Tuesday 12 March 2013

How to Make an Announcer Love Your League Part 2


In my previous article I talked about providing the announcer with the relevant information they need to do their job effectively.

In this one I'm going to talk about what you need to provide to let them be heard, or to put it another way,  what sound equipment should you have and where should it be.

If your league is lucky then you will know an awesome sound engineer that will rock up to a bout with everything they need to make it sound perfect. If however, like most you don't here is a quick and dirty guide to what's what.

The normal setup of bout sound is similar to this:


Mics and a laptop connected to a mixer, which is fed into an amplifier and then out into the monitors.

Watch us Wreck the Mic!
The microphone.  The weapon of choice of the announcer. There are many different types of microphone on the market for an even greater range of purposes.  For your announcers you want a decent vocal mic, and while you're on make it wireless.

Why Wireless?
Simple,  announcers need to be able to move around and having an announcer restricted by a cabled mic doesn't make sense.

Wireless mics can be picked up fairly cheaply now(I paid about £100 for a set 3 years ago, which came with 2 mics and the receiver all in a nice hard case).

If you are using a couple of mics(which aren't part of the same set) then you need to make sure that they aren't on the same frequency and they will interfere with each other. This goes for other people within range of your receiver.  I've been at a bout before where the headset mic used by an aerobics instructor next door was picked up on the bout setup, rendering one of the microphones useless for the day.

Talking of frequencies, if you are in UK you may not know that there was a switch-over of channels in 2012 and so some older microphone setups cannot be used now.  Something to bear in mind if you have an older setup or you're considering buying second hand gear.

The only downside I have found with wireless mics is that they do consume a lot of batteries(well mine do anyway).


So, you have some microphones now.  What's next?

The Mixing Desk
A mixing desk allows you to connect all of your sound devices into separate channels and then set the levels to give you a balanced output.

You can buy small 4 channel mixing desks for around £100 and this is all you need really. My wireless mic setup allows me to have a separate channel for each mic, then I need 1 for the laptop, and I have 1 spare for an iPod to be plugged into as a backup.

It is a good idea to have someone manning the mixing desk, as the sound levels will need to be adjusted as the noise levels in rise and fall.


The Mixing Desk then outputs into an Amplifier or PA.  The amplifier is the bit that takes the sound from the mixing desk, and powers it up so that it can be fed into the monitors(speakers) and then people can hear it.  P.A.'s come in all shapes and sizes and price ranges.

The amplifier will then be connected into a number of monitors.

I like Tall Speakers, I like Small Speakers...

There is a phenomenal range of monitors available ranging in powered or unpowered, size, output power, monitors to be put on stands or floor monitors(wedges).

What you get is very dependant on your venue, but at the very least you should have 2 monitors for each side of the crowd.  So, if you have all of your crowd on one side of the venue, you should have 1 monitor at either side facing them.

Floor monitors are the best as they don't obscure the view of the track.

Ideally you want to face your monitors at the crowd, as any extra sound being pumped across the track can cause problems with the players and referees, not hearing whistles or shouts.

Make sure that you tape all of your cables down.

At the Newcastle Roller Girls/Tyne and Fear home venue, we have a coupe of sections of bleachers on the floor and then a balcony at a right angle to that so we have a couple of floor monitors for the bleachers and then we run a couple of monitors up onto the balcony.  All of these face away from the track.


If Music is the Food of Derby...
The only other bit that needs to be connected to all of this is your music.
I'll not go into playlists here as that is a subject for a whole blog by itself.

You'll need a device for playing music from.  Something with a standard headphone jack will do.  I would recommend a laptop as a first choice over an mp3 player as the laptop is a bit more flexible in terms of selecting music and skipping over tracks.

I usually have a setup where I have a couple of playlists on the laptop, for the bout itself and then I have an ipod with backups of the playlists on.  The Ipod also has any skate-out songs on it, so that the laptop can be simply paused while the skate-outs happen to avoid the juggling of songs.

If you are going from a laptop/mp3 player straight into a mixing desk then you will need a converter which will take the headphone jack to a pair of 1/4" jacks for stereo output.


Getting Your Levels
Sports halls are not designed with acoustics in mind and so it will take a bit of adjusting to get the sound levels right.  Ideally you should be able to hear the announcer wherever you are in the venue, but it shouldn't be overpowering.  Do a sound check before the venue fills up and make sure you know the limits of where you can be heard and where your mics will work.  Then when the venue fills with people be prepared to adjust the levels again as the sound is absorbed by the bodies.


In the next thrilling instalment I'll be looking at playlists for derby.  What's your favourite song to play to?  What amps you up the most on track?  Do you even notice the music?

Let me know by leaving a comment below or on www.facebook.com/svenwillibefamous









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