Archive for August, 2008
1 Week Down…
This week has been far from exciting compared to last week’s installation saga. This week we have our off-site baptism event so it is the only week of the year with no midweek service. What does that mean? Work week!
Our big project this week is revamping our Clearcom matrix intercom system in the main auditorium and chapel – adding stations, revising the programming and logic, etc. We’re also working hard to finish remaining punch list items like configuring Synergy for keyboard/mouse control, re-connecting and testing tie lines that had to be cut at FOH to facilitate the cable pulls through conduit last week, and installing a paging system from the stage manager’s FOH position back to our green room and dressing rooms.
I’m also very excited that our new grand piano shell arrived today. We have now completely made the switch from a 9ft acoustic grand to a 7ft 4in Slam Grand piano shell with a Yamaha CP33 controller/Muse Receptor Engine/Synthogy Ivory Sampled Piano plug-in. The system never goes out of tune, looks great, and I can’t say enough positive about the Receptor/Ivory combo for usability, reliability, and flexibility of sound libraries. For those of you not familiar with Ivory, you need to be. Basically Synthogy sampled 3 different pianos (a Yamaha C7, Steinway D Concert Grand, and Bosendorfer 290) – each key at 10 different dynamic intensities. Each piano library lets you fine tune the dampening, sound board, key noise, timbre, dynamic range, release and comes with a variety of excellent sounding presets per library. In the hands of a great piano player, I don’t think there’s anything that sounds more like the real thing. When you consider this system has no mic leakage or feedback, I think this is the best piano package you could possibly buy. The entire system was less than $10k so it really is a great value as well. Check it out!
The Venue performed very well this past weekend. Coincidentally it was one of the most difficult services we’ve done all Summer, putting all of the new gear to the test right out the gate. Normal 5 piece band with a lead vocal, a 7 minute musical theater piece with 9 actors, all on new headsets and new wireless, 8 channels of tracks running from ProTools, rented ears for click/count to the actors, and recording the musical element and Saturday night message for use on Sunday at campuses. Everything went off without a hitch to the congregation but not without some scary, heart-in-my-throat moments for me.
First, I tried borrowing work flow ideas from some of my Venue friends and that wasn’t a good idea in such a complicated service, let alone my first such on the desk. I got bit in the first service on Sunday by snapshot channel scope – somewhere in Sunday AM rehearsal I accidentally unscoped the band channels from the snapshot for a feature song, so in the first service I recall the scene as the drummer clicks off and nothing changes on the console. Quick on my feet, I unmuted things manually and threw up the faders before the piano player hit his first note.
Second, in trying the new workflow, I also ignored my own advice for digital consoles in our fast paced environment – be careful not to get snapshot happy. I think at one point I had 13 or 14 snapshots for the service and this was way too much. 1 for starting video roll, one to take video down at the end of the roll, one for each song, then another for each spoken moment. Long story short, because the weekend was so packed there was never enough solid rehearsal time to actually step through all of my scenes and make sure everything happened exactly as I intended. Lesson: keep it simple. If you can turn down a video roll manually and mute the channel when its finished, do it. Maybe in time I’ll be able to find more ways to implement automation but I don’t want to ever make a mistake in a service because of ill-executed automation.
The system still sounds amazing. I’m so pleased with the sonic improvements. Wireless is very solid as well. The remote monitoring on the PC is spectacular and was a lifesaver this weekend!
Only 3 more days until we leave on 2 weeks of vacation and I am SOOOOO ready. These past few weeks have worn me out and I’m running on fumes. It will be very good to disconnect for a while and recharge the batteries. When I get back, it’s full steam ahead into the Fall ministry season and I’ll resume my normal service schedule of 4 weekends and 3 midweek services a month. I’m looking forward to spending a few months focusing on dialing in the Venue and PA to see what the two are really capable of!
Installation Documents
For those of you who are interested, here’s the documents we worked from for our system install this week. You’ll see our I/O connections, rack plans, system network IP addresses, and mockup space drawings.
The service last night went even better then the rehearsal on Tuesday. I still have some punch list items to nail down tomorrow to be ready for the first weekend, but the response was overwhelmingly positive from everyone. I’m hearing tones in our room that have never been there before and for the most part things sound naturally better when you push up the fader then they ever did before. Its sobering to realize how big a difference this console is making in the quality of our presentation!
First Rehearsal Thoughts
Well we made it! The D-Show was installed, stage wired, and ready for rehearsal by 4p today which gave me a few hours to build a plug-in list and just mess around before the band arrived tonight.
Once the band started playing, all we could say was WOW. There was an overwhelming clarity and natural character to the sound that we’d never heard before from our rig. I’d been told by many people who had upgraded to Venue to be prepared that the system would sound better, but I had no idea it would be so true! I expected something different just from hearing iTunes and my voice through the PA during the past 24 hours, but the difference with a live band was quite good…the kick sounded better in the room then I’d ever heard before, vocals needed less EQ, channel EQ in general is MUCH more musical, the rig sounds warmer and less harsh (perhaps I would say less “digital”) in the 2k and 6k range, low end while warmer is also tighter. I multitracked the rehearsal successfully to ProTools so I’m planning to spend the afternoon tomorrow dialing things in and playing with plug-ins to see how much better I can make it. I’m also interested to listen to the ears mixes and see what they really sounded like to the guys. I set up everybody’s ears mixes during sound check just to keep things simple, but I saw the guys with PQ controllers tweaking their mixes as the night went on and getting what they needed. I think I need to spend some time on the chain that’s actually driving their mixes because it seems there’s room to grow there, but regardless…
Besides the sound difference, my first “real” 4 hours on the console between 4p and 8p went very well. At first I sensed myself being nervous of adopting to a new workflow since I’d become so comfortable working on the PM1D. By the end of the first night, I feel like the system is very approachable and pretty easy to get under the fingers. I think by the time I mix for a few hours with the recording tomorrow and then do the service, I’ll be in great shape for the upcoming weekend’s challenges.
The new Shure UHF-R wireless system was definitely the right choice and I’m thankful that God made it clear this was the direction to go. Nothing against Sennheiser at all because I was completely content to go either direction, but the UHF-R product seems very mature and a perfect fit for how we work. I’m EXTREMELY impressed with the networking and Workbench software since our wireless receivers are off stage completely out of my direct site. We never had reliable monitoring and control of our previous wireless system and I learned to deal with it, but the frequency coordination, data reporting from the transmitters, and overall stability of the platform is reassuring. The new mix of capsules is wonderful – I now have at my disposal SM58s, Beta58s, SM86s, Beta87s, KSM9s, Neumann KK-104, and Sennheiser 5005 capsules. Soon I’m also going to pick up one of the new Sennheiser MD5235s just to complete the collection.
Overall, the first rehearsal tonight was very positive. Tomorrow has a short punch list of items to finish up that we didn’t get to today – labeling wireless packs with their RF #, some cable changes to the drum riser and keys rig to accommodate PQ mixers, etc. But the list is quite short and then I can’t wait to spend a few hours playing!
Consider me completely sold. Everyone present last night heard a difference in what we were used to hearing through our rig. Those of us who knew what we were listening for can’t believe how much better our room sounds. It’s hard to imagine what it will feel like once we get the new PA in the room next year as well. It’s really hard to wrap my mind around how much better this system sounds and how much more intuitive it operates, yet it is such a substantial difference in price from our previous system. For church world, regardless of the level of desired production, it’s hard to believe there could be a more powerful, efficient, and cost effective system.
Today was so busy tying up loose ends that I didn’t get a chance to take any more pictures. I’ll go through tomorrow and do that so you can see how the system finished up. Then I’ll post our docs later this week when I have a chance to see how we’re configured, input/output assignments, etc.
Thanks for your prayers and many of you contributed lots of advice as we considered such a substantial change to our system! Call me a kid in a candy store… :)
We’re up and running!
Today was a very long day but has a very happy ending. Patch and I started today at 7:30a and by 4p, we successfully had audio passing through the new system. The Advanced Lighting & Sound guys did a great job on the cable pull and had the SCSI lines out of the conduit by 10:30a and the new lines installed around 2p. I definitely sense God’s hand in this entire process more then I have on any other church install I’ve done. Things have just gone so smoothly.
By the end of the day, everything is operating correctly with the console (Nic Auger is the man at BNC terminations – 100% on the first try!), wireless is operational, the new PQ snake I built last week tested out correctly, and the ProTools machine is up and running great.
I didn’t get a chance to snap any photos of the cable pull but here’s some photos of where we left it again tonight.
The new FOH
I haven’t had a ton of time to just play yet but I love this console! I can’t wait for rehearsal tomorrow night…
The new system maintains a similar footprint to the old one.
Walking in the room from the back past the booth.
Our new stage rack layout. The rack on the left has lighting world and tie lines to everywhere. Rack on the right is audio world…wireless, PQ, and 2 stage racks. We just have a few more blanks to install tomorrow and patching the stage inputs.
Tomorrow we will assign frequencies to all of the wireless channels, patch video playback and test, finish installing Windows/Boot Camp on the systems Mac Mini for control of the wireless, the BSS London processor, and Smaart. Then our first rehearsal on the system happens at 6:30. I can’t wait!!!
