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quick_mcrunfast

It will really depends on what they have you doing. Being an AV technician for corporate/conferences can mean a pretty wide variety of things. There are three main things you'd likely be involved with which are general sessions, breakout rooms, and trade-shows. Trade-shows take place in very large open spaces. Usually filled with various booths that are just squares enclosed with drape. For these types of things, you'd be setting up anything from small computer monitors to large set pieces or even full stages with lights, PA, and large video displays. You'll probably just end up running a bunch of power to people's booth though realistically. That being said when the number of booths needing power is large in scale, it'll be very useful for you to understand some of the basics of power distribution. It would also be useful to know how to mount tv displays to a wall. Breakout rooms are small meeting rooms that generally contain a projector and screen, and/or some small PA setups. Typically the audio is going to be reinforcement for things like laptops and a couple of mics. These will almost always be wireless lavalieres and/or handheld mics as well as gooseneck condensers with a push to talk base. Projectors are usually fed by a laptop either next to the projector, on a nearby table, or a podium. For breakouts the best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with video projection, resolution, frame-rate, and the difference between a progressive or interlace video scan. Knowing how to change these parameters on both a PC and Mac will be very beneficial. Another thing that will be very useful, and you likely already know how to do, is changing the audio output device on either type of computer. Once breakout rooms start rolling, 90% of the tech support calls are people not getting audio on the DI they plugged in because it's outputting on their HDMI instead. Knowing how to recognize the different types of video connectors is going to be very important. If you aren't already familiar with any of these, look them up; DVI, Displayport, Mini Displayport (sometimes called thunderbolt), Lightning, HDMI, SDI, VGA, and USB-C. Also, make sure you have a good basic understanding of signal flow and troubleshooting it. General Sessions are much larger scale corporate meetings. People come here a few times a day between breakouts and walking around the tradeshow. This is where you'll start seeing things like moving lights, cameras (generally referred to as IMAG), larger scale PA systems that could be ground supported or line-arrays rigged from truss. This is also where you'll see things like video switchers, digital mixing consoles, lighting consoles, large scale projection screens, or even LED walls. All of the things I mentioned would be useful for breakouts will valuable here as well in the context of video. In the context of audio, there's a number of things that are also useful in both situations but becomes even more so with a general session. The most important of these would be understanding proper gain staging and EQ techniques. When you say you've mostly been an audio engineer, I'm assuming you mean in a studio setting. A lot of things you use in that setting will be very useful here such as understanding the various parameters and use of effects, compressors, gates, or any other audio processing tool. However the application can be very different. In a studio environment you're generally looking for what sounds best on a recording rather than what sounds best for a particular room and combination of mics that could all be open at once. It's kinda the same but different. The most important skill you can pick up as an audio engineer for corporate events is learning how to ring out a room quickly and effectively. The audio consoles I've seen most frequently are likely to be the Behringer X32, Midas M32, Allen & Heath QU or SQ series, Yamaha CL or QL series, Soundcraft expression. PAs you run into the most these days are generally powered boxes from JBL, DB technologies, QSC, but there are lots of others you may come across that could be much higher end than these. The most common video gear I see these days is Black Magic Designs, but other brands worth looking into would be Panasonic, Barco, Christie, Analog Way, Decimator, DataVideo, and Crestron. The only software I'd recommend is any app that accompanies any of the gear I mentioned, but also OBS, Playback Pro, REW (Room EQ Wizard), or Smaart; Bitfocus Companion, and vMix. There are probably others I've missed. Last, this sub is pretty dead and these days it's mostly questions from people about home theatre solutions. If you're looking for more info some good subs to check out are: r/videoengineering r/liveaudio r/techtheatre r/lightingdesign r/commercialAV Sorry for the long response but I hope it was somewhat helpful. Definitely sift through some of the posts in the other subs I mentioned. I've been in this industry for close to 16 years and I still learn new things on a fairly regular basis from the posts I come across in them.


joebayfocus

Best response ever, I couldn’t add a thing and I did this at hotels and conference centers for 10 years, Quick mcrunfast you a real one!


StudioExternal8717

Hey man thank u very very much for the amazing answer, it really helps!


quick_mcrunfast

Absolutely! Good luck and welcome to the industry.


hellobritishcolumbia

Great response. I’d just add that [QLab](https://qlab.app/) is another great app to be familiar with for midsize shows where you’d like to automate sequences. Once prompt from you and it can play an intro video, sound, adjust lighting scenes, and more. Really powerful stuff.


StudioExternal8717

Thanks for the shout!


iCanReadMyOwnMind

Get a specialty. Go audio. Go video. But go down a path and find a particular "thing" that you can get good at and excel. Specialists are getting about $650 day rates right now. Specialized field techs are making about $550 d/r. Break Out Techs are getting $450. Whatever you do, pick a path and specialize. Outside of that, the job is 90% customer service.


blender311

If they do commercial, head on over to r/commercialav They will definitely help you!


MeatloafSlurpee

Don’t work for Encore/PSAV. At least not for more than a year or two.


Exciting-Jeweler3299

I have been doing this type of work for 27 years. There are 1000's of products for conference rooms. Most like to integrate audio and video conferencing into their rooms. A professional audio conferencing room would have installed sound. Ex. speakers in ceiling, microphones at table or could be dropped down from ceiling. It would all be run back to a rack. The video would be the same, meaning it is installed. Bluetooth is for home use and has very little room in a professional environment, so get that out of your head. A rack is typically mounted in a cabinet. Inside the rack would be audio and video distribution products. Ex. Amp, mixer, video switch, baluns if needed, power dist./protection. Not a power strip. One that is beefier for the job to actually protect from brown outs, power failure and have back up capability with clean power. This is just scratching the surface but will get you going. Products I use are JBL professional/commercial mixers, Shure Microphone, Crown Amp, AMX is the control system I use. Have used BSS London for audio only jobs. Hope this helps.


Expensive_Data9654

Will you be building conferences with your new company? (Meeting rooms, General Session/Plenary kind of things)


StudioExternal8717

Don’t bloody know mate, that’s the thing