Automatic mic mute (stage)

[boji]

Infrared Temperature sensor might be best. Video output analyzed with a color pixel raster -type scan, threshold algo running on a raspberry PI.  Have it send a trigger to expander/gate.  That could be done with AutoIT code running natively on the Pi's OS.

Or It seems plausible you could use a proximity sensor at the mic, and then set a timer to compensate for the absence of movement that would be consummate with the style of the performer, but I'm afraid I don't know if car alarm prox sensors use an absorption (neg) or reflection (pos) type receiving threshold.  The former would not work on a large soundstage as it would need the acoustic confines of the car to determine a change

 

[joaquins]

I understand. In the situations you describe, you have bigger problems.  The multi-band night at the club, like CBGB used to do before it shut down? Your band already has two strikes against it. Of course the mix person isn't going to give the care he'd give if he was mixing only one band. And assuming you had the magic gizmo you describe, do you have time to set it up during the changeover?

  Assuming the gizmo works good enough it shouldn't take any time, just be there sitting on the mic stand, if you move the mic stand re align the thing at most and be done. Now days adding bluetooth or wifi is easy enough so you don't need to go in front of the mic in case you need bypass it or tweak the sensitivity, preferably not needed but that's an option. I agree having something to tweak where you need to step in front of the talent to do so isn't funny, sometimes the show doesn't allow it and sometimes it's just not practical to leave the desk and go for a walk.

  Conventional gates just doesn't do the job, as the guitar cab could very well get higher than the singer threshold when the singer isn't in the way and filtering the side-chain doesn't help here either.

  I'm thinking some kind of capacitive sensor using the mic body as such, of course a lot of care must be taken to avoid interference but as you are pinching in the shield and do something with it, in this case it shouldn't need any re alignment, worst case tweaking the sensitivity if the next singer sings too far away from the damn mic. Thinking at loud here, but shout me louder... An inductor breaking the shield, and an oscillator using the mic body as antena (variable cap) and proper RF filter going to the mic pre side. I know is asking for a lot of trouble but maybe worth mentioning.

JS

 

[boji]

I can see it now though...
Singer:  "Hey why is my mic getting quiet sometimes. Wazzup?"
Tech:      "Well, I need you to touch it occasionally."
Singer:  "Wait. What? Can't I just stand in front of it and keep my arms to my side and sing?"
Tech:      "Yes, but not for indeterminate amounts of time. 
Singer:  "..."

=)

 

[boji]

Autoit has a Library that scans an image for a predefined color hex.

Local $nColor = 0x8090ff ; this would be your 'HOT' color, ie the singer is close.
Local $aColor = _ColorGetRGB($nColor)
MsgBox($MB_SYSTEMMODAL, "AutoIt", "Color=" & Hex($nColor) & @CRLF & " Red=" & Hex($aColor[0], 2) & " Blue=" & Hex($aColor[1], 2) & " Green=" & Hex($aColor[2], 2))

Pick a frame of coordinates to pull data from (coord that is centered on the mic).
Scan the image say 5 times a second, do an analysis for color find,  and when found colors summed together rises above a predefined number (screen goes lotsa purple or whatever spectrum is equated with >98.6), hit the filter/gate. 

Ok I let go of this 'colorful' solution. But if we were in a HS science fair, I'd have a go at this.

 

[joaquins]

...
Tech: "Maybe you don't need to touch it, just to be close enough for it to feel your breath."

I'm automating a bag factory, they use a contrast detector which was quite surprising to me how accurate it can detect between very similar colors, though it points a laser with a color depending on what it's comparing, I guess that in the singer's forehead wouldn't look so appealing...

JS

 

[sahib]

Pointing a laser to the singer's head would be fun. Just don't pull the trigger.  ;D

Last year I designed a gate automation for a carpark and had hell of a problem in detecting black vehicles reliably even using laser. Also what worked during the day well turned out to be problematic at night.  The sensors chattered terribly when there was even a little drizzle. So, smoke or mist on stage in dark ambient conditions can cause the IR or laser to jitter. Could be good for chorus effect  though ;D . 

I think the cheapest method would be to use an off-the-shelf PIR unit as they can be very cheap. They also detect the body heat which solves a lot of  problems but obviously bringing their own.

Next option would be the ultrasonic.

Few years back I experimented with capacitive touch sensor ICs. A lot of design challenge there. 

I have a boxfull of development kits somewhere in the office. I'll have a look.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Pointing a laser to the singer's head would be fun. Just don't pull the trigger.  ;D

Last year I designed a gate automation for a carpark and had hell of a problem in detecting black vehicles reliably even using laser. Also what worked during the day well turned out to be problematic at night.  The sensors chattered terribly when there was even a little drizzle. So, smoke or mist on stage in dark ambient conditions can cause the IR or laser to jitter. Could be good for chorus effect  though ;D . 

I think the cheapest method would be to use an off-the-shelf PIR unit as they can be very cheap. They also detect the body heat which solves a lot of  problems but obviously bringing their own.

Next option would be the ultrasonic.

What could possibly go wrong with an ultrasonic signal around a microphone... ;D ;D

Few years back I experimented with capacitive touch sensor ICs. A lot of design challenge there. 

I have a boxfull of development kits somewhere in the office. I'll have a look.

We should use digital mixers with smart phone interfaces and unemployed mix engineers could sit around at home in their underwear, watching over the WWW, and ride the faders.  That would help the unemployment situation.

or wait for AI.

JR 

 

[joaquins]

...
We should use digital mixers with smart phone interfaces and unemployed mix engineers could sit around at home in their underwear, watching over the WWW, and ride the faders.  That would help the unemployment situation.

or wait for AI.

JR

  That would give place to over employed  mix engineers to send a dummy head to each location and mix them all from the home, having the oposite effect than you want.

JS

 

[JohnRoberts]

  That would give place to over employed  mix engineers to send a dummy head to each location and mix them all from the home, having the oposite effect than you want.

JS

Not sure what I want...

Technology could surely solve this problem (somehow), not sure how much the market is willing to pay? The concept has been kicking around for a pretty long time. I never pursued it at my old gig because IMO not a profitable use of my time..

JR

 

[sahib]

What could possibly go wrong with an ultrasonic signal around a microphone... ;D ;D

I don't know. Could the answer be in "ultrasonic" ?  ;D

I used to supply an ultrasonic proximity sensor (made by a US company) with my educational robot arms. The transducer actually clicked but I suppose at a lower height aimed at the legs or something would be safe.

We should use digital mixers with smart phone interfaces and unemployed mix engineers could sit around at home in their underwear, watching over the WWW, and ride the faders.  That would help the unemployment situation. 

I am up for that unemployment  ;D .

 

[JohnRoberts]

I don't know. Could the answer be in "ultrasonic" ?  ;D

Just because we can't hear it. doesn't mean the preamp won't try to amplify it 60 dB... (think IMD). 

I used to supply an ultrasonic proximity sensor (made by a US company) with my educational robot arms. The transducer actually clicked but I suppose at a lower height aimed at the legs or something would be safe.


I am up for that unemployment  ;D .

I have way too many (bad science fiction) ideas like that... for the underemployed sure to be in surplus due to automation and robotics.

How about drone pilots to follow prisoners out on parole, or maybe track illegal immigrants at the border?  The released prisoners could be tracked more cheaply with smart ankle bracelets. The drones would get employed when the ankle bracelet detects bad behavior.

Told you it was bad science fiction.


JR

 

[PRR]

> sit around at home in their underwear, .... or wait for AI.

Or something.

Westminster Dog Show on TV tonight. Most times when the Roger Caras stand-in started talking, his mike was live to the house but mute in the TV mix. After 1 to 10(!) seconds the TV mixer would wake-up and fade-up his mike. I'm 'banging on the board' in my pajamas but I guess the app doesn't work.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Westminster Dog Show on TV tonight. Most times when the Roger Caras stand-in started talking, his mike was live to the house but mute in the TV mix. After 1 to 10(!) seconds the TV mixer would wake-up and fade-up his mike.

I don't know, it may be something they learn at audio engineering schools; one would think they are concerned with their mics wearing out when they're open . 
Almost every time I play with a SE that does not know my show, the first line of the first song doesn't go through because the mic is killed; and most of the times, he does not understand that the other mics should be turned on for the BG singers...
I know it's because they're terrified with the idea of feedback, but for a broadcast feed! WTH 

 

[boji]

'There's an app for that' will surely come to mostly mean "There's a human substitution for that". This makes me sad.

 

[JohnRoberts]

'There's an app for that' will surely come to mostly mean "There's a human substitution for that". This makes me sad.

I am glad I wasn't born a few hundred years ago before we had so much labor saving technology.

Technology can enable us to do bigger and better things, but we will no longer make a living digging ditches or driving trucks (seriously truck drivers need to look for another gig, higher up the food chain).

JR

 

[joaquins]

...(seriously truck drivers need to look for another gig, higher up the food chain).

JR

  They still have for quite a bit here, very strong union completely killing trains and ships only remain for international trading and few internal activities in a very little percentage.

JS

 

[PRR]

> mics wearing out when they're open

Or the announcer saying something bad.

An issue because he talks maybe 1% of the time (but when he does, it is nominally Important).

My thought was: he doesn't say anything bad to the thousands of in-house fans. He has a PTT switch, or the house tech coordinates to his wink. Odds are the TV sound could just tap that line and leave it open, save them any stress or mis-cues.

FWIW, the contract ran out and a new crew is doing the TV. We already noted one change after the first night: the dogs complained about their billing. Next night the dog names were on the slides. I dunno why someone didn't think to tap the announce-mike post-mute. Maybe it is a union thing where the house guy can't touch the TV sound even if his board already has the muted feed in it.

Other changes: they have a stedy-cam like thing which gets a dog-level view. However there are remote pan cameras on the floor and many dogs were mildly spooked "that thing is staring at me!" Didn't see so much of that in past years. Also after 3(?) days they were just starting to figure out the judge inspection. Start at the teeth, so a face-shot of the dog is all handler and judge backs. The director should be holding a butt-shot of the dog where we see the judge looking at the head, swing/cut around to the face-angle while the judge checks nuts and tail.

There's worse. We have a local show that seems to revel in close-ups of the bassist while the cute singer is delivering the song. Isn't just a cold-shoot. Any able-hearing person knows enough song structure to know how it will go. Hell, I shot opera better than that.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

> mics wearing out when they're open

Or the announcer saying something bad.

An issue because he talks maybe 1% of the time (but when he does, it is nominally Important).

My thought was: he doesn't say anything bad to the thousands of in-house fans. He has a PTT switch, or the house tech coordinates to his wink. Odds are the TV sound could just tap that line and leave it open, save them any stress or mis-cues. 

Well there's probably many explanations for that, but in the end it comes down to teh fact that the SE has more important things to do than check if the announcer is talking.  Like having a smoke, or a leak, or a phone call from the girlfriend, or texting...

There's worse. We have a local show that seems to revel in close-ups of the bassist while the cute singer is delivering the song. Isn't just a cold-shoot. Any able-hearing person knows enough song structure to know how it will go. Hell, I shot opera better than that.

What about this guy who knows there is a solo, because the singer has ceased singing, so he raises just any fader, and you get 24 bars of loud rhythm guitar instead of the guitar solo? I've seen that too often...
But I agree, sometimes video guys can do stupid things; typical is filming the drummer during a piano solo; I believe they think there not enough movement so it's not interesting...?