[JayParticipant]

I believe the more accurate statement is “MP3 licensing is officially dead”.

On April 23rd, Fraunhofer IIS, the company that managed patent licensing for MP3, officially terminated the licensing program. No part of MP3 is encumbered in patent licenses and can now be embedded without legal issues.

MP3, unfortunately, will probably outlive most of us.

[JayParticipant]

Jeff,

Reset addresses the issues of PEG & GEQ on the surface – still leaves some outstanding questions:

– Surface, where is in/out for PEQ?
– Director, where is “reset” for PEQ/GEQ?

Jay

[JayParticipant]

DM64, S-5000, 1.41

I was running with my Dante card in Slot 4 this last Saturday for a handful of I/O, no issues.

A random item to check – is your Dante network set to sync to the desk with both “master” and “ext clock” check boxes marked on the card in the console? I’ve been on 2 different systems now that didn’t have “ext clock” marked and the Dante had clicks that were just “ignored” because the clocks weren’t locked – 1.4x may have disabled audio if clock is slipping.

My rig is out on a rental for 4 weeks, so any additional testing is out for the moment.

Jay

[JayParticipant]

Can someone please post a link to a sample PDF?

I’ve worked out 30 output patch pages and 27 audio sources in 1.41 so far, not counting the fact that that the surface is 1 output patch and 1 source (analog, aes, dx, slots and usb).

My output is quite crude at this time and making this readable is next on my list, both for “output from source” and “source feeds what outputs”. Quick format was going to be a CSV, but a PDF is in scope.

Jay

[JayParticipant]

DM64, S5000, Dante in Slot 4

[JayParticipant]

SMAART v7 – It showed up as I was measuring consistency across different analog inputs, which initially looked like the A/D side but it stuck with an input channel.

Dante In / Dante Out also showed it in SMAART.

Unfortunately, I just went to take screen shots for you and can’t duplicate it now that I restarted the system and loaded a clean show.

What does show up (easily viewed – no audio):

If you take a channel that hasn’t been slammed on trim, you have -1.1, -0.5, 0.0, +0.5, +1.1.

Set Trim to 0, turn to +24, and back to zero. You can set -1.3, -0.7, 0.0, +0.3, +0.9.
Set Trim to 0, turn to -24, and back to zero. You now can set -0.9, -0.3, 0.0, +0.7, +1.3

I can’t duplicate it in audio right now, but looking at the displayed values it looks like “0” has shifted. Similar to the PEQ comment I made above. Based on the shift above, it looks more like a .2dB shift.

Can anyone else duplicate the apparent shift in offset for trim?

Jay

[JayParticipant]

Here is the official page where future releases should be:

https://www.allen-heath.com/dlive-s-class/dlive-documents/

As Nicola said, the website organization needs some help. Google still can’t find the anything except the 1.10 reference guide.

[JayParticipant]

Nicola,

Thank you for the detail.

450KB (meters) + 450KB (burst, control) seems quite high, just as a comment.

A request and observation on the reference guide:
– Please add a “Changes” section so we can identify what changes release-to-release.
– They released it as a docx file instead of a pdf.

Have a great weekend,

Jay

[JayParticipant]

Tony,

– Select any channel
– Go to the ‘Routing’ tab
– Hit “Setup” and select the main routing window

From here you have more global settings. You can select the direct out source, if it follows the fader and if it follows mute. This may solve your issue.

However, be aware that “mute groups” are really just an extension of DCA’s with no fader – so it may require a “follow fader” to work which isn’t what you want for the direct outs to monitors but would validate the issue.

If you haven’t gone through and hit “setup” on every screen, I highly recommend it. Lot’s of hidden settings that are very useful.

Jay

[JayParticipant]

+1

[JayParticipant]

+1 on the RTA & better graphics.

– 12 band or better per octave (the picture looks better than that)
– Peak decay
– Option for spectrum/waterfall display (X32)
– Overlay on EQ display or full EQ display on lower section of left screen

[JayParticipant]

Tor,

I am not advocating heavy data – just putting forth what I observed based on comments from A&H (link below) and what I have heard in sales presentations. They present it as a usable network link between FOH and stage within reason.

Network port uses

One thing to note, regardless of how much data you put through the network ports, you can’t interfere with the 300×300 audio data (see link).

For some people, they may not have the luxury of $1800 for an additional Dante card and adapter vs running a few channels back down the network. For others, it is nice to know you could run MIDI/MTC over it to sync a Virtual VTR on stage from qLab without an additional network cable required for a traveling show.

This was put forth for those that “have a need” to use the network, need to know the capabilities, but don’t necessarily have the time or ability to do the measurements themselves. That is all.

Jay

[JayParticipant]

Tor,

Do what specifically? Run the bandwidth test or run Dante over it?

I ran the tests to know if I was working with 10mbit, 100mbit or something else:
– How many control devices can I safely put at the surface end? (Director, IP8, etc)
– Could I bring up a remote screen session if necessary to control a laptop?
– Does it interfere with the surface responsiveness?
– Does the wifi router need to be at the rack or can it be at the surface? (Rack better)

Dante (or MIDI) wasn’t even a remote consideration until Neak mentioned he was doing it, so I included it to see how reliable it could be done. Saves a pair of ethernet runs if you only have a few bundles and can handle the latency.

I also have a desire to know as much as I can about something I am using that I depend on. In this case, the ethernet link “just worked” but the limitations were unknown. Also, I didn’t want to suddenly need it for something unexpected and not be sure it would work.

Jay

[JayParticipant]

Neak,

Sounds like you have a setup that shares a lot with what I’m doing. I am not with A&H but I’ll share some of what I have
learned. I had an advantage that I’ve had about 6 weeks to build a show (actually, transfer from 2 X32’s) and work through
a lot of the networking side while waiting for other equipment.

One of my concerns, which you ran into, was networking. I needed Director, IP-8 and my iPad but at the same time have
Qlab/Dante, Sennheiser WSM and several other Dante devices that all needed to play well.

As an aside, it once again confirmed that Dante DVS needs to support VLAN’s to keep Dante and Management network clean.

On to dLive – as I said, I’m not with A&H – but here is what I gleaned through putting my rig together. It’s a great
platform with a lot of potential, but currently has som expectations you need to be aware of that I haven’t seen
in writing.

Logs

Utility->Utility->History. Hit “setup” and enable detailed logs.

This will show you all the connects/disconnects and other events that happen. A lot of information. The biggest
piece to watch for is connects without disconnects. I don’t know the 1.40 limit, but on 1.31 once you got to 23
connections it stopped accepting them. The console is 3 and each additional device takes 1.

Connections

Mixrack->Config->Network. Lower right shows you active connections.

Key here is that the MixRack (today) doesn’t appear to detect/clean up stale connections. If a device drops & reconnects
due to a network issue it just took an additional connection that appears it can slow everything down since there
is nothing reading the messages combined with the bandwidth. It sounds like you actually ran into this.

Bandwidth

AH-Net carries a lot of information. A single scene change can be 1,000+ messages to a device depending on how much
is in scope for the scene change. This is over TCP and I observed, as you did, that if some devices lag then the
console also appears to lag. I can’t say if this is devices not processing messages fast enough or the volumne of
messages, but all devices (regardless of what they are doing) receive all messages.

AH-Net also carries UDP for all the meters to each device. 160+64 with input level and gain reduction along with
metering information for gates/duckers/comps/etc. that appears to be transmitted at 50ms intervals to each device.

As you are planning this, also take into account that the GigACE connection has a significant bandwidth/latency
restriction in it. 300+ audio channels have priority and the link is run in a timed synchronous manner to keep
all the audio flowing – the “network” data gets to ride as small payload on each packet from documentation I’ve seen.
I don’t think you were trying to run wireless from the surface, but hou have to be very conscious of how much data
is being run and the latency considerations for anything connected this way. I realized I never actually measureed
the bandwidth/latency (project tonight) but I suspect a couple AH-Net devices may saturate it.

—

My setup overall isn’t too different from yours – S-5000, DM64, Qlab, 9 performers, 60 inputs – except I haven’t been brave enough
to give the performers devices to control their own mixes. The drummer has an ME-1 to make my life easier.

Love to hear how everything works out for you.

Jay

[Author]

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