Understanding Your Event’s Needs for Audio/Visual
We’ve all experienced an event where presenters are confused or delayed by an audio/visual (A/V) hang-up just before a talk or lecture. You may have even attended an event where every single lecture starts with a mad scramble to connect a laptop, activate a lighting source, enable recording equipment, hook up a visual display, or get a microphone to work.
Mishaps like these can leave a bad impression on attendees and event presenters alike, so it’s vital to understand your event’s needs for A/V support—and prepare for every possibility—before the event goes live. Below we provide an eight-point checklist to help your events run smoothly in the A/V department.
Choose Your Visual Projectors Wisely
When it comes to presentations, the more light your projectors shine, the better, as this will support excellent visibility for the audience. You’ll also want to think about how much natural light enters the presentation room or auditorium, and whether the projected image will still be visible during the day. Generally, a rear-screen projector is best when streaming content for a large audience because it offers clearer and crisper images.
Get Familiar With the Aspect Ratios of Your Screens and Inform Your Presenters
Most screens use aspect ratios of 16:9 (High-Def/Widescreen) or 4:3 (Standard Def) when displaying the height and width of a visual image. Although 16:9 is the most common aspect ratio at this time, if your presenters are creating their own presentation slides, you can’t be certain of the aspect ratio they’ll try to pipe through your visual display setup.
Therefore, it’s vital to talk with your lecturers ahead of time to ensure that their visual presentations aren’t skewed and distorted when they load their slides into your system. You may even want to have them send you the slides in advance for testing purposes so you can prevent disastrous surprises when it’s showtime.
Select the Right Microphones for the Needs of Your Event
Do you need a wireless microphone that you can pass through the audience? Do you need a presentation microphone that will be stationary throughout the event? Will the presenter be moving around and active? How many microphones will you need for simultaneous presentations happening throughout the event? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you select the right types of microphones.
For a stationary presenter, a wired microphone is the most reliable for providing excellent sound. Meanwhile, you should have a hand-held, wireless mic on hand so you can pass it through the audience for taking questions—or a microphone on a stand that audience members can walk up to—and consider adding some monitor speakers so the presenter can hear the questions. Finally, if presenters will be moving around a lot, you’ll want a lavalier microphone that clips to clothing and has a wireless transmitter.
Don’t Forget to Use a Soundboard
Many events will feature multiple microphones, amplifiers and other sound-related equipment in the same auditorium. This can wreak havoc on an audio setup if you don’t route the sound input sources (microphones) through a soundboard before sending the signals to the speakers. An experienced A/V crew will know how to hook up and control your microphone/speaker connections with a standard soundboard, and this will prevent the dreaded dead mic—or poorly amplified mic—that can ruin your presenter’s ability to communicate with the audience.
Eliminate Wires with Transmitters and Receivers
Skilled A/V techs will never leave an event littered with A/V wires that crisscross an auditorium or presentation room. Instead, they’ll connect the wires to transmitters and receivers for a safer and tidier setup. Transmitters and receivers use radio waves to send signals to and from projectors, microphones, and speakers throughout the room.
Ultimately, any kind of reliable transmitter/receiver tech will work, but you might want to research some of the smallest, mobile, smart technology for wireless transmitters available right now.
Plan the Frequency Bands for Your Transmitters and Receivers in Advance
Ever hear that high-pitched feedback when someone goes up to give a presentation? This is typically a frequency band problem related to a wireless microphone’s transmitter and receiver. Each wireless device at your event—e.g., TV monitors, speakers, microphones—will have a special frequency band it communicates on. If two devices are sharing the same frequency, the signals will scramble—causing the squealing noise from microphones. By keying your frequency bands ahead of time for transmitters and receivers, you’ll avoid these issues.
Plan to Have Enough WiFi Bandwidth
Having enough WiFi bandwidth to handle the connectivity needs of all your event attendees is essential. But simply planning connections for each person in attendance isn’t enough. Each attendee may need to connect multiple devices—such as a computer, tablet, and smartphone—to your event’s WiFi. Therefore, if you have 1,000 people coming to the event, make sure your WiFi network can handle 3,000 devices connections just to be safe.
Dongles, Dongles and More Dongles
Your presenters might not know what kind of adapter or dongle they need to connect their laptops and other hardware to your A/V setup. That means you should have plenty of adapters and dongles available for connecting audio and visual equipment. For example, do you have some HDMI cable adapters for computers that don’t have an HDMI outlet? Ultimately, you should also have as many kinds of cable adapters and dongles you can gather so your presenters have the best chance of connecting their different A/V devices to your network.
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Author Bio
Jeremy Hillpot’s background in consumer-investor fraud litigation provides a unique perspective on a vast array of topics, including event production, website technology, investments, startups, cryptocurrencies and the law. Contact Jeremy at legalwritingFINRA.com or [email protected].
Sources:
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-an-audio-mixer-soundboard/
https://cdn.kramerav.com/web/downloads/white-papers/kramer_wireless_guide.pdf
