What we rent, and what changes the price.
| Wireless handheld | For roving Q and A, emcees and award presentations. Channel count matters more than microphone count. |
|---|---|
| Lavalier and headset | For speakers who need both hands, and anyone being recorded. Headsets hold level when a presenter turns their head. |
| Lectern and table | Gooseneck at the lectern, table microphones for panels, AGMs and board sessions. |
| Speaker systems | Point source for meeting rooms and ballrooms up to a few hundred, line array with delay fills for long rooms. |
| Price moves on | Open channel count, room size and shape, and whether the house system can carry the job. |
| Service | Corporate AV and sound: radio mics, speakers and playback, with a technician on the desk. |
| 2.6mm pitch | For a low stage where the front row sits within a few metres of the wall. |
|---|---|
| 3.9mm pitch | The common ballroom choice, sharp from about four metres back and cheaper per square metre. |
| Sizing | Built to the room width and the back row sightline. A wall wider than that just wastes panels. |
| Support | Ground support stacking where ceiling rigging points are unavailable or load-rated too low. |
| Price moves on | Total panel area, pitch, build hours, and whether the room is available the night before. |
| Service | LED walls and projection, sized to the back row. |
| Fast-fold screens | Rear projection hides the throw and keeps presenters out of their own shadow. |
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| Projectors | Specified by brightness against ambient light and throw distance, not by lumens alone. |
| Confidence monitors | Downstage displays so speakers read their slides without turning around. |
| TVs on stands | For registration desks, booths, breakout rooms and foyers, where the audience stands close. |
| Touch screens | For booths and roadshows where visitors browse, play or check in rather than watch. |
| Price moves on | Screen size and number, projector brightness, and whether the room can be darkened. |
| Service | Screens and projection are part of LED walls and projection. |
| Stage wash | Even key light on presenters, colour temperature matched to the cameras in the room. |
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| Uplighting | Perimeter fixtures set to a brand colour, and the cheapest way to change how the room photographs. |
| Moving heads | Programmed looks for launches, awards and dinner segments for room colour changes. |
| Price moves on | Fixture count, rigging height, truss requirement, and how many programmed states the show needs. |
| Service | Event lighting: faces have to read on camera, or the recording is unusable. |
| Single camera | Locked wide or operated, with desk audio. Fine for an internal recording. |
|---|---|
| Multi camera | Two or three cameras with live switching, slide feed and lower thirds cut into the programme. |
| Connectivity | Wired venue line where it can be tested in advance, with a bonded mobile path as the fallback. |
| Price moves on | Camera and operator count, recording deliverables, and whether editing follows the event. |
| Service | Hybrid and livestream: remote viewers get sound from the desk, not from a camera at the back. |
It depends on open microphone count, screen area and type, crew hours including load-in and strike, and whether the venue's house system can carry part of the job. A quote given before seeing the room is a guess.
Ambient light decides it. Bright ballrooms and rooms with windows need LED, while a dim function room with controllable lighting does fine on fast-fold projection at a fraction of the cost. Viewing distance sets the pixel pitch.
Yes, for anything with live speech. Radio microphones need channel management and levels change as the room fills. A playback-only setup in a small meeting room can be handed over after a briefing.
Two to four weeks for a standard conference. Year-end dinners and the AGM season book out earlier, but short notice still works when the venue has a load-in window.
Four things, in most rooms: something to hear through, something to see, light on whoever is speaking, and a person running it. Everything beyond that is specific to the room or the format. The tables above cover what sits in each of those four, and the guides work through how to specify them.
Sometimes, for part of it. A hotel house system usually covers background music and one speech microphone. It is rarely enough for a panel, a band, or anything being recorded. Worth asking the venue what their system actually includes before pricing a full rig, because the answer changes the quote.
Yes. The difference from a conference is where the microphones are. An AGM needs open channels on the floor as well as the stage, a lectern for the chair, and a clean recording feed when the minutes depend on it.
Decks at a height the back row can see over, steps with a handrail, skirting to hide the legs and cable, and the truss or stands carrying the lighting and the screen. The load path matters as much as the size, because a stacked LED wall concentrates its weight across the back of the stage.
We come back with the equipment and the price, line by line.
