Bread pans and Tin Bins!

[Dalton Patterson]

Hey All,

 

 I’ve been wondering about the bread pans I’ve been seeing around A2’s stations and wanted to delve deeper into the concept similar to the XLR origins. So far I’ve talked to a few A2’s and gotten mixed explanations. I did some quick searching and found out that there is a definite beginning and I think now and end. Read for yourself, if interested of course! 😉 

 

Here is the link. 
 

RFVenue Blog

 

“This phenomenon is often limited to big shows, because the baking pan technique came from the big leagues—from the man many call the father of professional frequency coordination of low power devices for entertainment production, James Stoffo.”

 

 

 

 

[Philip Perkins]

It's a great trick, esp on a big live show where (as Mr Stoffo says) the soundies want to keep all of the huge collection of TX up at the same time, but in the same place so that they would make all kinds of spurious intermods that will sound to the mixer like problems but that won't be problems when the TX are deployed out on the talent.  It also keeps all those lavs etc organized and localized.  I like that they are a deal breaker for Mr. Stoffo, and that he brings his own even to huge shows.

[Constantin]

What fun story to read, I had never ever heard even the faintest thing about this. A creative solution!

 

what I don’t understand is why his mixers want the transmitters on all the time. So they can hear „everything is ok with the mic“? But the mics aren’t on anyone, so what would they hear? 
And in addition to the extra 10% battery drain mentioned in the article, there’s also the battery drain of leaving the transmitters on while they aren’t on someone

[nickreich]

As a Theatre / Awards Show mixer - the reason we want the TXs left on all the time is not really so we can PFL them at any time. Monitoring the radios is the job of the backstage radio techs on a large live show with a multi-person crew. The main reasons for leaving them on continuously after pre-show checks are:

1) to prevent the slight chance of someone being sent onstage with a transmitter turned off (and bypassing a backstage check before they go on).

2) the more real chance that the (analog) receivers of unpowered transmitter channels are susceptible to going off and finding some other RF Noise signal to make them un-squelch. Sometimes this can cause them to output full-scale audio hash which is just plain annoying to see on the console meters when mixing. Back in the day, certain top-end analog consoles favoured by Theatre especially had the unfortunate feature that such full-scale noise could leak through a channel that was "VCA Muted" and be audible in the mix.

[Philip Perkins]

Yes--on big shows there are too many TX for the audio staff to be powering them up and down when not in use.  Once they are on they stay on for the duration. 

[Constantin]

Alright, thanks for that info, very interesting!

[jgthesoundguy]

Hi all. First time posting here. 
 

I primarily do live sound and when I first learned about this technique, the RF tech also educated me on the fact that you shouldn’t fully enclose your Tx’s while the transmit circuit is on. All of that RF energy converts right into heat in an enclosed area and the units can get hot enough to catch fire or at the very least damage something. So if you hop on board with the bread tin trick, don’t stack them or otherwise cover all sides because you might be a sad panda.