New equipment for our practice room

The local arts centre decided to award us 50,000 NIS (about $13,000) for the purchase of new equipment for the musical group's practice room (we're not the only users, but our use far exceeds anyone else's). Whilst it would be good if we could move the practice room elsewhere (we play in one room of a two room public air-raid shelter), at the moment it's better to buy the equipment.

In descending order of cost, we bought a 32 input mixer, monitor speakers and wedges, a drum kit (the previous one belongs to someone specific and not to the kibbutz), microphones and a great deal of wiring. Above are some pictures of the room, taken from near where the mixer sits. [I tried to place the pictures side by side, but the old hack that I had no longer seems to work. I later handled this by defining a table with invisible borders and placing the pictures in the table]

The first half hour of our first practice with the new equipment was trying to get a decent balance. The use of a good mixer now allows us to mic up the guitar amplifiers (these aren't shown in the top picture) so that everything goes through the mixer and can be balanced. One of the singers told me afterwards that this was the first time that he's heard everyone properly.

Although it can't be seen in the top picture, there is wiring that goes along the walls with a multi-XLR socket here and there; into this can be plugged a monitoring device (a Behringer PM1) and earphones plugged into this device, thus allowing in-ear monitoring. I tried this at first with a pair of headphones that sits outside of the ears; I discovered that I could hear just as well with my ears and the ambient sound as with the headphones, so I stopped using the headphones. I may try again with another set of headphones that enclose the ears. I thought that we were going to have wireless receivers; at the moment, one has to connect the PM1 with a cable to the wall. Of course, this is useless outside of the practice room, which is when we need the in-ear monitors!

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
469	15/04/2012	[no title]	MBA
1022	15/04/2017	Return to Kaizen	DBA, Kaizen
1210	15/04/2019	Communications	Mobile phone
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