# Under development!

Sound is the most exciting part of the show - without it, you'd just be watching a silent movie! In StageSoc, the different types of shows will require different amounts of equipment and reinforcement. The highest tech shows may require amplification of the cast and band through the use of radio or wired microphones, whilst playing sound effects in time to the music and lighting cues, all whilst juggling additional equipment breakages mid-show with an audience cheering louder than you can make the speakers go. It may sound like living hell, but it really is very fun! Hopefully this page will break down the very basics of how sound works.

{ Sound source –> Microphone –> Mixer –> Amplifier –> Speaker }

Sound is generated by pressure fluctuations in the air, either by part of an instrument vibrating or a person's voice box. These pressure fluctuations travel through the air to the listener's ears, or in our case, to a microphone. The microphone's diaphragm vibrates, converting the acoustical pressure fluctuations to electrical voltage fluctuations that can travel down a cable. These voltage fluctuations are very small as there is very minimal energy in a sound wave.

Lots of different microphone signals are plugged into a device called a 'mixer', which combines all of the input signals into a set of outputs (e.g. to feed a speaker in the room). As the voltage fluctuations travelling down the cable are very quiet, they first need to be boosted around 100x by a device built into the mixer called a 'microphone pre-amplifier'. The mixer allows you to easily adjust the volumes of the individual microphones and they can also be edited e.g. to reduce the amount of bass or add effects.