The Mixer in a Box

The Daytona 2010 BikeWeek is now something for the history books. People came to the rally and partied. I did not talk directly to vendors but heard that it was a crowd of lookers, not buyers. The weather was somewhat less than co-operative. The temperatures were low for the whole rally. There was, however, only one rainy day and that mostly in the morning.

There were two bands that played the Full Moon Saloon where I worked this rally. Their schedule was broken up rather than straight through. This would have made for several remixes with an analog board, but with SAC, as any digital console, it is just a matter of saving the mix at the end of the night and calling up the proper mix session at the beginning of the evening. This was a good thing here but is really great for a regular rally or multi-band festival situation.

The stage and house PA in the Full Moon had been moved over the winter. The sound booth had not been moved. It is now located off to the side of one of the main cabinets. One cannot hear the mix through the PA from the house mix location. With the SAC system’s remote capability this was not such a problem. I mixed from the middle of the crowd using my NetBook. It is more comfortable to have at least a small table and even with the light weight NetBook my arm got a bit tired by the end of the evening, but I was able to hear the PA and the mix.

The NetBook worked fine for mixing the shows but the battery life is a bit of a problem. After the first few nights I spent some time uninstalling several programs that wanted to run in the background and shutting down several non-essential services. I also started putting the computer into hibernate during the breaks. There was a significant improvement in battery life.

The sets were one hour through out the week with a half hour break. Before the adjustments I needed shore power about 2/3 of the way through the second set. After the tweaks I had to plug in for the last ten minutes of the third set, and the last half of the last set if it went to four sets. The battery never makes it back to full charge with just a half hour, but it is much more workable now. Putting the computer into hibernate also helps as the lighting load is removed and the hard drive probably powers down, allowing more juice to trickle into the battery.

There were a large number of amazed people. They would see me in the crowd with the NetBook and wonder what the heck I was doing. I would explain that the little computer was a remote control for the sound system. Thanks to good bands and good equipment one of the patrons told me that the Full Moon was the best place to listen to music on Main Street.

February 4th was the evening of the annual spring Gospel Choir Concert at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach Florida. I have provided sound reinforcement for the Gospel Choir. This year was the first opportunity to use the SAC rig. This is a choir of singers. There is not too much problem getting the voices out. This year the Alto section was a little lite and the Tenor section was very strong, the reverse of years past.

Instrumentation included drums, percussion, and keys. Of course the prime instrumentation was the voices. As always with SAC the sound was excellent.

There was a mime group that performed to three numbers during the intermission.

There was video that was shot of this concert. I have a VST recorder available with the system. I recorded the performance and the video production crew had a USB external hard drive to which we copied the output file. They will sync it up and mix it with the camera audio for the sound track to the video.

The second event for which I used the SAC rig was the Church of God – Cocoa office state women’s conference. This annual event is held in a hotel conference room in Orlando, Florida. There is a good deal of music with the COG conventions. There is typically a full band, 6 praise team mikes plus a solo mike, a wireless mike for the podium and a couple of other mikes for vocals. The sermons need to be recorded to CD for copying and sale usually when the service is over.

I had set up a starter mix session with the inputs that I expected to need and the necessary in/out assignments. I had done some general presets as far as monitor levels that I expected to  be requested. Set-up and the whole outing went a lot more smoothly than the first gig. I had set a second set of outputs for my record output and done the channel assignments so that I was ready to record. I also had taken a small Yahama mixer to handle the input/output interface with the CD recorder. Everything worked pretty much as planned and the event went without a hitch.

I will be putting up a gallery that will include a couple of pictures of the setup at the convention as well as some other gigs.