. Better fixtures use a number of tricks to smooth this out, so that the levels don't jump but fade smoothly. CRI - without wishing to get too technical, is a measure of the "quality" of the light, how well it renders objects in different colours; it stands for Colour Rendering Index, and is a measure of the continuity and smoothness of the spectrum of the light. High CRI is expensive (especially with LEDs) unless you use sunlight, which is free :-) Now, consoles ...

Good to hear. We don't use it (Qlab, after using SCS for years, and before that SFx) but I know of groups who are utterly reliant on multiplay and love it, so I wish you luck. Are you doing it yourself or as part of a (maybe small) collaborative team? What software tools are you using this time, OOI?

The dimming of the MP75 is actually surprisingly good, much better than the usual somewhat steppy curve of cheap pars. Some (a lot, actually) gels balanced for tungsten look completely different when used with a cheap single white emitter, especially a cool white (which seems to be common) so you have to relearn your "looks". Used with something like a "proper" film or TV balanced multiple white high CRI fixture the differences are much smaller but still visible side by side

We've got a couple of elumen8 MP75 fresnels which are at the budget end of the market (although a bit more than RGBW pars) with zoomable optics and barn doors. Not perfect, but surprisingly usable for the price. Colours, of course, need to be manually tweaked after using the desk colour picker in gel mode. The better tunable white LED fixtures I'm told are much better with gels (still not perfect but much closer) but not at the budget end of the market. I haven't had a chance to try them out myself, yet.

Might have been a point source rig the first time, but almost certainly a line array of some kind the second time. Both were the familar flown curved line array.

I wonder if 16 years ago the sound chain would have been more predominantly analogue? Edit: Thinking about it, we were using digital crossovers and amps at least with switching power supplies (Chevin A500s racked up) at my mate's summer barbecue way on back in the late 90's/early 00's so probably not.

Yeah, but ... I've seen the same band (Manic Street Preachers) perform at the same venue (Wembley Arena) a good few years apart, and from a remarkably similar seating position. The first time, about 2003, the sound was loud and clear, like you'd expect to get in a large theatre venue, actually. The second time, 2018, the sound was horribly bass heavy, muddy, and unbalanced, with indistinct vocals but with a strangely toppy sound - the middle was missing completely, and to my mind it was overloud in some parts. I've seen them in several venues, and mostly the sound has been good (although it was a less than ideal at the roundhouse) so I don't know what went wrong at the Arena. At two different venues in Brighton the sound was loud (at the Brighton Dome very loud) but still clear. Strange that the sound was better 16 years ago.

Nice.

I was being somewhat ironic, not blaming the singers... but it is by all accounts a very tricky venue, possibly not the best place to start with all the added pressures of first shows... Ah gotcha, I missed the irony! Almost seems like there should be “local experts” at these tricky venues, maybe with an obscure PA, weird placement etc to really get the best out of it. Then just have a touring FOH package. Maybe there is, just seems strange to think you can tour a PA that size and hope it works everywhere. I've often thought we need an irony emoticon - the irony being there may well be one, but I haven't recognised it! I am reminded of the PA at the Minack Theatre - a mixture of odd bits and pieces, rusty and sea-stained, but it works - every seat can hear. FWIR at Minack the main seating pa is Bose as are the bits that get put in to fill from the wings with the Bose control system in the box. Subs are RCF.

If your keyboard is sending dummy characters when you aren't touching it that might be affecting timing, especially if it's like a key permanently stuck down.

Arduino (or something like it) might well be the best bet - no file system to corrupt on power loss.

Or another alternative (following from the idea of a cable up the air pipe) - a differential mic as used in motorcycle comms, which has to solve the same problem; loud, moving air inside the crash helmet.

Exactly as Brian says. I've assisted at a few primary school shows (up to year 6) and for one they borrowed a pair of our follow spots (S4 on a tripod with 10 degree lens) and we just built a platform in the corners at the back of the hall that got them up at about a highish table top height which was enough, they were over the audience and pointing slightly down at the low stage built of rostra. Once the teachers (the kids were a bit young to be working a hot S4) opping the spots got the hang of the dimmer and iris they were fine.Yes, there were shadows, but as Brian says, so what. The parents and kids were thrilled to have "proper" lighting (we also had T-bars with PAR cans for a few general covers).

Slight tangent, my partner has a tablet mount (which is meant to clamp to a mic stand) that she uses to mount her tablet to a tripod, but it would clamp to any round tube of about 1-1/2" - loads of them on the bay or up the big river.

Supermarket shelf-stacker's cage-trollies probably exceed that level as they crash and vibrate across the shop floor. Must whip my level meter out next time I hear one coming during the evening shop.

Indeed - even our amateur theatre used to prepare slides intended for off axis projection with built in keystoning correction.

One thing you do get is the concussion. You feel it and that is hard to get just with audio unless you have serious power available.

You can do much the same with a linux installation (even on a pi).

I have been asked on more than one occasion if we can light an area in black.

I recall sending DMX down the snake once and being able to just hear the bleed through when one of the mics was opened, so testing it all out before the run is important.

We advertised them on a web site Second Hand Chairs And Tables which cost about 60 quid, and we got about 25 quid per seat (we had about 200, smaller than your theatre). It generated a lot of interest and there was no problem disposing of all of them to good homes.

We did ours last summer and found homes for all of them. I've asked the people who ran the project how they placed them.

Oh, I've given up caring about that .

Which should mean you can also trigger it over a macro, such that for example running your first cue for preset could disable RDM. Yup. Also macros can quickly turn it on and off if needed for a quick check, same as is often done to toggle MSC, timecode, OSC etc. and via buttons on magic sheets, too.

The functionality which you used to have to exit to the shell for is gradually being moved into the console, so whereas before in setup you had user and show settings, you now also have system settings. The requirement to restart the console when changing the port/hardware configurations is also being removed bit by bit - I can't remember OTTOMH how far they've got with that so far, but I'm sure I saw reference on the forum that soon you'll be able to make on the fly changes to the port settings (which includes the RDM settings) without a restart.