# Something I've been wanting to see for a while...



## Soxred93 (Aug 24, 2009)

It's a place where I can talk to all sorts of other light and sound geeks. 

So Hi everyone, I'm soxred93. I'm a high school student that has been working on lights and sound since 7th grade. I currently do productions at my local high school, as well as a local black box theater. At the school, we currently have a 24/48 ETC Express for lights, and a Mackie 24-4 for sound. I wish we had the 72/144 for lights, seeing as my school has to really cram tons of lights into very few dimmers. With 12 lights reserved for FOH, 4 for the cyc, and 7 for house lights, we're trying to cram a little over 48 lights into 24 dimmers. The way we're doing it is that we have three electric stips. The first one is dimmers 13 through 24 on the first half, and then _13 through 24 are repeated_ on the other half of the stage. It's not a good system, especially when you finally find a free plug and you realize it's a special on the other side of the stage. The same system goes for the second one, which is 25 through 36 on both sides. 

Other than that, we have an excellent system. Maybe I'm just saying that because I did lights in middle school at a different stage, which really was not good at all. Every single light was at the FOH, so you couldn't light upstage properly. What's worse is that it was a computer running Horizon that was upgraded from an old analog board. That means that 1) you don't get the power of DMX, 2) You need a DMX to analog converter, which doesn't work too well, 3) The dimmers are so old that we had one 4-pack die on us one year. We were reduced to 44. 4) One time, the analog to DMX converter got so overloaded that a chip died one day before the show. 5) The instruments are over 30 years old, and as such, at least 2 bulbs break every day. We spent a fortune on bulbs. Thankfully, the school recieved a grant to improve the lighting system.

Our sound board at my high school is also an incredibly nice system. Mackie is our board of choice, and this is our 3rd one since the school was build 50 years ago. We have 5 handhelds, and 12 body packs, in addition to 5 SM57s. We have 1 brand new AudioTechnica 3000 series wireless mic, plus a body pack. It's an incredibly great sounding mic. We also have 4 ElectroVoice handhelds, not sure what model. We also have 6 AT body packs, 5 EV body packs, and 1 Nady Systems body pack (ugh). 

At the local black box theater, we have a less complicated and less sophisticated system. The lights and sound are controlled by 2 hand-written progams (the owner wrote them, not me). We have 9 dimmers above the stage, but each one controls 4 outlets. All of our lights are ellipsoidals, except for 8 tri-color stage wash lights (not sure which brand). The best part is that the sound system is a 1960 amplifier from the owner's college days.  Either way, it works.

Sorry if I've rambled on and bored you.  I hope that I'll have a good time here!


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## DaveySimps (Aug 25, 2009)

Welcome! Great to have you here. Thanks for taking the time to register and introduce yourself. Be sure to check out the Wiki and use the search function. There is a lot of great info here. Let us know how we can help you. Enjoy CB!

~Dave


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## Dionysus (Aug 28, 2009)

I've already seen you posting around! Welcome to the Control Booth.

Sounds like that blackbox is a pretty interesting place to work indeed. Especially with the custom lighting and audio software. I wonder how well they work.
Feel free to put forward your questions, and do what you can to answer other people's questions.
I find around here, alot more questions get answered than asked!


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## Soxred93 (Aug 28, 2009)

Dionysus said:


> I wonder how well they work.



That's about all they can do. Simple setup, dimmer IDs are hardwired in, no master, basically only can do simple cues.


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