Remote wish list for new concert venues

[klaukholm]

When new venues such as concerthalls are speced, designed and built, the end users and their needs are often overlooked.
This is true of the resident musicians needs as well as the needs of TV and audio remote trucks that will regularly be covering a great variety of events that take place in these great venues.

I invite you to share your experiences of good and bad solutions implemented in the venues you guest, and creating a remote wish list for new concert venues.

I would propose we relate it to a venue with:

Room A, a 1600 seat symphonic hall with occational non classical events and congress events. It will also function as a full size scoring stage for film and game sessions.

Room B, a 300 seat black box/chamber room with weekly jazzclub, regular chambermusic events, congress events and regular recording studio use for bigbands/brassbands and smaller.

Room C, a 2000 seat congress hall that will also host events such as bands and pop artists.

There will be a 50m2 surround capable control room, that is to be tied to all of the above rooms via AES, fibre cat5e and coax.
This room will also be connected by fibre to national TV's main building a few blocks away.

All three of these will regularly be recorded by national radio for broadcast, and they always use remote trucks, but with budget cuts and environmental restrictions they need to be able to come in and use the control room.
TV will also come on occation.


I will fill in this list as you make suggestions:

Loading dock with easy access including ramp

Redundant empty cable conduits
Extra large redundant cable conduit to mix posision in room A

Parking for two large trucks (TV plus audio) with outlets for:
fibre from control room (how many?)
coax from control room (how many?)
ethernet from control room (is 4 enough?)
AES or analogue?

Clean power available for all rooms
Mix posision in the back of each room

Very quiet HVAC in room A and room B
Quiet HVAC in room C
all three need to be easy to turn off



I will leave room acoustics out of the list as that is a huge separate discussion.

[NorseHorse]

Easily accessible loading dock. And ramp.

EDIT: Oh, and loading spots!

[sonare]

These apply to any room used for music:

REALLY quiet hvac

Smooth sound-- especially the reverb tail--and NO flutter echoes

Rich

[jude]

clean power
polite, smart in house crew
ample parking, including for trucks
properly serviced in house multicores. lighting etc
someone who can make a long black without burning the shit out of it

[rwhealey]

Not a recording request, but from someone who is a PA house tech in an 800 seat theater

1- Wherever sound/video/data cables need to be run in conduit, the conduit should be twice as big as you think and two should be put everywhere there is one. If that's excessive, always make sure there is some space to run future cables.

2- Ethernet everywhere!

3- Maybe not an issue at this level of venue, but the PA mix position must be in the house. We are lucky enough to have it there - most similarly sized theaters in our area don't.

[klaukholm]

keep it coming!
I am compiling a list based on your suggestions in the original post.

[ebs.audio]

Admittedly, my circumstances are a little different from others on this forum because I always run my recorders at front of house, so no need to interface with any sort of remote truck.

That said, I've worked in a few venues on our concert tours and I know it's going to be a good night when I show up and see: (some of this has already been said)

- A loading dock with enough room for a 48 foot trailer to remain docked throughout the show
- Isolated power for audio equipment both on stage and at the mix position
- Plain old ordinary tie lines from both sides of the stage to front of house, the booth, and anywhere else they might need to go. (In my experience, E-Snake, or setups where mic inputs on stage feed mic amps before being routed anywhere only make things unnecessarily complicated)
- Easy access to the catwalk or grid for hanging microphones. Bonus points for tie lines and audio power. Extra Bonus points for elevator access.
- The ability to roll gear (no steps) between the dock, the stage, and front of house. (should go without saying, but unfortunately...)
- Enough room for a touring act to set up their console in the hall without interfering with the hall's permanent setup.

That's it for now, I'm sure there's lots of stuff I've forgotten.

[pkautzsch]

Some kind of audio network would be an obvious solution. The only one coming to my mind right now is StageTec's Nexus system, but I'm sure there is some competitor out there (I'm not affiliated with StageTec).

MADI.

[just.sounds]

A ceiling/floor above the hall where you can walk straight up with holes in the floor where you can hang your mics through. Like in het concertgebouw

[fifthcircle]

Good power cannot be stressed enough... And a comprehensive system that includes audio power that is completely isolated from lighting. I've seen more rooms than I care to think about mess this up. Grounding issues, etc... all over the place. Or the sound power for PA is good, but nowhere for a recording rig to power up on the same service. When amps and other devices that take a lot of power are installed, this means a comprehensive solution.

Beyond that- issues like doors that aren't big enough to wheel gear/instruments through. Placement of structural beams that get in the way of stage and other access. Elevators that are not big enough to get gear where it is needed. Lack of a flat push-path for gear/instruments. This includes one hall where there were very pretty doorjams/seals that prevented a piano from being pushed on stage.

Cable paths are always a good thing. For every plan you can make with differing types of cable (Fiber, CAT-5, etc...), somebody will want to do something in a way that you aren't equipped to handle. Along those lines for things like CAT-5, have a patchbay where signals can easily be routed from one place to another using the installed cables.

Sound Power in the catwalks and locations for hanging mics are a very good thing and often forgotten. A winch system for moving mics around is even better. The Sydney Opera House has a great computer-controlled system with 3 cables per point that allow for substantial movement in all directions with ease.

A location with sightlines to the stage for a monitor console. lots of "almost" acoustic groups need stage monitors (especially world music and new music groups). They may not be major, but a monitor console is often needed. Even if they are not dealt with in-house, a rental rig will need a place to set up. Lack of a location for such a console is a problem in many halls.

House clock/blackburst would be nice as well.

A few thoughts... I'll write more as I think of them.

--Ben

[Corran]

Originally Posted by just.sounds

A ceiling/floor above the hall where you can walk straight up with holes in the floor where you can hang your mics through. Like in het concertgebouw

Excellent thought. Balconies are never in the right place!

[joelpatterson]

A "public" laptop that is always logged onto Gearslutz?

[JonesH]

These are all interesting suggestions. I'm about to compile a list of things to get/fix/build in the concert hall in Piteå, Sweden, so I guess I'll take some inspiration from here. Otoh... We already have a 5.1 control room with 24ch micstasy for people to work in so the need for remote installations is somewhat smaller...