Sound Ideas

Monitor Mixes

Set up a microphone in front of one of the choir monitors. Possibly an omni mic would do well here? The goal is to identify whether the output of the monitor is reasonably matched to the output of the choir and the orchestra, so that 1) the monitor is audible in the louder songs, 2) the monitor is not overpowering during any song, and 3) the monitor is not deafening over the entire concert.

Choir KSM141 Pattern

Currently choir is mic'd with four Shure KSM141 microphones. These are set to the cardioid pattern. These microphones also offer the omnidirectional pattern, and perhaps the omni pattern would work better with choir because the 4 microphones, no matter they are positioned, cannot point at even the majority of 40-50 people that comprise the choir. With the omni pattern the microphones would be receiving more of the sound from the sides, which isn't necessarily bad, especially if the microphones could be moved closer to the choir.

Choir Shotgun Microphones

Currently choir is mic'd with four Shure KSM141 microphones. Given the limited coverage of the choir with (any) 4 microphones, and relatively high distance from KSM141's to the choir, the theory is that shotgun mics could be a good complement to the KSM141's or potentially a replacement.

Shotgun mics have a focused pattern, and given their length, they have the issue of receiving sound from the person that the mic is pointed at rather than the entire choir. In this regard they can end up overshooting the target of balanced choir mic'ing and be significantly poor in ways other than KSM141's.

Oleg's current thinking is to:

• Move shotgun mics farther away from the choir (should be possible but requires fiddling with the clamp mounts during setup).
• Use AT815a and AT815R in preference to AT815b. The a and R models block the center of the barrel with metal, thus potentially receiving more sounds from other than right in front of the microphone.

Microphone Preamp Gain Levels

In theory it should be possible to preset gains for each microphone/instrument combination. For example, violin mics should generally always be about the same distance from the instrument, and as long as the same microphone is used, once a good gain setting is figured out, this setting should work well for subsequent concerts for the same microphone on the violin.

Wireless Headphones

Oleg is testing Audio-Technica Pro/88W wireless systems for headphone use. These are meant to be used with microphones and as such expect very low input voltage, plus they are single-channel systems.

Second Mixer

For recording all of the instruments, sometimes 32 input channels of the DL32R are insufficient. Additional microphones can be routed to USB interfaces for recording, but the issue with them is lack of monitoring for clipping. Absent this monitoring it is easy for the signal to be clipped which can render it useless in practice.

Multi-track recorders like Zoom R24 have a similar issue in that they can only be monitored from the physical location of the recorder, normally inaccessible during the concert and frequently difficult to access even during sound check. A mixer with remote control can be at least monitored via the levels shown in the control app.

Behringer XR18 is currently the preferred choice due to it using an open wire protocol (unlike specifically Mackie DL16S which uses a proprietary protocol). The open protocol leaves open the possibility of implementing any missing features in the control app manually (mute groups for example, including an arbitrary number of them).

X18 is similar but has less convenient I/O (1/4" outputs rather than XLR, possibly better for studio use with outboard hardware but not as useful in live application where outputs go into monitors or house inputs. X18 is also significantly larger dimensionally and slightly heavier.