Sq5 with Me1 and Yamaha Rio

[Armin]

Hello All,

I have used a Sq5 at FOH with AR24/12 and 4 Me-1 as personal mixers for the musicians, for the last four years and I am very pleased with the setup.
Next year it is possible that the venue will provide a Yamaha DM7 at FOH. My question is: Is it possible to connect the Sq5 via Dante to the RIO stagebox and use it as a monitormixer to witch the Me1’s will be connected?

[croydon_clothears]

Hi Armin,
Dante is a protocol that works across all brands that use it – it doesn’t care who makes the hardware.
I would suggest that installing a network switch, if there isn’t one already, would be essential as it will give you additional ports for other Dante devices and laptops for Dante Controller.
the new Netgear AV range would be my first choice.
The Yamaha DM7 and the Rio stagebox connect with Dante, which should be through the switch.
If your A&H SQ5 Dante I/O then plugs in to another port on the same switch, all of the DM7 and Rio inputs and outputs can be accessed.
Any source that you bring in to the SQ5 on Dante can be routed within the mixer to its S-Link port and then onwards to your fleet of ME-1s or any other outputs.
You can reverse the pathways, maybe from an A&H 2412 stagebox, routed via a Dante output to a Yamaha I/O port, either on the DM7 or the Rio.
Be warned though – setting it up needs a clear head and a lot of planning.
A Dante card is basically a programmable gateway.
The network side needs to be patched with Dante Controller and the internal mixer patches need to be done within the mixers and the stagebox.
I’ve configured several temporary rigs using almost exactly the same kit and while it’s tedious at the pencil and paper stage, it will work brilliantly when complete.
Reach out to me if you need more help, I’ve tagged the thread to notify me.

[Brian]

There are a couple of ways you could use the ME system with the new Yamaha console.

First, you could add a Dante card (if not already installed) into the SQ console and have access to the Yamaha I/O over Dante. Once the I/O was in the SQ console, you’ll set it up and use the ME system just like you are now. In fact, you would probably stop using the AR stage boxes (because you’ll be using the Yamaha stage boxes instead) and connect the ME system directly to the SQ’s SLink port, although this is completely optional and you could continue to use the AR boxes if you needed I/O to feed other monitor mixes (IEM or wedges) that aren’t going to use a ME device for this. (Of course you could still send those outputs out over Dante to the Yamaha stage boxes and drop the AR boxes completely too.)

Second, you could acquire an A&H ME-U device which is effectively a ME switch with an I/O port built in. You could install an ME Dante card (unfortunately it is not the same as the SQ Dante card) and gain access to the Yamaha I/O that way. By connecting the ME-U directly to the Dante network, you can get rid of the SQ console completely. Of course this option only makes sense if you are not going to need the SQ console to mix other monitor sends that won’t be using the ME system.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[Armin]

Hi Guys thank you both for your detailed answers. If the case should occur I will gladly reach out again.
For the mean time thanks for the solutions.

Have a great day.

[Author]

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