Is it possible and if so, how????

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  • #55017
    Profile photo of LancruzaLancruza
    Participant

    Getting ready to jump from an analog world to a digital one. I’m looking to purchase 2 QU32’s. At my church we are currently running 2 analog consoles. One is for FOH and the other is for video recording. We currently split every input to each console for independent control. We are expanding and our analog snake is going to be too short, so I would like to go to the digital cat5 Dsnake also. Can you split inputs from the snake to each console? Would you use a router to do this? Would each console have an independent IP so one console would not affect the other. Would it be possible to control FOH with an iPad and also control the recording console with another iPad, simultaneously? Thanks for anyone who can guide me through this.

    #55018
    Profile photo of cornelius78cornelius78
    Participant

    Sadly no. The dSnake protocol doesn’t support being split like that. Just because something uses cat5 and RJ45 sockets doesn’t mean it can be used by any and all cat5\RJ45 hardware. Even if it could, there are clocking issues, because the QUs can only be clock masters, and you’re really only supposed to have one clock master in the system, the rest are supposed to be slaves.

    The closest you can get is to go dSnake>(Cat5)>Qu1>(USB)>DAW>(USB)>Qu2. However, this requires finding a DAW that can use the 2x IO devices simultaneously, you’re limited by the length of the USB cables connects the QUs to the DAW, and you’ve still got clocking issues.

    Some workarounds:

    The Qu can do multitrack IO. If you video recording doesn’t need to output immediately, could you just multi-track 32 channels straight off the preamps out to a DAW, then mixdown in the DAW, either live using the DAW’s plugins, or later using either the DAW’s plugins, or the Qu’s processing if it’s not being used to mix live at the time?

    The Qu probably has more buses than your old analogue console. Could you perhaps just use the one Qu console, and use a spare mono\stereo bus to mix a video feed? The downside to this is that you probably get the same processing on the channels in FOH as you do for the video feed.

    If you don’t have the spare buses, you could use an ME-1 to get 40 channels from the QU (eg 32 inputs+4x stereo FX returns,) and mix them to stereo for the video feed. Of course you don’t get as many processing options on the ME1 as you do on the Qu.

    You could keep your analogue split. Run mics into the splitter, run one output of the splitter directly into a QU’s preamps and use this Qu for the video recording, run the other output from the splitter into the dSnake, then run that dSnake into the other Qu for FOH. If you did this you can use a separate ipad to control each Qu. They can have different IP addresses (or even the same IP addresses, if they’re on two separate networks.)

    You could use a different system all together: ilive, dlive and GLD can do what you want with the appropriate expansion cards, but they’re a quite a bit more expensive (though they do also come with extra features.) Other manufacturers have systems that can do you live\recording split, sometimes out of the box, sometimes with an expansion card, including BehringerX32\M32 (can use one console for FOH\mons and the other as a stagebox\splitter\video recording, and have the FOH\monitor output signals appear at the other console’s physical outputs if you want,) Soundcraft SI, Yamaha TF and up and Mackie DL32.

    That probably wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but at least you found out before spending the money rather than after.

    #55021
    Profile photo of LancruzaLancruza
    Participant

    Thanks for the response. I’ve looked at the X32/M32 and the feature set is nice. One thing I like about the QU32 is the 32 fader access vs 2 layers of 16 on the Beh/Midas. Price point on the QU is pretty close to where I need to be. I don’t have to have the Dsnake, but it would be convenient. I could stay analog snake with a longer split and probably make it work, but I’m also trying to plan for a few years in advance and a cat5 snake looks to be where everything is headed. I have not looked into the Soundcraft or the TF but I’m guessing a higher price. I’m not under a time crunch on this, so I’ll look into the options you’ve listed. We record simultaneously for television. We switch and record live but finish and edit in post down to 26 minutes. Once again, thanks. Looks like I’ve got more research to do.

    #55022
    Profile photo of cornelius78cornelius78
    Participant

    Fair enough. I agree that the more faders available at one time the better, especially when transitioning from analogue. It’s also worth pointing out that the x32\m32 doesn’t have a custom layer to the extent that the Qu does (but the guy who coded the remote control app for Android manged to implement one.) I also like that the Qu has dedicated encoders for each of the peq bands, rather than having to use a button to switch between bands like on the x32\m32, or relying on using touch+turn on the Yamaha TF.

    Because you mentioned iPad control, I didn’t realise a 1:1 channel:hardware fader was a consideration. If it is, only the Qu and a Yamaha TF5 satisfy that, (unless you got something older like an M7 or SL, but they have issues of their own, or got one of the bigger ilive\dlive surfaces with a ridiculous number of faders, but they’re also more expensive.) The Soundcraft SI series gets close, though it’s not quite 1:1.

    I’m not trying to sell you Behringer, but I’ve recently been helping a few people who have purchased them to configure them, and in doing that I’ve noticed that Behringer have got a series of midi controllers (BCF and xTouch) that can essentially get another 8x hardware faders under your fingertips, which would mean less layer switching. You can daisy-chain them together too.

    #55027
    Profile photo of Anonymous
    Inactive

    As you have an analogue split you could use a second QU32 off one of those for the TV feed, and ‘upgrade’ to a Cat5 dSnake for the FOH/monitor desk.

    You can control each desk with 2 QuPad connections and 6-8 (depending on the number of QuPad connections) QuYou ‘personal monitor mixes’ – though I’d limit those to any IEM musicians. You might also want to ensure that each is on it’s own wireless to reduce the bandwidth contention.

    I *think* that the Behringer X32 and digital snake combination might allow you to do ‘direct virtual patching’ without using up channels/buses, allowing you to send the inputs directly to the outputs on a second snake, or even to another mixer??!
    I’m a bit hazy on how the interconnects work, since it’s more detailed than my requirements (although I am considering them for something else)

    Of course if you don’t need the input eq etc to be different then you could use a group/mix ouptut for the TV, and mix *that* live using an android tablet hooked into a midi control surface for hardware faders.

    #55028
    Profile photo of airickessairickess
    Participant

    In addition to the other suggestions to make two Qu-32 consoles work for you, you can purchase two consoles and purchase two DSnakes as well – one for each console. You then use your current analog splitter to feed each DSnake. That way you have only two Cat5 runs from the stage to your consoles.

    #55029
    Profile photo of Anonymous
    Inactive

    I use 2 QU32 with iPads all of the time , so I know this system configure works brilliantly.

    If you have a budget issue (and you have an expanding Church) where you can not quite get this model happening…
    The questions: how many channels do you immediately require?
    How are you surrently splitting the analogue splits? Is that a rack of splitters?
    You could just buy the minimal 2 QU with 2 AR2412 and add the expander Ar2804 later.
    You should use your existing analogue multis for sub snakes?

    Not that I have needed this, having 2 complete systems you instantly have a back up in those difficult times.

    Some food for thought.

    #55030
    Profile photo of LancruzaLancruza
    Participant

    Thanks for all the help everyone. We are currently doing a poor man split, which is coming out of the inserts on the FOH board over to the recording board. Our current snake is going to be too short after we expand, so my thoughts were to get the digital snake to replace our analog one. But according to the info I’m getting, this will not be possible with the QU32’s. It’s out of budget to do 2 Dsnakes, so I may just go with a new analog snake and new split.

    #55032
    Profile photo of Dick ReesDick Rees
    Participant

    Why not just use an iPad for the video mix and simply use a Mix or a Matrix to feed the video? That way you need just one console.

    #55033
    Profile photo of AndreasAndreas
    Moderator

    This only works if both feeds match in channel processing and may get complicated with FX resources.

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