soundman208

Scenario is a local am-dram company doing a production of a West End musical with a 13 piece orchestra situated in the pit front of stage. Pit depth is quite deep with M.D. (who is also playing keyboards) elevated for cast sighting and therefore not in direct eye contact with other players. Due to the complexity of varying time signatures in some of the music he is worried about timing issues and has asked what options there are for talk back facility to the orchestra so that he can bar count as need be. Normally the solution would be easy via some form of Aviom type monitoring but big issue is that there is no money in the production budget for such a system. Any thoughts or similar experiences of how I can meet this challenge will be most welcome!

Most likely to be an issue with the mic itself. Either a fault in the cable (likely to be at the body pack connection) or the jack socket connector itself may have worked loose. The original XSW series of body packs did not have a locking nut fitted on the jack socket whereas later versions do. If the mic is repeatedly fitted and unfitted from the body pack the socket can often become loose leading to severe crackling in the audio. One other issue might be sweat having gathered in the mic capsule - this often appears as a crackle after a period of time in use. Best remedy would be to check the security of the jack socket and/or replace the mic itself.