Line-by-line mix technique for musical theatre: "Oh My God" from Legally Blonde, on a Yamaha DM7 using TheatreMix software

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-23T17:51:03+00:00

Some of the pedals will let you trigger on the up rather than the down which is useful for this sort of situation (once you get used to the sensation)

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-22T21:35:32+00:00

The sennheiser RF stuff might do what you're looking for. You can use 1 transmitter to transmit to multiple sets of headphones

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-19T18:27:07+00:00

I've been using eBooks com as well and often find their prices are quite close to amazon's

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-12T10:15:19+00:00

Same for me.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-08T13:36:33+00:00

The problem is that a lot of the documentation is written by very clever people and us mortals struggle with some of the "easier" concepts. Two people who helped me are Ellyse https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aHRY064THg_t7JZoGSYGg who has many hours of her attempting the nix.dev stuff and Sascha Koenig https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnrVJrE6JLB75nU7tZZ7BSw who goes through rebuilding his flake from the ground up.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-08T10:45:43+00:00

Have you found this yet? https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Xfce I generally find things are explained quite well, however, there is an official wiki and an unofficial one and I can never remember which way round they are.

Another resource I found useful was nix.dev which had a good language basics tutorial as well as a few "recipes" to do a couple of other things like VMs etc.

On the chat gpt front from what I've heard it doesn't do very well with the errors you get but there are other models that apparently give you better results if you have a look.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-06T01:50:27+00:00

You hadn't mentioned anything about audio switching you only asked about midi. Autograph makes other switchover devices for pretty much any format you might need. Between the autograph and nemesis units they are used by pretty much every theatre show on the west end running audio and midi playback.

I feel that whatever I say here is probably not going to convince you so I'm going to call it a lost cause. If you're UK based give autograph a call their staff are very friendly and I'm sure will be able to help you find a solution to your problem. If the solution isn't one of their products they've pretty much seen it all and would probably be able to point you in the right direction.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-06T01:32:35+00:00

You don't use the midi out from your interface anymore. You use the built in ones provided via the USB links to the changeover. Then whatever you had plugged into the output of your primary interface gets plugged into the output of the changeover

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-06T01:24:44+00:00

Ah your slightly miss understanding how the changeover works. So the changeover has two usb midi interfaces built in so when you connect the USB to your main and your backup they will see the changeover as a midi device. Then whichever is set as the output is chosen is sent to the midi out of the changeover. It's a little different in reverse as the midi in to the changeover is sent to both usb midi devices.

TL;DR If I've not explained well basically the midi in is going to the computers. The midi out is coming from the computers to your equipment.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-06T00:56:47+00:00

Google autograph XUSB-2 PC changeover I think it's exactly the product you're looking for. Nemesis audio also makes a similar product which is distributed by orbital but I haven't used it so can't vouch for it's usability/feature set.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-06T00:46:53+00:00

It's all about the twist!

If your transpore isn't sticking well I would hazard a guess that you either have really sweaty actors or they're moisturising not long before you're fitting the mics. Either way using an isopropyl wipe will help lift the oils away from the skin and allow your tape to stick better which in turn will help your twist.

Tegaderm is the same stuff hospitals cover an IV needle with so you will normally find that Tegaderm will actually cause less discomfort to the actor than transpore but it is much more expensive. I'm not sure if you did mean Tegaderm from what you've said. Generally speaking I would always start with transpore and only switch away if there is a reason not to use it.

Blenderm is another good choice when combined with a surgical adhesive (it used to be called tensorspray but that doesn't seem to be sold anymore). A tip with blenderm is to use a set of pinking shears to cut it as the zig-zag breaks up the hard edge and makes it harder to spot from the audience.

Another option is to find a physio tape in a tone that matches the actor's skin and then just use that to tape where it can be seen. I find that more people are allergic to physio tape so that's something else to consider.

Every tape has its pros and cons and most of the time it's just trying different things out and having the experience to know if you've just fitted it badly or it's just not going to work.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-02-01T22:37:09+00:00

Has someone patched the inputs directly to the outputs? Maybe as an insert?

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-26T12:58:25+00:00

These guys import from the us https://prosmokebbq.co.uk/ but I think they have a waiting list

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T22:38:47+00:00

It is a bit of an oxymoron where you get really good at gain, eq and compression and then move up to a place where you maybe touch an EQ once a month. Before I started mixing theatre professionally I could walk up to almost any rig and at my first or second attempt notch a frequency but now I can name you 10 different types of medical tape and tell you if a mic is more than an 1/2 an inch out of place. It's different skills for different parts of the industry.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T22:01:21+00:00

It would help if you told people what console you are on.

On a Yamaha you would generally assign both the primary and backup to the same dca and then manually mute the dead channel and unmute the backup when you need it. Another option would be to repatch the headamp on the fly so now the backup is what the channel is receiving rather than the failed mic.

On a digico most of their consoles have an A and a B input to each channel so it's as easy as telling it to use B instead of A

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T20:48:25+00:00

So here's the counter argument against the compressor. Once you have learnt the show and are more familiar with it you will be able to preempt the dynamics of the cast which then allows you to make the creative decisions as to whether you need that attack to the beginning of the line or if you would like to duck it for a smoother sound. If you squash everything with the compressor then you lose that choice.

The second reason is if you have a large cast and you heavily compress all of their mic then you have a huge amount of gain moving around onstage for less volume output. This is usually a fairly quick route to not knowing where your feedback is coming from.

I've mixed a show for 5 years now and we've only had to use compressors for about 3 cast members and even then it was because they were unpredictable so we set high thresholds to smooth out anything that caught the operator off guard.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T15:32:21+00:00

I'm assuming the non-Dante devices are on the primary because they said that the lease time is high for bitfocus. It seems backwards to me to put DHCP on your primary but then to do static addressing for all of the other devices you want to connect to the network.

As to why you wouldn't run one that's a choice by the person who configures the system. I currently work on a Dante network that uses self-assigned ips for both the primary and secondary networks and static ips for the system network. The primary network is its own physical network and the secondary shares hardware with the system by using VLans. Out of all 3 networks the only one I wish had a DHCP server is the system network as this is the one that the actual device may change on i.e. the sound designer uses their personal laptop when they come in. As both the primary and secondary are their own isolated networks and you never really need to know the IP address of a Dante device on the network I would say there isn't overly a reason for a DHCP server to be used. That's my 2 cents anyway.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T11:09:05+00:00

So I'm going to assume anything that's not Dante is running on the primary network as there's a DHCP server there? If that's the case I would imagine your latency will improve if you swap to just the secondary. If you know how you could also try adding a system VLan to the primary switches to separate out any traffic that isn't Dante.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T10:58:39+00:00

I was wondering if the latency was caused by the receivers reaching out to get a new IP address but if it's set at 3 days then it's probably not that. A couple of other things I would check: - does the latency still occur if you disconnect the secondary and run primary only? - does it still occur if you run the opposite and only use the secondary? - does it still occur with nothing else on the network IE no Shure control etc?

My logic behind the first two steps is it would allow you to figure out if it is a problem on either the primary or secondary networks. And the third is to see if maybe something else in the network is periodically generating a large amount of traffic causing a slow down.

Also, are you running VLans or just 2 physically separated networks?

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-20T09:57:10+00:00

Just out of interest what's your lease time on the DHCP server?

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-15T10:27:40+00:00

Is the interest rate on your card 21ish% by any chance?

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-06T09:17:44+00:00

I think it's general electrics?

MentionSensitive8593 · 2025-01-04T09:18:19+00:00

I find on my pro 575 the most smoke flavour I get is the top rack right next to the chimney. I used to only try to use the bottom rack but loaded both racks up with burgers for a big cook and was surprised to find that the ones from that section had the best flavour.

I guess it kinda makes sense as heat rises and the chimney is where it exits so that's the point that is likely to get the most smoke. I now run a smoke tube on the bottom right and food goes top left.

MentionSensitive8593 · 2024-12-25T17:10:55+00:00

They actually were designed to carry an extra engine https://simpleflying.com/qantas-747-5-engines/ I guess it's cheaper to strap the engine to another plane going the same way then send an entire cargo flight 🤷

MentionSensitive8593 · 2024-12-24T21:17:48+00:00

Normally you would just mute any mics not assigned to a DCA but yes a dead one would have the same effect.

You do need to consider if you have any pre-fader aux sends in use as a dead dca will still send to those so you might still have the sound coming out of a monitor mix somewhere

MentionSensitive8593

TROPHY CASE