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Just a little story to amuse you all …
On Saturday, we had a ‘plug-in’ gig, in Orangerie, in Den Bosch, here in Holland. This is a disused church that has been taken over by an events company. With these gigs, we take our pianos, dig drums, mixer, etc., and plug into their PA.
Got there, set up our equipment, waited for the sound engineer. He turns up (nice guy, btw!) and he fires up his super-duper, dB limiting, perfect compression, speaker management PA system and ***BANG***!!!! Fire and smoke from the back of the AD converter. 220v PS OS. Sound engineer is flapping big time. Lots of running about, calls to sound installation company, looking for fuses, etc.
After 30 minutes, I asked if I could help. Sound engineer, sweating and flapping, looks exasperatedly at stupid musician ‘band leader’, and says, “oh yeah, if you happen to have a spare multizone speaker management system!” with a fair deal of sarcasm!
“Weeeell, I suppose we could use our iDR32,” say I!
“Huh?” Very quiet …
“Yeah, no problem … How many outputs do you need?”
“Er, dunno …”
“Well, let’s have a look shall we?”
“Er, yeah.”
None of the amps were labelled, but we did have access to the delay settings. Quick mono line test and we mapped the amps and their zones around the church.
At this point, sound engineer has stopped flapping, but we’re under time pressure. Needed were LR, Sub 1&2, Centre, LR Delay. I re-set the output bus to LCR+Sub, thinking I could have a second LR for the delayed satellites: wrong. With the standard LCR, you can’t re-map LR to second set of outputs and delay. Also, not having used LCR, I didn’t realise that a stereo input would not appear in the Centre: I presumed that a stereo input would appear in all 3, but I guess it’s for true LCR theatre application? On the phone to our great A&H rep here in NL, who very kindly helped out on a Saturday, we couldn’t get signal to Centre, without doing a new bus mapping. I didn’t have time to do this, because I would lose the whole mix (a slight bug bear in iLive) so I used Mono Aux to give me Centre and Stereo Aux for the Delay L&R.
We did our own sound check in seconds few after replicating the delay and EQ settings from the blown system. (Fantastic having the ability to change the HP / LP filters through the whole range!) We also plugged in the laser / dance show (with monitor), the DJ and the tape act.
The sound engineer was blown away at the solution. He downloaded the iLive software from the A&H website, and sat happily FoH, wirelessly logged on to the mixer, and ran the night from there. He was even more blown away by the price, and noticed that the pre-amps, or at least the software running the gains, coped with slight clipping from a vocal mic, without distorting.
We had 3 options riding on this gig, and I’m happy to report that we got them!
I get criticism from some competitors (and hear occasional griping from some of the self-employed musos I use) that I have an over-specced system for a duelling piano show, and that I’m mad not to have a ‘normal’ desk solution set out FoH. This last weekend has been quietly satisfying, to say the least. At the end of the night, the sound engineer said, “I don’t know how to thank you, so I won’t! There’s no other band that could have done what you did today: you saved the day.”
Ok, a small pat on my own back, but a bigger pat on A&H’s back: your kit is totally fit-for-purpose, easy to use, and makes a great impression. The iDR has, literally, paid for itself with the 3 extra confirmed gigs!
Now to delve into the speaker management FX!
Way to go Guy!
You never know when you need some extra specs
Hi guyharris,
Thanks for your post, I really enjoyed reading how iLive saved the day!
I read you had a little issue trying to get some of the signals out of the main centre output, so I thought it’d try and explain just some of the LR output configurations we have to offer in iLive:
LR – Mono and stereo channels go out of both L and R outputs. (Sorry, I’m sure we all know this one! But I wanted to start simple).
LR Sub – Same as LR above, but an additional Sub level. If a channel becomes un-assigned to LR, it’ll stop feeding the sub too.
LR Mono – Same as LR above, but an additional Mono level. If a channel becomes un-assigned to LR, the Mono output will continue to output.
LCR – Mono inputs start in the center, and can be panned left or right. Stereo inputs only output out of L and R. (You were right when you said ‘true LCR’).
LCRplus – Mono inputs start outputting left and right, and so do stereo channels. Leaving centre empty, but a ‘blend’ control is available for every channel, so you can send either mono or stereo channels into both the centre and LR at the same time, or completely into the centre.
(please note – these are just some of the configurations we have in iLive, we have others such as Mono, LCR Sub, LCR Mono and Radio LRM).
Each of these outputs has a delay of up to 340ms.
You asked about having two sets of LR with separate delays for both. This is possible through our Speaker Matrix, but not through the Mixer Configurations above.So in V1.8 firmware and above we have added a Speaker Matrix. This Speaker Matrix gives you the ability to have different sets of LR, all with different delay settings and a crossover for each. To find the speaker matrix, simply press the ‘FX’ button on the surface. Select an FX Rack (1 to
, and choose Speaker Matrix from the Library list. You can even run more than one Speaker Matrix if you like.Or you could use stereo matrices (with their own delay control) fed from LR. Just depends if you only want a second speaker stack of LR or a second stack of LCR (or even more speakers).
These can be easily configured, without having to change your mix configuration. Plus the settings can even be stored in scenes for easy and quick recall.
I know at the time you used Aux’s, which I’m glad all worked out well. But I thought I’d try and share some more information as to how much more the iLive can do!
Thanks again, and I hope this information is helpful.
AndyH
Thanks Andy!
Yes: I’ve been looking through all the Mix configurations, and also the Speaker Matrix system. As it says in the Help, the Speaker Matrix system is not really a speaker processor, and we’d like to try to use the iLive effectively as a crossover, before we invest in something like the RME 6432, to have true digital signals all the way to the i-Techs. It might be more logical to use the Stereo Matrices or similar, to get frequency control. I don’t know how well the HPFs and LPFs work, compared to a bespoke X-over, but I see the Speaker Matrix has a lot of the functionality we require. It would be good to see A&H further develop the Speaker Matrix system …
Thanks for a great follow-up!
Guy
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