[pdherringParticipant]

Nicola,

That is great and certainly clears up my first question, I use the TCP driver all the time to send commands from the desk softkey to QLab so shouldn’t be too hard to sort.

As for the MMC control I am not sure what the play/stop etc controls would be used for? Maybe I am missing something obvious. Its just a query as to what this function does as it could be something useful that I am not aware of completely.

Many Thanks again

Pete

[pdherringParticipant]

Our setup depends on who masters it. If we do it in house then my setup is nothing crazy. Its a top spec’d Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. I have a mBox and a set of studio monitors, I use Logic X with Waves plugins. But the basic requirement of recording is that you get jitter free wav files that can then be imported into any studio setup.

TBH if you get yourself a high end Mac Mini to begin with both can be done on the same machine. We had some issues with the release version of Logic X and more than 25 channels so we switched to Reaper as per so many people on this forum suggesting we do so. I have never looked back. It is so simple to setup and just works every time without any worries. This is my main requirement in a multi track recording getting the job done with as little effort as possible and the mac does it every time. You can still have Logic installed on the same machine and once reaper has recorded the files simply import it into logic for mastering.

Hope this helps. These forums were invaluable to me when I first got the GLD and I can honestly say I am chuffed to bits with the ease of our setup now.

[pdherringParticipant]

Get yourself a mac mini, use reaper and you have everything you need in one simple box. We do lots of theatre shows and very often throw 48 channels of audio down on reaper. We then take the files away and use pro tools or logic to master them. The mac mini has my vote, yes its not a PC but for what you want it will be bullet proof. Also get yourself a Airport Extreme, nice quick and simple to set up and again will not let you down. So from this you are probably thinking yeah yeah we have an apple worshiper here. Yes I do like apple products but only because they cut down on any complications and have never let me down. Also if you have an issue with it you walk into an apple store and get it replaced. No worrying about sending equipment away for weeks on end.

[pdherringParticipant]

The last two shows I have done have been very basic (almost nothing changed) standard show files. I didnt use the USB at all, except maybe I had a usb led lamp plugged in. Will save the log file the next time this happens.

[pdherringParticipant]

Ive had it again on 1.4

I know it doesnt really cause any issue but are we saying that a £5k+ unit is supposed to do this? It would be good to hear from A&H as to if they believe this to be an issue and what they are doing to resolve?

[pdherringParticipant]

Yeah that would be a nice surprise! Maybe upping the channel count too 😉 or is that just wishful thinking…. Can anyone else confirm if this is just on the editor or is it on the desk too?

[pdherringParticipant]

I havent got the desk out yet to upgrade that but I have downloaded the editor v1.4. Has anyone else noticed that in the IO screens we now have the dSnake EXP in its own tab and more over it seems to show (on the editor at least) a 16/8 unit not the standard 24/12 or 8/4 we have all been used too. So does this mean we are to see a AR168 being released sometime soon?

Pete

[pdherringParticipant]

Wouldnt say the UPS is a must but a good idea for sure. The GLD is amazing compared to pretty much all the other digi consoles. I have to use an LS9 at a venue I work at lots and after 3 months of using the GLD every day for 2 very big theatre runs I have gone back to the LS9 for some contracting work and wow its so clunky. Nothing is intuitive! If your guys can get their heads round the Presonus and can use an ipad then they will find the GLD a walk in the park!

Dante will take a little bit to get your head around but once you do its simple! For your engineers its maybe a step too far but the beauty of dante is that once it is set up you shouldnt need to change anything. Also as for switching the networks. Dante is simple and excepts switching and VLan’ing very easily. The managing network again is no problem for anything. The monitor network is fine as long as all the ME-1s or Avioms are on the same VLan. The only thing to be careful with is the DSnake network. A&H say dont switch this network at all but in my experience its possible and works okay. But make sure its on its own VLAN with security set up between that and the other networks. Also it is worth baring in mind that this adds lots of possible points of failure that the standard DSnake network wouldnt have.

Hope this helps

[pdherringParticipant]

So firstly the learning curve. Once you get the engineers head around the fact that the IOs are separate from the channels and the channels are separate from the faders its easy! That has been my old school analogue guys biggest headache.

As for the Dante side of things. Certainly you wouldn’t need a second set of AR’s although your broadcast desk would only have 4 outputs so as long as that is sufficient then you are fine. You may find it beneficial to have an expander unit connected just so you have another 4 outputs but that depends on what you plan to do with the broadcast desk I guess.

As for the channels, you have the chance to send 64 items of sound in either direction – TOTAL. So this means from the FoH desk you could send all 48 inputs plus if you wanted the LR from the main desk and maybe a group or two etc etc. When you configure Dante using the controller you choose what devices are then set to receive what channels.

Although it is possible and I have done it I would suggest that each multi track machine receive the signal from the primary desk. This is not alway possible and I have done this myself but it did add a lot of extra traffic on the Dante network that was not needed.

The important thing is to make sure you dont add anything that is pointless to the network and then interfere with the QoS on the network.

For example. I did a multitrack the other day. Now when my engineer set it up he set every channel from the desk to record to the mac running reaper…. Now that was fine except 15 of the channels were coming in via dante in the first place. So they were coming into the desk and then the desk was set to send them back out again. I simply changed the controller to allow the recording mac to also receive the 15 channels from the mac running QLab to save on extra processing on the Dante card and extra data on the network.

Basically the long and short of it is that anything is possible with Dante and the GLD but be careful how you implement it so that it doesnt affect your event!

[pdherringParticipant]

Yes have tested it this week for a show I have coming up. I did it with two Cisco 3560c and spanning tree. Obviously the week link is the cable linking the desk to the first switch and the dSnake cable to the second switch. Oh and of course your adding the switches into the failure point, so instead of it just being 1 cable that could fault you pretty much are protecting the long run and adding another 3 points of failure.

I only tested with one SM58 plugged in and got sound routing okay. I have not tried this for a show.

Hope this helps.

P

[pdherringParticipant]

Haha no problem at all! At least we have a post here for others to find now with information on using Qlab and the TCP driver 🙂

[pdherringParticipant]

Okay so A&H have come back to me and said the above commands are incorrect SysEx messages. They should read:

F0 7F 00 02 10 01 F7
F0 7F 00 02 10 13 F7
F0 7F 00 02 10 14 F7
F0 7F 00 02 10 08 F7

Notice the second section is 7F not F7 as per above as F7 indicates the end of a command.

P

[pdherringParticipant]

Thanks all! Very helpful 🙂

[pdherringParticipant]

Jumping on the band wagon of this post, does anyone have any suggestions of external hard disks for my MacBook Pro for recording over Dante and probably around 40-48 channels. I have a few gigs coming up that I want to test with but would like to know I have bought the right drive before I do. Do I go FW or USB and what size to average 48 channels for 3 hours?

Thanks
P

[pdherringParticipant]

Ticket has been logged with A&H so lets see if they agree its a bug or if I was just being an idiot. My supplier seemed to agree it looked like a software bug.

P

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