Talkback, Yamaha LS9

[Techno-John]

I operate a Yamaha LS9 at the church I attend, and although I'm getting to know quite a few of its features, there's still alot for me to learn about the equipment and sound mixing in general. The particular thing I'm exploring at the moment is the 'talkback' feature and ways we can make best use of it. Got it all set up, and thinking it's probably best to only have it sending to IEMs only, although I guess it can be a bit distracting for someone in the band to suddenly hear the desk operator in their ears, 'mid-song'. I'd like to use this to communicate information to the band members as the building we use is quite big, and figured this is probably the best way, but what a few of us has really been discussing is a way to communicate (without people outside the band/tech group having to listen to us!) Has anyone had any experience of such communication, what's the best way to communicated between; band, sound desk, and "screen operator" (screen operator being the person who puts the song words up on a projector screen via a PC and software called Easy Worship).

 

So what would be ideal, and not necessarily all in a vocal way, is that we have a way for sound desk to communicate with band (for which we have talkback), band to communicate with sound desk (maybe slightly more complicated) and for band to communicate with screen operator, which is need for things like to say what song is next (as in a church environment things don't always go in an exact planned order).

 

Any ideas?

[Wilflet]

If you've got a spare channel then stick the mic into that,

that gives you the flexability to send it where you want - pa incase you need to make anouncments. wedges and iem for talking to the band (if the band are on several mixes you can talk to as many or as few of them as you want.) and then give the video guy his own aux to a shout box (small powered speaker), a spare wedge if you have one, or some headphones depending what you can find.

 

this means you can talk to him during the show, him and the band when you need to, and if you only need the band you dont need to bother the video guy with things like 'oi drummer tune your tom'

[Matt Pengelly]

For the musicians on stage, something like the ProCo Panic Button pedal (seen here) would be perfect. It's a simple toggling stomp box that allows the user to switch between an A and B output. Obviously requires a spare input per mic on the desk, but it would be the simplest way. All you need to do is route the A output channel from the desk out to FOH as per and the B output channel is routed solely to the engineers cans/the video guy/the rest of the band's IEMs/whoever else you might want them to be able to talk to without the audience hearing.

 

I've no idea if that particular ProCo one is still available (I'm sure a quick Google search will tell you), but it's not a complicated box so you ought to be able to find something similar if they aren't.

 

For the link from you to the musicians/video guy/etc, I'd second Wilflet's idea of sacking-off the Talkback on the LS9 and just using a spare input channel.

 

The obvious caveat to all of these is that they require spare desk channels, but assuming you have them that's the way I would go.

[TomHoward]

It may be worth just looking into a ring comms system?

[Techno-John]

So if you did use some sort of switch box like the proco panic button, could you put the 2nd channel on a 2nd layer? (The LS9 has 2 layers of 32 channels)

[Rob_Beech]

Only if you had physical inputs on the desk for it. It only has 32 of these so you'd have to use a physical input from 1 to 32 or buy additional expansion cards.

 

You CAN pick up small rack mount mixers that might be handy to put in more than 1 of these mics from more than one f these boxes and then taking an output from this into a desk channel (that remains off in FOH, and maybe sends back to the IEMS)

 

This way each person (after some careful initial setup) can switch between sending to their normal channel for FOH) and the talk back / comms channel.

 

The only real issue is it introduces much more potential to go wrong.

[TimmyP1955]

1 channel for you to talk to them. Switch it on to talk.

 

1 channel with (whatever number of) mics (with foot switches) on stage for them to talk to each other and you. Mics can be Wye'd together. Just make sure that the switches don't mute by shorting pins 2 and 3, as this will kill any mic that is on. (If they do short, put a resistor in each leg between the switch and the output.) Channel is always on, cue to listen.

 

Simple, effective.

 

If you custom make your switches, you could have a call light so you know that they want to talk to you.

[Rob_Beech]

So you don't think there will be issue with one mic diaphragm driving any other diaphragms open on the circuit (with 2 or more switches switched) due to it being the low Z route instead of down to the pre amp?

[TimmyP1955]

So you don't think there will be issue with one mic diaphragm driving any other diaphragms open on the circuit (with 2 or more switches switched) due to it being the low Z route instead of down to the pre amp?

 

Any given mic's output might be a bit less if multiple mics are switched on, but it should not be enough to matter. (Back before big boards were affordable, it was common to wye mics together to save channels - nobody died :-)

[TomHoward]

If you're only summing them for the talkback - so each mic on stage has a two-throw footswitch, one throw going the appropriate FOH input, and all the other throws being summed together to create a single talkback channel for everyone - does it really matter if the level is a bit wayward on the talkback channel? You're not going to have a gain structure on the talkback channel anyway so the levels would be all over the place.

 

Of course feeding each second throw back into a mixer to set levels for talkback would allow you to gain them up, but it'd be a lot more cabling / runs through the multi (unless you had the mixer at the stage end.)

 

The alternative would be to practice your hand signals or invest in some comms systems / headsets, which may be the less over-engineered solution.

[NoiseboyBaldy]

You can digitally patch 2 channels on the desk from one input, that way you can send either channel to the desired areas, it also means that once this has been set up, all you have to do is use the mute rather than going into the aux sends.

 

On another note; A word of advice with the LS9, don't bother using the dynamics, the compressors sound terrible and the gates click if they are not fully opened (I only use the gates when I know the drummer can keep a constant).

[TimmyP1955]

On another note; A word of advice with the LS9, don't bother using the dynamics, the compressors sound terrible and the gates click if they are not fully opened (I only use the gates when I know the drummer can keep a constant).

 

I find the compressors to be very smooth. My starting settings are attack at 0, release at 100ms, knee at 1, ration at 4:1.

 

The gates chatter badly unless you use the sidechain filters, with which the gates can be made to work fairly well (not as well as the G4s I had, but not bad).

[dan slv-tech]

I find the compressors to work very well?

and ive had no issues with the gates, I use them as I would an analog gate-