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Cucco 18 February 2009

For anyone who is interested, I'm doing audio for a live webcast right now. It's on http://www.banddirector.com. The clinician is DAvid McGill, principal bassoon of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble is the Capital Wind Symphony.

Cheers-
J

Ps
I've been told the audio is a little quiet over the computer but the video gear keeps clipping if I send him any hotter of a signal.

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Cucco Wed, 02/18/2009 - 22:19

The Mojave's were the main pair (cardioid ORTF) the Schoeps were the outer flanks (Omni- CMC6 MK2S).

There was a shotgun for the conductor (Rode NTG2) and a Shure Lavalier (wireless) for the clinician.

Earlier in the day, we did a "Partners in Performance" broadcast in the same venue. The conductor was the same but it was a (very impressive) Middle School band with 18 professionals in the ensemble. The format was similar - playing through parts of the piece and then going through and working them. The only difference was that the conductor would interact with the players and the players would speak back in response.

For that, the main mics were the same. There were another 8 channels spread throughout the ensemble though.

The rig was:

Mics -> Millennia Preamp, Focusrite ISA 428 and Mackie 1202 VLZ. The main mics (only the 4 front mics) were bused individually into the Fireface 800. All of the spot mics and lavaliers were bused into the Mackie so that it could be pulled in and out as needed. (Fully out when the band was playing, Fully in when the conductor and performers were speaking and partially in when only sections were playing).

With the 4 mains going discretely into the Fireface and the stereo output of the Mackie (combining all of the other signals) going into its own channel, I set up a few extra submixes.

1 - Recording (all channels left open at all times)
2 - Stage headphone mix (only channels 1-4 open)
3 - Broadcast mix (4 main channels on, 2 spot channels switched based on mixer settings)
4 - Backstage headphone mix (mirrored broadcast mix)
5 - Back-up recording mix (mirrored broadcast mix)

All mixes were handled on the fly by the RME fireface with 0 latency (did I mention how much I love the Fireface??)

BTW - the reason it took a while to get on - the server was at max capacity with over 18,000 viewers!! They must have advertised something right!!

Next time, if I do something like this, I'll try to give more adequate notice.

Cheers-
Jeremy

Cucco Thu, 02/19/2009 - 08:55

RemyRAD wrote: Jeremy I couldn't even figure out what to click?

You know, it was rather daunting to try and run so many different sub-mixes from a "virtual" mixer, but the RME really does make it quite easy!

You simply select which outgoing pair you're sending signals to and then tell it how much of what signals you want. For static mixes (such as direct to multi-track), this is REALLY easy. For dynamic mixes, you can either move the faders on the screen (which, btw, you can group so that you can move an entire bank at the same time), you can adjust your gain at your pres or you can hook up a midi control surface and control the faders that way. (I wouldn't dare trust a midi control surface for a live event like this.)

Anyway, like I mentioned - it's easy.

For submix 1, you select channels 1&2. Then you crank up the on-screen faders to where you want them.

For submix 2 you select channels 3&4 and do the same.

and so on...
What's really cool is you can monitor the peak levels of all incoming channels and the output buses at the same time so if one of your mixes is clipping the master bus or the AD converter, you can go in and adjust the levels. Of course, since it's digitial, it's non-forgiving. Clipping sounds bad - there's no soft-limiter in place. Headroom is the order of the day - especially when cramming over a dozen channels into 1 bus. I did clip once yesterday, but the best I could tell it was for less than 5 samples.

Cheers-
J.

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