Deaf loop and stage pyros

[james3mc]

I'm running the sound for our forthcoming production of Journey's End. It's set towards the end of WWI and is rather immersive i.e. the audience are in the thick of it, in the trenches. As well as machine gun fire there is the sound of artillery fire going overhead and therefore some pyros as well as SFX.

 

So my question is: For the louder pyros, should I kill the deaf loop? It's an Ampetronic ILD252?

 

Obviously we'll have the usual signage warning that the show contains loud explosions, but as the topic may well appeal to an older generation, I'm expecting a number of who might well use the hearing loop.

[timsabre]

The input compressors are pretty aggressive on those Ampetronic loop drivers. I wouldn't expect much pyro bang would get through.

Are you feeding the loop or is it just an ambient mic?

[james3mc]

...Are you feeding the loop or is it just an ambient mic?

 

It gets fed from one of the the desk's aux.

[Shez]

It gets fed from one of the the desk's aux.

As the sound op will doubtless be pulling down mics at the point of pyro trigger to avoid excess amplification through the PA, I would expect that to sort out the loop feed too.

[sandall]

It gets fed from one of the the desk's aux.

(Even if every cast member is mic'd) wouldn't it be better to feed the loop from the show relay mic(s), rather than the desk?

[Jivemaster]

It's not impossible for the sound and light of the Fx to be handled separately on the same cue. Sound being totally a level controlled sound cue and flash being a (semi)silent pyro. This keeps the effect within the limits of the sound system.

[dbuckley]

(Even if every cast member is mic'd) wouldn't it be better to feed the loop from the show relay mic(s), rather than the desk?

If there is 100% cast coverage with mics, then the desk feed is so much better than relay mics.

 

I say this not as a deaf person, but as someone who likes to wear double muff headsets and have a show feed into the headset. The additional speech clarity and lack of extraneous noises when I can have a feed from the radios is lovely, and I am assuming that someone with hearing difficulties would feel the same way.

[sandall]

If there is 100% cast coverage with mics, then the desk feed is so much better than relay mics.

Agreed, but as this would appear to be an amateur production (therefore presumably not a huge venue), 100% mic'ing seems unlikely. In 300-750-seaters I have only ever needed mics for children & musicals, never for drama..

[james3mc]

It gets fed from one of the the desk's aux.

(Even if every cast member is mic'd) wouldn't it be better to feed the loop from the show relay mic(s), rather than the desk?

 

It is. The show replay just comes of a desk aux. No cast members will be mic'd.

 

I might just momentarily mute the show relay at those points anyway.

 

 

 

[dbuckley]

In 300-750-seaters I have only ever needed mics for children & musicals, never for drama..

Drifting

 

Interesting, in our local 350 seater we now use mics on everyone. We used to be the only mob that didn't, and got a constant stream of complaints from audience members. Mostly rom people who are a bit hard of hearing, but not hard enough that they have been willing to admit their partial deafness and get the lugs tested and get a hearing aid. And we were incessantly compared by audience members to other companies, we were the cheapskates and amateurs that couldn't do mics. And probably newspaper reviews were the last straw. And this wasn't a lack of projection problem from actors.

 

Now we just get complaints from directors who - on principle - hate the things, but the audience is happy, and the directors are coming around. And we get a much better feed for the loop, and, it must be said, my cans.

[sandall]

Drifting further off-topic.....

 

Curious. It did take a long time for "my" G&S company to accept gun-mics (+ the occasional spot-mic for the odd quiet soloist) - all the other companies did musicals & pantos, using guns plus radios on the principals. Maybe needing mics for drama in small venues is a trend that hasn't reached these parts yet (it surely can't be that Kiwis are more cloth-eared than us Brits!!). We do have a good IR system at our local (amateur owned & run) 350-seater.

 

In 300-750-seaters I have only ever needed mics for children & musicals, never for drama

 

Actually I lied. For several years I looked after the technician stuff for a council-run 500-seater. There is a very big South Asian community nearby, so as well as the odd touring B & C-listers, & local amateur operatic companies, we had a lot of (usually sold-out) touring comedy shows from Mumbai & Karachi (mostly "names" nearing their sell-by date). The Indian shows all had sets, & just wanted floats, plus the odd spot mic upstage, but the Pakistani shows were more like radio comedy for the deaf - no set, 4 stand-mics, & everybody downstage & performing very loudly.

[Simon Lewis]

The maximum level that the loop can deliver is limited by both its peak current output and the drive / compression settings. Set correctly, the compression shouldn't be coming on too much in normal use to allow for some headroom.

If you have loud bangs going off, chances are that the loop's AGC will be pumping quite hard, and the slight delay from restoration time may mean that some dialogue in the loop is lost.

It wouldn't hurt to put an additional audio compressor before the loop input and set it to limit fairly hard a few dB below the loop maximum output.

 

With regards to getting an intelligible speech signal from the loop, please don't assume that the relay mic will be fine. It might work in some venues with patrons who have mild to moderate hearing loss, but those with more severe loss will struggle to understand anything that isn't close miked. If the relay mic is all you have, then OK, but for any production that is miking the actors directly (or has float mics closer to the action than the show relay) please use that as the loop/IR/Bluetooth/VoIP feed.