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Hi all Am looking to streamline my get-in's (and out's!) a little. My desk (Roland M480) has always travelled in its own case which is pretty much just the right size for it (no spare space). I've therefore always carried my router, script stand, lights etc. in a separate box, which of course all needs setting up every time. I've recently bought a spare desk which also came cased, however this one is a little larger and by reconfiguring the foam I can build my own moderate sized dog box. I'm wanting to make this as slick as possible when moving in to venues, so the more useful stuff I can build in, the better. The desk pretty much always runs alongside my redundant QLab rack, so I have a VGA monitor plus other paraphernalia. I'm able to extend the desk's upper control surface (where the screen and channel controls are) out a couple of inches either side, as part of the dog box, so have space for a few panel mounted controls, sockets etc. So far I've got the following as useful things to include, but am always up for more suggestions. Vesa pole (script stand and QLab screen travel in separate peli case). Network switch and access point. Usb hub X2 (one for each QLab Mac). Comms pack (with my own design changeover switch so my Comms headset doubles as my headphones and TalkBack mic). Usb sockets for charging. Illumination of desk surface, plus power supply for script light. LED strip routed in to case outside surface to illuminate floor under desk. All of my midi go button and redundant changeover setup. A small area of whiteboard with marker for notes (emergency spare radio mic patch locations normally). Bluetooth audio receiver. Somewhere for stashing pens. Somewhere for stashing chocolate! Any other thoughts? I've got a nice opportunity to build something that'll really work well for me, and make life a little more comfortable (I take a roll of carpet with me for just such reasons, plus it does save the knees when stood mixing!).

Collaboration mode also seems to include "view only", which is very useful for those shows where the SM or LX want to see what's going on. I've done VGA splits before to achieve this but doing it over the network is way better.

That looks like the stuff. You want the RG213 - look at the specs for the attenuation and you'll see it's remarkably better.

Last time we did it, they had a mobility scooter chassis with the handle bars chopped off and shortened so they were only a couple if inches high. This kept them well and truly out of sight within the hull of the gondola, which was built around it. Christine steered it. Seemed to work really well.

The Brady IDXpert can do up to 50mm labels, and I can confirm that the Outdoor Vinyl ones stick like excrement to a blanket. Hard to come by now though. Last roll I got was from eBay. Edit - I might be lying, they could be 38mm high.

That's the one I have. Very easy to do corners. Manoeuvres just as easily as a regular one. In the video he's got the handlebar extensions out, which is great for racks etc. but does push you in to corners on small landings.

Hi all Does anybody know where the v1.4 files have gone? Just looking to download a few bits and pieces, and the link isn't working.

LS9 won't do this off the shelf. I'd be looking at something like an Allen & Heath SQ. If you don't need physical faders then you really can't go wrong with the Behringer XR18. Cracking little box for the money.

I own a Stanley powered stair climber and can categorically say it's the best thing ever! It's not the quickest, but makes me rethink my get ins to a particularly unpleasant venue. I have very light boxes and very heavy ones, whereas before I'd had to divide everything in to medium sized boxes that were still exhausting. The few big heavy boxes go up on the stair climber and everything else is handballed up super quick. They're not cheap, but compared to hiring help for the sake of a few hours, it pays for itself very quickly.

Found it. Not quite what I'd remembered, but not far off. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://l6c-acdn2.line6.net/data/6/0a06434c202051f713c8564b3/application/pdf/P180%20Active%20Directional%20Antenna%20(%20Rev%20B%20).pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjsiY_n7rn1AhVGXMAKHVoEBskQFnoECCwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2bOqmaYeAYQbwjyIKvnBWs So up to 100ft seems acceptable. They do spec some double shielded low loss cable. My own coaxes are all RG213/URM67, which are thick but behave well. It's reasonably cheap compared to other fancier cables. Decent low loss cable.

The Line6 antennas are odd beasts. I seem to remember seeing a table somewhere in a manual camparing the gain settings to cable lengths, and they were ridiculously long! I assume because it's a digital system and therefore tolerate higher noise floor from lots of gain at the antenna. I believe the cable specified was nothing fancy - probably RG58.

https://www.commfront.com/pages/pelco-d-protocol-tutorial#3 Random, generic command set for a PTZ camera, but it seems pretty standard. It would appear that they're relative, and also that there's some kind of checksum to calculate. Maybe it's not quite as straightforward.

If you got a PTZ camera that took RS485 control then via a converter you could drive it from an RS232/485 converter off of a serial port (or just get a USB to RS485 interface). There are a few posts about sending serial data from QLab kicking around the internet (particularly with regard to driving projectors). They all seem to involve another application and Apple Script, but they seem pretty straightforward.

I don't have an answer, but it almost sounds like you need the mic stand equivalent of a tank trap. Could you have one fabricated? It would be a super simple job for somebody. Maybe a tank trap with an off-centre pole, which puts the speaker closer to the wall.

We had some on Jekyll and Hyde and they played absolute havoc with the radio mics!

Struggling to find a reference to that. Do you have a link? I've always understood GSM to be 2W. Just tried checking Ofcom's documentation but it's less than clear and I'm supposed to be wrangling 2 small children in a soft play area today, not trying to unpick Ofcom's paperwork. I did however find a few articles from other sources including the British Medical Journal that mention 2W. That article is quite old though, so possibly out of date.

Pretty much every GSM mobile phone going, at peak power. https://www.4g.co.uk/4g-frequencies-uk-need-know/ They'd only be transmitting at that power if they were a long way away from the base station. I've always been struck by the irony of people complaining about a base station nearby on health grounds, when its presence is likely to reduce the transmit power of the device you hold against your head. Wolf124, my honest answer is that I don't know. I've not had any issues yet, but then again I only use my channel 65/70 stuff on chorus/company - saving my channel 38 stuff for principals. Your biggest issue is likely to be receiver desense rather than anything else - stick enough RF up your aerials that's close enough to make it through the front end filtering and the receiver AGC will kick in, pulling back your own wanted signals too. If it's a bother then you could always look in to some simple bandpass filtering to remove it - a simple quarter wave stub would be a cheap and dirty solution, but you need a spectrum analyser/tracking generator to properly prune it. Other than that, as you've suggested, the most important thing is to make sure that your radio mic is the biggest signal that hits your receiver. Mitigations like no phones in wings and careful antenna placement can all help to make sure that's the case. You asked way back in the thread about where to start measuring your antenna lengths from. With the trantecs, given the case is metal, I've always taken it to be part of the rf shielding, and therefore have started measuring from the point the antenna left the metal case. Within the beltpack you can almost consider it like being inside a coax. That's been my theory anyway. I've got to be honest though, I've had a pack successfully finish a show with zero antenna and still had a usable signal from them.

Tricky one. Ofcom are never going to use the word "safe". They managed to do the Stewart Report - measuring cellular emissions near schools and hospitals, without ever using the word. All they'll do is quote ICNERP levels at you and tell you if it's lower than that. That calculator is useful, but it's slightly flawed for us in that it doesn't give results in the reactive near-field. If we're talking about head mounted mics then the skull is most definitely within that (8cm at 606MHz). It becomes far more complicated once we're that close. That said, the wavelength at 606MHz is 0.5M, so greater than the resonant frequency of the human skull. You have to get up to microwaves before we start getting to resonant frequencies, but of course with the higher frequency comes a smaller reactive near-field boundary, so that calculator starts to work for us again. At 2.4GHz the reactive near-field boundary is at 2cm, so only just through the skull. Wavelength then is 13cm, so arguably close to a cranial resonant frequency depending on which direction you measure (and the size of the person's brain!). As I say, it's complicated and nuanced. My gut feeling with it all is that when I'm putting a transmitter straight on somebody's head I opt for channel 38 over my 2.4GHz kit, as the longer wavelength worries me less. If I had to use 2.4GHz then I would, and I don't believe there's an issue there, but if the decision is within my hands then it's one that I take. It is also worth pointing out that most of these actors are going to finish the show and then not think twice about calling their mum for an hour, holding a more powerful transmitter (2W at 900MHz) straight up to their ear.

I used a silver based solder. The conductivity is poorer than leaded solder but in practice it's not seemed to be a problem. It needs to be nice and hot - I used a blowtorch. Takes forever to cool, so it's wise to have some sort of jig that'll hold everything where you need it until it's solidified. The bandwidth of the antenna is wider due to the thicker wire, and it will have a different velocity factor. I pruned them to the same length as my trantec originals and stuck one on the spectrum analyser/tracking generator at work. Frequency response was pretty consistent across the tunable range of my transmitters and compared pretty much identically with the trantec originals. Given that, I didn't go much further in terms of tuning the length. I don't think it'd yield any better results. My printed bases shroud part of the thread, so I bought standoffs with long threads, which the printed collar covers around 5mm of. The printed collar fits through the hole in the transmitter case, and the thread that protrudes from the end is what screws in to the threaded termination inside.

Bit late to the party, but my own aerials are the thinnest bicycle brake cable (so quite firm/springy). I have 3d printed ends around the beltpack end and tip. A big word of warning about making up your own aerials. You must make sure the thread isn't biting down on to the beltpack body - it needs to bite on to the threaded insert that's soldered to the pcb. If this isn't the case then when you nip up the aerial against the body, you're trying to rip the threaded socket off of the pcb.

Another huge success for Gareth Owen's sound design by all accounts. Would love to see it in person.

The M300 is a cracking little desk, given its size and age. I own an M300 and a pair of M480's, plus lots of stageboxes. If you don't need to fulfil riders and need plenty of spec in a small space then it's a great choice. But..... It's a 10 year old product. In many ways it still punches where it matters, but it lacks things like digital scribble strips and decent remote control (there's a dongle you can buy, but it's flakey - I use a usb anywhere network hub and just control via my windows laptop/tablet). It's also very difficult to get anything in or out of it digitally. REAC is a rock solid protocol and in many ways I prefer it to others out there, especially behringer's offerings which sound to be a bit fussy and unreliable. You won't find any Dante cards for it though. There's a Madi box, but it's expensive and seems a bit faffy to use. There's a Windows driver for REAC, and I've often wondered if Dante Via could turn a pc in to a REAC-Dante converter. Never tried though. There's some flexibility there in that it has midi (hardware and usb) and a very comprehensive midi implementation, so remote controlling and control surface expansion is possible. It even has serial too!? If you can pick up a used one for a good price then I'd bit say no, but if you're buying new then things have moved on.

For the last 6 or 8 years my antenna distribution has been solely TV amplifier based. The ones I'm using aren't made any more, but are a 1 in, 8 out, with 3dB gain. Never had an RF related problem with them. When we last had some fancy test equipment on hire at work (spectrum analyser with tracking generator and a network analyser) I brought one in and took a look at it. It was pretty much flat across the specified band, with pretty consistent gain. Think the main points gave been mentioned already above, but the main one to think about is power. Mine, like yours, are line powered. My receivers have switchable phantom for RF amplifiers and active paddles, which happily power the splitter. One quirk though is that the phantom isn't passed up the coax to the antenna, so if you're using active paddles you'll struggle to power them. Too much gain isn't a good thing in RF though, so I'd always suggest improving cabling losses before adding amplifiers anyway. Another tricky one was getting decent quality cabling. F type to BNC/TNC isn't easy to come by. For goodness sake don't by the pro signal adapters from CPC. All of mine fell in 2 over the years, leaving me with dead channels that took a lot of sussing out. In the end I went to a Chinese company through Alibaba and they made cables to my specification. I've got 32 channels of the stuff though, so it was a sizeable order.

Whatever you do end up doing, use a lint free cloth or sponge to apply/clean/whatever. I say this as someone who cleaned a similarly sticky item with blue roll and now have a not-quite-so-sticky but quite fluffy item instead! I'm a big fan of Wonder Wipes (or screwfix' own brand multi purpose wipes). They're coated in a soap and isopropanol mix, and are really good at this kind of thing. Sadly not very "green" but very effective.

You absolute beauties! That's it! You might also chuckle to note that after my last post yesterday I decided to try something else and get the name transfer working instead. Roland have a table of values 0-127 that correspond with characters. I set about building up an array of all the different characters. Took me ages. Then, and only then, did I realise that Roland had used values that corresponded to the ASCII codes for the relevant characters - all I had to do was write the received value to the display and it worked. Thanks again. Will share the final item with you once I've finished it. Chris