Live Audio – matt dale

OSC Controller Button Box

By combining my knowledge and experience of Python programming, web site construction, and basic electronics, I was able to construct a hardware device that sends OSC commands. I used a Raspberry Pi running a simple web server and listens for button presses. When a button is pressed, it sends the OSC command.

The concept is simple, a 4 button box that sends OSC commands when a button is pressed. These OSC commands are configurable with a web page that the device hosts. The first iteration of this box was used on a Broadway show to trigger a global system mute. When the button was pressed, it sent an OSC message to mute the eight Meyer Sound Galileos and change the Meyer Sound D’Mitri scene to the MUTED scene. After completing this device, I realized that it could be developed into something much more versatile.

The second revision includes programmable LCD buttons, multiple scenes, OSC subscriptions and an opto-isolated General Purpose Input. Using the Q5 switch from http://www.ledswitches.co.uk/lcd-oled-products/lcd-switches/q5-lcd-switch.html was the first challenge. These amazing switches are similar to what is used on the DiGiCo sound consoles. Their specs are quite good, and they are fairly easy to use. Although it is probably not the best choice due to speed, I chose to use Python to program the switches, and through much trial and error, came up with this library. This experimental library functions well enough, but has been significantly improved in the production code.

The Q5 does not have a chip select pin, so in order to address each switch individually I multiplexed the clock signal from the Raspberry Pi. The following picture shows this in action.

Q5 Breadboard — Q5 Switches on a breadboard

Once the switches were working on a breadboard, I attempted to design a PCB for the box. I learned just enough KiCAD to design a board, and used OshPark to produce it.

This PCB worked reasonably well, but like all first attempts, it can use some improvement. After populating this board, I designed a front panel using Front Panel Express. This allowed me to make a very professional looking front panel for this device.

Finally, Felix Kutlik helped make an enclosure to hold the PCB and the Raspberry Pi. In its current state, the OSC controller functions, but I am adding more features to it. Using the web configuration console allows changing button colors, text, OSC messages, confirmation messages, etc.

The Bodyguard US National Tour Production Engineer

Working as the Production Sound Engineer for The Bodyguard US National Tour was a terrific experience. My responsibilities were a bit more than a typical PSE role since the design team had already built this system many times before and none of the design team were a part of the shop prep. It was up to me to determine how to package and cable the system by interpreting the designer’s spec and translating it to Masque Sound’s inventory. The main PA is 12x Meyer Sound Leopards installed in 2x stack-

Leopard Sound Tower — Meyer Sound Leopard Towers

able 8′ towers with a 5′ lower section with a Meyer Sound UPJ-1P for infill.

Gary Stocker designed these towers with an internal gimbal that allows panning and tilting of the pinned array. Array angles can be changed easily since the new Leopard bottom up captured rigging system is very easy to use.

The UPJ-1P infill has limited tilt, but a wide range of panning. It provides additional front fill coverage for venues with wide proscenium openings. The additional room at the bottom of the tower provided a nice space for a patch panel and power panel to make connecting the towers simple and efficient.

The design team wanted to use the Meyer Sound 900LFC subwoofers in their cardioid configuration, and since this did not fit inside the tower footprint, they are stacked three high next to the tower.

The Center Cluster consists of 10x Meyer Sound Mina speakers, hung on a truss with 2x Meyer Sound 900LFC subwoofers on either side. The FOH Electrics truss is hung underneath.

Meyer Mina and Meyer 900LFC — 10x Mina, 2x 900LFC

The rest of the system is a straightforward touring rig. There are around 40 channels of wireless mics with Sennheiser 1046 receivers and Sennheiser 5212 transmitters. There is an 8 channel Sennheiser 9000 series digital system used for handhelds on all the pop songs for the show which sound particularly good.

The console is a DiGiCo SD7T with a redundant Waves SoundGrid Server system. Band monitoring is handled by the Roland M48 mixer. This system interfaces with the DiGiCo SDRack via a MADI output. Interfacing the system this way required the Associate Designer, Tom Marshall, to be very creative in the layout of the MADI stream since the M48 picks off the first 40 channels of inputs of the MADI stream only. To be able to provide a drum submix to the M48 system, he placed an AES I/O card in slot 4 of the rack and physically looped the outputs to the inputs of this card. This allowed him to send groups to the M48 efficiently.

Overall, the tech process went very smooth since the show has been produced in many other locations. We used a DiGiCo EX-007 for programming help, with Allison Ebling at the SD7 and Tom Marshall at the 007. Both Tom Marshall and Richard Brooker were a pleasure to work with, and I couldn’t have pulled it off without the support of Masque Sound, including Gary Stocker, George Hahn, and Scott Kalata.

Digico EX-007 tech — Digico EX-007 in a hazy tech

designdb.online

Masque Sound occasionally provides for a show or event that requires us to build a sound design and act as the “production engineer”, making cable decisions etc. We also occasionally design, build, prep and install systems for “one-off” events or shows. In these situations, I have used FileMaker Pro database solutions, Microsoft Excel or the gaff tape/Sharpie method of labeling. These methods were never quite good enough for my liking and I set out to build a free simple solution for this task.

Using the Django web framework and current HTML5 technologies, I was able to build a system that functions as a fast and elegant solution to sound system documentation and labeling. While it doesn’t currently include equipment management, or fancy features, it prints directly to Avery 5167 and 5160 address labels right from the web browser (Google Chrome) without having to save to PDF and print from another program, or in browser reader.

Next time you need to build a show, don’t use gaff tape and Sharpie, use designdb.online!

Currently in the Beta phase with a limited number of user accounts available, I am working on issues daily. Sign up at designdb.online.