I also would like the gain tracking. I use a T112 at front and a R72 at mon and although the trim on surface is usable the real problem start when a singer sings a lot softer as he did during soundcheck. When you crank up the preamp, the mon signal for that channel gets also louder and you get a risk for feedback . I can communicate that to the mon engineer but when there is a BE mixing that is not practical. You could say , why don’t you use the trim at foh? thats true but what when the preamp gets overloaded instead. Then you are forced to lower the preamp and as a result you get less signal at mon. especially a bad thing when using inears

Lieven

T112/IDR48/R72/IDR16
Save a tree, eat a beaver

Hey Graham – Did you read the post right? They a talking about gain tracking – Not gain Sharing.
What is being suggested is that if someone adjusts the gain on one console then the Trim on the other console will automatically compensate so that the “trim” console will effectively have no change in it’s audio operating levels. I think there is advantages/disadvantages no matter which way it is done.

Cheers

Richard Howey
Audio Dynamite Ltd
IDR48/IDR16/T112/R72

quote:

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Originally posted by ddff_lv

People, is this gain thing SO important? You need another iDR anyway, so what is the problem to have analog split before these 2 iDRs? It’s no that expensive -new ARX or KT boxes are quite affordable.

ddff

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Hi, i already have two IDR racks, one IDR48 and a IDR16 ( which i love to do small gigs when 16/8 is enough I/0) so if i want to split analog i am limited to 16ch if i use the IDR16 and IDR48.That is not enough for me.It is not my intention to by another IDR32 especialy if i have all the processpower and preamps already available to split analog to 32inputs .As for now i can not use dual rack and combine the two racks to 64input and split analog to 32 because i can not use 2 surfaces in dual rack mode ( correct me if i am wrong).
SO why would trim with auto adjust not work for now? The BE can still use the preamp and the mon engineer use the trim.( to be honnest we dont have a band mon engineer that often)
of course make dual rack mode with 2 control surfaces work would solve my preamp problem.

kind regards
Lieven

T112/IDR48/R72/IDR16
Save a tree, eat a beaver

Gain tracking = Sharing preamps ie “Gain sharing”… Whether one of the consoles then switches to trim mode or not either way you look at it Gain is being shared.

On the sort of shows where Gain tracking / sharing is acceptable i would argue that both engineers should work to a compromise with the preamps. I have worked like this before on smaller shows using the Roland S4000 digital snake. Gain was run from FoH, then “locked off”. the 2 monitor consoles and the broadcast truck worked off of trims or console gains where applicable.

Less than ideal, but still workable so long as all the “master” engineer, (ie the one with control of gain) doesnt go and change something mid-show without forewarning the other engineers.

But what it comes down to essentially is that when you start working with gain tracking you HAVE to introduce some more latency into the “slave” console. If the master console engineer were to suddenly pad a signal that on the slave console was trimmed “low” then the signal to noise ratio on the slave console would mean the introduction of hiss, Which if feeding IEM’s would be very noticeable. The slave console processor needs time to react to this gain change.

We also have the problem of preamps being “Non-Linear” in response. I know the iLive is fairly better than most other consoles preamps however drive a preamp hard and it will definitely have a different “tone or colour” than if were NOT being driven hard. (FYI iLive preamps like to be driven hard).
I know that this is not a problem as technically this issue of “gain tracking” is actually “trim tracking” but imagine if you manage to get that kick drum sounding just sweeeet and then FoH goes and changes the gain down, your trim goes up to compensate and you get less bottom end and some nice hiss too!

Not to mention that all your dynamic processing will now react different to these changes.

Gain tracking is not an easy thing to do… Just ask Digico who have being attempting this for donkeys years.

I personally would carry a handful of Y-splits and split the really important channels between consoles and just gain share the non-important ones. Lets face it, unless something dramatically goes wrong during a show, how many of us actually grab a handful of gain or pad anyway??? <<<<rhetorical question, please dont bombard me with one-liners and anecdotes of “that stupid DJ” or similar lol

Cheers
Graham

http://www.TotalLiveSound.com