Pre-Sales/System Design Help - 5:1 x 24?

[JesusFreak1959]

I am designing a LBE experience where I need to run twenty-four, 5:1, surround sound mixes. Ideally, there would be 2 unique 5:1 mixes; 12 of one mix, and 12 of the other. Purchasing a hardware matrix mixer would be cost prohibitive. But perhaps a SAW/SAC combination would do the trick? From what I've read on the web, it will. Has anyone ever done something like this? Or could a knowledgable moderator comment? Thank you.

[sebastiandybing]

Yes it should be easy done with saw alone.
Place the first 5.1 mix on saw track 1-6 and asign them to
output 1-6, place the next mix on 7-12....,
Then the easiest would be to rent a 12 ch split with 12
outputs for each input.
You could actually use wathever playback software for this,

Sebastian

[JesusFreak1959]

Yes it should be easy done with saw alone.
Place the first 5.1 mix on saw track 1-6 and asign them to
output 1-6, place the next mix on 7-12....,
Then the easiest would be to rent a 12 ch split with 12
outputs for each input.
You could actually use wathever playback software for this,

Sebastian

I realize I can replicate these 2 mixes using hardware splitters and use any multi-track software. Sheoot, I can use 2 copies of Audacity (free!) to do that. But that option creates 2 problems: 1) cost... I've got to split the 5:1 mix (6 analog outs) multiple times, and 2) signal degradation.

SAW/SAC appears to be able to do this digitally. Digital replication is perfect (at least theoretically, and pretty darn close in reality). The only challenge is... how many times can I replicate these 2 mixes, and how many analog outputs can I expect to create at a reasonable cost?

[sebastiandybing]

In that case you will need 2x72 da converters!!!!
You will have to run 2xsac and 2xsaw, 2xcomputers,
2 x rme madi pcix and 2x rme aes card,
and then a bunch of DA converters,
You could buy a small house for this.

I would buy a good 16 ch DA conv. and rent
a good splitter.

Sebastian

[JesusFreak1959]

In that case you will need 2x72 da converters!!!!
You will have to run 2xsac and 2xsaw, 2xcomputers,
2 x rme madi pcix and 2x rme aes card,
and then a bunch of DA converters,
You could buy a small house for this.

I would buy a good 16 ch DA conv. and rent
a good splitter.

Sebastian

Thanks for the replies Sebastian. I think any way I go is going to be a boatload of cash. I'm just trying to find the most economical and reliable way to go. Do you know of any splitters that could perform such a task? I've been looking online and don't see anything that can do this without splitting the channels twice, e.g. using something like Whirlwind's SPC83L. At $500/each, the splitters alone will run me $3000, I'll still need a mondo D/A converter (at about $700) and I will have to live with signal degredation (not sure how noticable this would be). If I invest that $3k toward something like MOTU's 24 I/O, then I can get all the output channels I need at around $4k, with no signal degradation. The only question then is, can SAW and a SAW slave or 2 do this elegantly?

[905shmick]

What about a 72 channel SAC system using splitters on the MOTU or RME adat outputs to feed 18 D/A units?

I'm not 100***37;, but you might be able to use this appsys unit to act as an adat splitter http://www.appsys.ch/products/34-digitalaudio/55-adx32badx64b

Or you could try and source 2 of these OptiPatch+ units http://www.z-sys.com/pp_routing.html. You can do 1 to many routing with these, so they'd act as a digital splitter to feed all the D/A devices.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/OptiPatchPl/

[sebastiandybing]

This radial splitter will give you 8 splits per
input, but you will need 4 of them.
http://www.radialeng.com/re-8ox-detail.htm

Are you doing permanent instalation ?

Sebastian

[Ian Alexander]

How about a few more details on the show. Like venue, video sync, etc. Right now, I'm thinking, "Buy a rack of DVD players." :-)

[JesusFreak1959]

What about a 72 channel SAC system using splitters on the MOTU or RME adat outputs to feed 18 D/A units?

I'm not 100%, but you might be able to use this appsys unit to act as an adat splitter http://www.appsys.ch/products/34-digitalaudio/55-adx32badx64b

Or you could try and source 2 of these OptiPatch+ units http://www.z-sys.com/pp_routing.html. You can do 1 to many routing with these, so they'd act as a digital splitter to feed all the D/A devices.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/OptiPatchPl/


OK... now we're talking. Let me chew on this for a few hours and see. What kind of rig are you running 905shmick?

[JesusFreak1959]

How about a few more details on the show. Like venue, video sync, etc. Right now, I'm thinking, "Buy a rack of DVD players." :-)


Wild idea in the blue sky stages right now for Halloween 2013. Imagine 12 caskets on pneumatics/hydraulics that take you to hell, and 12 caskets that take you heaven. Each casket has a 5:1 sound system (car audio size/quality) and an LCD in front of the "deceased's" face. I'm outfitting a proof of concept casket right now, producing video, doing sound design/VO, but am also trying to conceptualize the IT/AV infrastructure and propose a budget.

[JesusFreak1959]

This radial splitter will give you 8 splits per
input, but you will need 4 of them.
http://www.radialeng.com/re-8ox-detail.htm

Are you doing permanent instalation ?

Sebastian

It will be a seasonal event. Will probably have to strike after each season.

[sebastiandybing]

Why do you do so many surround setups
and what about amps and speakers for
all these (24) surround setups.
Is it small groups of people who are going to
listen. is it music ??

Sebastian

[JesusFreak1959]

Why do you do so many surround setups
and what about amps and speakers for
all these (24) surround setups.
Is it small groups of people who are going to
listen. is it music ??

Sebastian

Each casket will contain one person, so each casket needs its own sound system. I'm not talking Genelec here... I have to produce this fairly inexpensively. And since the speakers are inches from the ears, I don't need powerful amps. There won't be much, if any music. It will mostly be VO and SFX.

[cgrafx]

if there are only two unique mixes, why do you need 24 separate 5.1 outputs?

why can't you just parallel all the common caskets?

this would significantly reduce your hardware configuration requirements.

[RBIngraham]

Mark,

I think you need to put some thought into how many independent timelines you or need running at the same time. If all you want to do is have a handful of 5.1 mixes playback, that just all start at the same time and end or repeat at the same time, SAW might work out well. You could use SAC to route those mixes to all the outputs.

However if you are thinking of having multiple timelines that are all independent of each others (as in each coffin can start, stop, repeat itself, etc...) separately of each other, then you may well want to look at other playback solutions.

There are a number of more show control/playback oriented applications that allow for numerous separate timelines to be running off a single computer that would be easier to use in these situations than SAW. They also have more advanced show control abilities like scripting and conditional based execution of cues, etc...

Some examples would be SFX or QLab.

I think you should take a look at those.

SAW is great if all you need/want is a single timeline that everything syncs to. But once you need multiple timelines that can all run synchronously or asynchronously from one another, there are other tools that will do that better. At least until the time Bob allows one to run multiple instances of SAW on a single machine simultaneously.

2013 is a long way away. I hope you meant 2012? :)

[kylesoundman]

Mark,

I think you need to put some thought into how many independent timelines you or need running at the same time. If all you want to do is have a handful of 5.1 mixes playback, that just all start at the same time and end or repeat at the same time, SAW might work out well. You could use SAC to route those mixes to all the outputs.

However if you are thinking of having multiple timelines that are all independent of each others (as in each coffin can start, stop, repeat itself, etc...) separately of each other, then you may well want to look at other playback solutions.

There are a number of more show control/playback oriented applications that allow for numerous separate timelines to be running off a single computer that would be easier to use in these situations than SAW. They also have more advanced show control abilities like scripting and conditional based execution of cues, etc...

Some examples would be SFX or QLab.

I think you should take a look at those.

SAW is great if all you need/want is a single timeline that everything syncs to. But once you need multiple timelines that can all run synchronously or asynchronously from one another, there are other tools that will do that better. At least until the time Bob allows one to run multiple instances of SAW on a single machine simultaneously.

2013 is a long way away. I hope you meant 2012? :)

You could still do all of them with different time lines from one instance of SAC and SAW....all you would need to do is have put which ever timeline tracks in saw then route to SAC then distribute through SAC ....the main could be say the first 5 channels then each MON mixer would get their own respective channels routed from SAW through sac...it wouldnt be that difficult it would just be time consuming. Then to have each casket play back at a certain time would merely be moving the audio in SAW down the time line to get it to que in where you want. And to simplify things it would only need to be 3 channels per casket LR front and LR Rear and Center. There are probably even easier ways to make it happen that I am unaware of but either way SACand SAW can do this. And probably cheaper than any other configuration...

[RBIngraham]

You could still do all of them with different time lines from one instance of SAC and SAW....all you would need to do is have put which ever timeline tracks in saw then route to SAC then distribute through SAC ....the main could be say the first 5 channels then each MON mixer would get their own respective channels routed from SAW through sac...it wouldn't be that difficult it would just be time consuming. Then to have each casket play back at a certain time would merely be moving the audio in SAW down the time line to get it to que in where you want. And to simplify things it would only need to be 3 channels per casket LR front and LR Rear and Center. There are probably even easier ways to make it happen that I am unaware of but either way SAC and SAW can do this. And probably cheaper than any other configuration...


Sorry, but you're missing my main point. Other more show control oriented applications can start any of the time lines at any point in time and have them all running their own sequences all at the same time.

So imagine, vignette A has a timeline.

Vignette B has it's own timeline. Vignette C has it's own, etc, etc, etc...

Now I want to start, stop, reset, and start any of those timelines at any random interval and they might all be running at the same time, they might reset at random intervals and maybe you have a pressure mat that triggers the timeline to run when a guest approached each Vignette. That's what a real show controller can do that SAW is not capable of doing.

Yes your description may be all that is needed, who knows. If all guests are only every seeing one vignette at a time, they sure that works. But if it's more like a haunted house, you need multiple timelines that all run independently of each other. The only way to do that with SAW would be to run multiple machines, one machine for each timeline. With something like SFX, QLab, Medialon (probably outside the budget in this example, but a very cool tool) you can do all that in a single computer more than likely.

Basically what your describing is a single timeline that you jump around from one point to another. Which could be triggered via MIDI. Again, maybe that's all he needs. But I feel it's worth pointing out that more sophisticated tools do exist and these are the kind of tools that many haunted houses use. (at least the ones that are not trying to reinvent the wheel with a bunch of homemade rube goldberg stuff) :)

[Dave Labrecque]

Mark,

I think you need to put some thought into how many independent timelines you or need running at the same time. If all you want to do is have a handful of 5.1 mixes playback, that just all start at the same time and end or repeat at the same time, SAW might work out well. You could use SAC to route those mixes to all the outputs.

However if you are thinking of having multiple timelines that are all independent of each others (as in each coffin can start, stop, repeat itself, etc...) separately of each other, then you may well want to look at other playback solutions.

There are a number of more show control/playback oriented applications that allow for numerous separate timelines to be running off a single computer that would be easier to use in these situations than SAW. They also have more advanced show control abilities like scripting and conditional based execution of cues, etc...

Some examples would be SFX or QLab.

I think you should take a look at those.

SAW is great if all you need/want is a single timeline that everything syncs to. But once you need multiple timelines that can all run synchronously or asynchronously from one another, there are other tools that will do that better. At least until the time Bob allows one to run multiple instances of SAW on a single machine simultaneously.

2013 is a long way away. I hope you meant 2012? :)

What's stopping him from running several instances of saw simultaneously?

[RBIngraham]

What's stopping him from running several instances of saw simultaneously?

Yes I guess that is an option but it is a bit of kludge.

Also, unless you hooked up multiple sound cards, or I guess you could run the sound cards in MME rather than ASIO so that multiple SAW instances could use a separate outputs on a single sound card, you wouldn't be able to run more than one instance of SAW on a machine. I never tried really, so I'm not sure how well that would work. It likely wouldn't work using ASIO, since most are not multi-client or if they are, they all for maybe 2 connections.

If you need separate machines for each separate timeline that would get kind of expensive, especially if each one needs 6 discrete outputs. Although I guess some of the built in sound cards do 5.1 these days now, don't they? I don't really pay too much attention to them, since they usually sound like crap and don't deal with low latency streaming, etc... but in this case they might work well enough, given that the speaker systems will be inexpensive and high fidelity is probably not the upmost concern.

Anyway, it would be tricky. Or you just get a tool that is designed to do that kind of work from the get go and make your life a lot easier. :)

[JesusFreak1959]

RBIngraham, Dave, Kyle and others,

Thanks for all the input, and apologies for my tardy reply. Your short replies are rich with possibilities that I had never thought of, and I greatly appreciate it! It will take me a while research and digest the suggestions, but either way it looks like I could use SAWstudio alone at least in the prototype stage. I would like to centralize the technology rather than do the RG kluge thing (thnx for pointing that out RBIngraham!), so the other product suggestions, again, are greatly appreciated.

BTW, the design at the moment is for the 2 sets of caskets to operate simultaneously. The only reason the 24 caskets would not be running in identical sync would be if we had to stagger them in order to reduce load on the hydraulic and/or pneumatic systems. We don't know the answer to that just yet.

Again, thanks for all the input!

[RBIngraham]

RBIngraham, Dave, Kyle and others,

Thanks for all the input, and apologies for my tardy reply. Your short replies are rich with possibilities that I had never thought of, and I greatly appreciate it! It will take me a while research and digest the suggestions, but either way it looks like I could use SAWstudio alone at least in the prototype stage. I would like to centralize the technology rather than do the RG kluge thing (thnx for pointing that out RBIngraham!), so the other product suggestions, again, are greatly appreciated.

BTW, the design at the moment is for the 2 sets of caskets to operate simultaneously. The only reason the 24 caskets would not be running in identical sync would be if we had to stagger them in order to reduce load on the hydraulic and/or pneumatic systems. We don't know the answer to that just yet.

Again, thanks for all the input!


As long as you have no need to start and stop separate sequences or timelines then SAW should handle all you need just fine. Even if you don't want to open or close multiple coffins at the same time, you could do some MIDI control or serial control with data on a SAW Control Track. That could trigger all, or some, or one at a time of each coffin to open and or close depending on how you are syncing that with the audio or video if you have some of that as well.

[JesusFreak1959]

if there are only two unique mixes, why do you need 24 separate 5.1 outputs?

why can't you just parallel all the common caskets?

this would significantly reduce your hardware configuration requirements.

Good grief. I don't know when my ADD brain left the building on this idea, but I think you've brought me back to a simple and elegant solution that I should have thought of 1st. Guess I've got too many irons in the fire at the moment... everything from set building/actors to lighting, sound, video, SFX, budgets, volunteers and God knows what else. Thanks Philip!

I suppose this means I'd be venturing into the world of distributed 70v world, of which I know very little. I don't think I can run 6, let alone 12 speakers in parallel that are 10' apart without signal loss or degredation. Or can I? I picked up a large lot of new speakers on Craigslist for a song and they are transformerless. I'd have to figure out how to wire them for a 70v system.

[Cary B. Cornett]

I suppose this means I'd be venturing into the world of distributed 70v world, of which I know very little. I don't think I can run 6, let alone 12 speakers in parallel that are 10' apart without signal loss or degredation. Or can I? I picked up a large lot of new speakers on Craigslist for a song and they are transformerless. I'd have to figure out how to wire them for a 70v system.

70v distribution ain't rocket science, but you probably don't need to go to the expense of all those transformers. There is another way. Speakers can be wired in series as well as in parallel. You can do combinations, too. Car speakers, you said? Ok, each of those would be either 8 ohm or 4 ohm. For grins, let's assume 4 ohm impedance for each speaker. Put two in parallel, you get a 2 ohm load. Put two in series, you get 8 ohms. Take two parallel pairs, put the two pairs in series, you're back to 4 ohms. This trick will work with any array that lays out in a 'square' pattern. So, you can do that with 4 speakers (2 x 2), 9 speakers (3 x 3), 16 speakers (4 x 4), and so on. 12 speakers doesn't quite fit this, but you can still get pretty close. Put 3 speakers in parallel, and tie 4 sets of those in series, and you get a total impedance of just about 5.3 ohms, which most amplifiers will be perfectly happy to drive. All this, and not one single transformer to buy.

As for signal degradation, it probably won't be too bad, although I personally would try the experiment to be sure. If you're worried about the length of wire, I have used runs of at least 100 feet of 16 ga. wire without any problems for floor monitors in a stage show, and these were at 8 ohms, not 70v line.

Sounds like you're working up a hell of a show there.... :eek::rolleyes::D:p

[RBIngraham]

70v distribution ain't rocket science, but you probably don't need to go to the expense of all those transformers. There is another way. Speakers can be wired in series as well as in parallel. You can do combinations, too. Car speakers, you said? Ok, each of those would be either 8 ohm or 4 ohm. For grins, let's assume 4 ohm impedance for each speaker. Put two in parallel, you get a 2 ohm load. Put two in series, you get 8 ohms. Take two parallel pairs, put the two pairs in series, you're back to 4 ohms. This trick will work with any array that lays out in a 'square' pattern. So, you can do that with 4 speakers (2 x 2), 9 speakers (3 x 3), 16 speakers (4 x 4), and so on. 12 speakers doesn't quite fit this, but you can still get pretty close. Put 3 speakers in parallel, and tie 4 sets of those in series, and you get a total impedance of just about 5.3 ohms, which most amplifiers will be perfectly happy to drive. All this, and not one single transformer to buy.

As for signal degradation, it probably won't be too bad, although I personally would try the experiment to be sure. If you're worried about the length of wire, I have used runs of at least 100 feet of 16 ga. wire without any problems for floor monitors in a stage show, and these were at 8 ohms, not 70v line.

Sounds like you're working up a hell of a show there.... :eek::rolleyes::D:p


Great suggestion for something like this, just one minor correction...

The simple division you are using assumes that speakers and audio signals function like DC circuits and that is not the case. So taking two 8 ohm impedance speakers and connecting them in parallel doesn't mean that the load is 4 ohms.


I'm not sure I'm up on my AC theory well enough to explain it, (so forgive me if this is wrong...) but this is how it was explained to me many moons ago... That is because we are talking about nominal impedances and that impedance is going to be frequency dependent, so measure at different AC (since audio signals are AC, not DC) wavelengths and that value will change. This is why you can parallel 3 8 ohm speakers onto an amplifier that requires a 4 ohm load and it will not harm the amplifier.

Having said that, using the simple DC theory is a good rule of thumb that is easy to understand and usually adds a bit of playing it safe as opposed to pushing things to the max, which is usually a good thing. :)

The cable length vs. diameter issue will typically only effect the dampening factor of the amp and speaker set up. Probably not an issue in this situation.

Of course if he did go with a constant voltage system, it makes the wiring a bit easy to keep track of and more importantly it eliminates a failure in one speaker or circuit from causing failures in other parts of the circuit, which is an issue when wiring things in series. If speaker A in a series circuit dies or losses it's connection for some reason, then speaker B and any other speaker that it shares a series circuit with will also stop working. (like cheap x-mas lights.. LOL) Again, may not be much of an issue in this situation, but something to think about. A constant voltage system would also allow for using different taps to be used at each speaker so one speaker could be louder or softer than another that is on the same channel. Which again may or may not be all that useful for this particular project.

In the end I probably wouldn't go down the constant voltage (70V) path for such a project either, because it would mean having at least 12 channels of 70V amps if you want 2 separate mixes of 5.1. Although now that I'm thinking about it, 6 x 24 is 144 speakers.... hmmmm... :cool:

[Butch Bos]

Another way to go
Use 25V transformers YES 25V they are for intercom use normally (replacing the old 45ohm speakers used in the 40-50s)
Using a 10 watt tap will give 62.5 ohm from an 8 ohm speaker just connect all 12 to an amplifier and it will see about 5 ohms
J.W.Davis has the transformers that I have used many times and they have a good frequency responce
Be advised that some transformers are VERY BAD and will eat up all the low end

Butch