[EthanParticipant]

We’re experimenting with this in 2 of our SQ live venues and finding the lack of MIDI channel naming to be problematic. Our intent is have the SQ MIDI faders control the volume of up to 24 channels of commercial multitracks.com content running on a DAW (Ableton Live 10 in our particular case). The DAW is sending audio to the SQ via a Dante network. The volume of the DAW tracks are adjusted in the DAW by MIDI messages coming from the SQ, and this seems to be working properly. The DAW audio has been processed in the DAW, so all we really need is volume control. Adjusting the PAN in the DAW might be nice too.

The FOH engineer’s objective is to mix the DAW audio tracks along with the live (s-Link) audio sources coming from the stage musicians, and do al the volume adjustments in the SQ. While the SQ MIDI and DAW Control Driver functionality work such that the individual track volumes that are output by the DAW can be controlled via the SQ MIDI fader strips, naming the SQ MIDI fader strips is 100% essential for this to be useful. Up to 24 channels on un-named input is really painful!

The FOH engineer wants to focus on the mix. It’s a serious distraction in a real time live mixing environment, to divert attention away from the SQ to the DAW, and have to scroll around the DAW software screen to deduce what channel being adjusted. If naming the SQ MIDI scribble strips is not in the cards, we will abandon this approach and purchase faders for the DAW and place this additional fader bank adjacent to the SQ to control the channel volumes if we can find something that has scribble strips for channel naming purposes.

Once we sort this out, we’ll start messing with things on our dLive. But we want to get the operational kinks taken care of first on our SQ’s before working on MIDI playback control in our primary venue.

[EthanParticipant]

Hi Scott – and thanks for the reply. Appreciate it!

When you say higher write capacity, do you mean a higher write rate per second? While this might be a solution, the specs tend to suggest otherwise, which is what caused us to get the Samsung USB sticks. The thinking in selecting a USB stick was as follows:

– According to the dLive Firmware Reference Manual the dLive writes stereo .wav data to the USB at a rate of “approximately 34MB per minute.”
– This USB drive was selected because it has fast specifications, rated at 150MB per second (megabytes not megabits, and seconds not minutes).
– 150MB per second is equivalent to 9,000 MB per minute (150 * 60 = 9,000).
– 9,000 MB per minute is 264.7 times faster than the rate at which the dLive is writing data to the USB (9,000 / 34 = 264.7).
– Thus, we though the USB stick would be mare than fast enough.

Granted, the Samsung spec indicates “up to 150MB/sec” and does not differentiate between read and write rates, nor does it specify a sustained / continuous read or write rate. At the time we bought the dLive system, this seemed to be the fastest USB stick we could find. Maybe the sustained write rate is not quite fast enough?

Just in case though, if there’s a USB stick that is known to record dLive audio data with 100% reliability, I’ll gladly switch. Any suggestions?

[EthanParticipant]

One other thing: The recording is StMtx1, which contains the L&R mains and some extra ambient mics.

[EthanParticipant]

The problem was that Dante controller could not patch the SQ Dante and D800. I discovered that the Cisco switch did not have DHCP turned on. As soon as I set it up to serve up class-d IP addresses to the clients, and dropped the SQ Dante to 48KHz, they were able to connect. Thanks for the 48KHz reminder. The Dante Controller software is able to configure all the appropriate SQ Dante card IP parameters. The IEMS sound great!

[EthanParticipant]

hmmm. somehow my last reply got garbled.

Art, I have it working. Still not sure why a matrix is letting me fold in channels at will, but I’m not going to argue.

Jay, We’re on 1.7 and I’m still learning my way around the finer details of the surface. Seem like 1.7 treats a matrix bus similar to a mix bus. Combing & feedback doesn’t seem to be a problem from what I have running so far. The ambient stuff is not sent into into the main mix. The ambient channels are not muted in the main mix, but only to let the ambient audio pass through to the matrix. After experimenting, it seems if I select the matrix, I can control the volume of the ambient mics folding into the matrix with the ambient faders, just as in a mix bus. This yields the L+R mains going to the stream, with a controllable amount of ‘live room’ feel from the ambients. Not sure I need to use a stereo group as I can patch the matrix out to some XLRs. Yes I do need to add a delay needed for the ambient mics on this stem so the overall time alignment is reasonable. Appreciate the advice!

[EthanParticipant]

Hi Art, Thanks for the reply. Good idea and it works just fine. I was able to Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see a way to do it. ut the L+R into an unused matrix, and then somewhat puzzling, I was add the ambient mics into the matrix containing the LR, just as though it was a mix bus. I’ve always thought that matrix busses were only used to combine mix busses. But I’m not going to argue – it’s working and that’s all I really care about! Thanks!

[EthanParticipant]

We’ll be doing something similar with our C3500, connecting to an SQ6 via a gigaAce card in a CDM48 mixrack. The C3500 connects to the CDM48 via the built-in gigaAce ports, and the link carries audio, control and metadata. This is how channel names are conveyed to the ME-1’s. I’m waiting for a gigaAce card for the mixrack to arrive. I’m told that the benefit of a separate gigaAce link from the mixrack to the SQ is that audio, control and metadata are conveyed to the SQ. Dante only carries audio – no metadata. So long as we only tie 48 or fewer audio channels into the SQ via the gigaAce card in the mixrack, this should convey the scribble strip metadata info from the C3500 over to the SQ. We’re getting a Dante card for the C3500 to export audio only to several other SQ’s, so a Dante card in the SQ would also work – but would carry audio only. Will let you know how it works!

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