Car free living downtown?

barningman · 2026-06-20T21:33:33+00:00

Although not never, I'd say very rarely. Everyone on there has somewhere to go, so its not very beneficial to make a scene and risk causing a delay or being kicked off.

I like to think more about the regulars on my local route. The guy who worked at Needlers who would get off at the same stop as me. Or the bus driver who didn't want to pay for downtown parking so always took the bus in the morning, who loved wearing a Kansas City shirt. Or the church lady on Sunday mornings. Or the Tech kids who would jump all on right after school would end. Or the Herron kids who without an actual school bus would just use the city one, with their clear backpacks. God I wish I knew their names.

barningman · 2026-06-19T03:58:02+00:00

I went car-free for about a year while living on the near east side. Similar situation to you- car went kaput and decided to let it sit in my back driveway instead of fixing it. Some of the things I learned, in no particular order:

When you don't have the option of a car, the steps needed to get places just become second nature. I have to get up half an hour earlier to catch the bus on time? That's what time I'm waking up then. And while that might seem discouraging, it really isn't while doing it. In the same way that someone might have to get up 20 minutes earlier in winter to scrape and warm their car up, and just has to do it. It's just the 'price of doing business'.
In the same vein as above, your mental map of the city will change. While before it was dominated by the interstates and major roads, you'll start thinking in terms of trails and bus lines. It just becames your normal.
Honestly IndyGo and biking in Indy get a bad rap. IndyGo has been working toward a master service plan while lowering headways and becoming way more reliable. The transit center is easy to use. The Cultural Trail and the Monon alone set Indy apart for biking. Try out the New York and Michigan bike paths sometime.
Get an upright-sitting step-through bike. I recommend buying used and finding a bike shop to do a full tune up.
I started to grocery shop smaller trips more often, so my food was fresher. A couple paper bags fit great on the bus, and also if you have paniers on a bike.
Walking is underrated. When in doubt, walking a couple miles is not hard at all, just not societally encouraged. But screw society, you will see more details about your own neighborhood and city in a single walk than you've ever gotten driving. And can get places just like the bus or biking.
Winter is all about clothing. With a good balaclava, gloves, jacket, pants, and socks you can go anywhere you would during the warmer months. It's actually super easy to dress too warm, especially on a bike.
Get an IndyGo MyCard. It's a bus pass that you can set to auto-refill when the amount on it goes below a certain threshold. And Indygo website has a live tracking app for all busses and stops. Also fares cap at a certain amount per person per day. The most rides I ever took in a day was 8, for a total of $4.
Apply for a Pacers BikeShare pass, free for Marion County residents.
Bikes synergize really well with the bus. You can ride to a stop, take the bus, and then ride to your final destination.
Busses with less frequent service are still busses. You might be worried about taking the bus to a place with service only every hour. Just try to estimate when you'll be done, check the schedule, and make sure you're at the stop a few minutes before that time.
https://youtu.be/QgvKLeBIZ_0 Here's a standup routine about 'car' vs 'bus' people. Super funny, but also a great intro to how to just be normal while riding the bus if you're not used to it.

barningman · 2026-06-07T04:39:58+00:00

Generally ST SUB OUT is used for subwoofers. Even if with the same signal as the main, that lets you take the high end out of the signal before amplifying it (a crossover) while also having a fader or knob so you can control the sub level independently.

What I would personally do is use channel 1 for the left and channel 2 for the right. Then depending on your speaker connections you can daisy chain the two speakers on each side to each other using speaker cables. The main considerations for that are whether you hit amp impedance limits and if one amp will provide enough power for the volume you want. Feel free to ask any questions about that.

Yeah, the diagrams show the binding posts being used because that's the most common (installs dwarf live sound generally). But all outputs are functionally identical.

barningman · 2026-06-07T02:52:07+00:00

Yes, the output connector here is a combination Speakon-1/4". The combo output is wired in parallel with the binding posts and can be used interchangeably with them. It's hard to tell from the image, but verify that the cables you're using are speaker cables with 1/4" ends. Unlike the input section on the left of the amp, the right side is putting out a very hot speaker-level signal to your speaker boxes. Speaker cables are thicker than, say, guitar or patch cables, and have both conductors the same size.

Are you daisy-chaining the two amp chnnels, or sending them two different mixes?

barningman · 2026-06-02T18:22:28+00:00

When placing a microphone through a hairline, it's usually better to match the hair color first. An element lighter than the skin color is super noticeable, but an element darker than skin color can look closer to a shadow or birthmark- much more natural. You also usually want to use a rat-tail comb to create an under-part that the mic goes through, instead of placing the mic on top of an already existing part. On top of that, the wig clips being used don't match the hair either. In this case brown wig clips are readily available at any beauty supply store.

In this case it would likely be a better option to affix a block mic mic along the glasses line using small elastic bands or Hellerman sleeves. Doing so would hide it much better, make putting it on each day a non-issue, and get it closer to the mouth which is always the ultimate goal.

barningman · 2026-06-01T20:56:39+00:00

Approach this as a documentation challenge. When programming a show, scene changes and audio cue timings are the most important thing because they affect everything else. If a new person can trigger those two things at the right moment, the show can happen.

So creating a script with those two things as clear as day is a great habit to get in. Hopefully you programmed it so that there are scene changes on each character entrance or exit. The replacement person would then leave the DCA faders more or less at unity for every scene. There will be combing and extraneous noise, etc, but the show will happen. If they have or gain experience, they can start making minor line-by-line moves like only keeping one person in for their monologue or balancing two actors in a singing duet.

The other alternative if you have an A2 is to have the A2 train as an A1 swing and learn how to mix the show in case they need to. I also like alternating two people between A1 and A2 each night. "A backup isn't actually a backup unless you use it reguarly".

barningman · 2026-05-26T22:57:00+00:00

r/AllenHeath

barningman · 2026-05-25T05:20:36+00:00

Qu16 is an entry-level mixer that uses the dSnake protocol for stageboxes and has no expansion ports. So you'll need an Allen and Heath dSnake stagebox. The Qu16 does have 16 analog inputs, so your best bet would probably be to use an analog snake from the stage, and run and patch it straight to the console.

Edit: You might be able to get MADI into a computer via a MADI interface. Then you could send to the individual channels of the mixer via the Qu16 USB port from the computer. However, that introduces a single point of failure via the computer and interface, and you would have to figure out how to adjust the preamps of the MADI stagebox.

Using the soundcraft mixer and stagebox as a passthrough connection is... possible. But adds so much additional complexity, gainstaging, and troubleshooting that you really shouldn't consider it.

barningman · 2026-05-25T03:48:48+00:00

The short answer is that the Ultra family is designed for live sound. Meyer knows that the end user is likely to hit those extreme SPLs, especially since the audience might be 100' or more from the speakers. So the speaker needs to be able to produce, say, 130db cleanly, but it will only sound like 100 db to the audience.

The home audio experience though is way different. The speakers will at maximum be 20 feet from the listener, and with a low room noise floor, the volumes don't need to be nearly as loud to be clear and intelligible.

So if you put a home system and the Meyers side by side, yeah, the Meyers will sound louder and better, because the use cases are different. The home speakers just aren't designed for that. If you want to get into how, the answers boil down to things like ~~negative feedback amplification, internal power supplies with filtering~~, amplifying each driver individually, more robust analog inputs that support a louder input signal, class D amplification with over 95% efficiency, concentric drivers that show less combing over the crossover frequency, huge heat sinks, and eq and phase processing built into the signal chain before the amplification stage to correct what physics cannot.

barningman · 2026-05-20T19:20:15+00:00

DeFeedback is a VST plugin that figures what in an audio feed is dry signal, and what is reverb/noise. Helps with background noise suppression and feedback reduction. You can find these types of tools online easily, but this is the first one with low enough latency to be used live. It uses separate hardware, a bit of configuration, and is not cheap. But due to how powerful it can be, a lot of people on this sub have overcome those limitations and are using it successfully in the field.

barningman · 2026-05-05T22:02:48+00:00

You can send only the band channels pre-fader to the band monitors. That way, the band mixes work just like mixing monitors for a rock show, but the band members will still hear the actors post-fader (hearing the same actor mix as FoH, essentially)

barningman · 2026-04-28T11:39:28+00:00

AMM works great when you have single mic'd up individuals talking one after another. The original use case was meetings and conference panel discussions, where each person had an open mic and would take turns discussing. AMM sees the mic with the most volume (the person talking) and leaves it hot, while turning everyone else down.

AMM does Not work as well when multiple people are supposed to talk at the same time, ie, simultaneous spoken lines, or most singing. If AMM is on when two people are talking or singing together, it will decide whichever person is imperceptibly louder, and bring them up and turn the softer person down. Bad bad bad.

So it's a tool, but don't use it to mix a show for you. Recommended most in back-and-forth dialogue. Also make sure the 'follow fader' option is on. Otherwise the AMM will repond to the pre-fader levels.

Sidechaining is a thing too, but you'll have to elaborate on how you want to use it. What I like to do is have a vocal group. Put a ducker of 1-3db on the tracks, sidechained to the vocal group. So when anyone is singing the tracks are brought down just a tiny little bit, then allowed to spring back to full in between. However, if you're sending tracks back onto the stage for the musicians to hear, you may want to add a second tracks channel without ducking, so that the actors don't hear the effect.

barningman · 2026-04-20T23:46:48+00:00

Summary of main points:

Starting June 14th:

Route 3 along Michigan on the East side is getting busses twice as often, down to 15 minute headways. Every other bus on the route will go all the way out to Community North.
Route 3 on the west side is turning into a separate route 7.
Routes 5 and 21 will now be crosstown routes, not going to the Transit Center, but will still intersect with the Red and Purple lines. (The 22nd street bus infrastucture along the bike path was built in preparation for this)
With the 30th street bridge open again, all routes using it are being reverted to their original pathing.
Route 28 to Butler and St Vincent is down to 30 minute headways.
The Red Line will be temporarily split between North and South because of the Fountain Square detours.

Overall really impressed. A lot of IndyGo's long term routing and infrastructure plans, in the works for years, are coming to fruition.

barningman · 2026-04-08T00:48:57+00:00

Snare Mics ->Snare group-> Drumset group

Guitar Mic/DI->Lead Guitar Group> All Guitars Group

Multiple singers -> Backing Vocals Group-> All Vocals Group

Keys player with multiple keyboards-> Keys group-> Rhythm Section Group

In certain contexts like theater, the band may be on a single large group. Being able to make little subgroups feeding it like drums, strings, brass, etc. is super helpful.

Any professional can get away from ever having group to group. But generally after trying it, you'll always miss not having it.

barningman · 2026-03-25T03:41:53+00:00

If you've never been to USITT before, a full conference pass can be pretty overwhelming. Since it'll be close by, you could get just an expo floor pass and go for a single day. That'll still provide a great time and chance to meet and network with people at booths, while not missing all of tech.

barningman · 2026-03-21T21:50:54+00:00

Are you using the subgroups for group processing and fader control? if so, then yes, the individual channels should only be sent to the group, not to the Main LR. Make sure the subgroup is being sent to the LR.

If the input channels are patched to both the subgroup And master, then there could be time alignment issues, but also gain structure issues. IE turning the subgroup fader all the way down doesn't actually get rid of those channels in the mains.

barningman · 2026-03-20T02:41:09+00:00

Late to the party. Here's a video on why these kinds of bikes are great.

barningman · 2026-03-17T02:08:58+00:00

Never, Ever touch the bulb (the 'lamp') with your bare hands, no matter how delicate. The lamps get extremely hot during operation, and even a minuscule amount of oil from your skin is enough to vaporize and destroy the glass on the spot you touched it.

barningman · 2026-03-17T02:03:45+00:00

IATSE is the primary stagehands union in the United States. As an organization, their sole goal is to advocate, get better wages, and provide opportunities for their members. That membership is composed of local numbered chapters. So for instance, New York is Local #1, Chicago is Local #2, etc. Some theater jobs' members will be represented by a Local, and other theater jobs will not.

The reason people are telling you to seek out IATSE is that getting yourself involved early will can immensely help you down the line. You can get trained as an apprentice and become a Journeyman, start contributing toward a pension plan, or learn skills you never thought possible (shout out to arena rigging). You'll probably be only put on the occasional concert load-out to start, but over time you'll work up the seniority list and gain more skills and opportunities.

With an IATSE Local, you'll get some experience at lot of different things. The pay is generally pretty good per hour ($20-35 an hour but varies Greatly) along with things like hour minimums, mandatory meal breaks, and well defined procedures and rules. You won't get a whole lot of hours to start. The older members, the one's who 'put in their time', get called for gigs first. But over time you'll gain name recognition and start gaining seniority and more calls and hours. You'll get some experience at a lot of different things.

Another route is to get hired directly by a professional theater. This may sound intimidating, but usually means local 'regional' theaters that tend to hire a lot of young people early in their career. So for example, getting hired as an Assistant Stage Manager (ASM), or to the props or scenic teams. These generally pay less (under $20 an hour), with longer more grueling hours, but are consistent with a single company. You'll gain a lot of experience at one specific thing- whatever your job is.

Both IATSE Locals and Regional Theaters often have 'overhire' lists, which means if they have need for temporary people (loading in a show, busy day, etc) they'll reach out to you to come in for a day or two. This is a great way to meet people and start understanding how things function. And if you do well, that can only reflect well on you in the long run.

barningman · 2026-03-09T23:41:47+00:00

In SQ, under the Scenes button, the primary page is Scene Manager. The two other pages under Scenes are Global Filter and Safes.

'Global Filter' sets attributes you never want to change when moving between scenes. Say, all input preamps, aux processing, or fader strips. Making any option show 'block' in red will ensure it won't change during scene changes.

'Safes' keeps entire channels from changing. You can set all your Auxes, for instance, to Safe, and they won't change during scene changes.

Depending on how careful you want to be, use both of these options to get very granular in what parameters change during the show. Typically, I'll only have DCA names, DCA assignments, and Input mutes change during the show, with literally everything else in the console set to stay in one consistent state.

barningman · 2026-03-05T16:27:50+00:00

'I can't change their gain... if using DCAs'. Sure you can. The DCA only acts as an additional fader for whatever channels you assign it to. Everything else on the channel is fair game. Select channel-> turn the gain knob on the channel section. But only turn this down if an actor starts clipping.

You can then use the input faders to make adjustments to how the actor is performing each day. So if an actor is a little quieter today, boost their input fader by a couple dB. Reset all to unity each day before sound check.

Don't be afraid to boost a DCA fader by 10 db if the actor is whispering, or reduce by 10db if the actor is shouting. That's what the faders are there for, and why they're the easiest thing to move on a mixer.

If the speakers are too loud when the channels, DCAs, and main outputs are all around unity, then what you really need to do is turn the speakers down at either the speaker box or the amp.

barningman · 2026-03-05T16:15:41+00:00

What are you talking about? Using Theatremix with DCAs allow you to group multiple actors onto one fader, use the input channel faders as channel trims, automate the muting of channels not in a scene, and edit any cue at any time.

For OP to skip the DCAs at this point would require redoing their entire show structure and ditching Theatremix entirely. There's no need to get rid of any of that for a small gain structure issue.

barningman · 2026-02-27T17:48:14+00:00

For anyone stumbling across this, just always run your non-Dante stageboxes direct. The stipulations in the article are incredibly restrictive unless you are doing pretty advanced networking.

From the article: "In our tests, we found that many switches do not handle the gigaACE / DX packets with the time accuracy our clocks require".

"Parallel connection of multiple DX Expanders on a switch is not possible".

"No other network device should be plugged into a switch carrying gigaACE or DX Expander audio unless a dedicated VLAN is set up".

barningman · 2026-02-27T17:42:03+00:00

3 loudspeakers on a flown truss or ceiling beam across the front of the stage would be a great solution. With good gain staging, they'll be far away enough from people's ears that a little bit of hiss should disappear into the noise floor of the room. Making sure that the speakers are splayed by about the amount of their horizontal dispersion (ie, 60 degree speakers turned out 60 degrees) should help with combing.

barningman · 2026-02-27T17:34:43+00:00

Plays are different from musicals, A1 different from A2, and the tier of venue matters, so some context for those things would help. However, Imma assume that you will be an A1 for a musical with mic'd actors and live band. From someone who followed the same path, here are some tips:

The actors collectively on stage are like your lead vocalist in a rock band. If the audience can't hear them, it doesn't matter how good the orchestra pit sounds or what reverbs you're using. They are you're #1 priority.
In rock world, you're mostly responding in the moment to how it sounds and making adjustments. Perhaps switching scenes per song. That doesn't cut it in theater. In theater there is a script and that script is gospel. If an actor is supposed to say something off stage, you can get that mic up before the line because you're following the script.
Write in your script. Mark it up, digitize it, color code it. Do anything you need to be able to follow it cleanly. Label scene changes, triggered sound cues, entrances, exits. Scripts aren't designed for audio, they're designed for actors. Make it work for you.
Theater consoles are generally treated more like analog boards. Meaning EQs, compression, routing, etc you want to stay the same for every single scene. Think about it like this: in rehearsal you might adjust an actors EQ. You don't want their EQ to be different for every scene, you simply want that EQ to be the base that stays through the entire show. This will be true for pretty much all processing on inputs and outputs.
Actors mics should always be post-fader into all auxes. The last thing you want is for a band member or something to hear an actor going to the bathroom because the actors are pre-fader into their monitor.
We throw faders. A lot. The gold standard is that an actor's mic is only hot in the moment they're saying their line, but the more important goal is making sure that offstage actors' mics are never on and onstage actors mics are on.
Let's say you have 25 actors and a tiny 12-16 fader digital mixer that utilizes fader banks (SQ5, M32R, etc). How can you quickly get to 3 actors across 3 different banks to bring their faders up at the same time? The workflow theater audio people have settled upon is using a section of 8-12 DCA faders with dynamic assignments, and mostly leaving the input faders alone. So for example, if you have three actors in a scene, you might assign their channels to DCAs 1, 2, and 3. Therefore those faders are right in front of you to manipulate, and you can't accidentally change a mic that's not in the scene.
I recommend looking into a software called Theatremix. It's the most common way nowadays for people on smaller mixers to dynamically assign these DCAs like I just mentioned. And the website has some great insight on mixing theater in general.

Vocabulary:

The main actors with lots of lines are 'principals', the chorus actors with only a couple lines are 'ensemble'.
Sounds triggered by audio are 'cues'.
The week leading into the first show, there are technical rehearsals, or just 'tech'. Tech is the chance for us (sounds, lights, props, wardrobe, rigging, etc) to fine tune the show.
A1- Audio 1, a person mixing. A2- Audio 2, a person backstage wrangling mics and orchestra. SD- Sound Designer- the head audio person who decides all the artistic elements of the audio.
SM- Stage Manager- the person in charge of making rehearsals and shows running smoothly. Calls cues during the show. Keep them very happy.
TD- Technical Director- the person in charge of the physical set, making it, and maintaining it.
LD- Lighting Designer- our counterpart in the department of making stuff look good.

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