School hall audio - the impossible dream

[sam.spoons]

I'll try by best to answer these

 

* I am a member of the schools PTA that fund a lot of their requests, I got involved (with the PTA) to try and help the school make better technical decisions and to try and prevent the PTA blowing themselves up at fundraisers with their creative cabling.

* though they have some coomber stuff around, the kit in this case it is low-medium range kit

* I went to see it today at an event and the speakers are low-end plastic boxes with a 10" driver and piezo in a horn, the cabinets are mounted hard in each of the four corners and their output seemed to be mainly muddy-mids.

 

 

 

It sounds like the solution now should be

 

* better speakers, better placed

* a locked-down LMS

* a kit of microphones, di's, stands and cables in some nice storage with the understanding we'll have to replace them all at least once every couple of years as they get inevitably trashed

 

I'm sure you already know all of this but, on the basis of what you've just said, speakers will be better placed either side of the 'stage' at one end of the room only. I don't have any brand specific advice for passive speakers but Studiospares boxes seem well regarded at the budget end). Mics and stands need not be expensive ones but do buy something reasonable and robust. Stagg stands, of late, seem pretty well made and Thomann sell Samson and Superlux branded vocal mics for less than £20 each which may be a good choice (I have a Superlux drum mic set which is remarkably good) though the cheapest Sennheiser E825 is under £40 and if it's similar to my E815 it'll be very usable and solidly built. DI's are a no brainer, Orchid Electronics Micro DI at £25, built like the proverbial concrete outhouse, only two sockets and no switches or buttons almost totally idiotproof...... Buy decent cables (I know it hurts when they get badly treated but at least they'll probably still work afterwards).

 

HTH

[MarkPAman]

My kids primary (many years ago now) stored their 10 or dozen mic leads "in series" on a hose reel mounted on the wall in the cupboard where the mixer lived. Managed to keep them much better than the normal winding round the elbow method does. Also, mic stands clipped to a shadow board.My contribution to their setup was to screw a DI box to the electric piano and tie some right angle jack leads in, so that it always had ballanced outputs available.

[sam.spoons]

My kids primary (many years ago now) stored their 10 or dozen mic leads "in series" on a hose reel mounted on the wall in the cupboard where the mixer lived. Managed to keep them much better than the normal winding round the elbow method does. Also, mic stands clipped to a shadow board.My contribution to their setup was to screw a DI box to the electric piano and tie some right angle jack leads in, so that it always had ballanced outputs available.

 

http://media.towsure.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/900x/040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/w/1/w169_1.jpg

 

I do a similar thing with my older, cheap cables using one of these the cheap cables don't coil well but this method keeps them tidy, is almost idiotproof, and you can also check them all for continuity in one go. My decent cables get the under and over treatment with velcro ties.