Because the studio is shared, and because each show can be different, we have to completely assemble the audio connections for each show. Below we’ll follow each step in the audio chain. As it happens, I’m one of the audio team so this tour is a little biased towards audio. Maybe some other volunteer will fill in the other areas?

These are some of the microphones we use. We have both wireless and wired microphones, and various ways of clipping them on you. We like people who wear ties or sport coats the best, because it’s easy to clip a mike to those. Otherwise, you have to snake the cable under your clothes to keep it looking neat on the air.

Most of the mikes and the wireless transmitters use batteries, so we check these before each show.

There is a box like the one above on each wall of the studio. Wired microphones are plugged in here. The mike shown here is both wired and battery-free, and we use it as a backup in case something goes wrong with the main mikes. When we have a lot of guests, you’ll see a lot of cables plugged in to these boxes.

Above is the main audio patch panel, in the audio booth. Each of the audio panels in the studio, plus all of the other audio inputs and outputs, connect to this panel so we can wire them up as needed for each show. Mostly, we have to connect each microphone input to a particular spot on the sound board, shown below.

The audio board lets us mix inputs from up to 8 microphones, video tape players, sound carts, a CD player, and the phone system. Using our 4 sub-masters, we create 4 different mixes: