[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

I edited my reply above but just noticed it didn’t submit.
Have a look at the link, it might help.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

In the large format analogue days A&H used to publish a guide called “Mixing Live with VCAs” that I would point people to for a good explanation, but since the ML series was discontinued they seem to have pulled that document from the web site.

It’s a shame because it gave a good explanation of VCAs for the uninitiated, and is equally applicable to DCAs in the new digital world.

To Carey D. – Any chance you can get it republished? Even as-is it’s a really useful guide, and it probably wouldn’t take too much work to be rewritten for the digital age.

In the absence of that there’s still a VCA guide for the ML3000 at https://www.allen-heath.com/media/ML3000-VCA-Groups-Application-Guide.pdf which has some of the explanations although it is specifically aimed at the ML3k so the detail won’t apply to dlive/iLive/GLD/QU

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Sorry, still banging on about watts…..

I guess what I’m trying to say is that whilst watts ARE important, that figure is where you end up not where you start.
Begin with the other criteria, how loud (SPL), what area are you trying to cover etc. and make your speaker selection based on those. Forget watts at that point, only once you have those criteria defined can you take values like speaker sensitivity, peak SPL, speaker impedance etc and plug those into the equations that will allow you to calculate the watts required to achieve the desired result.

Easier still pick active speakers based on those initial criteria and forget about watts altogether until you need to speak to people who really don’t have a clue, then telling them your tiny K8s are 2k gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, you know the truth and they walk away happy 😀

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Yeah the active/passive question has kinda got clouded by the ‘ole watts issue.
Watts alone get you nowhere without other data such as sensitivity, peak SPL etc as has already been pointed out. It’s just one part of a more complex equation.
To use your motor analogy, watts only tells part of the story, once you take RPM, torque etc. into account one 1000W motor is not the same as another. Every part of the equation needs to be taken into consideration to come to an answer as to if your chosen speaker (and amp if passive) will perform how you’d like it to, watts alone won’t cut it.
We’re trying to help by getting people away from the mistaken idea that watts = loudness or volume, it just aint so.
I have a pair of QSC K8 active speakers that are rated at 1000W each, by your table above I’d be able to do a medium sized auditorium or small outdoor festival with those alone but if I tried that I’d be firmly into the realms of “not enough rig for the gig”.
They’re nice speakers and go incredibly loud for their size but they’re not right for a full on rock band even in a small venue if you’ve got Animal on the drums and a guitarist who goes to 11, in spite of being “2000W”.

That table comes from an article on the Crown website which if read in full, references some of the other required characteristics of a speaker/amp system in the assumptions listed prior to the table. Don’t take the table as gospel, it relies on the assumptions which may or may not be correct for your situation. Again it’s just one part of the equation, all parts of which must be evaluated to get an answer. The article in it’s entirety should give you a pretty good idea of how to work things out.
More important tables come further down where it talks about distance from source to listener and desired SPL.

If I was buying afresh I’d go active every time for your application.
The manufacturer should have done all of the hard work with built in DSP, limiters, even the dreaded watts are sorted for you.
All you need do is pick a box that goes loud enough for you and is of sufficient quality for your budget.

Extra cabling is a non-issue, you’ll gain with easier to handle cables plus no amp rack to lug around and cable up.

The Yamaha DSR112 seems to be flavour of the month right now, Nexo technology in a Yamaha package.
Haven’t heard them myself but they’re getting a lot of good reviews.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Additionally, it would be germain to speaker choice discussions to consider pattern/pattern control:frequency, multi-functionality such as doubling as monitors (wedge angle), possible use with sub, internal crossover (powered) and more.

In the words of Sherriff Buford T. Justice… “The god damn Germans got nothin’ to do with it”
Sorry Dick, couldn’t resist, I fully agree with everything you’ve said.

I also agree as suggested earlier that PSW may be a better place for this discussion as these forums are specifically for A & H equipment which seems to be lacking from the proposed system.
If you do post a “how many watts” question over there though be prepared for many more responses in a similar vein and maybe a few with considerably less tact as to put it bluntly, you’re asking the wrong question.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Rereading the original post if you’re running mono mains there’s no need for any of this LCR stuff, just set your mains to LR+sub and use either L or R to drive your mains, leave all pan controls central.
Setting up LCR is just eating up an extra mix bus that you could use for something else.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

OK, those shows are not on the mixrack nor on a fairly new R72 surface.

I found them on a USB stick so I must have copied them from an iLive system at some point.

The FOH-LCRplus template replaces the Sub control with a Blend control so you lose the “aux fed” Sub bus.
I guess you could use a mono aux like in the old days if you want both.
I can confirm that the normal LCR mode will send signal to only the Centre bus if you have pan central, thus you can only send each mono channel to a maximum of 2 main buses at a time (L&C or R&C). If you need to feed all 3 from a single input you need LCRplus.

PM me and I can send you the template shows if you want them to play with.
Scratch that, you can get LCRplus from Setup – Mixer Config in the menu, mix config tab, MAIN drop down option.
No need for the template shows.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

According to the firmware manual there are 2 different LCR template show files.

FOH-LCRpan gives LCR with just a pan control so that the pan control goes from left through centre to right.
FOH-LCRplus gives an extra Blend control so that pan goes left-right and blend does LR-C

Looking at my editor offline I can’t see these options, only FOH-LCR so maybe these template shows only exist on the hardware.

I have an iDR16 by my chair in the living room (I know, sad eh?), I’ll hook up editor to the mixrack and see what templates I find.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Maybe it’s reset back to defaults which is DHCP falling back to APIPA if there’s no DHCP server to be found.
If this has happened and you had static IP settings previously you’ll be on different networks and you get those kinda symptoms, card visible but you can’t do much with it.

Try unplugging all connections to the card except a cable directly between the primary port (left Neutrik socket) and your laptop.
Configure your laptop to DHCP (automatically acquire IP address) and it should be able to connect to the card so you can reset the IP settings, then you can cable back up as usual.

Let us know how you get on.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

As has been stated above, dLive just like iLive has ZERO DSP processing in the surface.
Without a MixRack the surface is just an impressive looking hunk of metal.

The MixRack IS the mixer and is esssential to get anything to work but size doesn’t matter in terms of processing capability, the only difference is the number of analogue inputs and outputs.
Think of the surface on these systems as a giant remote control with some audio I/O, nothing more.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

It’s exactly what it says on the tin, in the analogue world it would be empty space in an effects rack that you could fill with whatever effects unit you care to buy or rent.
In the digital world when you don’t want an effect in a slot, you put an empty rack unit in there and voila – no more effects unit.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

On my iLive I have the masters burried on layer D.
I rarely have to adjust them after soundcheck and if I do they’re only a keypress away, leaves room on the other layers for more frequently accessed strips.
No chance of muting a strip that’s not on your working layers.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

Good to see it’s finally fixed and runnng faster than ever 😀

….now just need to throw some development resources back at the iLive and bring it up to date with all of the little advancements that QU and GLD users are enjoying.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

I sure hope that iLive isn’t abandoned in the development department.
Whilst I personally have no urgent desire for any additional features there are loads of requests from this forum and its previous incarnation, some of which have been addressed for GLD and QU but not yet for iLive.

In an ideal world features should appear in the flagship model and then filter down to the lower cost lines.
It seems crazy that features that have been requested can appear in the budget QU and not in the iLive.

I can understand loads of development time being thrown at new lines when they’re released with a partial feature set to get them into market quickly, but once that initial hump is cleared at least some attention should still be paid to the big boys toys.

Worst case some effort should be made to provide these features on iLive once they’re available on GLD and QU.

…but then who knows, A&H never talk about features in advance of release. Maybe there’s another iLive update on the way that addresses the list of features that have been requested over the years but never gotten around to.

Some sort of a statement, however generic, on the future of iLive development would be nice.

[MJCElectronicsParticipant]

If the AV network is a single subnet it should just work.
If there are several subnets and the mix rack is on a different subnet to your Editor PC you’ll need to add a persistent static route to your PC to tell it that the other subnet lives off of the AV interface, otherwise it will send all non-local traffic to the default gateway which I guess is on your admin network.

If you have a subnetted AV network, open a command prompt on the Editor PC as Admin and type ROUTE ADD x.x.x.x MASK y.y.y.y z.z.z.z -P
where x.x.x.x is the network address of the subnet your mixrack is on
y.y.y.y is the subnet mask of that subnet
z.z.z.z is the router address on the AV network
That will add a persistent route to the PC.

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