FOH / MON console setup

[BMS ProductionsParticipant]

I have an SQ7 running FOH and an SQ6 running MON. I have 2-AR2412’s and a AB168 as my stage boxes. Each console has the added SLink card installed. How do I eliminate the analog split snake And do strictly a digital split? Am I limited to only 40ch?

[TerryParticipant]

With the AR/AB series stage boxes you are limited to 40 channels from the stage boxes – this is a limitation of the d-SNAKE protocol used by these boxes. The good news is you can plug the AB168 into the AR2412’s expansion post and have access to all of he inputs and outputs. You can also use the local inputs on each desk, and/or the USB, in order to get to 48 total channels.

Connect the stage boxes to the S-Link port on the monitor desk and connect the S-Link expansion card to the S-Link port in the FOH desk. Use tie-lines to patch the AR2412 and AB168 sockets to the FOH desk’s input channels. Make pre-amp settings adjustments on the monitor desk and use trim at FOH, if needed. Note that you don’t have to use these specific ports, but by following a standard set up you’ll reduce problems and make troubleshooting easier.

[drc_onlineParticipant]

Hi – just to re-iterate my understanding on this, as we’ve gone through a similar process recently.

You can do 48 channels on a single SLink connection, but you can also only connect one AR2412 and one AB168 on a single S-Link so you can only do 40 input channels on stageboxes and the other eight inputs would have to be direct inputs on the back of the SQ6
See this doc
You can only use one of your AR2412s with an AB168 into the SQ6.
You could plug the other AR2412 directly into the SQ7 at FOH but any inputs from that AR2412 that you want at monitorland you would have to send back to the SQ6 from the SQ7 on tielines.

So here’s how I would plug it up.

– Plug the AB168 into the AR2412
– Plug the AR2412 into one of the S-Link the SQ6.
– Plug up another 8 inputs directly into the local sockets on the back of the SQ6.
– Plug up a Cat6 cable from the OTHER S-Link port on the SQ6 to the SQ7
– Send all these 48 inputs via tielines to the SQ7.

That will max out the input count on your SQ7, so either keep the other AR2412 as a spare, OR plug it up as an extra stagebox on the second SLink port on the SQ7 at FOH or elsewhere (for wireless mics etc?) or even onstage, if that helps with layout, but bear in mind that you can only have 48 input CHANNELS on the SQ7 at FOH but they can come from either Slink port.
You can have more sockets (physical XLRs) than channels but can only use 48 of them at one time.
If you do use the second AR2412 as a stagebox bear in mind that any sources on that stagebox will not be available at the SQ6 unless you do some more fancy routing back from the SQ7 to the SQ6.

What we do is put all our ‘this never needs to go to monitorland’ inputs on our extra AR2412 that only goes to the SQ7 at FOH.

Hope that’s useful.
Dave

[Søren SteinmetzParticipant]

The S-link is limited to 40 channels in and out as said.

One possibility could be a S-Link card in both consoles.
then connect 1 x AR2412 to each console, with the AB168 as extender on one of them.
Plug a cable direct between the consoles using eg. the S-Link cards, and use Tielines to send all inputs from one set of stageboxes to the other console (as welle as any outputs needed)

The cable direct between the consoles will be running the 96KHz protocol, giving you 128×128 signal paths between the consoles.

That way you can pick from any of the 64 AR/AB inputs as well as any local inputs on both desks, just remember you can only Process 48 channels at any time on each console.
(inputs send by Tielines does not use up any processing power on the console, unless you have that input patched to a processing channel as well)

Hope this helps a bit as well.

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