I’ve had the CQ-20B for just over a week now and took it out for its first trial by fire: a rehearsal by our musical theatre company. They’ve historically kept things simple with just phone/tablet recordings during the rehearsal phase. The move to our performance venue entails a mad scramble one-day tech load-in and rough rehearsal where everything from lighting cues to audio configuration happens in a hurry with varied results. It’s a small enough venue that the in-person experience has been serviceable, but live streaming could definitely use improvement. Plus this show in particular really leans into solo performers who need to stand out against the backdrop of the chorus. So we’re changing things up.
All-in-all? An intensive week of getting to know the unit really paid off as virtually everything was preconfigured and I knew what I could and couldn’t do. The rehearsal space requires us to get set up from scratch and tear down every time, so having the integrated solution with everything from decent pre-amps with phantom power to effects to mixing, plus having the Wi-Fi access point built in and the Feedback Assistant working overtime was essential to making it possible at all.
In practice? We were in and recording all required channels within just a few minutes, so that as mics came up and cable was run we could plug new channels in, turn on phantom power, and bring input levels up on the fly. Everything worked flawlessly and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
The hall we use is a fairly bright, reflective space so we’ll continue to tinker with mic and PA placement to produce the best recordings possible for our cast to use as their own reference material for their private practice – and it’s all valuable input into the plan for the our eventual paid performances. As someone new to live sound, I will be learning a lot each and every night we go through the drill.