mac.calder

At that analogue IO count, I would hands down go with Q-Sys - a Core110 with 8in 8out 8flex will meet your needs. Soft-license the additional channels of Dante. In my opinion it is the nicest DSP to work with, with the best troubleshooting tools available (probes, injectors, hover monitor etc). And it is pretty cost competitive with other DSP's in the same ballpark of IO.

Don't know of many movers, but it was fairly popular for discharge studio lighting. The Arri Compact 575 used it, amongst others. GX9.5 based 575's were more popular around that time with the MSR 575/2 (although that may be because my primary exposure was Mac 500/600 and Robe)

In Australia at least, Panasonic is the brand that excels in a quality for price comparison. 12k single chip would probably be okay at controlled lighting levels of a theatre at walk-in - that seems to be the sweet spot at the moment. Rrp that's about AU$28k including a 3.58-5.45 lens. So, competitive bid through an integrator, would be around 25k. If you only need to project at show lighting levels you may be able to drop to about 8k lumens which is about 15k rrp inc lens. Hope that helps.

Not a cheap solution. A front silvered or surface-first mirror is needed. And it needs to be prefect. This is just increasing your throw distance at the cost of and brightness and clarity. Most ultra short throws work exactly this way.

It depends on the quality of your haze, and the quality of your UV. Ideal UV lights are not visible to the human eye - If your UV light, when pointed at a surface, looks dark blue... well... it's going to show up. Combine that with "poor" quality haze (large particle size, white and dense), you are 2 for 2. If you are using a nice, fine haze and a good UV source you should not end up with everyone appearing to be in a cloud of dark purple/blue.

No matter what type of lens, ultra-short throw means you need a still background... The longer the throw, the more forgiving to slight imperfections along the distance plane. To be honest, projection is not the answer in most cases for theatre at small scale. Especially if you only have a meter of throw to play with. That implies you may need to be lighting things in very close proximity to your screen surface. Any direct light spill will seriously wash out almost any projection in the sub 4000 lumen range - especially when 'distributed' over a large surface. Ultrashort throw optics are also woefully inefficient.

I think it depends on lifecyle replacement policy; I'm in a university, our AV lifecycle is 5-7 years and we have about a 2-3% annual budget for maintenance. The closer the median age gets to 7 years, the more that we need to push that higher. That said, we tend to base our budget figure more on past years experience for 'ad hoc' things, and then do project funding where there are troublesome devices we wish to expunge... ie we have a model of lecture capture recorder which is getting to the point where they are now a support burden, older units needing to be reset every week or so - we have 80 of that model left, so next years plan is to replace them all. Our total maintenance, capital works and operating budget (excluding employees) works out to about 25% of the total asset value.

The "thing" is that none of the information that is needed is in any way commercially sensitive, so restricting its access is ridiculous. What? Another venue might copy your risk assessment? Aaaand... it's not a competition. A competing venue might match the same lx desk as you? As if you are not already sharing techs and they have access to that information anyway? Sometimes there is reason not to publicise information ... but this is just gatekeeping for the sake of it.

You can't even get weight limits? That's a BIG red flag... as you can't just eyeball motors and go "Yep, I got x SWL here..." - you pay good money for an engineer to do that stuff... I would also expect at bare minimum a technical specification of the space detailing all those lovely important details, numbers and figures be made available well before even booking the venue... Are they a "proper" venue? or are they a local community hall type thing where you are dealing with the front desk person for the shire council who also takes bookings for all the multipurpose halls etc - and the extent of their event management is usually collecting the 50 quid for the hall hire and pointing out where the tea urn is?

If they require you to follow their policies and procedures, one would think it would be in their best interest to share. I only spent about a year as a tech manager of a receiving house, but my standard "welcome packet" to visiting shows included a 'tick and flick' risk assessment (ie if you tick no to all of these, I am not going to ask to see your RA and pass it by our OH&S committee), a copy of our policies, the venue information and a bunch of other more admin things. I will note - we did not have a boilerplate show risk assessment to share. What we did have was library of safe method work statements relating to a range of common tasks. Basically, if you ticked no to our tick and flick questionnaire, our SWMS should cover you. . If they are a receiving house with no staff and no infrastructure, they may entirely rely on the visiting companies. Is this the right thing to do... no... Can I foresee some venues being run that way... yep.

So there are 2 options that were my go to with churches when I worked install land. Option 1: side by side systems - I'd use something like a QSys DSP - select channels went through the DSP and then were made available via dante to the mixer before any processing - alternatively I would do an isolated split before it enters the DSP. Audio from mixer goes back into the DSP and then to FOH. The general user control was given via touch panel or button panel. Option 2: install a good mixer and recall presets on the mixer via a control system (or via instructions on a laminated A4 sheet) Option 1 is a great user experience, there does tend to be a couple of little things the sound engineer needs to know (ie certain channels have phantom power managed by the DSP etc) Option 2 is when I had a client who (frankly) didn't care about the user experience and wanted maximum control when they were running a service... Because option 2 relied on no one overwriting presets on the desk, or turning it off, or any one of a myriad of other things.

Extended leader screens often suffer really badly from warping and rippling, as the leader and the screen area react differently to temperature. Something to be aware of.

Asm used to make a steel band hoist that was pre asembled on a unistrut-esq beam with 2 attachment points. Jands used to make a derivative here in Australia which we used to use to create large double deploys for screens. It even came with the option of lighting bar with cable management if desired. They may still make it, it's worth a look.

Ooof... catering... The majority of my live career was corporate events in venues where we were contracted as the in-house supplier. Generally I was in large 5* hotels with 600-1000 pax ballrooms. Some times you got good clients who would pay for crew meals - and the crew meals would be a guest mains. Tasty meals, even if we were eating them on our laps at ops 2 hours after being plated because by the time they were served we were 30 minutes into the next bit of formalities. There was however a >30% chance if you were meant to get guest meals that they would decide NOT to serve them for reasons unknown (actually I do know, it's because they either under-catered or decided to feed the serving staff... there was also the time they put all our meals in a crew room and never told us that there WAS a crew room...) The okay times, we might get sandwiches. Usually at a time where no one is hungry (served prior to 3pm rehearsals for example... with a midnight finish). Main problem here is that they would typically make "gourmet" finger-sandwiches with weird combinations (I assume, trying to clear the fridge of leftovers?) ie: no ham, cheese and tomato - more often than not it would be pickled capsicum, camembert and chicken or some other weird choice. The bad times, nadda. 9ish hours from rehearsal to close, no catering - and a groan when we flag someone down dare to ask for a pitcher of water. Sadly this happened more often than not - and there were a few shifts where we would operate for 45mins a man down so that someone could go do a food run.

At the end of the day, design should be born out by the end user stories.... OP says "build an accessible theatre"... which I interpret to read "A theatre, who's intent is to provide a space for people with special needs to demonstrate their capabilities within theatre, a space optimised for those with accessibility issues". Ie: this is not a theatre intended for the 'common man' but rather is being built specifically for a special needs school or community group or similar and by extension the design should be optimised to enable this group to self-manage as much as possible I would approach that brief very differently to how I would approach the brief of "A general use theatre, with a remit to maximise accessibility where possible." In the case of the later I would make sure there is both ramped access and elevator access to the stage, a couple of UAT accessible backstage change rooms, accessible bio box... I might throw in a few additional cue light stations than I normally would as well... and then the usual stuff to make it compliant with building code (including hearing augmentation, appropriate signage and lighting etc).

Pretty sure the atterotech ones can be set - they call it the "friendly name". For analogue - the unBT2a is what you want.

Autocorrect is fun! DA's. not Days...

I gathered that... was just amazed to see one out in the wild, let alone driving a monitor speaker... performing houses are certainly not their natural habitat

Aussie Monitor amps are still being made? Jeebuz. They used to be one of the go-to commercial amps that would run 20+ years and then either get converted into another usable product like a doorstop or a boat anchor... or needed to be left in place because they had become structurally integral to the building. Can't talk to their current quality, but they used to be robust workhorses... although I don't think I would look at using them for FOH or Foldback... they were more your ceiling speaker/meeting room/large commercial installation kind of brand...

Belden 7731a can (nominally) get you above 100m but then you need to relock. Or you convert to fibre. If you are always going to be using SMPTE resolutions and most sources have sdi outputs, you could do worse than blackmagic. It works and it meets a price point. And they have all the bits you need (days to relock, fibre converters to extend) If you are in a stadium/concert type situation and can hear FOH/pa (or are time aligned down the venue) and it is 150m line of site, you are going to lose lip sync, with video arriving first towards the back. If you are in a venue and things are not time aligned, I would look at the feasibility of pulling pa audio for the zone from the displays and embedding the audio. Keeps it all nice and tight.

If designing a "fully" accessible theatre needs some guard rails on the concept: Accessibility is not necessarily about ensuring anyone can do any task - it is about trying to remove as many obstacles as possible safely, and adapting what can be adapted. First thought would be to do away with counterweight/manual flys and go straight to automation. A fully powered flying system removes a huge number of barriers. Inspection and test of flying systems... I don't think you can reasonably accommodate wheelchair users in any configuration to enable them to undertake a proper inspection and test - flying hardware is generally packed in tight and you need to be able to look above, between and behind things that are most likely going to be sitting above head height. Lighting is fairly easily adapted. I would bring bars to the workers instead of making wheelchair accessible gantries - as reach can often be an issue for wheelchair users. Bounce focus may take longer, but risk assessment hat on, it's safer. Sound - fairly easy - although if you are also adapting for dexterity issues then you will want to go for something with a more spacious control surface. Accessible design for actors is already well established, however you may want to look at tactile indicators near stage edges etc. But the biggest and best thing to do - reach out and engage with the target users. There are accessibility consultants out there. There are performance troupes composed of people with impairments. Involve them in the design process. Walk through the various tasks with them. Ask what they would like in a space like this. What is critical, what is not.

PPE is a fun one. Some employers tend to be pains in the rear and buy the cheapest they can get away with. Others may reimburse you for a portion of the amount (up to what they may pay for those cheap and nasty ones). And the diamonds in the rough, they will reimburse the lot. Generally, if it is PPE you are using often, you will want to choose your own. Additionally - whilst it is Personal Protective Equipment, nothing says the PPE is dedicated for your use. Many companies issue PPE to their full time employees, and then have a box of PPE for casual staff, or a collection of high vis and hard hats stuffed in the vans for drivers etc. My last job basically had in the contract $100/yr for the purchase of steel caps for full time employees. They had to be boots with ankle support. Good luck finding steel caps for that money. So they went and looked for the cheapest, nastiest boots that met spec, and our allowance was upped to cover those. About $120/year. Most of us wore steel caps that cost in excess of $200... because semi-decent footwear is essential. Eye and hearing protection - again, typically employers will get the $12 ear protectors and the bulk pack of uncomfortable foam... again, if you need hearing protection day-in, day-out, you want the good stuff. Gloves - again, you want gloves that fit you well and provide enough dexterity to do your job. I've seen a lot of horrible company issued gloves in my time. Hard hats - in Australia at least they have an expiry date (AS/NZS 1800:1998 says 2 years on the harness, 3 on the hat) - and to be honest, in most live event scenarios are more safety theatre than anything. Go with what you are given. Harness - unless you are a rigger or have other legitimate reasons to be in a harness on the regular, chances are you are looking at shared PPE there. It's fairly typical (at least in Australia) that things like harnesses for boom lift work etc ride with the boom lift. As mentioned above, blacks are uniform not PPE. High vis - typically if blacks are expected, the high vis you may be issued/loaned will be a vest. These are fine for short periods... longer periods you want a high vis shirt. The long and the short of it, your employer will supply exactly as much PPE as they need to supply. If you are going to need it on the regular... splurge and get comfortable stuff.

I don't do playback from CD's any more - haven't for about 6 years. Takes seconds to rip a track from a CD. Minutes to rip the whole thing. Saves much heartache. I had a client about 8 years ago who was renowned for their cringe radio spots rock up at their 10th anniversary event, about 15 minutes before rehearsals, with an armload of cassette tapes wanting very specific time codes to be played on cue - some times 2 or 3 radio spots would be on the same tape - half the tapes were in random positions... So... rewind, zero the counter, get to the vicinity of the cue point and RIP - USB straight out of the desk into the PC, and grabbed each section into audacity and top and tailed the clips - It was probably faster than playing through them all in rehearsal and then recuing them ready for playback on the night - and significantly lower stress. Additionally, commonly reused stuff thrown into google drive means it is nearly always available to me even if I don't have my laptop.

I would second Neil's comment - QLab is great to a certain point - but after that point there are far better options out there for dealing with multi-display setups and finding one that fits your workflow is key. For example, if you ever do 3d mapping onto objects (or it may exist in the back of a directors mind somewhere) - and if you have money to spare, something like Disguise (used to be D3) or Watchout would be far better. If you may want to do LED pixel mapping integrated with your video, again, there are probably better options out there.

Sometimes electronics die. The first X32's hit the shelves 10 years ago (June 2012 IIRC) - and some people had them prior to general release. They were insanely popular. So the desk you were using could be anywhere from 1 day to 10 years old... Touring kit/rental kit lives a hard life. 10 years in a roadcase is probably the equivalent of 25 years in a venue. Think about it, it gets thrown about, used by people who don't necessarily care about it, drinks spilled in or around it, vibrated in a truck, thrown onto shelves, left half in it's case when powered on so that it cooks in its own warmth... electronics don't like that. There are lots of things wrong with the X32, but there are still some that were first off the production line that are still doing rental gigs - so that's saying something.