Terry Richards Oct 11, 2013:

I didn't see it... ...the first time but it's possible I just glitched it. More than possible, I've been spinning from one thing to another all day today!

Anyway, fortunately we don't have to figure out WHY they want it, just what it is :) The fact that there's at least two possible uses tipped my neutral to an agree.

When I had my sound company, we didn't do much theatre - mainly concerts - so I bow to your superior knowledge. It would certainly help if we knew what sort/size of performance this is and what follows this item in the list. If it's satellite speakers and racks of some sort, that would be a good clue.

Tony M Oct 11, 2013:

@ Terry Oh I see! Not "added", there all the time, but I just felt it rather clouded the issue, and needed to be treated as a separate term in its own right.

Given the absence of any other corrobrating context, I don't think we should read too much into that little word; after all, 'diffusion' basically means 'distribution', in the broadest sense of the term, and 'broadcast distribution' is only one quite narrow subset of all possible forms of distirbution.
It is perfectly possible this could mean that a delayed and EQ'd feed is taken from the main FOH channel to feed other speakers distributed round the auditorium; hence why a series of delays might be required.

Terry Richards Oct 11, 2013:

The extra context... ...is the one word added to the beginning of the term - "DIFFUSION"

Tony M Oct 11, 2013:

@ Terry What extra context? I don't see anything...?

I think it a little unlikely; broadcasters usually apply their own profanity delay in the feed to the transmitter, it would be most unusual for them to request a delayed feed from the source theatre; and note, too, that the delay needs to be both sound and vision, and the theatre itself is unlikely to have the facilities to add video delay; besides, the idea of having audio and video delays applied separately, at different points in the signal chain, and controlled by different people, sounds to me like a recipe for technical disaster!

Also, if this were the case, why would they mention 'façade'? Generally speaking, a totally separate feed would be used for broadcast, quite different from that used for in-house FOH sound reinforcement.

It would certainly help to have a bit more context to work with, but even from what we've got, I somehow doubt that your 'broadcast' theory is very likely in this particular instance.

Terry Richards Oct 11, 2013:

Probably #3 Given the one word of additional context, it looks like this is for a broadcast feed.

Terry Richards Oct 11, 2013:

More context! There is something odd about this item. Can you tell us what precedes and follows it and is it grouped under some sort of heading?

There are several reasons to use delay in audio but none of them seem appropriate here:-

1) It is often used on singing voices to mix a little bit of the original signal back in a bit later to give the voice a "fuller" sound. This is why people sing in the bath - the hard walls give an echo that has the same effect. Here, though, it is used on individual channels not on the whole FOH mix.

2) On really big shows, they are used on the whole mix for satellite speaker towers so that the amplified sound arrives at the same time as the stage sound. Normally, the stage sound travels at the speed of sound (duh!) and the amplified sound travels at the speed of light as far as the speakers. More than a few hundred feet from the stage, the two get noticeably out of step so any sound towers located this far back are delayed. This seems unlikely for a theatrical performance unless it is a very big one.

3) Broadcast feeds are often delayed so that they can be interrupted when the lead singer says a bad word. The delay gives the censor time to react.