Wrapping up my last outdoor job of the season yesterday with a fun and chilly night at the movies was a welcomed end to great summer. In this video we take a quick look at what I’ve been up to in the past week, with a walk-through of the simple distributed sound system we had out on this job.

JBL VRX-932LAP & 918SP speakers made up the system, with a QSC Touchmix-16 handling the mixing duties and allowing me the freedom to walk the venue easily with iPad control of the system. Dealing with pressure from an adjacent neighborhood to keep the late night noise spill to a minimum, the system needed to be distributed in order to keep the primary speakers flanking the screen (and closest to the houses) from being a nuisance. A pair of BSS TCS-804 time correction units were on hand to provide simple linked stereo delay pairs sends out to the zones.

Placing the first delay ring at 90′ from the screen and the second at 150′ allowed us to keep the screen-side volume to a minimum while still covering the audience effectively. With the surround audio down-mixed to L/R + sub, we are getting the center channel dialog through both left and right channels equally, along with the panned effects and music, which provides a very nice surround feel throughout the lawn when the system is aligned properly. This is an unusual situation where we are deploying the system this way to mitigate noise complaints, but we make the best of the situation and had a great week of movies.

In other exciting news, I’ve been working on a notebook project to fill the gap left after moving from carrying a full sized notebook to using digital note-taking on a daily basis. I often find myself in the need of a small, simple way to jot down the basic info about a gig when on the job. Something that can fit into a pocket and not be noticed, but that is designed to make my life easier when info is coming in quickly during setups. I came up with a simple design, and I hope you’ll find it as useful as I have so far.

I’ve just finished making the first small batch, which will be going out to those who support the channel directly on Patreon as part of a quick ‘beta test’. These are individually handmade and will be available in greater quantities very soon.

If you would like to order some right now,  early ordered notebooks will be only $2 each plus shipping. I’ll be doing a separate video announcing the notebooks officially soon, and will have another few batches on hand to send out then.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

If you’re looking for a rock solid little mixer that handles smaller gigs with reliability and rock-solid remote control with the built-in WiFi, the QSC has been doing a killer job for me this past year. Traveling around town and around the world, the Touchmix has been an awesome tool!

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