[MichaelParticipant]

The block diagram on page 130 of the Firmware Reference Guide shows how this works.

The MixRack has the Mix Engine and does all the processing, except for surface IO which has its own preamps and ADC/DAC.

A MixRack will work headlessly, passing audio according to its last state, and can be controlled by an iPad or Surface(s) or the installed remote controllers which I know less about.

We have our Dante card connected to our MixRack so that even if we lose the surface, the audio still passes.

I have no idea why the surface talkback mic would still work if you lost connection entirely. If the cable was unplugged, it would not have worked, so you must have still had some audio connection between them, but perhaps a loss of control only?

[MichaelParticipant]

Nice! We look like to find a cheap, but working solution as it will only be used for training engineers. We already have a Mac mini, so if Garage band works, it will suffice! Do you need both Dante card at dLive and data virtual interface on the Mac, or only one of them?

Our dLive Dante card came with a bundled license of Dante Virtual Soundcard.

And seriously don’t use Garage Band, Reaper is free to try and practically free after that.

[MichaelParticipant]

Depending on your global settings for direct outs, you could also use a pre-mute direct out.

[MichaelParticipant]

You buy a 2-in USB audio interface, like this one and connect it to your audio computer. (Bonus: you use the two out to get better quality, balanced stereo audio into your dLive.)

Reaper is an (almost) free software for recording multitracks. Works great with Dante, but for your case, just make a stereo track and patch it to the USB audio interface.

Here’s a starting point to automate it!

[MichaelParticipant]

Plus I can make a softkey incrementally increase automatically with just one button press instead of “next” then “go” for two presses.

“Go” automatically moves to the next scene. Press “Go” repeatedly and you’ll progress through all the scenes. “Next” and “Previous” just let you skip ahead or back without recall.

[MichaelParticipant]

I’m confused why you’d want to use a softkey for “next scene recall” instead of the “Go” button or “Next” buttons?

Could you tell us more about your application?

[MichaelParticipant]

The anti-spam seemed to eat my first version of this comment? Friendly fire! Friendly fire!

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Not exactly an answer to your question, but we run an Apex 220 (inexpensive linear measurement omni mic) into a spare channel on the dLive surface, send a tieline out via Dante to our FOH Mac Mini and run that and the PAFL bus into Aurchitect’s Spectre. This lets us see what’s happening in the room, vs what’s coming out of the board. It’s not a dual transfer function FFT like SMAART, but it’s still pretty useful.

(If you don’t have Dante, you could use an audio interface like a Sapphire 2i2 right into your Mac or PC).

The spectogram view is very handy for finding troublesome rings since intensity, frequency and time are all shown.

You don’t even need the mic if you just use the PAFL bus. So for the price of a basic interface and $80 for Spectre, you could be up and running pretty easy.

For example, PAFL a flute and you can see the exact frequencies of the notes (including harmonics) they’re playing over time.

[MichaelParticipant]

And prepare to get familiar with the “Clear PAFL” button under the meters. 🙂

[MichaelParticipant]

I’ve seen this as well. It seems like the Linux cursor sneaks through at times. Every now and then a touch on the touchscreen leaves an x behind.

[MichaelParticipant]

The compatibility is in the other direction The ME-1 units can receive the Aviom (A-Net) protocol via an Aviom AN-16 device (for example). This is the only way to use Avioms and ME-1s together – everyone receives A-Net and the ME-1s translate it internally.

Alternately, an ME-U can receive A-Net protocol as an input, then send out ME protocol to ME units. However, Aviom units cannot interpret the ME-U output.

[MichaelParticipant]

It’s come up a few times on this forum, and unless I’ve missed a recent patch, I don’t think it’s changed – global only.

With that said, tie lines are another option you could consider if you want certain signals directly after the preamp. We use tie lines for recording (via Dante) so we can “reverse the polarity” and do a virtual soundcheck by re-inserting the audio right back into the same place.

[MichaelParticipant]

We use a DCA to control our (separate) LR + M faders as one. Could this work for you?

It means that a single fader will control levels, but you’d still have to use the original L + R for other adjustments like mix assignment.

[MichaelParticipant]

Hi Steve,

The dLive has a dedicated “DCA mute” LED under the mute button that illuminates when that the channel is DCA muted. This is separate from the mute button on the channel strip, but located just below it.

So it’s always clear why/how a channel is muted, but I haven’t found a way to achieve the functionality you’re looking for, of unmuting a channel that is DCA muted. A&H confirmed that here: https://community.allen-heath.com/forums/topic/mute-groups-on-dlive/#post-48704

There has since been a firmware update that lets you use DCAs as mute groups, but my understanding is that they’re just DCAs without the level control.

[MichaelParticipant]

What does this new update have that has people so excited?

[MichaelParticipant]

Thanks Nicola for working through this with us!

Updates!

So we got the Surface on the facility network (which includes enterprise wireless access points in ideal locations for remote mixing), and the iPad app worked great. The next day, the system booted up just fine, soundcheck proceeded as normal and about 10 minutes into the program, the Surface spontaneously lost connection to the MixRack – luckily the MixRack continued to pass audio but it was a tense 10 minutes. After the operator rebooted the Surface twice with no resolution, the problem was resolved by turning off DHCP at the surface and disconnecting the network cable – rebooting then resolved the issue.

Questions:

• Could a problem with the facility network bump the Surface and/or MixRack off of their direct GigaAce connections? Or was this a configuration error caused by having one device assigned the default manual IP (without a static DHCP reservation), and the other a dynamic DHCP-assigned IP? (In which case, why would it have such a delayed impact? Perhaps the MixRack’s manual IP was at that moment assigned to another device which bumped it off the network or caused packet confusion?)
• Do the GigaAce and network jacks share a NIC? (It seems the same IP is shared between the network connection and the GigaAce connection?)
• Followup question: How does this work with the redundant network and GigaAce ports? Do each of the ports have different physical/MAC Addresses? What happens in the case of fail-over?
• Am I missing some obvious documentation on how to set this up according to best practice? For example, if both options are available – which device (Surface/MixRack) is best to be the connection point to network? Perhaps the MixRack, so that Director or a tablet could still be used if the surface loses connection to the MixRack?
• Is it perhaps safest to assign a manual IP to each device, leave DHCP assignment off, and simply reserve those IPs on the router end for both the Mixrack and Surface?

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