Some of our locations (Bristol Room 15, Salford Room 11 and Tempelhof Room 4) include a Showcase rehearsal room. This room offers a much larger space than any other room type, more lighting and all the equipment is placed on a stage, usually facing a large mirror. This room is capable of hosting up to 14 people including yourself and it is perfect if you need to prepare for a show and you would like to get used to a live room ambiance.
Sharing the same type of equipment of a Rehearsal PRO room (full list available on a room on book.pirate.com) it only differs from it by having a larger mixer - an Alto 2404. All guitar and bass amps are ready for use, just like they are in a PRO room, and do not need to be routed into the mixer.
Despite the following procedures are almost the same as in a normal Rehearsal room with an Alto 1202 mixer (more information here) we've put together some quick tutorials to get you all clued up on the Showcase room:
- How to set up a mic/instrument into the Alto 2404 mixer?
- How to add FX to it?
- How to send signal to the wedge monitors on stage?
- How to connect my laptop/phone to the mixer?
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How to set up a mic/instrument into the Alto 2404 mixer?
- To connect a mic or instrument in a Showcase room, plug the mic cable into a channel (eg. Channel 1) on the mixer. Turn all knobs on that channel to 12 o' clock, aside from the four green knobs (more on them below).
- Turn up the gain knob at the top up to about 12 o' clock.
- Press down the MAIN L-R button at the bottom of the channel to send audio to the speakers.
- Turn up the MAIN volume fader at the end of the mixer.
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How to add FX?
- This is how to add an FX to a mic or instrument in a Showcase room. On the mic/instrument channel turn up the 4th green knob labelled DFX. This one controls the amount of effect for that channel.
- On the right hand side of the mixer turn up the DFX OUT knob, then below the fourth AUX 4 knob and press the SOLO button next to it and to the right, turn up the DFX2RTN knob. All these will enable the effect to the speakers.
- Select the effect type (first digit of the number on screen) and the amount of it (second digit of the number on screen). Eg. 45 is 4 (Chorus) with an intensity of 5 out of 10.
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How to send signal to the wedge monitors on stage?
- This is how to run audio through a stage monitor in a Showcase room. There are 3 monitors/wedges on stage, labelled AUX 1, AUX 2 and AUX 3.
- To send audio to the second monitor, AUX 2, we need to turn up the second green knob (AUX 2) on the mic channel, making sure the button next to it is pressed down ('POST'). This controls how much of this mic signal we want to send to that monitor.
- On the right side of the mixer, turn up all the AUX sends (1-4) and make sure all SOLO buttons are pressed down. These control the general signal to all the monitors.
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How to connect my laptop/phone to the mixer?
- To connect your laptop or phone to the mixer in a Showcase room, plug the aux (3.5mm jack) cable into your laptop/phone. This cable should already be plugged into the last channel on the desk.
- On this last channel, set all knobs to 12 o clock, including the green ones if you need to send this signal to the on-stage monitors.
- Play something on your device and turn the volume fader up on the last channel and on the MAIN volume fader on the desk.