Hey group!

I am well respected at my children's private school as a home theater expert, but now the owners of the school have bulldozed one of their buildings and are planning a new gym with a stage at one end. I know it's not the perfect venue for theatre, but they've asked me to take on certain aspects of the design and audio is part of the picture. I've got the DMX stuff under control, but the real problem for me is the accoustics and sound system.

While many of you could do a quick google search, and come up with several web sites that could help me, trust that I've already been there. I plan to speak with Jerry LeMay at HAA, but have not done so yet.

I'm hoping to hear from those that may have proffesional theater experience, and are willing to help me in this endevor.

Aside from the unimportant, or I should say undemanding needs, such as school assemblies, we put on Broadway Musical productions that rival many of the community theaters in our area, SoCal. We serve about 4000 patrons with every show.

I'm engaging your time because the budget for this project is less than one would hope for. I'm thinking that there may be an audio solution that could handle an 11 thousand square foot area with 24 to 32 tracks, within the consumer audio arena. Am I nuts? I hope not.

Anxious for your reply...

Actually yes, You are barking up the wrong tree and in the wrong forest.
Only professional/Commercial technicians should help you on a project of this size. Home theater people would doubtfully ride both sides of the fence. We tend to pick residential or commercial. My company does both.
Besides the budget, there are tons of things to condsidder. If you are in no hurry, to start this conversation with me, please give a till the end o0f this week to finish the club I am currently doing. Then I would be happy to discuss this with you.
I am a dealer for JBL professional, EAW, MAchie, All the Harmon companies, Rane, Sennhesier and plenty more.
I have built a few dozen systems you are trying to deal with.
Hollar next week and I can give you some pointers or I can design it for you all the down to the installation and testing.

Busy Child is right.

You do not want to use consumer products for this job.

You would be a lot happier walking away from this job if the budget isn't big enough...

HDTV...

busychild is right AND wrong!

Right that this is a commercial job, with commercial requirements, including the speakers, soundboard, lighting, acoustics etc...ESPECIALLY since this will all need to be accomplished in the end of what would will ultimately be primarily used as a gymnasium, which requires an entirely DIFFERENT design, if for the acoustics alone.

busychild is wrong in that there is such a distinct seperation, and the insuation that he's one of the few that does both.

We do both, very well, as we have a couple guys that have come from commercial background...

Check out Beau and Brandon at JBJ Systems (Beau is a frequent poster here) http://www.jbjsystems.com/

have seen their work first hand, I'm sure between busychild, and JBJ, they could offer you some EXCELLENT local resources and advice, since they both seem to be (can't find any information as to busychild, but he sounds adept in his second post here)...crossover between residential and commercial is not easy, but it can be accomplished!

Good luck!

avdude
site admin
www.integrationpros.com

HDTVJunkie,

Maybe you could talk with the guy in the "Home Automation" thread. I hear he does 3 theaters a day.

lol

Well, I'm sure he does something 3 times a day!

Me, too: breakfast, lunch, and supper.

Larry,

you are being WAY to docile for the recent goings on here...liven up!!!

;-)

avdude

I would talk to these nice people before you do anything else: http://www.sweetwater.com/
[Link: mackie.com]

I am good friends with JBJ Systems. We are both very qualified to do the work.
Good luck with whomever you choose.

Me? I get up, I eat, I go back to sleep....

Thanks for the responses group, the helpful ones and the humorous ones. I was braced for a Bose solution from someone, maybe Q, but it never came. :o)

As much as I would hate to have to pick just one of you to do this job for me, as it seems several of you are qualified, at this point I have no budget. In fact I've not been paid anything, and if I am paid at some point, I will reinvest that pay in equipment for the theater.

I will forsure need help on the far end, with calibration. I am not qualified to work on a space this big. Gerry at HAA is working out the acoustic treatments required to get room reverberation down to 1.5 to 2.0 secs. and I'm going to have to suffer through prewire, or at least preconduit myself.

Before the foundation is poured, I have to place conduit for the audio system. The room is 83' wide by 103' deep. The ceiling is curved left to right with the ceiling height at the left and right walls @ 29' and in the center 33'. Anyone want to guess at a speaker configuration? I'm guessing that the console/preamps will be in the back of the room and the amps will be stage left near the dimmer rack. We own 9 wireless lavaliers, and often rent 6 to 8 more for a musical. We usually hang 4 to 5 more for ensemble singing. (This all happens in a theater that we've rented for the past several years) So I'm guessing two conduit runs from the booth to back stage, one for baseline audio to the amps and another for sound from the mics to the booth. Does this sound right?

Thanks again everyone!

Me too. I lost my 67 Old's in a law suit over a dang plasma hitting the deck. I should have never listened to Impaqt's advice in the hanging a plasma on steel studs thread. I didn't realize that it was April Fools Day because I don't know how to program my watch.

Now I just reminisce... The good ol' days when I ripped the terminal blocks off the back of the amps and speakers and soldered my 2 guage right onto the copper clad. And the programs I had to write, for each individual display, to allow for pixel by pixel calibration of fixed pixel displays. And my work towards a unified field theory...

I might just go to Florida and work for Timshows.

Anyone know what day it is?

you can run all that in one 3" conduit.,.. a 32 channel snake is only 1.5" thick, and will solve both problems.

What you need a second conduit for is power, and make sure you have totally clean power that comes from a secondary source, ie, not the same source as the lighting system.