Cody Hazelwood wrote on Sat, 08 January 2011 22:56 |
Labor is going to be mostly donated (this is a pretty big deal for the community, so everybody's willing to help). The electrical contractor is running all of the conduit that I specify. The general contractor will hang the speakers once I specify where they'll go and where they'll be aimed. I will lead the laborers in running wire, etc, and I will make the connections myself.
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Does the General Contractor have experience doing this? Do they have any certified riggers? Is a Structural Engineer reviewing the connections to structure?
On the Balcony floor plan, is that a wall dividing the upper Balcony in half? It looks to have a door in it, indicating it may indeed be a wall. That would probably affect what you do to cover that and make the concept of a future LCR system difficult for that seating.
A system that is being built on financial and labor donations and that is using EAW MK speakers is usually going to have difficulty justifying the cost associated with multiple directional subwoofer arrays. You might also want to look at whether the coverage of the main subwoofer array is likely to also result in coverage well into the balcony.
This also brings up that looking at your section I noted what appears to be a lot of overlap in coverage. What looks like a flown front fill overlaps significantly with the main while the main and front balcony fill also overlaps significantly. Also remember that the pattern of the speakers is not the same for all frequencies and that the speakers will be less directional at some frequencies.
On the front fill, on addition to the overlap in coverage wit the main and pattern issues noted, you might also have issues in terms of imaging. The fills are probably most relevant to speech intelligibility but the location of the front fill could also result in the perceived localization of the image being pulled up rather than being from the source on stage. This is more critical in lecture and theatre type applications but if you incorporate front fills you might want to consider incorporating them in the front edge of the stage.
You haven't seemed to mention anything about acoustics, is anyone addressing the acoustics of the space and are you coordinating with them?
Planning for a potential future LCR system means more than just some additional conduit. It should include things like planning for hang points, being part of the coordination with acoustics, being included in the power and rack space provisions and perhaps even being accounted for in the system processing used.
Speaking of which, do you have a system processor in mind? With the multiple delays, thoughts of subwoofer arrays and potential of an LCR system, that could require a fairly large and powerful system processor. That could be a factor if that is to be part of your $15,000 budget.
I'll just offer my $0.02 from experience. Projects with no specific budget that depend on grants and donations tend to end up with grand goals and much less grand realities. There are certainly exceptions but with no budget identified, something I would suggest should be done and committed to as soon as possible, then it is very likely that you will be asked to cut back from whatever you initially propose. If that happens, then aspects such as conduit, floor boxes, power and equipment space are much easier and less expensive to deal with during construction and are often a place where it makes little sense to not make cuts upfront. Speaker systems are often another area where it makes little sense to make too many compromises as once they go in they are unlikely to be changed unless there are other major changes. While the iLive, and I assume you mean the iLive-T, may be a very good option, I have to say that with a $15,000 budget for the entire speaker system, a $20,000+ mixing console seems a bit out of balance and if budget cuts have to be made the console, along with some ancillary items, may be the first place to look for reductions.