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[James Feenstra]

You clearly don't have any experience in the kind of production that goes on at large corporate presentations. I'm done talking about lighting. Friends who spend 200 days a year doing this kind of show bring what they know they need. If your needs are less demanding, bring what you know you need.

Mac

i've done my share of large corporate shows. never seen that much redundancy on one yet.

and just FYI, I've seen as many digital audio crashes as I have lighting desks...possibly more...

I guess clients don't care so much about if the sound goes out so long as they can still see the presentation

[Mac Kerr]

i've done my share of large corporate shows. never seen that much redundancy on one yet.

and just FYI, I've seen as many digital audio crashes as I have lighting desks...possibly more...

I guess clients don't care so much about if the sound goes out so long as they can still see the presentation

I guess your experience is different than mine, and pretty much every lighting designer I work with. Whatever.

Mac

[Bob Leonard]

Nice job Mac. Good to see people working and good to see the job being done correctly. Nice job.

[John Sulek]

For absolute redundancy to the redundancy (in case of catastrophe explosion of a console for example) I suppose you can throw in a third desk.

Mind you, if desk a fails, desk b takes over and vice versa, allowing the other to be restarted. Load show, automatically sync and continue. Might have a desk down for ~1.5 minutes unless it's a case of catastrophic failure causing a desk not to turn on.

Odds of that happening with a MA from a reputable company? About 1/75859593...

That will be the longest 1.5 minutes in your life and I can't think of any high end corporate clients who would find it acceptable.
There are people who have the money to do it right because there isn't any time in the fast pacing of the back to back cues for any down time.

One day, it will be commonplace on audio gigs to have the luxury of online backup consoles. The lighting and video guys are just 10 or so years ahead of us.

thanks for sharing those pics Mac!

[Craig Leerman]

As for backups, some digital audio consoles will still pass signal through the board, and not mute the mics when the console crashes. When lighting consoles fail, the end result is usually a dark stage, and  some pissed off folks (promoters, clients, performers, and audience members)

I have always carried a small backup audio console for corporate gigs. (usually an old  Mackie 1202 or DFX12)) While I may not be able to get all the inputs I need into the backup, I can at least get the Podium, a lav or two, and some video playback, as well as music into the board, and get a barebones show back up and running.

One cool thing in lighting is that there are a lot of backup type units that can be used to get you through a gig, instead of just bringing a second console and a DMX merger.  These can be small consoles, or just boxes with a few buttons. They are placed between the lighting console and the fixtures/dimmers. If the units sense that DMX is not being outputted by the main console, they automatically kick in with either the last look that went through , or a pre-programmed look.  Many of these units will snapshot an output of the main board so you don't even have to program them, just program the regular board and record the scenes into the backup! 

[James Feenstra]

That will be the longest 1.5 minutes in your life and I can't think of any high end corporate clients who would find it acceptable.
There are people who have the money to do it right because there isn't any time in the fast pacing of the back to back cues for any down time.

One day, it will be commonplace on audio gigs to have the luxury of online backup consoles. The lighting and video guys are just 10 or so years ahead of us.

thanks for sharing those pics Mac!

1.5 minutes (or less) of no editing is not generally a big deal with the amount of rehearsals and pre production that goes into an event of the size we're talking about...you still have a backup online that takes over...two people would just have to work off a single desk

corporate shows are hardly fast paced, back to back cues...compared to other types of shows anyways...

arena rock show: 8000-14,000 cues in 120 minutes or less
theater show: 400-700 cues in 120-180 minutes
corporate show: maybe 200-350 cues in 45-180 minutes, and it'd have to be an incredibly huge show to have anywhere near that number

as for audio backups...they may not mute on crash, but they sure do mute on restart...

[John Sulek]

1.5 minutes (or less) of no editing is not generally a big deal with the amount of rehearsals and pre production that goes into an event of the size we're talking about...you still have a backup online that takes over...two people would just have to work off a single desk

corporate shows are hardly fast paced, back to back cues...compared to other types of shows anyways...

arena rock show: 8000-14,000 cues in 120 minutes or less
theater show: 400-700 cues in 120-180 minutes
corporate show: maybe 200-350 cues in 45-180 minutes, and it'd have to be an incredibly huge show to have anywhere near that number

as for audio backups...they may not mute on crash, but they sure do mute on restart...

you can restart the control surface (which is usually what crashes) on Avids and Soundcrafts without glitching the audio as it is busy passing through the seperate D/A rack which is in the last state of said surface. You can't mute or unmute anything that wasn't already and no level or scene changes, but the audio will carry on. Been there seen that first hand.

Ok...I'm done too...apparently I haven't learned anything in the last couple decades hanging out with my LD pals.

have fun and travel safe.

[ProSoundWeb Community]