The RKC can be a challenging venue for live music events. With many curves and hard surfaces, acoustics are poor and rigging lights are awkward. Getting a good atmosphere out of a venue designed as a dinner hall will always be challenging, but we came up with some creative ideas to tackle this. 

Sound

We hired pretty much all the gear we could from the Instrument Lending Library. With four point source tops deployed evenly around the curved stage, we were able to get reasonably clear sound all around the venue without needing to push the volume too high. Usually I'd avoid distributing large point source speakers around the crowd-facing perimeter of a stage in order to avoid phasing issues, but it's very hard to run a single pair of speakers at high volume without serious reflections around the venue. This was a compromise, but one I'd argue worth making; sound reflections are likely to be a more significant issue than phasing in this venue.

Four subs were plenty to cover the low end, which were all auxiliary fed. Staying on control of the bass in this venue is crucial. Last year, we used a crossover over the main mix to feed the subs and tops respectively, but we simply couldn't achieve the sound separation required given the boomy room acoustics.

We had a Behringer Wing running FoH, with two AES50 lines to connect the console to an X32 Rack and traditional X32 on each side of the stage. This worked really well - having consoles with full colour screens to change settings for patching and routing much easier! One thing I did notice; establishing the AES50 connection between the consoles took an additional 15 or so seconds after console boot had completed - with peculiar pops and crackles coming through outputs if they weren't muted over this period - not ideal, but typically Behringer, I guess.

Lighting

Ben was in charge of lighting, armed with just a haze machine, a laser and my two-port Art-Net DMX node. With help from Josh and Andy, the existing gear in the RKC lounge bar was pulled out into the main venue. After a bit of rewiring and re-rigging, the lights were up in place!

Ben used QLC+, an open-source piece of DMX control software for controlling the rig. With some guidance from Josh on how to point and program the lights, the set was looking pretty good in no time!

Ben and Josh did a fantastic job, we had a comments from students saying they've never seen the RKC look so good. I hope that if we do an event in this venue again, we'll be able to give them a budget for hiring some more powerful intelligent fixtures.

I also brought along some festoon lights to hang over the venue's balcony rail, which added some more gentle ambient light. Ideally, we could have done with a bit more in terms of uplighting and accent lighting - but we had what we had. 

Logistics

Owing to thoughtful and extensive planning on the part of Tom and Will, the event ran extremely smoothly. It's rare I work on an event where every band played to its allocated set length, with band changovers that lasted no more than ten minutes. It was definitely worth the careful planning. 

There was one thing however, completely beyond our control. Despite the fire alarm system being isolated, during the beginning of the last set of the night - the fire alarm sounded. We all evacuated, campus safety turned up, followed by a fire engine - not ideal. Unfortunately, it was a system fault with a detector that hadn't been properly been assigned to the isolation group of that building.

This is one of those things that we simply couldn't do anything about, it just happens and you have to suck up to it. Despite the alarm, after 15 minutes whilst the fire brigade inspected the facilities, we were allowed back in and finished off the set. Barely anyone left over this time, and it was a great opportunity for Tim to hype everyone up on his saxophone for the staff band. The electric atmosphere was soon restored, and the evening wrapped up without further complications.