How do I use the sound desk?

In the Greenwood Theatre, the sound department uses a Digico S31. 30 maximum channels can be seen and manipulated at once, separated by three screens as shown in the image below. For the vast majority of shows, there will only be a few sliders and buttons you would need to use, which will be explained shortly.

The most important aspects of the desk you will need to know how to change are as following:

Mute Buttons: (insert image) These mute a certain input. It prevents any signal coming from that input from being routed to the master output, muting any sound. This is used when performers are not playing their instruments or do not have any lines for the current scene. It is imperative that mics are muted and unmuted accordingly, as failing to do so may require in lines being missed by the audience, or backstage chatter leaking into the speakers.
Volume Faders: (insert image) These change the volume of a certain input - referring to microphones, instruments, sound from the mac or an external laptop, etc. It does not change how much signal is coming in through a microphone, but it affects how much of that signal is routed to the master output and by extension the speakers. The rightmost fader is the master fader, which affects the volume for everything coming through the desk. Make sure this is sitting at around 0db at nearly all times.
Gain: (insert image, mention that you have to press and hold the gain on the actual display) Gain controls the input volume of a designated input. Turning the gain up or down changes sensitivity, allowing for more signal to be picked up from that input and be routed to the sound desk. One easy way to think of this is linking a phone speaker through a megaphone. Turning the volume up on your phone doesn’t change the volume settings of the megaphone, but more signal is coming from your phone so the megaphone has more to pick up, resulting in a louder volume. Aim to keep the gain of microphones at around -10, but change accordingly.
- Take extra caution with gain, as turning the gain too high results in feedback. Check the volume fader first, and if there is not enough signal coming from the input then edit the gain in very small increments until you are happy.
Reverb is an effect that you can put on any channel but it is normally put on a singer’s microphone. It is what people often refer to as an “echo” and it essentially sustains all the audio for a specified amount of time. It can be used to help blend a singer’s voice into the instrumental or create dramatic effects such as indicating a “ghostly” presence. To use reverb, you would need to set up an effects channel (this should be in the template but if not refer to page). Once set up, you should be able to assign an amount of reverb to specific channels blahblahblah

Once you are comfortable with all of these, you should be able to run the majority of shows without a problem! Below will be a list of a few things to keep note of, but this will be significantly easier to get used to once you’re at the Greenwood in person and can test things on the desk.

Sound from the PC or external devices: The “Sound Mac’ channel refers to anything played on the Greenwood PC, such as spotify pre-show, interval, or post-show playlists, SFX files played on QLabs, and more. As such, make sure the fader is up enough (usually around -5db but change as needed) and not muted to avoid missing a cue.
(will add more when my brain works)