Welcome to YouTube
Click video to expand view.
Visit and subscribe to our YouTube Channel HERE
Copyright AVLDesignsInc. 2022+
St. Bonaventure University Field House
In 2019, AVL Designs Inc. started on a project to renovate the basketball arena sound systems of St. Bonaventure University. There was a bit of a delay on the project, which picked back up in 2021. The systems are now complete and being commissioned.
The purpose of the renovation was to improve sound intelligibility for game announcing plus other room uses such as graduation ceremonies and events containing musical content. Danley Sound Labs Inc. and Fulcrum Acoustic LLC. loudspeakers were chosen for their phase coherence, moderate cost, and high SPL capability.
Combinations of SH 96i, SH 69i, CX1226, GH60, and DBH 218 subwoofers were selected to cover the various venue orientations. Power is provided by Danley DNA Amplifiers. Midas M 32 consoles are utilized for the arena, as well as on-air video systems. Sennheiser wireless systems are coupled with Neve Portico 5045 processors to provide high gain before feedback operation. QSC Core 500i processors are used to provide DSP and control processing.
.
Box suites are served by Ashly Audio Pema amplifiers with DSP, and JBL Control series ceiling speakers.
After a long C-19 delay, The Bonnies are finally getting their new system which will be used for their games in the very near future.
Copyright AVLDesignsInc 2021+
Lakeshore Middle School
The Lakeshore Middle School auditorium had not been updated in many years. All of the stage rigging is dead-hung due to challenging overhead conditions and lack of stage height. The district wanted to have some moving sets over the stage but the overall rigging was “creatively” installed and not up to safety standards.
.
AVL Designs Inc.’s first task was to design new stage rigging which would be up to current standards and with as many moving pipes as possible. AVL utilized ETC FlyPipes to accomplish this task. A self-climbing package hoist allowed us to provide a safe, moving solution.
.
The control of lighting and studio was in the balcony, which is not a great location for running a show, so a new control booth was included on the main floor to allow the audio and lighting crew to experience the show from the audience’s perspective.
.
New AV systems included main speakers with over and under balcony delays to fill shadowed areas. A new digital console, wireless microphones, projector and screen, and controls were also included.
◦ Speakers by Danley
◦ Wireless by Shure
◦ Console by Soundcraft
◦ Projector by Panasonic
◦ Control by Crestron
Lighting was also in need of updates, as the existing Varilight dimming and control were failing. The decision was made to upgrade to all LED lighting. A new lighting console and control system by ETC was specified as well as LED fixtures from ETC and Phillips Showline.
.
*The completed project went online in 2021 following some delays due to Covid.
Copyright AVLDesignsInc 2021+
.
Do you know we are on YouTube? Stop by; subscribe and you will be notified when new videos post.
Audience mics in LARGE Spaces – VIDEO CONFERENCES
Picking up a large area with distant microphones naturally adds in the room sound (resonance) as well. Those who are in the room most likely think it sounds fine. Our brains process sound in a very sophisticated manner using both ears. But that is not how microphones work.
The way a mic works compared to how our ears work can make a video conference sound like a subway tunnel when the sound in the entire room is picked up. Solutions to the problem are abundant. Sorry to say, though, that none of them are inexpensive. The better solutions involve audio intelligence in the mics.
Good – Better – BEST!
So, you have a couple of choices when you get down to the idea of “good, better and best” in a room. If you want good audience participation without spending a lot of money, the users must be involved. If you want your video conferencing setup to be “plug and play,” then it isn’t going to be cheap.
Any mic used close– headset or handheld – primarily picks up the voice of the person speaking with little of the room sound added in. When distant mikes designed for conference rooms are used, they do not do well in larger spaces.. If the space has sound reinforcement, it is an even bigger problem. Unless you get a mike with AI (artificial intelligence) and DSP (Digital Signal Processing.)
LOW END SOLUTION
AUDIENCE Mics On Stands
- Place handheld wireless microphones on mic stands in a few locations out in the room, gain structured to match what the presenter’s mic is doing. The audience mic is then automated so that it only activates when some gets close to it and is talking. Anyone with a question must walk up to a microphone. This system works reliably and is relatively simple.
PROS and CONS
- Sounds Good. Doesn’t t pick up random noises like coughing, etc.
- Works with sound reinforcement used in the room.
- On the negative side, people must get up to talk.
HIGH END SOLUTION
NARROW BEAM, AUTO Steered array Mics – WITH Built-in Intelligence
All beam-formed microphones use an AI algorithm to decide who is talking. If everyone in the room is polite, this works well — kind of like a zoom call where everyone has learned to wait their turn. If too many people talk at once, even this AI solution will have some issues as the mics track to whatever sound is loudest at the moment.
Many beam-formed mics pick up too large a section of the room at once, making the room sound hollow. Some use narrow tracking beams that move, so that only a small amount of room energy is picked up and a maximum amount of the person they are supposed to pick up.
This type of solution can have limitations when you want to use loudspeakers within the room to amplify the presenter. You may run into problems in some spaces that are too large for the presenter to be heard without sound reinforcement. This is where a DSP and a presenter mike must also be included.
PROS and CONS
- Pros
- The entire room can be picked up
- Can be used with sound reinforcement with the additions of DSP.
- Can sound pretty good and pick up an entire room
- Cons
- Cost – Mic plus DSP (digital sound processor) can be $$$ (Solutions that work well cost in the range of $ 15.00/sq ft covered or higher. (About $18 K for a 40 X 30 ft room).
- If a room is small enough that it does not need sound reinforcement, the DSP could be dropped.
- The entire room is picked up – no control over who can or cannot talk.
- Cost – Note* some mike solutions do not work with sound reinforcement for the presenter being used.
- Mics automatically catch sounds. So, someone coughing etc…. becomes an active sound source.
Other alternatives that can be utilized involve operator interfaces. Say, for instance, you have a control touch screen in the room and a presenter is speaking on their microphone. When they want the audience to say something, they would have to press a button for audience response. Pressing that button turns off the presenter’s mic and turns on the audience mic.
The audience mic would have a series of DSP tuning filters, which is another piece of hardware added to the system which will help with the reverberation and the sound quality of a more general pickup microphone. This would have to be selected by the person using the room. And if they forget to de-select it, then the microphone they are wearing will no longer be active. That is where you end up with a hollow sound in the background, picking up the whole room the whole time while the presenter’s mic is off.
Properly tuned a high-end system sounds like there is a sound man mixing the audio in the room, to the far side of the conference.
Copyright AVLDESIGNSInc 2021+
Update on Williamsville CSD
NEWEST UPDATE: Casey Middle School and Transit Middle School, both of East Amherst New York (part of the Williamsville CSD.)
Images below followed by images from East High School and South High School.
.
Casey Middle School
.
Transit Middle School
.
The following images are from East High School and South High School, respectively:
East High School
South High School
Previous posts from our ongoing projects for Williamsville CSD:
Williamsville CSD – the beginning
Williamsville CSD Renos in Review
Copyright AVLDesignsInc. 2021+
Do you know we are on YouTube? Stop by; subscribe and you will be notified when new videos post.
Mixing It All From Front of House (FOH)
This first segment is “how to mix front of house” when you also have control live stage monitors, are feeding IEMS (in-ear monitors) and maybe a sub feed out to a streaming mix. When mixing all of these different things from the same console, it forces you into a mode where your gain structure and certain other parameters have to be driven by the other feeds you are mixing, not just the PA. Truly, it isn’t perfect, but it can work.
*In an ideal world you have a monitor engineer, streaming engineer and two more consoles. Lots of $$$$$$$ Good Luck!
So, the first thing you have to look at is how much gain is required to feed the IEM direct outs to get good signal-to-noise. Inadequate levels with whatever types of headphones/in-ears the individual musicians are using leads to excessive IEM Noise.
Tip=> everyone’s IEM’s needs to have high sensitivity at least 107 dB. If that’s not the case, you may have to have enough gain to handle the lower output devices that people might be using..
So your Gain structure is initially driven by what needs to go to the IEM and direct outs. Busses will also be used for IEM feeds so you’ve also got to look at things that need to be grouped into the IEM. Also determine which feeds are pre EQ, compressor etc.…. and which aren’t. People always say give me a pre everything feed, but that is not always the best choice for live or IEM. (Ear Damage i.e. accidents)
You may not want to have EQ applied to certain aspects. The last thing you want to do is have any EQ you’re doing at front of house affect, let’s say a bass player and what they’re hearing in their in hears. On most consoles there’s a variety of feed options with direct outs, buss outs, other ways of getting signal to an IEM with or without mute with or without EQ with or without gain adjustment.
Vocals vs. Godzilla
When you deal with a group of vocals however, it’s very important that what you’re doing at front of house does translate into the in IEM ears and floor wedges. For example, you have six vocalists and one of them goes “Godzilla” on you and is much louder than the other five.
At front of house you have to pull that one singer down to save the mix. (It’s a rescue operation!) You want that change to translate to the IEM mix (and floor wedges). So they get fed off of a post fader group buss. (On most consoles it’s not called a “group.” It’s called a “buss.”) On a buss, send every EQ change and every gain change that you make on the vocals does translate to the in-ears and it also translates to the floor monitors.
Similar issues anyone else using live wedges.
Note – do not let these people have stage IEM control boxes to mix their own mix. This basically becomes a second sound system, being run by a musician. You need control of all wedges or your mix will be destroyed by your other “sound people” on stage.
Floor Wedges
You’ve got another anomaly you have to look at when you have floor wedges that are primarily giving keyboard and in some cases click cues to the musicians that aren’t using any ears, which most often are the vocalists.
The question is do you make these pre fader or do you make these post fader? Now the prevailing wisdom would be make that pre fader because you wouldn’t want front of house changes to make it disappear.
The reality, however, is that when you do that, the tonality in the front of house is constantly changing due to the unchanging monitor mix. If you pull a fader down on the keyboard FOH, the monitor bleed, which is a completely different frequency set and is out of phase and creating comb filtering is at a higher level than what’s coming out of the PA. Can sound pretty bad.
So the best solution is to actually keep a set of in-ears handy at front of house or a really good set of headphones, mix everything post fader – keyboards, guitars, everything else that’s going into the monitors.
You have to check the monitor mix levels by soloing up that bus to see what the blend is and make sure that with vocals there’s enough keyboards and other instruments there that they can get all of their frequency cues and all of their timing cues from the click track. So you want that to be there but not overbearing.
Streaming
The feed to streaming is a similar scenario. Drums in the live mix do not need to be that loud in the house. Kick drum does, but unless they are in a separate room, most everything else does not. However, what needs to go to the streaming mix is all of it.
So you need to create a buss mix that allows you to get a better mix to streaming than you would get if you just left it alone. This has to be post EQ fader etc….. so your FOH changes affect that feed. And, you have to listen to it once in a while. Okay, so that kind of ends the basic session there about big gain structure, etc…
Also assign a good gain limiting device to that bus overall, and set it so on quiet songs it is barely set on working, on RMS. Use one that simulates a vintage comp/limiter.
It’s still not a good choice compared to mixing on a separate console, but if you pay attention it can work.
Copyright AVLDESIGNSINC 2021+