J Pearce

I doubt you'll get much that is 'feel-able' in a large room from anything less than a 15" driver (excepting some of the more specialist sub designs). I'd look at borrowing/hiring/buying a cheap active sub. You can get something that will do rumbles and bangs for under £200, it won't be the best musical sub ever made, but it will do unsubtle generic bass which is probably all you need. Does anyone in your company know a DJ or band who could loan you a sub?

Thanks all, some leads to follow up. I'd like to go draytek (it's what I use at home on my needlessly complex network), but possibly a bit too steep. It's good to hear some real user opinions on the mikrotik stuff, probably the front runner at the moment. The peli case setup of switch and access point is possible, but we work in such a variety of spaces, some of them very tight for space for extra kit, that I'd like to keep this a small one box system that can sit on top of or behind a desk if needed.

It would've been New Wine, and yes some years ago! I do indeed mean Open Broadcaster, it's a great package and will handle holding slides, prerecord playout and other niceties as well as your live camera(s). If you can't get any internet, even 4G, then maybe a good point to point wifi link? Directional access point on a pole to get it clear of passing people/vehicles etc. Then just stream over the local network and pick it up with VLC or similar at the other end.

To be honest you're probably cheaper webstreaming it, even if the venues have no internet connection a 4G signal is usually plenty for a 720p stream. Hiring a proper wireless video kit (with attendant frequency license) is certainly more expensive than some 4G bandwidth. You can do most of this with kit you'll have lying around - laptop with OBS, consumer cameras, USB to composite or HDMI capture card(s), tether to a phone (or router with 3/4G capability). It's all fairly simple and easy actually. If you've got money to spend then the BlackMagic stuff is hard to beat, and their WebPresenter adjusts frame rate to match upload bandwidth so you drop frames rather than drop the whole stream.

Thanks all for your input. I don't need just an access point, wifi is actually a very small part of this. I don't actually really need a full blown router either. What I DO need is a switch, DHCP server (local DNS would be handy, but certainly not vital), and access point all in one box. For most commercially available solutions that is going to mean a router, though I'm all ears if there's another simple one box solution. To do it 100% top notch, yes I'd build a rack with a managed switch, a small server, and an access point with external antenna, but that would be total overkill and well out of the available budget. I'm after something between that and the current cheap ex-ISP routers. This needs to be a simple one box system that a stage manager or stage management student can setup and power up/down. Not something that needs a sysadmin and a proper power-up/down routine, I can do all of that but I have other things to be doing. I'll have a look at the Mikrotik devices - already on my list, does anyone have experience with them? Ubiquiti stuff is great stuff, but couldn't see a switch/DHCP/access point one box solution on their products page? In my personal kit I have a rather nice Zyxel access point (it lives with my X32 Rack), but somehow it manages to do a login popup - cafe style - when it doesn't have an ADSL connection (reopening the popup every 15 mins or so). Not an issue when using X32 Remote on an iPad, but it does popup on a mac/laptop and this would just confuse and annoy some of our designers.

Sorry, I should've been clearer. The only things on wifi are tablet remotes, and the occasional designer laptop when they've forgotten their ethernet adapter (or expected me to carry 2 of every USB/Thunderbolt/USB3/USB-C dongle going). Everything else runs on cabled ethernet. We've found the cheaper routers just overheat/hang up/go slow because they're trying to reconnect to a non-existent ADSL connection.

Thanks. That thread is very console biased, which isn't particularly data intensive. Having 2 designers on screen share, multiconsole running, and consoles/projectors, sometimes OSC cues too makes it a bit more needy in requirements.

We setup a production network at every show we do now. Used for screen sharing and file sharing for audio and video designers back to the show macs, riggers remote (QLab and LX), sound console remotes, and sometimes ETC multiconsole for designer's remotes. We've stumbled along with discarded routers from my pile of bits BT/Plusnet/o2 have sent me but I've never used, but the traffic on our networks has grown to the point that these are not coping, and regularly freeze up under the weight of the traffic. I'd rather stick with a router type device, as we sometimes need to use wifi (riggers remotes, when designers forget their ethernet adaptor for their shiny new mac...), and keeping it DHCP for clients is much easier than changing network settings on designer's computers that then need resetting after our show (I set statics or static DHCP on show macs and consoles). We move around various Birmingham venues, and use a large pool of freelance designers, so having a static address system would be cumbersome. Has anyone got any recommendations for a router type device, with gigabit ethernet and 5GHz wifi, that can handle the amount of network traffic described above? I really don't want to end up building a rack with a big managed switch and access points etc, I really want a simple one box solution. 6 ethernet ports would be handy, but I'm not too concerned about that as long as it is gigabit as I can always put the less data heavy devices on a cascaded switch.

I've had a show with service provided audience response keypads - a standalone system with 1800 transmitters and a fancy receiver system. They set it all up, charge the keypads and output the data to whatever you're doing with it. I've had a show with a cloud based system, audience view a website and log responses there. Worked fine for 200 people on an enterprise grade wifi network. No crew work other than doing something with the data and displaying a slide before the show with the website details. I've also had a show with 4 coloured bits of paper (go for really different colours - white/red/blue/green) under the chairs, hold up the colour to give an answer and the talent or a handy spotter can fairly quickly get a good grasp of the responses.

It's not unknown for the termination networks in older Tecpro units to fail, or at least drift out of specification. Perhaps this is the cause of your issues?

Shure have various quad receiver options, including the very nice digital (and dante enabled) Axient systems (not sure I've ever heard a radio mic sound so good). I've only seen a few of the MiPro units, but the ones I've seen have worked fine.

Which should mean you can also trigger it over a macro, such that for example running your first cue for preset could disable RDM.

Some RDM splitters can strip RDM packets, Enttec for example. Or enable RDM only on certain universes?

Thanks, I shall add to the reading to do list. Hopefully some of them will be accessible on work’s academic subscriptions.

The work you're doing is probably deserving of some proper academic research and publication (and if it's already happening, tell us where we can read the papers!). As a tech/tutor in a music and drama conservatoire I am reading with much interest.

Altair have a bluetooth cans pack that is Tecpro/BlueClone compatible. Keep toying with the idea of buying one with a comfy headset as my personal pack.

Stereo mics often employ a similar approach using XLR5 on the mic and a breakout cable to split this to 2 x XLR3.

Nominally replaced by the SE300 preamp, and CK91, 92, 93, 94, and 98 capsules, with a more foolproof bayonet lock.

Aha! The strand archive don't list it as a download on the website, but may well have it stashed away somewhere.

I've got a little touring package that runs Chamsys outputting to a Strand SN110. It works reliably and was very simple to setup. I didn't need shownet config, I just did it on the web broswer config page.

I'm on no commission sadly, just a satisfied customer.

Yes, fanned. I'm using them with bands, so haven't noticed at all, but when I ran them up at home the fans were around level with the general background noise. Not tornado like fans at all! Might be an issue with the most intimate of studio theatres, but everything else you'd be fine. Beam angle wise - useful beam seems to be about 2.5m wide on a 4m throw, so roughly 30-40 deg. Photos are posted below - the only space I could find was the (slightly messy) kitchen worktop, so the throw is quite short, but hopefully shows any inconsistencies between angle across the colours. UV and blue come out the same on the camera, but the UV is a fairly deep colour, L181 equivalent really rather than proper UV. Slightly dimmer than the rest, but does make things fluoresce. White http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image_3.jpeg Amber http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image.jpeg UV http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image_5.jpeg Red http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image_1.jpeg Green http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image_4.jpeg Blue http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/bangadrum/image_2.jpeg

Very odd, I get that error if I click that link, but not if I go via my watch list to that item which is up and open? Anyhow this search is the one you want - it's the 6 x 8W devices, there seems to be 2 variants, 6 round the outside or 5 round the outside and 1 in the centre. I believe mine are the latter, I'll confirm tonight when I'm in the same building as them.

eBay - Link here Good service from the seller too.

UV isn't hugely powerful, but is useful output. Much dimmer than the rest of the colours. The white is a nice clean white, and the amber is useful in colour mixing. I'd need to look at them again to comment on variance of beam angle across colours. I'll have them out tomorrow, if I get time I'll take some photos. For the money you really can't argue.