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[Geoff Doane]

It's an idea.  It's certainly the simplest solution, but since it's a school nothing is ever simple!  Sometimes someone, custodian or staff, will unintentionally hit the button to turn off the mains and nobody can figure out what to do without calling me out of class :0.

It's a never ending battle between keeping it simple, and providing tools that can do the job well, when you're dealing with non-technical users.

If simply getting all your wireless on the top layer is important, have a look at the other inputs you have there now.  Do they all need to be there?  Are any of them stereo?  You can create a stereo pair between the two layers, so one fader on the top layer controls both left and right inputs.  You can put any input you want on the "stereo" inputs over on the right hand side, although you only have two of them at a time on the LS9-16.

Adding another console seems like asking for trouble if they're already having problems with the LS9.  Anything analog that gives you close to the control of the LS9(PEQ and HPF on every input) will have far too many knobs for them to screw with.  At least with the digital, you can always recall one protected scene that gets you back to a base-line again.

GTD

[Mac Kerr]

It's the LS9-16, sorry forgot to mention that.  So you think it's simplest to just get the card and run the wireless on the 2nd layer?  My concern is that if someone who doesn't know how to use the stuff well needs to (I don't have control over the equipment since it's in a school) then they won't be able to figure it out.  Whereas if the wireless are on a separate mixer it's a little easier since they can adjust sliders up and down at least.

You need to figure out how many inputs you need, and what they are to see what you can fit in the console. With only 16 faders on an LS9-16 you will probably want to find a way to keep everything you want on the top layer. How many wireless mics, how many other mics, and how many channels of playback to you need to get into the console? Adding another console for the wireless mics is not a good solution in my opinion. If you must go to another console I would put other stuff in it and keep as many mics as possible in the LS9. You might be able to have stuff like band mics are area mics in the external mixer, but if you can get everything into the LS9 it will be better. You can write scenes and assign them to the User Defined Keys so other users can just select a preset that brings up what they need. You need to label the UDKs so it is clear to those users, but it gets them just what they need.

If you use the slot to expand the console, the cheapest way is with a 16ch ADAT card and a couple of Behringer ADA8000 8ch mic pres. This would give you 32 min inputs. If you are doing a musical, maybe all the band mics can be on the bottom layer and all the cast mics on the top layer. It really depends on how many inputs you really need.

I am not a fan of using an automixer like the Shure for lavs because you lose all the individual channel eq, where you want to adjust each mic for the person wearing it.

Mac

[jesseweiss]

You need to figure out how many inputs you need, and what they are to see what you can fit in the console. With only 16 faders on an LS9-16 you will probably want to find a way to keep everything you want on the top layer. How many wireless mics, how many other mics, and how many channels of playback to you need to get into the console? Adding another console for the wireless mics is not a good solution in my opinion. If you must go to another console I would put other stuff in it and keep as many mics as possible in the LS9. You might be able to have stuff like band mics are area mics in the external mixer, but if you can get everything into the LS9 it will be better. You can write scenes and assign them to the User Defined Keys so other users can just select a preset that brings up what they need. You need to label the UDKs so it is clear to those users, but it gets them just what they need.

If you use the slot to expand the console, the cheapest way is with a 16ch ADAT card and a couple of Behringer ADA8000 8ch mic pres. This would give you 32 min inputs. If you are doing a musical, maybe all the band mics can be on the bottom layer and all the cast mics on the top layer. It really depends on how many inputs you really need.

I am not a fan of using an automixer like the Shure for lavs because you lose all the individual channel eq, where you want to adjust each mic for the person wearing it.

Mac

Thanks for all the responses.  It sounds like getting the 16ch ADAT card and getting 2 pres might be the best way to go with our best.  The StageBox would be nice, but way too pricey.

The downside to having the pres, of course, is I won't have control of the gain on the channels in the LS9, but maybe what I can do is what Mac suggested and move "other" stuff that requires less finesse during a musical/drama onto the pres and keep the mics on the LS9.  We've got 7 overhead condensors on the stage for band/orchestra/chorus concerts, 3 stage drops for mics and that's really it.  I could easily move the overheads off to a pre because they aren't used much and we do not need 7 given the stage size.  Probably don't need any to be honest.  The stage drops might be a little trickier, but the gain shouldn't need to be adjusted that often.

Thanks again all, at least now I've got a plan.

FYI - Mac, this is the theater you visited to help me out in December.  Thanks to your help the sound from the PCC-160's finally worked well enough to get decent sound from those without lavs.  More importantly, your advice led me to get someone to come in and rewire the connections so the board was actually using all the amps, etc... There is still some extra wiring and unused components in the system, but the sound improvement is HUGE.  Major kudos to you for your help!

[Tim Padrick]

Rent an analog input card and see if the SLX have sufficient signal level (use the 1/4" output, and don't forget to crank the rear panel control).  They may well have (there's a gain control in the channel EQ section for tweaks).

[Samuel Rees]

If the users have already gotten over the hump of using an LS9 at all, using the second layer certainly can't be an unacceptable complexity. It  isn't any more complex than most of the basic functions such as bus sends on faders, GEQ on faders, master layer... it'll be fine.  How many wireless inputs do you have / expect to have?

A Dante card and the new Yamaha RI8-D would run you about $2000 and add 8 additional preamps that are fully controllable from the LS9 itself. You'd additionally be able to record 16 outputs to a computer directly via ethernet. You'd be able to expand with another RI8-D later. This option is more expensive per-channel, but has the upside in ease-of-use because you can control the preamps from the desk and includes the recording capability. If these things were important to the school, it might be worth looking at. The ADAT card with Berhinger expansion preamps is quick, dirty and hard to beat though! Don't know if it is on the market yet but the new ADAT preamp looks set to be well liked.

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