[coppoParticipant]

I agree but best practices are all very well with trained operators but not at all feasible otherwise – you need to force them to do the right thing!

Here we are talking about an installation that one of its use cases is an untrained user who has been given a key and told where to put it and turn. The system has to start up and shut down seamlessly and safely.
I have got around this now by modding the RAMSA (WP 1200) startup delay circuit so it now unmutes after 15 seconds approx. Was actually quite an easy mod.

[coppoParticipant]

Thanks – interesting but out of our price range. (Its a local parish church) I didn’t realize things like that existed.

We have a spare RAMSA amp and the startup delay is an IC device with a 10uF timing cap. Assuming I can get at that it is a simple matter to increase the delay by tacking a 22 -47 uF cap in parallel. Virtually zero cost. If that works I’ll swap the spare in and then modify the other one as well. Plan B – bit more expensive – is a inline relay with a delayed turn on time. Probably about £20 including the housing and relay.

[coppoParticipant]

Thanks

I’m sort of surprised that other users haven’t run into this problem. I also use a behringer xr18 for a band and that has better control of outputs on power up and down than the Sq6 does.
The power amps are RAMSA ones but I’m fairly sure they are not user configurable but you made me think – I have a spare RAMSA so will open it up and see if I can tweak the power on delay and increase it to 15 secs or so from its current 4-5 seconds I think. I have the schematic so it looks easy enough. The thump is also transmitted to the sub but you get a dull whooomph from that as opposed to a loud click/bang from the FOH mains. Less painful on the ears.

I’m pretty resigned to having to add functionality to delay the power amp on moment. The system is used by many different folk of different skill levels and the bottom line is a key controlled ‘ON OFF switch’. An unskilled user has the key but all it will do is turn on mains and about 15 seconds later load a very cut down scene of 1 mike plus hearing loop. When he leaves, he removes the key and the mains goes off. I need to automate the de-thumping so it works on this dummy user scenario as well as a proper operator.

[coppoParticipant]

Our desk has gone back to Audio Technica for repair and we are still waiting – using a loan SQ6 for now.
I also built a 4 channel phantom power injector in case it happens again. It will get us by in most cases but the loan desk has been faultless.

I had updated the SQ6 to the latest firmware a few weeks before the problem started happening – not sure if that was related.

I had thought the issue was one that only occurred at startup and then only occasionally. I also suspected finger trouble on the part of operators with only basic skills as the first couple of times it occurred I wasn’t present and I couldn’t reproduce the fault in testing. The feedback I had received was ‘ it stopped working’ which doesn’t give you much to go on.

Then – I was sitting in on an event when the 48v just vanished mid performance – fortunately during a dress rehearsal not a concert.

I was using the desk for big event 2-3 days after that there was no 48v on startup and nothing I did got it back – multiple reboots. (It had worked for the rehearsal and setup the evening before.) Had to swap out mikes and put pp3 batteries in DI boxes during a very panicky 20 minutes before the start and couldn’t communicate with the stage (no phantom power for talk back mike). I lost my confidence in the SQ6 at that point.

Hope you get yours sorted. When I hear back from Audio Technica I’ll report back here.
Coppo

[coppoParticipant]

Thanks. Things have moved on now.

It had sprung back into life later the same day but them earlier this week it failed mid way through a school nativity (dress rehearsal fortunately). All mikes just suddenly cut out – not a startup type issue as we had seen before – and when I checked there was no 48v appearing on the talkback mike socket any more.
It is now going back to Audio Technica in Leeds for repair and we are picking up a loan machine at the same time.

Regards
Coppo

[coppoParticipant]

Hi
Thanks – but my problem is that I don’t have the SQ6 here – it’s miles away and also switched off or doing some other event. (So I can’t even set up a vlan to talk to it.)

Everything works fine when I am on the same LAN as the sq6 and I can copy or paste in either direction fine.
However I do most of my setting up at home prior to events and the desk is miles way.
I can’t find a way of getting a local show prepared in windoze mixpad accross to tablet mixpad without actually using the real desk as the intermediary.

Andy

[coppoParticipant]

I have the same issue.

Can’t find a way of duplicating a channel or any feasible workaround. Copy/Paste only does bits of the preamp, saving as a library item doesn’t restore any routing or sends or compression as far as i can tell.
I could be missing something but have spent hours faffing without finding a solution. (Even looked at the dat files to see if I could decode and hand edit – not really feasible!)

I also could do with the ability to save libraries of channel types that ALSO save everything but the name.

I think a useful feature would be channel duplicate that does everything apart from the name. (Maybe a PasteALL command?)

I can do this sort of thing easily on a cheapy behringer desk.

Andy

[coppoParticipant]

UTS – Thankyou – very kind comments! Sometimes you need to actually fall in a hole to grok how deep and wide it is!

I had already started duplicating/backing up scenes as masters- especially at this early stage where we faced with a totally new layout each week. I can then go back to a known starting point.
I’ll also have a go with USB saving as well.

I do enjoy the learning curve but also wish the really important ‘don’t push that button again’ moments didn’t only occur at times of highest stress!
A

[coppoParticipant]

I will check when back on site but i think i may have accidentally overwritten a scene when switching back and forth between the two settings with different speaker layouts. I.e a UTS fault if you know the acronym!
Andy

[coppoParticipant]

Thanks – apologies that I didn’t make my question clear.

I have waded through most of the pdf manual and do know from that reading that ‘all’ settings are saved in scenes and then filtered on the recall. What I can’t find out from the manual is what the recall filtering/safes are set to by default. I was hoping that the defaults were listed somewhere.

The other thing I asked was for hints/tips on good practices – something which doesn’t seem to appear in the manual but is probably second nature to regular SQ users.

I expect will eventually be able to answer my own questions as I gain experience but that will take time as I wade through a lot of new (to me) information.
I was rather hoping to pick up useful tips from the knowledgeable and helpful folk on here.

Thanks
Andy

[coppoParticipant]

Thanks. We still use floor wedges and did leave it preset during rehearsal and it seemed OK – I just felt uncomfortable without instant level control. In the services the sound level varies widely and I’m concerned trying to pass a subtle message and have it boom out accross the sanctuary during a quiet music bit. (Fred – your bottom E is flat!!!!) When we get the musos set up with ‘sq for me’ (or whatever the app is called) it will be a lot better. IEMs are a way away yet!
Coppo.

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