Page 1 of 1

Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:14 pm
by RBIngraham
http://rbicompaudio.20m.com/Xanadu.html

Some more shots of a SAC system in action. Also used Realtime Music Systems Keyboard Solutions for the show. Their software is pretty cool. Very specific for the task at hand so it's only useful if you're producing a musical theatre piece they have patches for, but cool stuff none the less.

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 12:05 am
by Craig
Nice! I love the 'speaker' stands for the monitors...
And how exactly are you using the BCR? I've considered using one but wasn't sure the resolution would be enough to tweak levels.

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 10:33 am
by RBIngraham
Yeah the speakers used as stands were the best looking thing we could come up with in the time and money we had to do it. You'd be surprised how often speakers are used as stands for other speakers or other gear in theatre. Old speakers don't die backstage in theatres they are just turned into tables, stands for newer speakers, door opened holders (when you don't have spare or old stage weights kicking around), etc.....

As for the BCR, I set it up so it can be used to control the faders for the first 32 channel strips in SAC. Just takes a bit of programming of the BCR. The resolution is OK. Obviously a fader is nicer, but the BCR is certainly usable. If you wanted you could also program a more limited range of values into each rotaly on a BCR. I'm not sure if that would make it more precise or not, since it's not like there are any real physical end points on the rotary knobs of a BCR. Theoretically it would give you more fineese of the thing you're controlling, but I've never tried to make sure that works in reality. Depends on how slick the thing is really if it would actually give you more resoltion or it just allows for the same amount of adjustment per amount of twisting and just limits the range of values it spits out.

What I did for this show was to move all the outputs of Monitor Mixer #1 to the far left end of the F Mixer screen. This way the BCR was actually controlling all the outputs. The row of knobs across the top then became the master output levels for each of the 4 musician. Then I split up the rest of the knobs to be used as submaster. So each musician would have a vocal level from the wireless, one knob of just their own instrument and one knob that was a mix of the other 3 instruments. I placed a few random empty input channels in between the outputs so I could lay out the knobs in a pattern that made sense. There was also a knob or two for levels of what I called the "Keyboard Effects" and Sound Playback to their ears. The Keyboard Effects were some patches that had things like gust of wind when Kyra would magically appear or disappear, that kind of crap. So we actually routed those out of seperate outputs on the keyboard patch software so I could route them differently than the rest of the keyboard sounds and have move control over their volume in the house and such.

At one point I had two BCR's hooked up, that were actually duplicates of each other. All going into one instance of SAC Remote. I used MIDI-Ox to combine and split their MIDI data. It actually worked OK, but it was a little bit buggy and if you turned a knob on one surface it wouldn't update the LED rings on the other. So once we had things tweaked a bit I cut the 2nd unit and they just had the one unit for the run of the show. After the 1st weekend of shows I don't think they really touched it much except for when they had sub guitar or sub key 2.

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 12:51 am
by Andy Hamm
That's funny, one of the Soundco's that I freelance for just did Olivia Newton-John last night too!

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 2:30 am
by jlepore
Did a show with her a few months ago ... her FOH guy had people RUNNING out of the arena. Too bad .. she used to be good. Not so much anymore.

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 11:33 am
by leadfoot
Andy Hamm wrote:That's funny, one of the Soundco's that I freelance for just did Olivia Newton-John last night too!


She must be sore.

Re: Xanadu at Beck Center, Lakewood, OH

PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:20 pm
by Andy Hamm
jlepore wrote:Did a show with her a few months ago ... her FOH guy had people RUNNING out of the arena. Too bad .. she used to be good. Not so much anymore.


Yeah, she didn't even sing at that show, she was just a talking head for breast cancer.