need help with live set up

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:46 am

hi there,
I play in a half electronic/acoustic style band. we seem to have trouble getting everything hooked up between us and the sound guy at festivals, that is-when you have no more than half an hour or so to set up,

I was thinking if we had some sort of patch bay thing-the band could plug into one side of that and the foldback guy could take lines out of the other side, which would already be labelled, thus hopefully save us a whole lot of time and frustration...

anyone have any suggestions of a box that may do this,

we have in our set up- 2 lap tops (2 stereo outs)
2 acoustic guitars
1 electric guitar
1 percussionist-(2 mics)
2 vocal mics(which we probably would run through the patch bay thing)

kind regards
Paul

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:08 am

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that dealing with laptops (1/8" stereo outs?) would require scrambling for the MISC. CABLES bag and trying to come up with some extra DI channels. Get your own DI boxes for the laptops. If the mains are mono, cut your laptop input needs in half by sending a MONO signal.

Nothing else in your setup seems like it should cause any trouble at all.

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:23 am

I'm with Karl on this, but I'd go farther. It is really best to ask festival sound guys for only two things - mics and mono XLR line level connections. Stereo is great if you have time, but with a quick festival setup too much can go wrong (e.g. one channel getting turned off)

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:01 pm

why do i need to DI soundcard outputs to mixer?
thanks.

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:00 pm

If it's on stage, a DI will take the unbalanced output and make it balanced - less likely to pick up noise on the long cable run back to the mixer. It also takes care of any impedance issues - not likely to be an issue on a laptop output, but good practice anyway - IMHO.

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:17 am

AND, YOU'LL GENERALLY NEED TO LIFT THE GROUND TO PREVENT GOBS OF UNDESIRABLE HUM, only possible with a DI box that includes a "lift" switch, so no impedance converters from Radio Shaft.

THE GOBS ARE COMING!
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 8:47 am

tijuana wrote:

hi there,
I play in a half electronic/acoustic style band. we seem to have trouble getting everything hooked up between us and the sound guy at festivals, that is-when you have no more than half an hour or so to set up,

I was thinking if we had some sort of patch bay thing-the band could plug into one side of that and the foldback guy could take lines out of the other side, which would already be labelled, thus hopefully save us a whole lot of time and frustration...

anyone have any suggestions of a box that may do this,

we have in our set up- 2 lap tops (2 stereo outs)
2 acoustic guitars
1 electric guitar
1 percussionist-(2 mics)
2 vocal mics(which we probably would run through the patch bay thing)

kind regards
Paul

Sorry, but as a guy that has mixed major artists with 80+ inputs at festivals all over the country....what the heck? They can't get you guys on stage in 30 minutes? Either you are dealing with total morons, or you guys are disorganized yourselves.

I would do nothing. I would rehearse like a NASCAR pit crew at getting set up. Time yourselves. All that the stage techs (and I use that term loosely for festivals) should have to do is bring you the cables to plug you up, do a quick line check, and go.

Now, you guys have to understand that a festival doesn't mean that you get everything just right in your monitors all of the time. While this can be realized (it was for us because we had a ME), it will likely nt happen. So be prepared to play under adverse conditions. Practice that too.

As for a patchbay, etc. There is nothing in my opinion that is going to save time. Most festivals have consoles connected to stage drop boxes. Stage location and available channels not used by the headliner determines the patch location. They are not going to open their doghouse on the back of the console to patch anything directly, or unplug drop snake channels from the splitter. Either way, 10 channels need to be plugged in. It doesn't matter what you do, you will be making 10 connections somewhere.

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:10 pm

sheet wrote:

What the heck? They can't get you guys on stage in 30 minutes? Either you are dealing with total morons, or you guys are disorganized yourselves.

I thought the same thing when I read the message - I tend to err on the side of diplomacy, so I didn't go there. Wink

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:46 pm

sheet wrote:

...what the heck? They can't get you guys on stage in 30 minutes? Either you are dealing with total morons, or you guys are disorganized yourselves.

Good rule for playing at festivals: expect total morons. Sheet, there are lots of little festivals around the country run by community organizations, cutting every corner on sound support they can. They wouldn't be able to get past the first paragraph of a rider for a major act.

I'm with Sheet all the way on practicing setup and tear down. Since you guys don't even have a full drum set you should be ready to play in 10 minutes. You should have a rider and a stage plan that you send the sound guys in advance. You want to bring good quality DIs (with ground lifts - good point Remy) with good cables to connect to you gear so that all they have to do to plug you up is to send XLR cables to the snake. Label thing, organize your packing. Buy good cases to carry your equipment. Less time spent on connection more on sound check.

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