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Last night I was asked by our local high school technical director in charge of the high school auditorium to evelaluate their sound system. It was professionally installed when the aud. was built 4 years ago. It has Altec Lansing speakers, amps, EQ's, compressor's, and a mackie 24x4x2 main board. I believe they put in way to advanced of a system for the school since it's all supposed to be run by the students. I have all the schematics from the original install and the pro's set up the system so that all music went through two main cabinets that are left and right of the stage. They had a crossover hooked up to this path and the low level output goes to a line level mixer (which I'll get back to in a minute) and then output's to the sub amp. Next, they installed a center cluster in between the two music speakers which included a 3-way cabinet and then a horn fill. In the second catwalk they installed a second 3-way cabinet to reach the back half of the aud. and they put a digital delay unit on this. In the signal path for these two cabinets they have a 3-way crossover with the high and mid going to the 3-way cabinets and the low going to the line level mixer (as mentioned before) and then to the sub amp. Next they put in some smaller 3-way cabinets in the balcony which also have a digital delay unit. It looks as though these are wired for full range. They also have eleven 8" drivers built in to the from of the stage for front fill and these also have a digital delay unit.
Now, I see the point of this, they want all the vocals to go through the center clusters and the fills and only have the music go through the side cabinets and then use the two subs for all the low end but to do this you would have to either have 2 consoles or use two buses for your stereo music and the another bus for your vocals and then mix the two until they sound blended. This just seems like a little much. I'm thinking that I'll recommend they go to a single main 4-way system and then have one mix that goes out. That way all speakers have the same output. I know this is long but any suggestions would be helpful. If there are questions or something needs clarified please let me know. Thanks!!
Follow Ups:
You havent told us how large the room is or what type of events they need to accomplish. This does sound like a mildly complex system but most of it seems like its hardwired and not changing. I dont think of using two busses for the main music and two for dialog that insane. For a large room, having center steering and nicely timed delays could be needed to do a good job.
Frost
The room is a 1000 seat auditorium. It follows all the basic acoustic rules, i.e. no parallel or perpendicular walls, it has acoustic ceiling panels and also rounded sheetrock wall sections that are about 12 feet long. With no sound re-enforcement at all you can get quite good sound from a choir but they will have theatrical performances, musicals, and community talent shows with rock bands and soloists. It has a main floor level that goes about 3/4 of the way to the back. There is then an aisle and then a raised seating section with about 14 rows. Above the raised seating is a balcony with abut 20 rows of seating. Hope this helps.
A thousand seat auditorium is large enough to warrant a delay line. The center cluster is a good addition for theater making the voices come from the stage but not NEEDED. I would keep it tho. I think focusing more on teaching people to use this system would yield more bang than replacing it. The system sounds like a system that you would find in a university theater of that size. Also, teaching people to use it will be educational.
Frost
I agree with the need for the delay and the center cluster. I don't mind those because that's all initial set up. For atually mixing a live show though, who wants to mess with trying to balance the system between two front speakers that put out the music and then 2 center clusters, 11 front fills, and 3 balcony fills all putting out the vocals. Although I have not had the chance to mix a show on the system as is yet, it seems as though it would be very difficult to balance it out. It also seems that the overall system output would be very low unless you wanted the vocals totally overpowering.
These should be set up such that the rear fills run a signal from the center or a summed front/center. The stage lip should be on an aux so you just dont have to use it. and the Mains, center should be setup bussed so you can just bus everything to whichever system you want. You should be able to just send everything to the speakers you want without doing anything but pressing a few buttons. Also, even in theater you will want some vocals in the mains and a little more in the center (usually +6dB)
Frost
I work in a theater in The Netherlands, and we have a comparable system consisting of an Axys source set, Axys source centre cluster, 4 Axys U-12 balcony fills and 6 Axys Tx-86 frontfills. We use two XTA DP200 DSP's for EQ-ing and delaying.
I always operate the system using the left and right outputs of our K3 mixer for left and right stack, and the mono output for the rest. All levels are set by the XTA, and delays are set as well. I operate the K3 in a special fader mode, so that the left master fader handles left and right, and the right faders operates the mono ouput. Some others prefer a maxtix output or a group out.
This is very simple to operate. You can use the summed L+R signal for the mono ouput, but for speech or to let the sound come from the middle for the entire audience, you just set the mono level somewhat higher.
Their idea of "simple" sound like a bastard child of a movie mixing stage!
Please continue with YOUR plans and save them all!!!!
Dman
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