Brent Evans
08-18-2009, 09:15 PM
Monday night was the first time out with SAC, at our local church camp meeting. The meeting is held under an outdoor arbor, with indoor and outdoor seating. We've previously run with an A&H GL3200, and it's been good for the most part. The monitors have been a very sore spot, but this is caused by the fact that the stage is all concrete with a 4' block wall 8' behind the monitor line, which makes for a very resonant area. After two nights of meeting, we have FOH and monitors dialed in better than ever, and we have the best sound we've ever had in both environments, and this by a long stretch in the monitors.
Night 1 was kind of a rocky start, as we were having wireless networking problems. The original plan was to have me at FOH wirelessly on a laptop and my helper on stage with a second remote for monitors. We started off with both connected, but very quickly started having problems keeping both connected. We ended up with his laptop at FOH to run the whole thing. Sound quality was great, apart from first night jitters, and a lav pack failure, which was easily corrected. On the way home, I placed a call to Bob (who returned it in 15 minutes :eek:, you can't get that from Digidesign....), and we went over the problems. I had the host wirelessly connected to the router, and everything running on G network speeds, and Bob felt that was the source of the problem. I have to say, Bob is very passionate about his software, and it makes me feel very secure to know that the developer actually cares about his creation this way, and knows it inside and out the way Bob does. I learned more from him in a 30 minute phone call than should be possible. I wouldn't hesitate to call again if I needed it.
For this evening, we, on Bob's reccomendation, wired the host directly to the router, and I picked up an N card for my laptop (and made sure that all laptops were not using Wireless zero config, none were). This mostly fixed the networking issue and we were able to implement the original idea, and this gave us great results. The only other glitch with the remotes was solved by a restart, so I'm pretty confident in saying we had 100***37; software success, with only 7 dropped buffers all evening, and all of them were related to one specific plugin (an RTA).
When i spoke with Bob Monday evening, he asked how sound quality was. I have to say, I kind of waffled on FOH sound, and sang praises of the monitor mix. After tonight, and a few more EQ and plugin adjustments, my waffling is over. FOH was awesome. It was clean, clear, tight, punchy, exactly what we wanted. Several people said it was the best sound ever. The band mix was exactly right for the first time ever. There's something about the way this system mixes audio that is just fundamentally different than anything else I've ever heard.
The system has generated quite a bit of interest, and I'm hoping it will be the start of something good in this area. Both of my helpers are quite taken with the interface, picking it up with very little training. Our sound contractor has even referred me a contact who may be interested in installing SAC instead of Aviom, after he saw the flexibility.
Quote of the week, from the choir director: "I've heard of portable sound, but this takes it to a completely different level!"
The final build was:
HD: 500G|SAMS 5K HD502HI
MB: ASROCK G31M-S 775 G31 RT
CPU: INTEL|PDC E5200 2.5G 2M
MEM: 1Gx2|G.SK 240 F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR
IF: RME DIGI9652 + 3x ADA8000
Ran about 20 channels, 4 monitor mixes, EQ on most channels, compressors on 10 or so, 1 Waves Renaissance Verb plug, 2 rubberfilters, 3 instances of TapeIt, 1 Mlimiter plug and SpectrPRO (this one caused the buffer drops) at 3x64 with no dropped buffers until I popped SpectrPRO on about halfway through, and a total of 7 that all happened while SpectrPRO was engaged. I did have realtime priority forced, and I'll use a different RTA tomorrow to see how that works. We recorded all 20 engaged tracks with DigiCheck as well, and I definiently see the usefulness of SAW even just for track capture, as DigiCheck takes a while to save the files. TapeIt on the other hand, has the files instantly ready when you click STOP, but it lacks the ability to sync multiple instances, so it's only useful for capturing a single track, or a mix. Total CPU load never exceeded 20%.
I also discovered a neat little program for communicating called Fomine Net Send GUI (http://www.fomine.com/net-send-gui.html) which allows LAN communication via Windows' own Net Send protocol. It can stay on top of SAC, and its windows will always pop up on top, so messages always get through. It gives you a list of all computers on the network, and you can send to one or all. It's very simple, and VERY effective. Using this, I was able to communicate with monitors and my second FOH helper effortlessly, and completely quietly (which is important for a church service). They also have a few other programs along these lines that look useful as well. And, best of all, it's free.
I am confident that performance will continue to improve, as we get the sound further dialed in and get used to the interface, but I am quite pleased with what we've accomplished so far.
Now, here's the kicker. I don't do this for a living (although I'd love to). I do audio at my own church, and I like to think that I know what I'm doing. I've even occasionally installed or upgraded systems in other churches, but I'm not even a weekend warrior when it comes to gigging. SAC is so intuitve that I've been able to get it running nearly flawlessly in only two nights, and train two other people on mixing on the system.
Three thumbs up to Bob!
Night 1 was kind of a rocky start, as we were having wireless networking problems. The original plan was to have me at FOH wirelessly on a laptop and my helper on stage with a second remote for monitors. We started off with both connected, but very quickly started having problems keeping both connected. We ended up with his laptop at FOH to run the whole thing. Sound quality was great, apart from first night jitters, and a lav pack failure, which was easily corrected. On the way home, I placed a call to Bob (who returned it in 15 minutes :eek:, you can't get that from Digidesign....), and we went over the problems. I had the host wirelessly connected to the router, and everything running on G network speeds, and Bob felt that was the source of the problem. I have to say, Bob is very passionate about his software, and it makes me feel very secure to know that the developer actually cares about his creation this way, and knows it inside and out the way Bob does. I learned more from him in a 30 minute phone call than should be possible. I wouldn't hesitate to call again if I needed it.
For this evening, we, on Bob's reccomendation, wired the host directly to the router, and I picked up an N card for my laptop (and made sure that all laptops were not using Wireless zero config, none were). This mostly fixed the networking issue and we were able to implement the original idea, and this gave us great results. The only other glitch with the remotes was solved by a restart, so I'm pretty confident in saying we had 100***37; software success, with only 7 dropped buffers all evening, and all of them were related to one specific plugin (an RTA).
When i spoke with Bob Monday evening, he asked how sound quality was. I have to say, I kind of waffled on FOH sound, and sang praises of the monitor mix. After tonight, and a few more EQ and plugin adjustments, my waffling is over. FOH was awesome. It was clean, clear, tight, punchy, exactly what we wanted. Several people said it was the best sound ever. The band mix was exactly right for the first time ever. There's something about the way this system mixes audio that is just fundamentally different than anything else I've ever heard.
The system has generated quite a bit of interest, and I'm hoping it will be the start of something good in this area. Both of my helpers are quite taken with the interface, picking it up with very little training. Our sound contractor has even referred me a contact who may be interested in installing SAC instead of Aviom, after he saw the flexibility.
Quote of the week, from the choir director: "I've heard of portable sound, but this takes it to a completely different level!"
The final build was:
HD: 500G|SAMS 5K HD502HI
MB: ASROCK G31M-S 775 G31 RT
CPU: INTEL|PDC E5200 2.5G 2M
MEM: 1Gx2|G.SK 240 F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR
IF: RME DIGI9652 + 3x ADA8000
Ran about 20 channels, 4 monitor mixes, EQ on most channels, compressors on 10 or so, 1 Waves Renaissance Verb plug, 2 rubberfilters, 3 instances of TapeIt, 1 Mlimiter plug and SpectrPRO (this one caused the buffer drops) at 3x64 with no dropped buffers until I popped SpectrPRO on about halfway through, and a total of 7 that all happened while SpectrPRO was engaged. I did have realtime priority forced, and I'll use a different RTA tomorrow to see how that works. We recorded all 20 engaged tracks with DigiCheck as well, and I definiently see the usefulness of SAW even just for track capture, as DigiCheck takes a while to save the files. TapeIt on the other hand, has the files instantly ready when you click STOP, but it lacks the ability to sync multiple instances, so it's only useful for capturing a single track, or a mix. Total CPU load never exceeded 20%.
I also discovered a neat little program for communicating called Fomine Net Send GUI (http://www.fomine.com/net-send-gui.html) which allows LAN communication via Windows' own Net Send protocol. It can stay on top of SAC, and its windows will always pop up on top, so messages always get through. It gives you a list of all computers on the network, and you can send to one or all. It's very simple, and VERY effective. Using this, I was able to communicate with monitors and my second FOH helper effortlessly, and completely quietly (which is important for a church service). They also have a few other programs along these lines that look useful as well. And, best of all, it's free.
I am confident that performance will continue to improve, as we get the sound further dialed in and get used to the interface, but I am quite pleased with what we've accomplished so far.
Now, here's the kicker. I don't do this for a living (although I'd love to). I do audio at my own church, and I like to think that I know what I'm doing. I've even occasionally installed or upgraded systems in other churches, but I'm not even a weekend warrior when it comes to gigging. SAC is so intuitve that I've been able to get it running nearly flawlessly in only two nights, and train two other people on mixing on the system.
Three thumbs up to Bob!