Todays Outing with SAC.... A bittersweet ending

[bassthumper]

Well first off I must tell you we put SAC through a massive workout that has even me saying WOW!!! 24 ins with FOH and 4 Monitor sends running via firewire through 1 RME Fireface 800, 1 RME Octamic, and 1 Octamic II. 0 slipped buffers the whole time with absolutely no lag or delay of any sort. Greg said he can't remember if he was at 2 x 64 or 4 x 64 but WOW....

Now for the bitter side..... Even after doing what was suggested with the network share we were still unable to make my remote machine load the template from the host. After we had SAC up and running and had been doing great for about 2 hours we started getting this pop and crackle in all channels (sounded like someone decided to start a fire and mic it). towards the end Greg was able to bring it back up with no crackle so we are not absolutely sure what caused it.....At any rate because of the noise and the fact that it was rather noticeable, we decided to fall back to our safety net.

The good news through this is that we got SAC up on a firewire connection with no slippage and had everyone saying WOW. I hated to make the decision to drop back and punt this week but we will have a touchdown on the next outing.... I am sure of it.

Greg and I both seem to think that the noise could be from the generator we use to power our stage. Our setup is self supportive for all power, however, no one has ever felt the need to use a grounding rod on the generator and tonight Greg got a couple of 110 bites while connecting the equipment. By the next outing a rod will be purchased and the generator or the stage or both will be grounded.

Bob, other than the unknown noise, firewire worked like a charm . I know it is not the connection of choice for you and you don't suggest using it but at least now I know it is a viable alternative........

[Bob L]

Well... good and bad news in that story... but we will continue striving for perfection.

The noise description kind of sounds like clocking issues... could the fireface have lost its clock source... or switched from internal clock to external somehow?

Bob L

[bassthumper]

Well... good and bad news in that story... but we will continue striving for perfection.

The noise description kind of sounds like clocking issues... could the fireface have lost its clock source... or switched from internal clock to external somehow?

Bob L

It is possible.... We looked at it and it was showing the Fireface clocking as the slave. Greg changed it to master but the noise didn't go away.

I know he is planning on posting some images on here tomorrow of our setup and how it looked

[mako]

You might want to have a look at the "sharing" area
http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7596.

It's possible your noise could be related (outside chance but possible).

good luck

mako

[IraSeigel]

My question might be a little OT of your issue, but I'd like to ask, since I have the same setup: Are you getting synch from the FF's Word Clock, or are you synching the 2 Octamics to the FF via ADAT. My understanding from the RME newsgroup is that when using ADAT, the WC is redundant.

If I'm wrong, PLEASE tell me.
Regards,
Ira

[bassthumper]

My question might be a little OT of your issue, but I'd like to ask, since I have the same setup: Are you getting synch from the FF's Word Clock, or are you synching the 2 Octamics to the FF via ADAT. My understanding from the RME newsgroup is that when using ADAT, the WC is redundant.

If I'm wrong, PLEASE tell me.
Regards,
Ira

The FF and one of the octamics is connected via external coax but not the other. We have not had this issue before and have used this setup with SAW over past 3 years.

The only thing we can think is that the power coming the generator was not clean. We setup on Saturday night and ran for about 3 hours with no hitches but we were drawing our power from a wall socket.

[bassthumper]

OK I got it the remote up. I had to also have SAC going green when I made the connection.

[IraSeigel]

OK I got it the remote up. I had to also have SAC going green when I made the connection.

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by this.

As to your generator issue, perhaps it affected the FF. Since the Octamics use outboard wall warts, they probably wouldn't be affected. Don't you think?

Ira

[bassthumper]

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by this.

As to your generator issue, perhaps it affected the FF. Since the Octamics use outboard wall warts, they probably wouldn't be affected. Don't you think?

Ira


Sorry Ira this was to the other problem I had which was the remote connection coming up and sharing the mix template. I was finally able to get it to share and come up.

[Bob L]

You do not need to have SAC in live mode to make the remote connection... in fact... at the moment it seems more stable to connect first before activating the engine.

Bob L

[mako]

>snip< at the moment it seems more stable to connect first before activating the engine.

Bob L

My experience also.

Glad you got connected.

mako

[bassthumper]

Today I spoke to one of my customers who is a communications network tech. He told me in his experience with power that generator power is very "dirty". He also said something about the frequency path given off by a generator is a square path and not sine and that many pieces of digital depend on the sine signal. Could this be the case as far as what could have caused a clocking issue for us on Sunday???

I know nothing about this but if this be the case then I think we may have to review our outdoor setup and rethink power for the modules.

[Craig Allen]

Today I spoke to one of my customers who is a communications network tech. He told me in his experience with power that generator power is very "dirty". He also said something about the frequency path given off by a generator is a square path and not sine and that many pieces of digital depend on the sine signal. Could this be the case as far as what could have caused a clocking issue for us on Sunday???

I know nothing about this but if this be the case then I think we may have to review our outdoor setup and rethink power for the modules.
A generator doesn't put off a square wave - it does a sine wave. But it possibly isn't clean depending on the generator. Good ones are very clean (and expensive), but cheap consumer ones will drift a bit frequency wise. DC inverters are square waves and can do nasty things to electronics.

My guess is that it wasn't your problem since the RME has it's own clock and doesn't reference the AC line.

[Leadfoot]

Now for the bitter side..... Even after doing what was suggested with the network share we were still unable to make my remote machine load the template from the host. After we had SAC up and running and had been doing great for about 2 hours we started getting this pop and crackle in all channels (sounded like someone decided to start a fire and mic it). towards the end Greg was able to bring it back up with no crackle so we are not absolutely sure what caused it.....At any rate because of the noise and the fact that it was rather noticeable, we decided to fall back to our safety net.

Greg and I both seem to think that the noise could be from the generator we use to power our stage. Our setup is self supportive for all power, however, no one has ever felt the need to use a grounding rod on the generator and tonight Greg got a couple of 110 bites while connecting the equipment. By the next outing a rod will be purchased and the generator or the stage or both will be grounded.


Are you by chance using a behringer processor for the mains? They've been known to make a frying bacon sound when they have problems.
I doubt you have a generator putting out square waves, but it is possible to have a generator putting out a high harmonic distortion sine wave which will cause problems with sensitive electronics. most cheap generators have a high percentage of harmonic distortion. You can only see it on a scope, voltage can easily be checked with a multimeter.. imo any time you are using a genny, you should at least check the output voltage.

And as you already may suspect, I wouldn't trust firewire as a robust means of high performance audio data transfer, especially in a live critical situation.

Tony

[gregangst]

On Saturday, I was able to reproduce the same situation that we discovered on the outdoor event the previous Sunday night, however this was on utility power. Bob, you were right it was a clock issue. I actually ran SAC in a live event for about 5 hours with no problems once this problem was resolved.

My setup is one RME Fireface 800, one RME OCTAMIC-D, one RME OCTAMIC II, and one HP dual core 2.4 GHz laptop.
I am running 16 bit at 44.1KHz on every channel.

My operating system is XP4 SP2. As we discussed in Vegas, the small Firewire connector on the laptop is not a very good way to go. It is very troublesome.

Anyway I was running a FOH setup of 26 inputs, multiple reverbs, eqs, and compressors. I also had setup 8 separate monitor consoles with input splits so each system is totally separate.

The sound was awesome, I look forward to more use of this product in many live events.

I actually plan to use a box that I built for the host computer that is a dual core 4.2 GHz AMD Athalon 64. This system uses one Gigbyte IRAM card to host the operating system as well as SAC and possibly SAWStudio. I will be using Firewire 800 between it and the FireFace 800. The system will boot from pressing the power button to having SAC running in approximately 30 seconds. In a live setting I am concerned with how long it takes windows to boot. So I am taking a minimalist approach to having a stripped down system just for SAC. No internet, I want no surprises.

Friday night I was able to get a remote connection between my laptop and the IRAM box with all of the templates transferred to the remote machine. I let it run for about 10 hours with no slips.

Bob, keep up the good work. You sure have some very fine products that actually perform better than advertised.

greg

[gregangst]

A few weeks ago I went tot Tenneessee, using the same setup. I ran SAC with a horn section, It was awsome being able to have a trumpet walk up to a mic and it not distort. Also being able to add reverb was a great feature.

In this setup, I recorded 20 tracks of the Clark Brothers for about three hours a night for three nights. This is the group that won the next great american band on American Idol last year.

I have recorded multiple concerts over the last year and a half with the same setup. My only regret is not having more hardware inputs. I one setup I need at least 40 inputs but at that Time only 12 mics and 6 line inputs available. This concert had 5 Grammy award winners on stage.

It is awesome to be able to carry this kind of hardware in the trunk of my car.

greg

[bassthumper]

Are you by chance using a behringer processor for the mains? They've been known to make a frying bacon sound when they have problems.
I doubt you have a generator putting out square waves, but it is possible to have a generator putting out a high harmonic distortion sine wave which will cause problems with sensitive electronics. most cheap generators have a high percentage of harmonic distortion. You can only see it on a scope, voltage can easily be checked with a multimeter.. imo any time you are using a genny, you should at least check the output voltage.

And as you already may suspect, I wouldn't trust firewire as a robust means of high performance audio data transfer, especially in a live critical situation.

Tony

Tony read Greg's post preceeding this one and you will find our setup. Other than the RME's occassionally I use a M-Audio Firewire Solo for small setups.

[gregangst]

http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/c:\saw

[dbarrow]

On Saturday, I was able to reproduce the same situation that we discovered on the outdoor event the previous Sunday night, however this was on utility power. Bob, you were right it was a clock issue. I actually ran SAC in a live event for about 5 hours with no problems once this problem was resolved.

My setup is one RME Fireface 800, one RME OCTAMIC-D, one RME OCTAMIC II, and one HP dual core 2.4 GHz laptop.
I am running 16 bit at 44.1KHz on every channel.

My operating system is XP4 SP2. As we discussed in Vegas, the small Firewire connector on the laptop is not a very good way to go. It is very troublesome.

Anyway I was running a FOH setup of 26 inputs, multiple reverbs, eqs, and compressors. I also had setup 8 separate monitor consoles with input splits so each system is totally separate.

The sound was awesome, I look forward to more use of this product in many live events.

I actually plan to use a box that I built for the host computer that is a dual core 4.2 GHz AMD Athalon 64. This system uses one Gigbyte IRAM card to host the operating system as well as SAC and possibly SAWStudio. I will be using Firewire 800 between it and the FireFace 800. The system will boot from pressing the power button to having SAC running in approximately 30 seconds. In a live setting I am concerned with how long it takes windows to boot. So I am taking a minimalist approach to having a stripped down system just for SAC. No internet, I want no surprises.

Friday night I was able to get a remote connection between my laptop and the IRAM box with all of the templates transferred to the remote machine. I let it run for about 10 hours with no slips.

Bob, keep up the good work. You sure have some very fine products that actually perform better than advertised.

greg

What plugins were you using and how were you controlling them? With Netsupport Manager or some such?

[steel53]

Bassthumper, are you and Greg planning on using SAC when you come to Port Acres? I have my system up and running and am going thru the trials. I've had good luck so far with remote setup using a 100' cat5. My first gig will be the 4th of July. Hopefully everything will go smooth. At least I have time to work some of the kinks out. I'm using 4 ada8000's and raydat. So for the most load I've had is 27%.

[IraSeigel]

Greg,
I've been seeing a lot of HP laptops lately being used for A/V work, and I'm thinking of repacing my older Thinkpad T40. Which HP model do you use or recommend? Thanks, Ira

[DaveS]

I'm curious as well...

[gregangst]

Yes, we will be using SAC with our trailer during the Port Acres event. On our last outing, we ran front of house, front of stage monitors, drum monitor and three in ear monitor mixes also while recording 24 tracks of audio to hard disk. system load was around 58%. I don't think that we will be getting our Yamaha board out of the trailer.

We have one more street service in June before we come to Port Acres. Our setup is using Firewire, wish I had the money to spend on a couple of RayDat cards. Our mic Preamps are RME Octamics.

I look forward to seeing your setup.
greg

[gregangst]

In answer to the question on LapTops, mine is an HP nx9420 with 2 gig of memory. This one has a large display, however I am having battery charging problems. A new motherboard was installed, a new power supply was purchased, and a new battery was purchased.

The problem still exists with my laptop battery system.

[gregangst]

Steel53, are you guys getting a sound permit for us at the Port Acres event?

Our JBL stacks are six - 15s and two horns on each side of the trailer. These stack up to about 10 feet in the air on each side.

greg

[steel53]

Greg,

I'll check on the permit. The church is on the outskirts of town so that helps. Several of the houses in front of it were damaged in Hurricane Rita and never repaired so they are empty. I'll try to bring my Sac system. I'm in the process of buying amps and speakers. So I don't have everything yet. The main thing is that the "brain" is together. Just in case you're not sure who I am, I played the steel guitar at the Christmas program ya'll did. Looking forward to you seeing ya'll in June. Also I believe and will double check, there should be ample power. There is an electrical connection for a travel trailer close to the front of the building. I'll check the volt/amperage on it.