Microphone gain control for in-house sound... ideas?

[selfdestroyer]

Here is my situation. At my work we have a Performance Art Center with a very large stage and a pretty nice sound booth. We do small plays and presentations in there. The stage and seating is on the first floor and the sound booth is located on the second floor over looking the stage and seating. I have 4 roaming Shure SLX2 microphones that are on the first floor and all the transmitters are on the second floor with external antennas. Everything works great but sometimes we have a need to turn up or down the microphones from the first floor. I was hoping to find a external gain/volume knob that I can put on the first floor.

All in all I am looking for ideas. I called my Sweetwater rep and he was looking into it for me but he did not sound to confident on a solution. I thought I would shoot something here for ideas or to be made fun of.

The signal flow goes.
Shure SLX4 transmitter to channels of a 16 channel mixer to in-house sound. Pretty basic setup.

Cody

[rullywowr]

I think you mean the "receivers" are on the second floor.

You have several options here:

1)  Upgrade your mixer to something with WiFi wireless control (like from an iPad or tablet).   Presonus, Yamaha, etc are all great manufacturers of these kind of mixers.

2)  Relocate your wireless receivers/antennas to the performance area and run them into a small mixer before they go to the larger mixer at FOH.  You could sum them all into one XLR cable and send this to the large mixer just using one channel.

3)  Split the signals at FOH, run all 4 microphones via XLR to the stage into a small mixer, then send back up to FOH.  This involves a lot of cable runs and is pretty complicated.

4)  Get an additional 4 receivers for the SLX2 system which will reside on stage, connected to a small mixer.  Patch this mixer into your PA.  This way will allow you control from the stage, or control from FOH during actual performances.

etc...

There are many ways to slice this one, it's really just a matter of budget and preference.  I would go with #1 if possible, having iPad control from stage is pretty sexy and convenient.

[selfdestroyer]

I think you mean the "receivers" are on the second floor.

You have several options here:

1)  Upgrade your mixer to something with WiFi wireless control (like from an iPad or tablet).   Presonus, Yamaha, etc are all great manufacturers of these kind of mixers.

2)  Relocate your wireless receivers/antennas to the performance area and run them into a small mixer before they go to the larger mixer at FOH.  You could sum them all into one XLR cable and send this to the large mixer just using one channel.

3)  Split the signals at FOH, run all 4 microphones via XLR to the stage into a small mixer, then send back up to FOH.  This involves a lot of cable runs and is pretty complicated.

4)  Get an additional 4 receivers for the SLX2 system which will reside on stage, connected to a small mixer.  Patch this mixer into your PA.  This way will allow you control from the stage, or control from FOH during actual performances.

etc...

There are many ways to slice this one, it's really just a matter of budget and preference.  I would go with #1 if possible, having iPad control from stage is pretty sexy and convenient.

Thanks Ben, I did mean receivers... I have been reading a bunch on the subject and have been tossing around terms all morning.. I got confused. lol

You gave me some great options and I will look at each one in detail. My goal would be to keep the SLX4 receivers on the second floor in a "secure" audio booth. This would all be solved if I could run the SLX4's into my Crestron system and use wall controllers for volume. Still waiting on the installer to tell me if its possible with out current product or not. 

Cody

[rullywowr]

Got it.  Yes, you could run a 2-way split at the booth for the 4 channels and then run those four channels into a Crestron-controlled summing mixer.  The mixer would output back into one channel of your main mixer and you would have the best of both worlds.  When you want to control them yourself on stage, just mute the four channels on the board and make the single channel active.  When a real show is going on, you mute the single channel and just have the engineer mix the four channels as normal.  If the mixer could be located in the booth and controlled by CAT5...this would be a great solution especially if the network cables are already run to the side of the performance area.

Plenty of options here, if you have any questions feel free to hit me up. 

[selfdestroyer]

Thanks Ben, I really appreciate your help. My Crestron installer got back to me and will be able to run the SLX4 receivers into the Crestron and do a pre-gain before it hits the mixer. I think we will go this route and give it a try.

Cody