dbuckley

I do both movies and look after a radio station.

 

If you are going to do drive in movies, and transmit in the FM band, please consider getting a decent transmitter, and since you are in the UK, the BW Broadcast range is the obvious (but admittedly, fairly expensive) candidate, because, firstly, they are competent transmitters, and with the correct per-emphasis to match the UK broadcast standards, but secondly, they also incorporate a "processor", in broadcast speak, which in audio terms is a multi-band compressor, which will not only keep the FM modulation within legal limits, preventing splatter, but will reduce the dynamic range, so the movie will literally sound better on a car system.

 

If the movie audio is coming out of a "proper" movie processor, and it would be better if it is, you'll have the 5.1 outputs, so you'll want to mix those down to stereo, so mix L/R hard left and right, pan the centre to centre, about 6dB louder than L/R inputs, and then mix the L/R surrounds in mostly L/R about 6dB down on the main L/R inputs, and see how that sounds. If you mix in the LFE output at all, mix it in at quite a low level, it'll pump the compressor, and most car systems won't reproduce what comes out of it very well. Most folks advise just forgetting about it.

I said Mac has explained how it is possible to use Dante over wireless. I didn't say over WiFi, which everyone knows doesn't work, and Audienate / Canford are right in that respect. But if you have the right kind of wireless internet, that which is indistinguishable from wired Ethernet, then Dante works just fine. I've now found the post referring to this.

What happened was you posted a post full of HTML, probably from word. So I googled for remove html from text converter whioch led me to www.striphtml.com which appears to do exactly what it says on the can:

 

Hi People,I'm fairly new here. Been reading over your shoulder.I want to share this with you though.I have an elderly Sound Devices USBPre. Used to be top notch.Defunct since Mavericks it seemed.Not so: I've found a 3rd party driver which is actually working, very low latency to boot.https://www.usb-audio.com/download/Comprises a lot of vintage USB audio interfaces.Just test with the trial, it will work, but with a "beep" every second or so.Once you register, it will work on 1 Mac only, registry is done by MAC address.Very safe precaution this is.The cost may seem prohibitive ( ±60€), but this does not stand up to buying a new audio interface.Please also bear in mind Mac OS is capable of creating "aggregate devices" for audio. These wil add up, no matter what brand, no matter how old, to your channel count in your favourite DAW.See the bigger picture here?Good luck!here goes:https://www.usb-audio.com/download/Thank you Markus Medau for a job very well done!

And if you really want to drop the latency, there’s always Dante...

 

Indeed, Mac Calder has previously explained how to make Dante operate in a wireless environment, something normally considered quite difficult, and Dante delivers very close to zero latency, and is frame accurate across the network, it doesn't get much better. And these days, once you've got the networking in place, dropping stereo audio in and out is actually fairly low cost. Still, getting "good enough" wireless networking is not cheap, any old WiFi is not going to cut the mustard...

 

Someone needs to commercialise Jack / JackTrip and put in a box with XLRs and an ethernet port.

David, at the moment, time is something some of us have more of than we know what to with :)

This meme has been doing the rounds in New Zealand, describing our lockdown...

 

That's exactly what I still do.

If you do come up with a good solution, please post, also interested in a good solution, for the same problem.

Funny, Paul, very funny :)

 

Though the current pandemic may go some way to addressing that.

 

Too soon?

If you do decide to buy rather than build, A&H still make the XB-14-2, we have one in our backup studio, it seems to do everything right, and USB I/O to the computer is a useful bonus.

No it doesn't Gerry; there are a number of subtle problems, by far the most annoying of which is the labels for the desk buttons don't appear.

 

Which makes selecting which desk one wants a bit of a game of Russian Roulette.

 

Whatever techniques Michael used to dynamically update buttons doesn't work from Windows/7 onwards, so the static text has gone too.

 

Upper image Xp, lower image W/10.

 

http://davidbuckley.name/pix/pcstage_xp_vs_w10.jpg

 

In terms of the idea of a replacement:

 

Obviously interested and keeping an eye on this!

 

PCStage does do video, but only one stream of video

 

The nearest commercial tool, indeed the only commercial tool I'm aware of that can do anything similar is Showmagic, but to do lights, sound, MIDI, and video, one needs the AV edition, which is is a big bucks product. Showmagic also seems to bring out strong opinions in people familiar with it, some regarding it utter junk.

 

So I'm still running PCStage on an Xp platform, which for a couple of shows a year, keeps me going OK. It interfaces nicely through joystick interfaces (or MIDI) allowing actors direct control of cues where appropriate. On the same machine I've run Midi Maestro for "live" music for musicals, Pure Data for textures for war scenes, synthedit for live sound effects for rayguns and the like (wireless triggers from props), and other things I can't recall right now.

Saw Earthquake in Sensurround as as teenager. Damned impressive in its day. Of course, that is what it was intended to be, impressive, which is, I guess, a big part of why it was just another flash in the pan. Movie DCI sound is just so much better in every respect that the cinema sound of the 1970s.

A little pedantry here... unless you are referring the pieces (mainly) by Purcell and Beethoven from Kubrick's Clockwork Orange film, I suspect you meant Castle Groups' Electronic Orange Entertainment Noise Controller

 

Yep, that's the honey, slip of the memory.

 

What would the protection device actually do? Open trapdoors and drop the offending players into the basement, or turn off the orchestra stand lights? If it's simply noticing a flashing danger light, I doubt it would be very effective. Maybe electric shock to the conductors baton?

That brings up interesting visuals...

 

It was a slightly tongue in cheek suggestion, but not much so; If the measured sound pressure level in the area was above upper EAV as described by law and regulation, then the area is required to become a "Hearing Protection Zone", and there is mandatory signage required for such a zone, the sign of the head outline with ear defenders on, and the text "Hearing protection must be worn in this area". So the clockwork orange would expose such a sign. The judgement picked up on the lack of such a sign as one of the violations of the law.

 

Having to mandatorally wear hearing protection at all times whilst in the pit (because that is what the sign means) would be such an inconvenience to the musicians that the appearance of the glowing orange orb would have the same effect that it has had on bands and DJs through the years; a rapid reduction in volume. Though you're right, maybe it wouldn't be seen unless it was on the Cconductor's stand.

 

Obviously, doing to orchestras what the clockwork orange has done to bands and DJs for years is as almost as horrible it has been traditionally, evil bloody things, but when the alternative is a day in court and a large impact to the chequebook, not to mention hearing damage, the stakes are high.

 

The whole acoustic shock thing now of course has precedent in law (I'm not sure if British precendent holds in Australia or not?) which I guess means that regardless of whether you think it's a real thing or not, it has to be considered.

 

Certainly in NZ, the courts often refer to UK and Canadian precedent in judgements, particularly in the higher courts, so although they are not binding, they are informative. So I guess its a Commonwealth thing.

I have no expertise in the field, neither am I a lawyer, but did read the judgement; I think what they are getting at here (hear?) is that if you have not applied the full gamut of protection appropriate for the circumstance, which in the case reviewed, fell into the mandatory (and effective) hearing protection category, then you haven't done enough to provide a "legal shield" from anything that happens, and so you can be held responsible for everything that happens, foreseeable or not.

 

This case went wrong because the ROH were not brutal enough in their mitigations, and (effectively) did not treat the orchestra as a bunch of fitter/turners in a factory. Now you can argue that the law is wrong, and there was argument brought for that, in that the "noise" the orchestra produces is not a byproduct of some activity, but actually the desirable output, but those arguments (this is turning into a punfest) fell on deaf ears at court, and apparently that is the case at law too.

 

This could turn out badly. Option one is upping of game, better prediction, better measurement, better adherence to the law, and better and mandatory hearing protection that actually works for the musicians and conductor, enabling them to still bring their A game. Option two is to turn it down, so there is a business opportunity here for Formula Sound to start selling the Clockwork Orange Orchestra edition, and if the orange light stays on the for ten seconds the "mandatory hearing protection" sign comes on for the remainder of the run. Option three is for ROH to fund-raise and get used to paying big fines. Option four is to strike the loud works from the programme, admitting they can't be accommodated in the venue. This sounds like a bit of a thin end of the wedge argument, and eventually, only the weediest of works will be able to be performed there. Option five is a change to the law, but one has to think, a law change that allows hearing damage is something that might be a hard sell.

 

Although this case is about the ROH, and many of the problems are due to the ROH physical layout, the ROH can't be unique in having a challenging pit setup.

I was musing on this thread whilst watching They Shall Not Grow Old at the local community cinema last night; the "cinema" is basically the local town hall, so no acoustic treatment of the sort "proper" cinemas have, just a typical village hall, 300 odd capacity. It has the sort of realistic explosion sounds one would expect from this war movie, delivered with feeling, it it came from something very similar to that as described by csg above, a QSC SB-5218 2x18 sub driven by a bridged QSC DCA 2422.

This [ubiquiti AP and stuff in Pelicase ] is literally what we do but using a USG over an ER-X.

 

I was theorising, but you've done it; is it as good as I think it would be as a portable solution? Asking because I might need to do one too!

 

And do you cloud manage or phone?

The problem is that most of the non-enterprise wireless stuff is much of a muchness, and when you get to enterprise stuff, which is a step up terms of capability (especially when the number of concurrent users goes up) and price, there is usually the assumption that you have a full enterprise management system backing it. But there are exceptions, higher performance stuff that does not require an enterprise back end management system.

 

If whatever you consider buying doesn't have DHCP, one of the lowest cost solutions for that is the all purpose magic networking fixit box, the Ubiquiti ER-X, which is cheap (RRP $59 US), has 5 1GB/Sec ports, which can be switched (fast) or routed (less fast), and it'll run off anything from about 7V to 24V, and it supports the full gamut of networking stuff, and you can even load stuff on there if you need something it doesn't do. And they are reliable.

 

So could then put a power supply, an ER-X, and something like a Ubiquiti AC Lite AP (which can be configured with an app on a phone or tablet) in a Pelicase, and have a high performance, near-enterprise, portable WiFi setup, that should be a cut above anything you'll get with a consumer brand label on it.

That is very nice indeed.

Can I join the party and had some of these internationally shipped to NZ, and they are better than I expected.

 

Has anyone found the IEC mains inlets to be a difficult mate with power cables? I've binned all the supplied cables with the 13A plug, and am using some locally sourced cables, and they don't seem a good fit; they require a very hard shove to make them stay mated.

 

And..... 50% of the fixtures arrived with the rattle of a nut or washer flailing around; anyone taken these apart, and if so, what is the disassembly process?

Are those QTXs fanned? If so, subjectively, how loud????

I recently bought a couple of QTX hex pars for £79 the pair...

 

Which model and where from?

They have a 4pin 3.5mm jack on them, using the screen as a common for both the left/Right channels and the Mic. I seem to have found that when plugging this into the AD903 it does not like it at all and I have had a whole host of issues, ie, cross talk between the headphones and microphone, a very quiet level from both the microphone/headphones and the return from the ring. ... In theory this should be straight forward as I am using a 4 pin XLR to 4pin jack and connecting as per the AD903 "unbalanced connector instructions". I think the problem I am having is the combined screen.

 

 

I cant find the diagram you refer to, but, the data sheet specifies that the AD903 inputs and output are transformer isolated, and "balanced and floating", so there should be no issues from a common ground from the AD903 perspective if wired correctly.

 

Also, and again from memory, the Bluecomm has a header connector on it which provides and input and output like the AD903 does, albeit not transformer isolated and balanced, but that should be fine for your application, if the levels can be made to match.

Anyone any idea of the price of those Wahlberg units? Website says "Drop us a line at sales(a)wahlberg.dk for info and quotations.", and I've got that "if you have to ask..." kind of feeling!

I'd just suggest some form of emergency power off, in case embarrassing things do start to happen, a simple switch near someone reliable on comms would do, as Ian notes, this is a sedate application..

As such:

• Check your spelling. Then check it again. I had one recently that mispelled the name of the venue.
  

 

Also the amount of applicants who have left there Facebook feeds on public is very funny indeed.