[StratKatParticipant]

Aha! There’s the clear explanation on page 82. Without the reference guide I didn’t recognize that block in the matrix was a switch (I thought it was a label).

Also I should have clarified: like the OP I just want to capture my main LR mix to Audacity. But unlike the OP I am not doing multitrack mixdown. In my case it’s live sound. Capturing via USB-B directly to the computer saves me a step (versus capturing to SQ-Drive and then copying that to the computer).

Keith, thanks much for the quick reply and for explaining the multitrack workflow and patching. That might come in useful for us later.

[StratKatParticipant]

I am in the same situation, and am experiencing the same result. I do NOT want to use “another recorder” — I want to use USB-B to capture the main LR mix to Audacity. As the OP reported, in Audacity the SQ-5 appears as a source and I have set Audacity for 96kHz recording. But I am still getting only a flat-line in the audio recording. So I suspect my patching or routing is wrong. What routing or patching is necessary to make this work?

By the way, in the “Output Patch” screen I have it set like this (attached photo). Is it correct? I am particularly confused by the block in the upper left which says “USB Source: SQ Drive.” This label makes no sense at that location in the matrix. Can you clarify that as well?

Thanks in advance.

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[StratKatParticipant]

The amount of “headroom” needed above a nominal “0 dB” is not agreed-upon by all designers of equipment and software. These days it is very easy for our digital audio to find its way to digital audio meters which disagree with the A&H meters.

I have run into this same problem recently with webcast equipment at our church. Our console produces a -18dBfs signal (as described by KeithJ above) on the mixer’s AES/EBU connector. This plugs into a device which merges our digital audio with video and formats it into an HDMI connection. The HDMI then feeds a Blackmagic interface to a Windows PC running Wirecast software for webcasting. The audio is digital straight through and no levels are altered.

But when our digital audio reaches Wirecast it is quite low on Wirecast’s audio meters, requiring a LOT of gain using Wirecast’s audio level controls. The explanation for this: Wirecast does not expect to receive audio produced with 18dB of headroom. A lot of video production systems these days seem to only provide about 6dB of headroom above what they call “0 Vu.” So if we create a pure digital path from our professional audio console, we might be making audio that’s about 12dB too low.

And to make matters worse, when discussing the problem with tech support for these manufacturers, they often do not even know what “dBfs” means.

And to top it all off: a lot of the equipment or software we use these days doesn’t even have audio meters.

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