Cant afford Tecpro- Let's use Discord!

[Oscah]

Hi, so I am working at a sixth form college, trying to make the most of an under equipped little theatre, I have a 1001 things to buy not least of which is a talk back system of some sort. Unfortunately we need lights more than we need talk back but considering we all have Chromebooks or laptops it would seem totally reasonable to have 1 in each wing with a headset with a long cable, 2 or maybe 3 more Chromebooks in the control room for sound lx and my trainee DSM!

 

What issues am I going to have that I haven't yet thought of?  I use discord a lot to talk to friends worldwide and have found it pretty stable and reliable really, at least more usable than no talk back system at all, so what do you think  good plan? bad plan?

 

 

thanks

[timsabre]

With any online chat system there can be quite a lot of delay - never tried Discord particularly though, but presumably you're going to a server somewhere out on the internet. Delay could be a problem in a cueing situation and will be very weird if you are in the same room as someone but hearing them with a 1 or 2 second delay.
There's a few android intercom apps (presumably iOS too if you're on iphones) which use local UDP connections rather than going out onto the internet. Might be worth trying those. Zoom is quite reliably low latency but you'd need to pay.

Edited April 18 by timsabre

[alistermorton]

I've seen one guy (on controlbooth) who uses a local mumble server for his talkback system and is really happy with it, but even on a quiet local network he still gets 1/2 a second latency, which can matter for cueing, especially, as Tim says, when you're in the same room as someone, it's really off putting.

Edited April 18 by alistermorton
Fix typo

[sunray]

1 hour ago, Oscah said:

Hi, so I am working at a sixth form college, trying to make the most of an under equipped little theatre, I have a 1001 things to buy not least of which is a talk back system of some sort. Unfortunately we need lights more than we need talk back but considering we all have Chromebooks or laptops it would seem totally reasonable to have 1 in each wing with a headset with a long cable, 2 or maybe 3 more Chromebooks in the control room for sound lx and my trainee DSM!

 

What issues am I going to have that I haven't yet thought of?  I use discord a lot to talk to friends worldwide and have found it pretty stable and reliable really, at least more usable than no talk back system at all, so what do you think  good plan? bad plan?

 

 

thanks

If it's a 6th form college there are likely to be technical students with contruction abilities. Look on this forum for blueclone.

[david.elsbury]

I’ve used Mumble with a local Murmr server before for local Comms (between a hospital operating theatre and an auditorium) and not had any issues 

[Oscah]

Thanks for the replies chaps, ill do a little latency testing. The build your own system sounds fun, I would have to do it myself as we don't have an electronics course anymore, great of you guys to offer the design.

[Ynot]

How often does the school NEED the talkback? 
If it's only a couple of times a year or so, then look at hiring in a proper setup - same with lighting/sound gear. You don't HAVE to buy everything at the same time. Hiring can also give you the opportunity to test out what you might purchase in the future to make sure you're getting the best bang for the buck 🙂

 

[alistermorton]

Out of interest, David, what sort of latency do you get? The guy in the states reckoned about 1/2 a second.

Edited April 19 by alistermorton

[Ynot]

I suspect that using a server based system is all well and good, allowing for that latency, but you'd always be at the mercy of that server losing connection (and law of sod will dictate it being at the worst time!) as well as getting busier (and hence more latency...) when you have a potential room full of people also wanting to access that server from their phones...

 

[Bryson]

Clearcom are rolling out Gen-IC thats an internet based intercom.  Cost real money, though, but I imagine they have optimized for minimal latency:  https://clearcom.com/News-Events/Details/Clear-Com-Introduces-Gen-IC-Virtual-Intercom-and-SkyPort-Virtual-System-Management-Platform

Be interesting to see how this goes.  We have used the LQ boxes before to link intercom systems between remote buildings via the net.

[david.elsbury]

9 hours ago, alistermorton said:

Out of interest, David, what sort of latency do you get? The guy in the states reckoned about 1/2 a second.

I really don’t remember sorry. This was probably 2019. We were obviously nowhere near each other but I don’t recall it being a problem for conversation so it couldn’t have been super high?

Edited April 19 by david.elsbury

[J Pearce]

9 hours ago, Ynot said:

I suspect that using a server based system is all well and good, allowing for that latency, but you'd always be at the mercy of that server losing connection

 

Modern digital comms (like Clearcom's Helixnet) are just a server feeding data to/from clients. It's just a matter of having a suitably stable server. Greengo is slightly different being a serverless peer-to-peer system.

[richardash1981]

To come at this from a different perspective, comms kit designed for live use isn't just about the audio performance and latency which others have talked about. It is also about mechanically robust design (connectors, cables, switches and so on) and simple, tactile user interfaces (you don't have to see a beltpack to work it), which you won't get from something using consumer electronics (at least, not without doing some modifications yourself, which is heading back into blueclone territory).

[themadhippy]

As its a school why cant ya r̶o̶b̶  borrow the bits from various departments  to throw a coms system together, small amp from physics and headsets from the language lab was our make do system,but even that was a big improvement on the  old telephone handsets and a 9v battery that we started with.

[sunray]

1 hour ago, themadhippy said:

As its a school why cant ya r̶o̶b̶  borrow the bits from various departments  to throw a coms system together, small amp from physics and headsets from the language lab was our make do system,but even that was a big improvement on the  old telephone handsets and a 9v battery that we started with.

Indeed. In 1969 I used a valve amplifier (ECC81 & PL84) and loudspeaker robbed from a record player, LT & HT PSU's from physics dept, headset from language lab for comms between MD (Known as organist) and lighting. I soon added c/o switch to isolate LS and enable Foster DF1 microphone to talkback to MD. used for 2 plays a year apart.

After leaving school I joined a little theatre club and installed the same system into there for use between SM/sound position to lighting but knocked up a basic PSU, changed the PL84 to EL84 and the C/O switch to PTT button and used the LS as the talkback mic. I did 2 plays there as lighting op and left it in place. About 10 years later I went to a show and it was still in place and lit so I assume being used.