School theatre sound

[sunray]

1 minute ago, J Pearce said:

Veering off topic, but there's not much I won't point a 4099 at. They make great lectern mics too. Very popular with sound recordists for 'plant mics' and hiding in car sun visors etc.

I wasn't questioning it in the slightest, It was just one of those situations that had not crossed my mind. Not having any of my own I've never 'played' with them.

[Malcolm Gordon]

16 hours ago, Ynot said:

I've had a lot of success with the PCC160 but as with all things you need to position them right, with adequate padding to prevent direct pickup of stage noise, and balance them well with other mics in use.

 

In addition to padding I had Perspex baffles made up, in an attempt to mask the rear lobe from the pit band on the floor below the stage

Edited June 11 by Malcolm Gordon
word missing

[Ynot]

32 minutes ago, Malcolm Gordon said:

In addition to padding I had Perspex baffles made up, in an attempt to mask the rear lobe from the pit band on the floor below the stage

That's something I'd never considered...

And something I might play around with as I have a 3D printer on loan...

What size baffles?

 

[Malcolm Gordon]

4mm clear Perspex. 12" long x 4" x 4", hot folded. The idea was to make them not too obvious. This is 30 years ago. I can't remember now whether I was following someone's recommendation, or designed it for myself

[Malcolm Gordon]

I may have got the idea from "22 years of Crown Mic Memos" on the Pearl HiFi website. Re-reading a note there I find that cardboard worked better then Plexiglass"! 

[kgallen]

Cute!

I'm surprised these are needed though, the lobe at the back should be pretty small.

[Malcolm Gordon]

Well, it's about -10dB at 1kHz, and you have young actors competing with a band going hammer and tongs 3ft away.

[sunray]

I can't imagine that a small hard upstand behind the microphone would be a good idea, first I struggle with how much attenuation it could provide and secondly the reflections of the sound from the front are reaching the rear in a way not designed for.

I can imagine the carpet rising to cover the upstand making a difference.

Thes are only assumptions and having not experimented, I have no idea at all if I'm right or wrong.

[Ynot]

9 hours ago, sunray said:

I can't imagine that a small hard upstand behind the microphone would be a good idea, first I struggle with how much attenuation it could provide and secondly the reflections of the sound from the front are reaching the rear in a way not designed for.

I can imagine the carpet rising to cover the upstand making a difference.

Thes are only assumptions and having not experimented, I have no idea at all if I'm right or wrong.

I sort of agree with the theoretical assumptions of what may or may not work, BUT if someone has experienced an improvement by doing something unusual/unexpected I tend to think to myself "Worth a try"...

😄

[sunray]

4 hours ago, Ynot said:

I sort of agree with the theoretical assumptions of what may or may not work, BUT if someone has experienced an improvement by doing something unusual/unexpected I tend to think to myself "Worth a try"...

😄

Oh yes, experience overrules theory. Time and time again I've done the design, the calculations ad nauseum, come the day of erection and... oh b0l0c0s!!!.

I used to get involved with a fair amount of radio links; music, comms, data and the loss prediction programs would indicate elevation and bearing of yagi and power required, sometimes there was no way it worked, other times a pair of handhelds were adequate when a 60ft mast was predicted. One such situation for an OB we had to make arrangements to use an adjacent farmers field to rig the mast for program, reverse program and talkback comms IE Lowband, VHF & UHF the comms was already running on a roof mounted aerial and provided an impossibly strong path so stayed there. OB finished and mast let down and de-rigged. Something unexpected in the form of a royal visit and the the cry went out to get the OB running again and quickly rigged to the roof aerial to provide a signal everybit as clean as the big mast.

 

Come to microphones and yes I've achieved alsorts of unexpected results which should have never worked. An outdoor remembrance service possibly 40 years ago the placement of kit was horrendous for feedback and the multiple buildings provided terrible reflections, out of desperation I positioned another microphone just below the boom arm, chopped the mic lead and reconnected antiphase into another input, it sounded quite 'phasey' but a vast improvement to the intelligability... tried the same thing somewhere else and not a chance of any success.

With boundry mics I generally found placement to not be critical and wouldn't have expected the PCC160 rear lobe to only be 10 to 15dB down (something I may have been aware of 30 years ago) but never being in the situation of significant sound levels behind them it hasn't arisen, however audience ambient/cheering and the PA is something that hasn't been obvious when I've used them for show relay but the speakers are more likely closer to the 120° direction, in fact I usually find I need to add a little PA to the show relay so they get their music clues and hear accouncements and the feed taken for recording has usualy been augmented with additional mic(s) facing the audience.

Edited June 12 by sunray

[Malcolm Gordon]

17 hours ago, sunray said:

II can imagine the carpet rising to cover the upstand making a difference.

Now that you mention it, I did have the PCC160 on a soft pad, and the carpet on the upstand. There are the remnants of double-sided tape that would have held it there.  Unfortunately, from 30 years ago memories fade, and I cannot find any photos. I have found a reference to using the padding and setting the bass cut. Also the baffles were made from Makrolon, stronger than Perspex, which is prone to cracking on the angle.

[sunray]

48 minutes ago, Malcolm Gordon said:

Now that you mention it, I did have the PCC160 on a soft pad, and the carpet on the upstand. There are the remnants of double-sided tape that would have held it there.  Unfortunately, from 30 years ago memories fade, and I cannot find any photos. I have found a reference to using the padding and setting the bass cut. Also the baffles were made from Makrolon, stronger than Perspex, which is prone to cracking on the angle.

That makes a lot more sense to me but I'll reiterate I haven't played with anything similar to make considered comments.

I used to make busbar covers out of perspex in control panels and switchgear, one day our procurement guy was offered Makrolon cheaper than real perspex by a new rep. I struggled to warm it and fold it round an angle, no I mean really struggled to get it hot enough over 600mm with a hot air gun to fold at a right angle round a piece of timber. What should have taken half hour took all afternoon and it looked terrible. I came back in the morning to find all 4 sides had random splits at the folds.

I was straight down the road to our local supplier for a sheet of the real thing.

The Makrolon is a nice material to cut and file the edges and a gentle warm with the hot air gun 'polishes' the work marks nicely so it is a good material to use as flat pieces, it is certainly more resiliant to splitting than Perspex, a local guy was making portable illuminated dance floor boxes with some which was quite thick, possibly ~15mm. Some made it onto TOTP

[Junior8]

I simply can't believe what I'm reading here. Its a few kids doing a show. Tell Little Louise to be louder, if they still can't hear her tell her parents that's hard luck but you're going to spend the money on something far more useful for her education. Too many schools are wasting their money on these frills used maybe once a year. It's madness. And I, for one taxpayer, am getting just a tad tired of paying for it. 

Edited June 15 by Junior8

[sunray]

3 hours ago, Junior8 said:

I simply can't believe what I'm reading here. Its a few kids doing a show. Tell Little Louise to be louder, if they still can't hear her tell her parents that's hard luck but you're going to spend the money on something far more useful for her education. Too many schools are wasting their money on these frills used maybe once a year. It's madness. And I, for one taxpayer, am getting just a tad tired of paying for it. 

And what about the schols where it's used every day for assembly and regularly for the dance/PE lessons and the drama lessons and the media studies ...

 

Like it or not,technology is now part of the durriculum and part of the learning process, not like in my day when students would marvel at that thing with 2 wheels that repeated things that had just been said.

 

Oh and schools don't consist of just 1 class per year any more, 2000 students is becoming the norm these days with school halls the size of footballpitches... or so it feels.

Edited June 15 by sunray

[sandall]

4 hours ago, Junior8 said:

...... I, for one taxpayer, am getting just a tad tired of paying for it. 

To be fair, it's probably been paid for by the parents, through the PCA. Not much money for school "frills" is coming from the taxpayer these days🙁.