Andy Wilson's Pinewoods Facilities Recommendations 2004

Recommendations for upgrading sound system and non-sound facilities at Pinewoods Camp

Who am I, and what is this?
What do I recommend?
Epilogue

Sound engineer for Pinewoods Campers' and English Weeks 2004: I did sound for Campers' and English Dance Weeks at Pinewoods during the summer of 2004. I will leave it to others who where there to indicate whether I did a good job those weeks, but will mention that Brad Foster was at English Week, and would probably share his opinion on the sound reinforcement I did there. You could also ask the musicians for the week for their opinions. In my hours off from sound reinforcement duties, I also did some extra-curricular work, like repairing a bad mic cable, replacing bad light fixtures, and clearing clogged gutters on the back side of C#. These are some of my observations, experiences, and recommendations based on my time at camp this summer.
Experienced home builder: Few of you will know that I have spent several years building homes. I can do framing, electrical wiring, supply and drain plumbing. I know how structures go together and work. A recent project of mine was a timber-framed pavilion, raised by hand.
Trained mechanical engineer: I have two degrees in mechanical engineering, and a pre-professional "Engineer in Training" certificate. I have designed and engineered residential structures.
Dance organizer/caller/sound guy: I organize two dances a month in my home community of Santa Cruz, California, call dances in the greater northern California area, and run sound for many of the dances, camps, and special events in my area. Dare I confess that I recently took up accordion?
My expectations from you: None. I understand that many different considerations bear on any decision to do or not do anything at Pinewoods Camp. Every sound guy has a different opinion, and states it emphatically, as though it were the only right way to approach a problem. I realize that you have many different user groups and sound people at camp, and that you must decide where to use limited resources of money, materials and labor. I won't pretend to know what the big picture is, or where you should put any of my ideas among the myriad suggestions jostling for priority. If you adopt any of my suggestions, that's great. If not, that's great, too. I offer these suggestions with no expectation that any of them will be adopted. Read them, then do with them as you see fit, with my compliments.

What do I recommend for Pinewoods facilities?

The stage box in the middle of the stage is too far back on the stage. As it is, it is underneath the musicians and in the way, as well as putting the cables in danger of getting trampled and damaged by musicians. The stage box in the wall stage left should be moved into a hole in the floor similar to the existing box for channels 1-6, but also forward of the existing box to keep the cables out from underfoot. The two boxes should be six or eight feet apart in the stage floor, and perhaps just a few feet from the front edge of the stage. As it is, the box for channels, 7, and 9-12 is so far from center stage that the 15-foot cables cannot reach the musicians at center stage from the box.

It might clean up the stage a bit if the box for the caller's mic input were on the stage floor or on the front of the stage facing the audience so the mic cable didn't have so far to stretch across the area where the step up to the stage is. The callers mic plug could also be positioned next to the caller monitor, but I favor a floor-level installation so the caller does not need to look through a cable dangling from the ceiling.

Piano amplification

Barcus-Berry piano pickup

I finally found the box for the Barcus-Berry piano pickup in the Pinewoods Camp office sometime in my second week in camp. The piezo-electric pickup was missing from the box, though the DI was there. If you ever find the pickup for the Barcus-Berry, you might achieve better long-term results by attaching it semi-permanently to the sound board with screws. My Barcus-Berry piano pickup suffers from severe signal distortion when the adhesive fails, but sounds great when properly fastened to the sound board. You could avoid the distortion caused by inadequate adhesion by using a few small screws. (Ask me if you want recommendations on that.)

Piano mic

I used a Crown brand, model PZM, pressure zone microphone for the piano. Ask Brad Foster if you want to hear a glowing recommendation for using this mic on piano. I taped the mic inside the access panel in front of the player's knees, more or less centered over where the bass and treble strings cross. For a semi-permanent installation, I would recommend drilling two small holes in opposite corners of the plate, and screwing it to the inside of the kick panel with tiny wood screws, so you need not worry about tape giving out after time. I bought mine for about $250 a few years ago.

N. b. This condenser microphone will not accept a battery requires phantom power, so you will need to run the global phantom power from the board (which I did without incident for two weeks straight) or have a separate phantom power supply for just this one channel. I note that the instructions for sound operators strongly suggests that we not use global phantom power, but I also note that (at least for the moment) the mic cables in C# are in good condition (i.e., they haven't been stepped on too many times yet) and make no noise when phantom power is used. Humidity does not cause noisy cables -- walking on them, or sitting in a chair on them, causes noisy cables, which is one more argument in favor of moving the stage box for the snake out from underfoot.

Monitor speaker and monitor amplifier rated impedance

It would be nice if the operator manual for the system listed the rated impedance of the monitor speakers and the monitor amplifiers. Not knowing, I assumed that the speakers were a standard 8 ohm design, and that the amplifier might only be rated down to 4 ohms, so I only ever put two speakers per channel. It would be nice to know if I could put four speakers per channel without concern for clipping or overloading the amps.

Mic cables

It would be great to add a white mic cable to round out a complete set of the colors used in resistor color coding. I use white for channel nine. You already have the other nine colors of this system: brown (1), red (2), orange (3), yellow (4), green (5), blue (6), violet (7), gray (8), and black (0, or 10).

Add one more set of house speakers in C#

Dancers periodically complained that the speakers near the ends of C# might not be working. Every time I checked on them, they were working fine. After thinking about this for a bit, I realized that if you stand in the center of C#, you effectively hear sound from an infinite line of speakers stretching out on both sides of the stage. However, if you dance in the side sets, the line of speakers that you hear only extends to one side, in a semi-infinite line. Because of this, the sound pressure is only about half as great at the side of C# as it is in the middle. We could help this situation some by adding one more set of speakers to C#, placing them as close to the end of the pavilion as weather permits, and shifting the remaining speakers toward the other end of the pavilion so the last speaker is in a position symmetric to the new speaker added at the other end. These outboard speakers might be angled somewhat toward the dance floor to limit the excess sound that spills out to the world beyond the dance floor. This would definitely help even out the sound toward the sides of the dance floor in C#.

Instrument cables

It would be nice to have one or two more instrument cables in the kit. It would also be great if the coaxial instrument cables were clearly labeled and stored separately from the speaker cables. Since they have the same 1/4" tip-sleeve phone plug terminations, it is easy for unaware sound people to try to use an instrument cable as a short monitor speaker cable. The results won't be pretty for the musicians who have to listen to the monitors. (For those of you not versed in the fine points of this, the wires in instrument cables are very small, and not designed to carry the high currents required to drive speakers. Also, the coaxial design does a good job of protecting the low-level signal in the instrument cable from extraneous electrostatic noise (which is irrelevant for the high-level signals that feed speakers), but also increases the distributed capacitance in the cable, which acts with the high resistance of the skinny wires to filter the high-frequency signals from speaker-level signals. It isn't good to use instrument cables for speaker cables.)

Compressor

I would have found it convenient to have an audio compressor available. Especially on camper night, some of the callers were not very good about projecting a consistent sound level into the microphone. Also, some instruments, like tin whistles, recorders, and flutes, which achieve the upper register by overblowing are often much too loud in the upper register, and it is convenient to be able to compress these instruments' dynamic range at the channel insert point. An inexpensive two-channel compressor with side-chain inserts can be had for around $100.

I sometimes set up a compressor to "duck" the band sub-mix 3-5 dB when the caller speaks. This helps make the caller a little more intelligible without having to keep the band too quiet when the caller is not speaking. This would be easy to wire in since you already use a band sub-mix and caller sub-mix in the sound system signal routing.

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Buildings

During Camper Week I thought that the band shell in C# was too enclosed and had too many hard surfaces that caused sound on stage to be loud and muddy due to reverberations. This problem was largely alleviated during English Week, when band size was mostly limited to three or four musicians, not the dozen or more camper musicians during Camper Week. Never the less, it may be worth reducing the reverberation of sound on stage. One possibility would be to install acoustic tile on the ceiling and parts of the walls of the band shell. Another possibility would be to open up the false wall under the gable at the front edge of the stage, and let some sound into the dead space above the old roof of the dance area, now enclosed under the extension of the roof of the new band shell. Particularly if you put some sound absorbing material in this large hollow space, you could dampen some of the worst offending notes, particularly at the bass end of the audio spectrum.

Acoustically couple C# stage space to dance space

Extending the idea in the preceding paragraph one step further, it would be possible to open the space now closed by a false wall in the gable at the front of the band shell, and also open the roof of the dance floor in the same area so sound could not only escape from the band shell, reducing reverberation on stage, but also projecting more direct, acoustic music to the dance floor, without amplification.

The most obvious way to do this structurally would be to remove the roof of the dance floor that is in front of the stage, and put new trusses that would span all the way from the far edge of the dance floor to the back of the stage. This would have been expensive to do when the band shell was built, and even more so today. I don't recommend this option.

However, it is possible to cut out much of the existing roof decking of the old dance floor roof that is now covered by the new band shell roof framed on top of the old dance floor roof. This is precisely what was done on a much smaller scale in the framing of the band shell roof in C# minor, so you can look there for an idea of what I'm talking about if my description isn't clear enough for you.

To do this without compromising the structural integrity of the building, you would need to maintain the load-bearing path from the roof surface all the way down to the foundation. This can be done by noting where the band shell roof comes down to rest on the C# dance floor roof. Everywhere the new roof rests on the decking of the roof below, the underlying roof decking must be allowed to span over to the next truss of the dance floor roof. However, once past the next truss, the decking of the dance floor roof can be removed without interfering with the load-bearing down to the foundation. One caveat: note the spacing of 2x4s aligned across the roof trusses, nailed to the bottom chord of the trusses. You would need to install 2x4s on a similar spacing, attached to the top chord of the trusses, or leave roof decking boards on a similar spacing, to brace the top chords against buckling sideways. If you ever get inspired to do this and don't understand what I've written, please contact me and let me explain it better, as this bracing is structurally important.

Full disclosure: letting sound out of the stage will reduce reverberation on stage, and make direct, acoustic music more audible on the floor, but it will also allow dancer noise -- talking, shuffling feet, clapping hands, etc. to return to the stage where it may bother the musicians. I understand from John Doerschuk that dancer noise was a common musician's complaint about the old band shell.

This would not be a terribly expensive renovation to do, if you ever decide you want to do it. It requires very little material, and could probably be done with skilled volunteer labor. It would involve cutting out a section of the wall above the front of the stage (making sure that the ridge beam for the stage roof is adequately supported on a post, since that wall almost certainly carries the roof load down to the I-beam that spans the front of the stage), cutting out the no-longer needed sections of the dance floor roof underneath the new band shell roof, and any finishing required to neaten the cut edges.

Non-sound related

Get C# ceiling fans off dimmer switch controls

One of the new ceiling fans in C# makes noise. I checked it, and the motor makes the noise, not the bearings or fan blades. It may just be a bad fan motor, but this problem may have been caused by controlling the fan speed with dimmer switches. Cheap residential dimmer switches chop the smooth sine wave provided by your electric utility, adding a large amount of energy not at 60 Hertz, but in high-frequency harmonics of 60 Hz. Motors operate with coils of wire that like smooth sine-waves, but generally don't like the high-frequency harmonics. I don't know that using the dimmers to control the fan speed caused this motor to become noisy, but it is plausible that this could have happened. I would check the specifications on the fans, and get them off the dimmers and onto on-off switches unless they are specifically rated for speed control by dimmers.

These fans have built-in four-position switches that allow their speed to be adjusted between high, medium, low, and off with the pull of a string. It may be possible to wire into the fans so that a four-position rotary switch on the stage where the dimmer switches now are would allow you to adjust the fan speed while still providing a smooth 60-cycle power source to the motor coils.

Gutters on C#

The gutters on C# above where people walk in to the dance pavilion on the side of the building near the water fountain do not catch the rain coming off the roof, because they are too low to go under the drip edge at the eave of the roof.

If the gutters were raised an inch and a half or two inches and the drip edge was inside the gutter, we could actually keep the water from raining down off the edge of the roof in those locations.

Also note that the inside corners where the roof valleys drain into the gutters next to the band shell get clogged with pine needles easily, causing water to overflow onto the surrounding walkway. They should be cleaned periodically.

Fascia on C#

I understand that there is some concern about the rafter tails weathering on C#. If the rafters were cut back an inch and a half, and a fascia nailed on the exposed ends, and the fascia painted, it would protect this area from accelerated weathering. Short of installing a fascia, it would definitely help just to paint the exposed end-grain on the rafter tails so the cannot wick moisture up the grain of the wood and cause rot.

Protect light bulb at Poughkeepsie (outhouse behind C#) from rain

I replaced a light bulb outside the outhouse behind C#. The bulb broke in my hands as I attempted to remove it. I believe that the problem is that this bulb is exposed to the rain, and rain drops on the hot glass bulb create thermal shocks that cause the glass to crack. A new fixture that protects this bulb from the rain, or just a board to keep rain from falling directly on the bulb would prevent this problem in the future.

I-beams in C# should be scraped and painted

I note that the I-beams supporting the roof trusses in C# are flaking paint and starting to rust. It would be good to put scraping and repainting these beams on your list of projects to do some work weekend. It isn't urgent, but it should not be ignored, either.

Missing light fixture

There is an electrical box above the dance floor in C#, directly in front of center-stage that fits in the pattern of ceramic light fixtures above the dance floor, but the box is covered with a metal plate, instead of a light fixture. It appears that whoever installed the electrical wiring intended that there be a light there. I suspect that the light may have been removed because it was in the way when the old central array of EV SX100 speakers were installed, and it was never replaced when the newer set of distributed speakers was installed and the center speaker array removed. Barring a reason for keeping the light fixture out of there, I would replace it.

Lower floor in chair storage closet by stage on C#

It would be handy if the floor in the chair storage closet at stage left in C# were at the same level as the dance floor, and then a door to the closet installed from the dance floor, so the rolling carts of folding chairs could easily be accessed and concealed. This would involve re-framing at least this section of floor. I didn't look carefully at what would be required, but can tell that the outside wall of the band shell is a load-bearing structural wall that holds up the roof, so care must be exercised in any re-framing plan.

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Grounds

Avoid path erosion by getting water off the paths: I notice that some effort was put into putting wood chips on the paths around camp, and that the rains make short work of washing the chips off the paths. You can keep more chips on the paths, reduce erosion of the path surface, and keep campers' feet drier if you get the water off the path as quickly as possible, instead of allowing the water to run along the path. I urge you to put some work weekend effort into diverting water off the paths and roads around camp -- every 20 feet is not too frequent. By preventing the buildup of much water flow along the path, you will reduce erosion of the paths, and help keep the wood chips on the paths. Getting the water off, or across, the road surface is top priority in maintaining dirt and gravel roads (and paths).

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Epilogue

Thanks for reading all this. I hope you find some of it useful. Feel free to write or call me at (831) 462-6072 if you have questions. If you call, please note that I am in the Pacific time zone, and don't call too early in the day.

Best regards to all,

Andy