TonyMitchell

I've found, as indeed would be expected, the condition becomes even more apparent when used outdoors with multiple paddle antennae mounted nice and high and well separated. In practice though, the trick is to lock the TX so users can only mute their mics as opposed to being able to switch them off, to avoid leaving an open RX to pick up whatever is going on within the overcrowded spectrum. Going back to the OP, the situation was far less likely with the budget kit he was formerly using, as the usable TX-RX distance was no doubt a fraction of what he now enjoys with the professional kit.

A few reasons - ours would be: Mics travel in their own compact flight-case which holds up to 24 x 57/58 et al shaped mics with grilles facing up and a space in the middle for fatter/stubbier kick & tom mics, etc. No room in that box for clips.Stands travel in a compartmentalised flight-case where the clip attaches to one leg of the mic stand, keeping the stand together in one pieceUnwinding clips off stands takes longer than unclipping a mic from its stand We do avoid brittle mic clips though.

Indeed, Tascam introduced a new twin cassette deck with USB connectivity last year.... and their vintage, industry standard model 122 always fetches a good few hundred pounds when an example in good condition surfaces

1U CDR/USB/SD recorder/player, for quick "on the fly" recording/playback when the talent turns up with a CD or USB key 5 minutes before going on? edit: corrected typo

As a general rule, if you're bringing a rack of big amplifiers into a venue that only has RFCs AND you intend to draw beyond the capability of a couple of 13A outlets, either (a) you've got too much rig for the gig or (b) the rig is incredibly inefficient. Most venues of any reasonable size will have a 32A or 63A power on IEC60309 connectors tucked away somewhere.

Worth noting, these were mentioned prior to the OP giving any indication of budget.

You're confusing power consumption (watts) with sound pressure levels (dB) It's all about efficiency. If you get a chance, have a listen to some C7 (a 200W mid/high cabinet that plays to 138dB/1m)

I agree - so forget the bishop thing I'll reiterate my previous post - this must involve college staff and an electrician - the college will of course have a regular approved contractor for electrical works. There are many factors to consider in determining the size and type of cable, how it will be installed, earthing arrangements, etc.

there are no direct power to the stage. but there is near by buildings with mains plugs. so extension cables would be run. I don't like that as the cable can get very hot as it will be running of one plug James, please stop. You are out of your depth. If the sound equipment is badly specified, the worst outcome is people won't hear the production. If you get the electrical side wrong, the outcome may be life changing/ending. As indicated by many above, the whole project needs to be evaluated and specified from scratch by paid professionals with the experience, qualifications and insurance to cover their recommendations and installations. Where a permanent outdoor stage structure is being installed, I would expect to find a mains distribution cabinet close-by, for productions to use. Alternatively, if the stage is close to a building and heavy duty mains cables can be safely routed temporarily to the stage, there may be a suitably sized and IP rated IEC60309 outlet on said building. It worries me you talk of cables getting "very hot" - if you are seeing this within your current activities, you must tell a member of staff immediately. They don't exist. Hire companies generally stock tried & tested, industry standard equipment, that is available worldwide and people/companies ask for because they know how it performs - typically L'acoustics, d&b audiotechnik, Nexo, Martin Audio, etc. The closest you'll get to what you've suggested - but please don't take this as a recommendation because it certainly isn't - would be to look at the various diy speaker building websites, where you'll find lots of very keen (and knowledgeable) hobbyists, who think the answer to everything is to build massive ground stacks and measure the highest SPLs achievable. But the concept of distributed systems is alien to them.

What are the power arrangements for the stage, James?

James, not sure if this is homework, but as a student, you may get more input from the forum if you put forward your own thoughts and suggestions and asked for thoughts on that. Meanwhile a few pointers, some of which you may have already studied... - what is the size of the stage and the shape of the area for sound coverage? - 120dB at 1m from source will become ~80dB 100m from source, assuming no physical obstructions - a 10dB increase is perceived by the human ear to be a doubling or halving of volume - a 40dB range is enormous and you will not provide audible levels at the back without deafening the front, with a ground stacked or flown source at the stage. That's why there are delay towers dotted around at festivals. - check out the definitions of "base" and bass", they have different meanings - what do you mean by "easily packed down and stored away not taking up much room"? This means different things to different people. 4 stacks of C7 or Q7 & a couple of B2s fall into that category in my book, but possibly not others. C7 is ideally a 2-man lift, Q7 is a one man lift and easy if you're tall. - keys & guitars... no drums? - what is the budget? - The amplifiers, which would be mains powered would typically be positioned inside or under cover. Professional boxes don't normally worry if they encounter a little rain (again, think festivals) Hopefully this gives you some things to think about and come back with after doing some research. Oh, one other thing, microphones don't "play"...

Avoid the really cheap PARs that still use single colour LEDs. Someone bought a set of eight in for ISITEE a while back and it was notably amazing how poor they were, in terms of brightness (lack of), consistency from one unit to another (lack of) and general build. The housing was of thin injection moulded plastic and the plugtop + hard wired cable weighed about the same as the head.

The mic is almost 3½ years old and now discontinued in favour of G4 replacements. Cost in Mar 2016 was £220, book value now £93 after 3 years depreciation. Aside from it just being the torn rubber switch which *should* be user replaceable, it hurts to charge more to P&L than the residual value of an asset. If they were still available new, I could buy another one and only charge £55 to P&L in year one. I have found another ebay dealer selling the button only for £8.80, so will probably buy one and tackle the brass ring inside the grip housing, which one could be forgiven for thinking was intentionally designed to be difficult to remove/replace...

I have an EW300 handheld where the grey mute button has severed, it looks like a performer has repeatedly picked at it. The Sennheiser Pro Spares page indicates, "The SKM300 G3 is the only model from the G3 hand held wireless mics with a mute button the housing. A replacement button cover can only be obtained with part 534499." Part 534499 includes the grip housing and costs £47.60. This seems excessive akin to replacing your front lighting clusters instead of being able to change a lamp. I found an ebay seller (albeit in the US) selling packs of the buttons only. Has anyone encountered this issue... and how did you resolve?

I bought this Fluke unit around a year ago, which has proved useful on many other cable locating/fault finding missions, beside the data duties it was bought for.

Now back in the day, when the grey matter was a little sharper, perhaps this would not be so confusssing...

Also not compared, but if your specs are correct like for like comparisons, surely the box that plays a massive 9dB louder wins hands down? FWIW, I'm not sure what "Klark Teknik amps" actually means. Back in the day, KT were of course an industry standard in signal processing, with the DN-360 and DN-410 being iconic products that you'd see everywhere, but they never made amplifiers. I've nothing against the Music Group, but in this context, wonder if "KT amps" is no more than applying a brand name to a box, where there is no heritage (no pun intended).

How long is a piece of string? There's so many considerations, size & shape of the room, position of main dance-floor, where you want sound to be more intense, fringe areas where you don't. A distributed system will achieve far favourable results to just piling up a big load of speakers and deafening the front of the room to achieve audibility at the back. I'll echo the sentiment of others - hiring is your friend here - or better still, engage the services of a PA company with the right inventory and experience to put on a production that will exceed yours and your guests' expectations. Then you can concentrate on the DJ side of things and be remembered for an awesome gig. Just adding more MI-grade boxes to make a >700pax rig is IMO never the best idea, many take this path and the results usually aren't pretty. It's good that you've asked the questions. No formula. From a quick Google, I see those QSC 'K' boxes are powered... therefore all the '12k' rating tells me is, if I were providing your stage power, for most music genres you'd be ok with a 16/1, but I'd probably run a 32/1, just to err on the side of caution. It doesn't indicate how loud each section plays, nor the pattern of the mid/high packs, nor anything else for that matter. For ballrooms of this size we typically put a couple of stacks of Q on the dancefloor and E8 everywhere else as fills. Probably adds up to circa "3k" in dj speak, if pushed hard.

I understand you 'drag' it onto their upload area

This video seems to explain simply what is and isn't acceptable in terms of Excel submissions. After watching it, as an exercise, I exported our last Sage VAT return to a two tab excel file (detail and summary) and replaced the text output with formula, then replaced the box 1-9 text output on the 'summary' tab with calculations pulling the respective values in from the 'detail' tab. I added a check formula for boxes 1-9 to confirm 0 variance between my formula and the initial Sage data. It took about 10 minutes to make an MTD compliant Excel file. Sage (and others) want to use MTD to force people onto their 'pay monthly' cloud based software. Reality is for us and probably most small businesses, this will just add cost and no benefit, which is why we won't be going there!

The risk you take is, when there is a problem with the audio, which may be nothing to do with you using one line for DMX, yours will be the first to get disconnected. Then you have no DMX line. Be safe and run your own, or perhaps look at one of the better wireless DMX solutions, if it really is problematic running a cable.

... and the Bluetooth range is 100ft - 2½ times the Radial's 40ft !

For these type of events we use the Radial ProAV1 to connect any phones, ipods, etc. The mono summing is a good feature and the pad can be useful and you're up & running in seconds. We always use our cables, to avoid crappy, abused consumer grade cable that acts tend to carry with them. We looked at the Radial BT-Pro, however foresaw potential problems. For talent and arena acts that walk up with their phone 30 seconds before they go on, there would be insufficient time to pair devices, cue & and check the signal level. That aside, the limited distance would likely cause problems when the act walks away with their paired phone, goes out of Bluetooth range, then the music stops... which would translate into being the sound man's fault. If the thing is wired, the talent has no option but to leave the phone at the sound control position... much safer.