Forums › Forums › GLD Forums › GLD general discussions › DCA and Group – A beginners Question
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2015/01/01 at 8:34 am #44210
I run the Audio Visual team at my Church and in February we are making the upgrade from A A+H Analogue desk to the GLD80. I have been using the GLD editor software to design how I want the desk to run as we tend to run a fairly complex setup and ideally this needs to be replicated on the GLD 80, but just need some advice around Groups and DCA.
On our current Analogue desk we are running 4 submixes (Vocals, Instruments, Drums and Speech) into the main mix. When you mute the submix sound is still channeled to Aux sends for foldback but kills signal to FOH. on the GLD80 this is what we want to replicate.
Looking at the manual and other forum posts I am confused as to whether i need to do this via a DCA or Group as some posts tell me that using a DCA and then muting the channel also kills the sound source to the Aux Mixes. is this correct, or can you reprogramme a DCA so it don’t affect Pre fade groups?
The reason I went down the DCA group is because we need to use the individual DCA’s to feed into a mini desk which powers our MP3 recording suite and DVD recording. I have created a matrix to take a feed into this mini desk.
Hope this makes sense and look forward to your responses.
Dan
2015/01/01 at 9:06 am #44212Go to the 1:35 mark, it says that muting a DCA mutes the channels, including all pre and post fader sends.
The DCAs don’t actually have audio routed through them (just think of the them as remote controls for the faders of whatever’s assigned to them.) If you’re wanting to route sound out to another desk for recording, you need to use your subgroups/mtxs/a double patch of LR etc.
HTH
2015/01/01 at 9:23 am #44213Thanks for your reply
Just so I can get my head round this and also to add more meat to my comment:
If i mute a DCA it mutes all channels including pre and post fade sends
If i pull the DCA fader down, does this affect the output levels on the main input faders, or does it only affect the level being sent to the Main mix/matrix sends. What i basically want to know is: If the DCA fader is at the bottom, does pre fade aux sends and ME1 units still get sound.
Sorry if this very simple stuff, trying to get my head round new technology
2015/01/01 at 9:33 am #44214Yes, DCA mutes mute pre and post sends, but they do not mute direct outs. So for example if you are feeding aviom or me from a direct out the DCA doesn’t mute that.
And you can’t use a DCA to ‘feed’ anything. The only feed comes from the original channels routing assignments. The DCA just allows you to fade or mute a set of channels together.
While using the editor to set up the mixer before you get your hands on the physical hardware is quite helpful, there is no substitute for seeing what happens when you actually pass sound through the mixer. Be prepared to to revise some of your decisions when you find out how it really works. I speak from personal experience:-)
2015/01/01 at 9:37 am #44215Sorry our posts crossed. Pulling the DCA fader down is exactly equivalent to pulling the faders down on each of the channels assigned to the DCA. So, for example, preface sends are unaffected, but all post fade sends, including LR are affected.
You would normally use a direct out for an me send, but you don’t have to of course, so that would be unaffected by the DCA fader or mute.
2015/01/01 at 9:38 am #44216So are you saying if i reduced the DCA fader this would stil affect the sound levels going into the the pre fade aux mixes?
Final question about DCA’s for the moment. If I had 4 DCA’s setup to group together a number of outputs and I muted one DCA, would this mute the entire Matrix or just the sources controlled by that DCA?
2015/01/01 at 9:46 am #44217So are you saying if i reduced the DCA fader this would stil affect the sound levels going into the the pre fade aux mixes?
No. Because they are pre fade. As I said, it is exactly equivalent to moving all the faders. So pre fade sends are not affected, as usual, but obviously post fade sends are.
I’m not sure I understand your second question. You can have a channel controlled by multiple DCAs. So for example, I have a DCA each for vocals, drums, guitars and then another for the entire band, and one for all th band except vocals. So vocals are assigned to both the vocals and band DCAs and guitars are assign to guitars, band and all except vocals.
But I don’t think that is the question you are asking. Can you clarify?
2015/01/01 at 9:53 am #44218BTW a useful resource for answering some, but not all, of these type of questions is the system block diagram on page 10 of the user manual (not the screen reference manual).
2015/01/01 at 9:56 am #44219sorry,
we are hoping to run 5 DCAS on the new system:
1. Speech/Sermon
2. CD/DVD/PC Audio
3. Band Vocals
4. Instruments
5. DrumsMy question is if any of these DCA’s are muted (ie DCA1) are the output mixes associated with that DCA completly muted to all sound or just the inputs associated to DCA1 (will DCA’s 2-5 still get a output through the output (in this case the speakers)
Sorry if i not explaining myself clearly.
2015/01/01 at 10:09 am #44220I get the impression that you are still thinking of DCAs like analogue groups. They are a completely different animal. If you mute DCA 1, it is equivalent to muting all the channels assigned to that DCA, and no others. So if you have, say, Inputs 1, 2 & 6 assigned to DCA 1 you will mute just those channels and any outputs (pre or post fade, but not direct out) assigned to those channels.
Does that make it any clearer?
2015/01/01 at 10:17 am #44221It does
What was confusing me was on the GLD Editor – when I muted a DCA, the red DCA light appeared above the main output fader so was unsure if this meant the whole output was deleted. Thanks for clearing that up.
2015/01/01 at 10:22 am #44222Hmmm. Sounds as if you have the main output included in your DCA. You can assign outputs to DCA groups as well. For example I have LR and the aux fed sub output fader assigned to a DCA called main, which is the only one I put on the surface for most people.
2015/04/18 at 6:04 pm #47113Hey guys!
Trying to make my way around GEQs on a GLD112
Is it possible to add a 31 band GEQ as an insert on an input channel or do I have to route it to a group and GEQ the group?
Really appreciate your help!
Cheers,
R2015/04/18 at 6:27 pm #47116Hi R,
This may serve other forum members better if you started a new thread for your GEQ topic (easier to search for if someone else wants to know). The short answer is… GEQs are only available on MIX outputs on the GLD. If you want to apply a GEQ to a specific input, you will need to route it to a group.
2015/04/18 at 6:41 pm #47117Thanks for the reply @dcongdon!
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