One of the coolest new features Digidesign has implemented in the SC48 and will soon add to D-Show & Profile with the impending release of software 2.8.1 is Group Spill.

Here’s a short video tour of the feature.

Here’s a video I ran across on Mixonline.com that’s close to my heart. FOH mixer Nick Simons gives a tour of The Joint, the new 4,100-seat performance venue at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, which features an extensive d&b audiotechnik installation with remote monitoring of all functions, Digidesign D-Show Profile mixers and BSS London control of processing and zone control.

When we started out on the plan to revamp the audio system at Kensington Troy last summer, moving from the Yamaha PM1D to the Digidesign platform, a new PA, new microphones, etc. this is a profile of a similarly designed system. Worth the watch!

In exploring Youtube yesterday, I ran across a really informative console tour of the new SC48 console from Digidesign that I have written about previously and we are considering for use at our portable campuses.  Check this out!

Two plug-ins that are rocking my world these days.

Trillium Labs’ TL Space is the first TDM convolution reverb for Venue!  This innovative convolution TDM reverb plug-in reproduces natural rooms and classic reverbs from the largest concert hall to the densest plate reverb.  TL Space delivers the pristine sound of natural reverb spaces with the familiar controls used in high end hardware reverb units. By combining the sampled acoustics of real reverb spaces with advanced DSP algorithms, TL Space offers stunning realism with full control of reverb parameters in mono, stereo and surround formats.

TL Space includes a comprehensive library of high quality sampled reverb spaces and effects ideal for music and post applications. In addition, TL Space can easily import existing impulse responses in common convolution formats.

This delay came highly recommended from a few friends.  Really good stuff here!

Find an echo tone that fits your mix by choosing one of the 30 built-in echo styles modeled after a personal collection of vintage echos. One of the favorites is the warm sound of “Studio Tape”, modeled after a ATR-102 half-inch two-track machine. You’ll also get instant access to a whole range of classics, including EchoPlex, Space Echo, Memory Man, DM-2, and the TelRay oilcan delay. EchoBoy’s chorus even emulates the CE-2 chorus, considered a holy-grail of guitar chorus pedals. And yes, turn it up! EchoBoy is designed to be abused, just like real analog gear

No math needed to figure out delay times! Just dial in a musical note value and lock it to your song’s tempo with the flip of a switch. Fine-tune the echo rhythm with the Groove, Accent, and Feel controls.

Even though EchoBoy is easy to use, it’s also incredibly versatile. Switch to Dual Echo or Ping-Pong modes for powerful stereo echo effects. Or use Rhythm mode’s remarkably easy-to-use 16-tap rhythmic delay. Under the Style Tweak button you’ll find a 3-band parametric EQ with separate control over echo decay and tone. Choose the amount and type of analog saturation, dial in the amount of tape wobble, and even reverb-style diffusion control. There’s nothing anywhere that gives you this sort of control.

Along with the release of the SC48 this week from Digidesign, I’m also excited to see version 2.8.1 of the D-Show software shipping soon. There are some welcome new features that I’m looking forward to!

1. VCA & Group Spill is something I think I will use all the time. I had a chance to play with this on the SC48 demo I saw a few weeks ago and since I like to layout my console fully utilizing the 4 fader banks, this is another very intuitive way to access things that might not be at immediate reach. This feature temporarily brings channels assigned to a VCA or group immediately to the top of the console. Double-tap the Select button for a given VCA or group and the contents “spill” across the console’s input faders from right to left. Super cool!
2. Copy and Paste Plug-In Settings. This one should have been there from the start on the desk. You could always get around it using the plug-in library, but this is a welcome addition!
3. Channel pan is now included in the snapshot crossfade. Previously the pans would snap which was less than ideal. I don’t scope pans very often but glad it will be a smoother transition.
4. Cue on Mains Fader. I have a set of monitors at FOH that I use quite often to cue things up, see what a player is adding to the mix at any given time, etc. We also don’t use our main fader for anything – the PA is fed off the matrixes pre of that fader so it is pretty well useless. 2.8.1 lets you assign that fader to control the monitor level (leaving the mains level unaffected). Now when I want to supplement what I’m hearing with my monitors or cue something up, I can use that fader instead of having to reach to the top of the desk to twist the monitor knob. Not a big thing but still cool.

I know that not everyone is happy with Digidesign’s policy of charging for software updates. This upgrade is $149 list. My take on this is that a significant drawing point to Digidesign is the fact that, as an audio console company, they update their consoles frequently. If paying a modest fee means that I see updates at least once a year with good, usable feature improvements, I’m more than willing to contribute. The alternative is what I experienced with Y*!@#$%A where some updates were free, but they were largely bug fixes or it was years between major feature updates. For what its worth, those are my $0.02.

I can’t wait to get my hands on 2.8.1 once it is released!

Exciting news introduced yesterday, the Digidesign SC48! I had a chance to take a demo for a test drive a few weeks ago since we are going to be strongly considering replacing some M7CLs with this console. If you’ve missed the details, the SC48 is essentially a D-Show Mix Rack/Profile system without the rack; everything is built into the console. It’s insanely small – 16 channel faders and 8 master faders. 48 in, 16 out is the standard config although you can expand the outputs to 32. It includes two mix cards with the capacity for 20 plug-ins in the rack (rather than 100 in the full-blown D-Show systems). Included as standard is ECX laptop control of the system and a firewire connection (Protools 8 LE also comes with the console) for 18 channels of I/O to a laptop or desktop for recording. There’s even an included shelf that fits perfectly on the left side of the desk for the laptop to sit in close proximity to the control surface. Price point is in the neighborhood of a M7CL.

I’m excited about this console for a few reasons:

• To the best of my knowledge Digidesign is the first and only company to create a range of live mixing consoles based on the same software with interchangeable file standards. In our multi-campus model, this is HUGE. The new SC48 means engineers at Kensington would only have to learn one software and it would be consistent whether they are mixing at a portable campus on a 48×16 system or at one of our permanent locations with i/o that could easily exceed 96×32 or more. Also means that our guys can build preset libraries of their favorite settings and travel with them from room to room with perfect translation.
• It should be no surprise, since Digidesign is first and foremost a software company, but the D-Show platform is the most powerful, well thought out, and intuitive digital audio platform I’ve ever worked on. The snapshot automation system is the standard every other console should be patterned after and the native use of plug-ins takes mixing to an entirely different stratosphere.
• I love that the SC48 carries on the same small footprint of the Profile with 24 faders (16 input/8 output). I love mixing on the Profile so much because everything is directly in front of you and instantly available and the SC48 feels great for 48 inputs.
• A new feature in v2.8 of the software makes the 16 channel faders really useful. Digidesign has modeled a feature after the Midas “pop groups”…double tap the select on a VCA fader and up to 16 of the faders assigned to that VCA populate immediately to the left of the master section. Regardless of whichever bank the drum channels are on, doubletap the VCA and they pop up to the top bank and are available for immediate control. As I play with a potential channel layout for our campus scenario, this feature is huge!

There are a couple weaknesses in the initial release…

• Initially, there is no on-board accommodation for an external stage rack or digital snake. Analog only inputs into the SC48. If you want to use a digital snake (such as the Whirlwind E-Snake we use currently at several campuses), there is no way to integrate gain control of those external preamps into the console. BIG weakness. C’mon Digi!
• I’m sad that there is no PQ control on board. The SC48 is not the only system to be missing PQ – the Mix Rack system also has no provision for PQ. If you’ve been following my thoughts since we installed our Venue system last Summer, you know that I think PQ rocks! I understand in a package of the SC48′s size, some things have to be left out. I just wish there was an expansion option to add PQ control.

Overall, this console rocks! Kensington owns four Yamaha M7CLs but I can’t imagine that lasting for much longer. Changing from a PM1D to the D-Show was the single best decision I’ve made for audio at the Troy campus and I have a feeling we’ll be saying the same thing soon about the SC48. Yamaha consoles are reliable, steady workhorses and are certainly a capable tool. But Digidesign’s software puts them in an entirely different league. It is intuitive, so powerful, and now compatible among multiple levels of systems. The Venue becomes far more transparent than any other desk I’ve used, allowing the engineer to focus on mixing while the technology supports that task, rather than being a slave to the workflow of the software.

We have a demo coming in the next few weeks so a few of our campus engineers can spend some time on the SC48. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Easter 2009 was filled with lots of new techniques and systems things that were implemented. In no particular order, here’s some notable stuff…

#1 – Ever since I started mixing on Venue, I’ve learned a lot from studying other engineers’ show files to see how they run the console. One common theme I had noticed was the use of virtual channel strips or EQ/dynamics plug-ins on vocals. I never completely understood why but had not really tried it either. Too many people do it for it to be a fluke. This holiday was a turning point in my channel workflow, especially when it comes to vocals!

For Easter, I used the Digi 7-Band EQ and Compressor on each vocal and it made such a difference in a couple ways. First, the extra bands that were available instead of the 4-band on-board channel EQ were welcome. But the bigger benefit came in automation. By running vocal channel processing from dedicated plug-ins, I was able to easily automate independently from the rest of the band channels. There were multiple instances where I wanted to create a snapshot that had faders/mutes/dynamics scoped and the only channels with EQ scoped were vocals. Using the plug-in route, I could add their plug-ins to the snapshot scope without having to effect the EQ on the rest of the console or needing a second snapshot only to scope the EQ changes. Since this revelation, I’m investigating full blown channel strip plugs and think I’ve landed on the McDSP Channel G as the one we’re going to go with.

#2 – There were three audio playback cues needed in the service – a drama voiceover, music for the crunch, and a testimony voiceover at the end of the day. Inspired by the latest Scovill Digi webinar on advanced Snapshots, I finally got MIDI going back and forth between our ProTools machine and the D-Show. This is so slick! Now, using MMC and a snapshot, I can locate PT to a specific time code associated with said clip, set the level on the fader, and start the clip. Worked perfectly every time. On our second service day, I also used MMC to start and stop recording to PT for all of the sections I wanted. All I had to do during the turnover between each service was set a new playlist for all 56 tracks I was recording and at the end of the day I had all 4 services with each service’s tracks on their own playlist.

#3 – While I was working with MIDI, I also routed MIDI time code from our MOTU Timepiece into the Venue for the first time. I must say, I tried using timecode with our PM1D during my first holiday at KCC and it was more trouble then it was worth. I don’t remember all the specifics of what I tried to do back then or whatnot, but again inspired by the webinar, I thought I’d revisit it on the D-Show.

I think this proved to be even cooler then MMC control of ProTools! Since all of our tunes in the day other than the piano ballad were to click tracks that came from the video system, I was able to lock all of the video rolls to time code so as soon as the video rolled, my console responded and I never had to worry about missing the start of the tune/video. This was also handy for a few snapshot changes mid-song for a couple of the tunes, mainly for subtle effects changes or vocal mix stuff (mics up/mics down). These were the sort of things that were too intricate to hit manually, but since they could be done automatically, added an extra polish to the mix.  It worked flawlessly and was so easy to work with that I think some of these basic time code functions will be a normal part of my operation mode going forward. It was so nice to be able to just focus on mixing and not have to remember to hit every cue manually!  Because our video playback comes from a digital source, the timecode is very stable and locks nearly instantly to the console.

That’s it for now. If more things come to mind, that will have to come as a part two!

Since I’ve recently covered my love affair with Digidesign’s PQ mixers, I thought it might be interesting to go through how our PQ monitor channels (which could be used for ears or a wedge mix) are setup. Each PQ mixer has a choice from the following sources:

• Kick (direct off channel)
• Wedge Drum Mix (Mono Aux – Snare & Hat with a little bit of toms if necessary)
• Stereo Drum Mix (Stereo Aux – for ears)
• Bass (direct off clean channel)
• Guitar 1 (direct off channel – mono)
• Guitar 2 (direct off channel – mono)
• Keys Submix (Mono Aux, includes verb for piano)
• VOX 1 (could be a mono Aux submix of lead vocal mics for the day or a direct of single channel)
• VOX 2 (could be a mono Aux submix of BGV mics for the day or a direct of single channel
• Click (submix of drummer’s Dr Beat and click channels from ProTools & VTR)
• Track/Loop
• Extras Stereo Mix (ambience, speaker mics, playback – basically everything else that artist would want to hear when they aren’t playing so they’re still connected to what’s going on.

As you can see, I have to dedicate 12 auxes to monitor functions in addition to the PQ mixers in order to execute the above configuration. My auxes are setup like this…

• Aux 1 – VOX Verb
• Aux 2 – VOX Delay
• Aux 3 – Band FX (generic bus for specialty effects)
• Aux 4 – Talk (this is for various talkback stuff from comm to get to the wedges since it gets to ears down the extras aux mix. This means this aux is only used for wedge mix PQs)
• Aux 5/6 – Vocals Submix 1 & 2 (sometimes used, sometimes not. Depends on the vocal configuration for the day)
• Aux 7/8 – Band Submix 1 & 2 (used to submix multiple inputs for an artist to 1 PQ channel. Ex: acoustic & electric.)
• Aux 9/10 – Stereo Drum Submix
• Aux 11 – Wedge Drum Submix
• Aux 12 – Keys Submix
• Aux 13/14 – Stereo Extras Submix (ambience, playback, speaker mics, talkback from comm)
• Aux 15 – Click submix
• Aux 16 – Feed to Subwoofers

Looking at the assignments, one obvious question is how do I survive with only three aux dedicated to effects? Pretty easy actually. The trick is to make more use of direct outs or inserts to feed specific effects for any case where a single channel is the only thing feeding the effect. For example, the snare and piano verbs are fed direct off their channel. If I need an acoustic verb, also fed direct. Once you include this in the equation, I now have 8-10 discreet effects busses available, plus the 14 submix auxes and 8 PQ monitor mixers.

Again, if there’s questions, please ask away!

Here’s a few tips and tricks I read about Transient Designer a long while back.  I’m not sure where I found these – copied them into my Evernote without noting the location!

Boosting its attack controls on drum tracks can give kick, snare and toms the extra punch often needed to make them come alive. When you’re processing tom tracks, lowering the TD4′s sustain controls is a much more transparent (and speedier) remedy for reining in timpani-like sustain than smothering batter heads with duct tape. And for reducing excessive cymbal bleed into tom mics, just turn the TD4′s sustain controls counterclockwise for inputted toms and you’re done.

I wouldn’t dream of mixing a drum kit in my room without Transient Designer.  However, Transient Designer sounds great on more than just drums. Crank that sustain knob on soaring guitar solos to make David Gilmour blush. Or boost the attack on dampened ostinato parts played low on a six-stringer to make that rock ‘n’ roll vamp jump. These are just a few of the well-known — but powerful — applications that the TD excel at.

Tight, discrete-sounding drum tracks are cool, but trash is a bash. When your drums’ overhead mics sound like they were placed in a shoe closet and you’d prefer the sound of an empty warehouse, Transient Designer can provide instantaneous moving services. Route the stereo room mics through two of the TD’s linked channels (channels 1 and 2, or 3 and 4) and crank the unit’s attack controls to put a point on the traps. Then, slowly raise the sustain controls on both channels to bring up the room tone for an “all-buttons-in,” 1176-type sound — without pumping cymbals. Fine-tune the sustain control settings so that the room mics’ envelope more or less ends on the desired upbeat or downbeat for a driving rhythmic effect.

Are you bored with using the same tired reverb patches on your productions? Patch your reverb’s left- and right-channel outputs through linked Transient Designer channels to add a little pizzazz. Boost both attack controls on TD to the max and lower the sustain controls to their minimum settings. You’ll notice that the reverb’s intensity at its onset will subtly increase while the apparent decay time decreases.

Take the exact opposite approach to process a reverb patch so that it exhibits a pyramidal slope. Turn Transient Designer’s attack controls on two linked channels fully counterclockwise and crank the sustain controls to the max. With these settings, the onset of the reverb patched through Transient Designer will be de-emphasized, but the effect will bloom and then tail off over time (as long as the reverb program’s decay time is set to a sufficient length so that it continues evolving during the unit’s sustain phase).

Transient Designer can also be used to superimpose the dynamics of one track onto those of unrelated tracks. For example, patch two mults of a kick drum track into channels 1 and 3 of TD and send the outputs of those two channels “out to get pizza” (i.e., somewhere they won’t be heard). Patch a stereo keyboard track into TD’s channels 2 and 4 and activate both of the unit’s Link switches. Next, boost channels 1 and 3 attack controls to emphasize the kick drum’s slammin’ nature. TD will dynamically adjust the attack of its processed keyboard tracks to track the dynamics of the kick drum. Try it — you’ll get the point!

Its a great day to be a Venue engineer! Somehow I missed its initial release a few weeks ago, but yesterday I loaded the new SPL Transient Designer TDM plug-in and enjoyed sweet audio bliss!

Why so excited? Danny Cox, Kensington’s music director and accomplished studio drummer, first introduced me to a 4-channel hardware version of the Transient Designer a few years ago and I had one in our previous PM1D rig for maybe 6 months. In that time, I quickly found it to be one of those magic tools that just makes things sound better.

Its very simple to use – only attack and sustain controls – and the combination allows the engineer to completely reshape the attack and sustain characteristics of a sound. On snare, adding some sustain adds a natural verb of sort to an otherwise too tight sound. On toms, reducing the sustain a few clicks gives a similar effect to taping up a drum that’s a bit too resonant. On kick, dynamically adjust the click of the tone vs the sustain. On piano, add or reduce the initial attack of the note.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a big proponent of getting the mix right at the source. While Transient Designer made its name in the industry to fix in the mix otherwise poorly recorded tracks, I found it provided a great tool to adjust for the variety of styles of drummers that play on our stage and make otherwise great tones even better. The whole key to using it effectively is moderation.

Now on any given week I will have at least 6 or 7 instances of the plug-in set up in my rack on kick in and out, snare 1 and 2, rack & floor toms, & piano.

Dave Stagl said today that its a bit early, but it seems likely that Transient Designer TDM is destined to become another must-have plug-in for Venue. I must agree! Much in the same vane as Cranesong Phoenix, Rane Serato Dynamics, & the Pultec/Fairchild combo on guitars, Transient Designer will be a staple of my live setup going forward.

SPL has a 14-day demo available on their site. But be warned: don’t try it unless you’re prepared to purchase!

Question: What is the recommendation regarding how often a Venue system should go through the shutdown and startup process? Our console is installed in a permanent venue so it is easy to just turn off the displays and rest of gear at FOH while leaving the FOH rack on 24 hours a day on a UPS. Does Venue run better if it is software reset each day? Its occurred to me the console could be like any other Windows machine where it runs better with daily reboots.

Background: I had a Bombfactory BF-3A inserted on a couple of vocals, using it for the first time, and experienced a strange scenario. When we started the song in rehearsal, suddenly no audio was passing through the channel strip for the vocals with the BF-3A inserted. There was signal showing up on the signal meter, but not hitting the PQ or main busses. Unassigning the channel from any VCAs or mute groups didn’t make a difference. Going to the plug-in screen for said channel caused the screen to not redraw completely with a blank space where the plug-in should be. After trying to cycle to another screen and back, the entire software locked up. I could still control levels from the control surface, but said vocal channels would not pass audio. Scary!!!

Resolution from Digidesign engineer: While the system is designed to be able to run with no end, it is difficult for *any* system to actually *prove* that no bug is going to appear just because the system was up for too long. You’d have to perform full regression suites (which includes all configurations) with weeks of up times. It’s just not realistic. While you can have a few systems kept up & running the same configuration for a large number of days, it’s impossible to do with all configurations SW/HW (how many thousands exists?).

A classic problem for SW is counters rollover. If your system does include counters (and it pretty much guarantied to have some, no matter the OS, in your applications or drivers), you have some level of risk exposure. The textbook example of this was found in Windows 95/98 which crashed after 49.xxx days (http://news.cnet.com/Windows-may-cra…_3-222391.html). This is the type of issues that have given Windows a bad reputation, but the same condition happens in so many different ways. You also have potential memory leaks slowly saturating VM, etc. I’d like to tell you that we keep a bunch of systems running for over 50 days in each SW/HW configuration…

So let’s be practical: if your system has been running 24/7 for more than a week, you are in an increasingly less tested condition. Your system won’t burst into flames, but then, the chances that something is going to misbehave start to grow. So if a daily shutdown doesn’t work in your situation, I’d recommend a weekly restart. I pick a week because it’s the most practical period to remember. That will keep you in a reasonable uptime range, and if you forget it once in a while, it shouldn’t matter.

Additional: I also reinstalled the Bomb Factory plug-ins just to make sure there was nothing corrupt there. I’m using the BF-3A regularly since the incident and haven’t had any more strange behavior. I don’t know for certain that the problem was caused by too much runtime without a restart. Since it was the first time I used the plug-in, it is possible that something was corrupted in the initial install.

Lesson: Restart the console. Don’t leave the mix engine on 24/7. And test plug-ins before using them in a pressure environment since anything is possible in the world of software. I’ve had strange behavior from a PM1D and now I can say I’ve had a strange scenario with Digidesign Venue. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again.

I need to take a few minutes to sing the praises of the Digidesign PQ controllers as a part of a Venue system.  I know there are some other alternatives out there, but after going through my first major holiday on our Venue platform, I can’t imagine doing monitoring any other way without adding another console (which is out of the question for us).

When Kensington began 18 years ago, FOH and monitor duties were covered by a single desk and operator.  Fast forward 18 years and FOH, monitor, and broadcast duties are still covered by a single desk and operator.  Because we’ve lived this way for so long, it is not in our paradigm to do it differently.  Enter PQ.  Now we get the best of both worlds because we are still technically functioning under a single desk and operator, but we’ve been able to move the far bulk of monitor mixing out of the engineer’s head and into the hands of the artists.

The magic of the PQ system for us is in a couple things…

1. Because PQ is simply a remote control for a stereo matrix on the console, we are able to provide an artist with control whether they are using ears or wedges.  Our stage is probably 80% ears week to week, but there’s normally a mix or two of wedges in each service.  Because PQ is so tightly integrated into the console, I don’t have to worry about giving the artist control since if it gets out of hand, I also have access to the mix.
2. Being able to automate PQ mixes throughout a service is really cool.  I’ve found that the majority of our guys would rather not have their mixes automated since they don’t need very many changes.  But PQ ties so cleanly into the console automation that it is wonderful to be able to offer a patch or level change to be stored so they don’t have to worry about it.
3. It sounds great.  I’ve listened to some other systems and have never been impressed by how they actually sound.  PQ really sounds good.  You can drive it hard and it will respond just like the console – smooth and analog sounding.
4. Because no audio passes through the PQ controller, we’ve been very successful giving a mixer to the stage center worship leader for rehearsal so they have full flexibility to dial their mix, store it into each song’s snapshot, then remove the mixer for the service so we don’t have to look at it.  Works great!

Now it is rare to have to worry about monitors.  Soundcheck has been revolutionized because we don’t have to spend all the time for me to do FOH things – dial gain and get stuff happening, then go around the stage and build everyone’s mixes.  Once I’ve established gain for everyone, the band just needs to run a verse/chorus a time or two so that everyone can dial in, and we’re ready to go.  It should go without saying that I’m also able to provide a better FOH product because of not having to think about monitors.

I figured some of you who are using Venue systems might be interested to see my current default file.  In order to view, all you need to do is grab the standalone editor app from the Digidesign website (2nd item in the list – 2.7.1 standalone software).

I’d be very interested to see yours as well.  Just shoot me an email if you’d like to share!  If you’re running on another platform but curious about Venue, this is a great way to investigate.  Although I must warn you, this is exactly how I started a year ago.  Fast forward a year and our old Yamaha PM1D system has been replaced.  So enter at your own risk hehehe.

tims-default-v5

The matching default input list can be found here.

I am an audio geek.  There, I said it.  With this in mind, there are several cool online resources to stay up on what’s happening and learn new things.  The first few are Digidesign specific…the others not so much.

First, and most importantly, the Digidesign User Conference is invaluable and was a factor in our decision to partner with Digi.  I’m so glad the Venue has a vibrant user community.  This is a daily check-in and read.

The next one might be new to some, old to others.  Regardless…there’s a great resource of tips and tricks for the Venue platform that’s published by Digidesign on their site.  Topics such as the events list, tap tempo, managing multitrack recordings, gain guess, etc.  Really good stuff.  If you want to receive these tips as a part of the live sound newsletter that’s normally published once a month by Digidesign, go to their site and sign up.  There’s far more usable content than sales babble so you won’t be disappointed.

Another really great resource is the archived Webinars that Robert Scovill has been conducting the past 8 months.  Each one lasts about an hour and includes a 45 minute presentation and 15 minutes of q&a.  Topics include introduction to Venue, Virtual Soundcheck, Plug-Ins, Snapshots, PQ/Aviom Integration, D-Show vs. D-Show Profile, etc.  A new webinar normally happens on the last Wednesday of every month.  Check it out here.  While these webinars definitely focus on Digidesign hardware, many of them also include just general good practice stuff from Scovi that would be beneficial to users of other platforms.

Outside of Digidesign, the best overall live audio forum I’ve ever found is the Live Audio Board over at ProSoundWeb.com.  There is another board there for Church sound but I don’t find that one very inspiring.  But the LAB has a huge list of contributors and is normally a pretty good read.

A new one to me that I think is flying way below the radar is a forum set up at Rat Sound’s website.  If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a pretty big fan of Dave Rat.  The forum on their site is full of some really great content and, if you’re like me, you’ll be sucked in till you lose track of time the first few times you visit.  Places to specifically check out are the Doing the Gig, Sound Questions, and Sound Business.  Archives go all the way back to 2004 so you can keep yourself busy here for a while!

So to wrap up this topic, here’s a few more learnings and such…

I mentioned we actually have two broadcast/outside world mixes.  The first is the one I’ve outlined.  #2 is just a slight variation.  When we rolled out the new chain, we had one problem with it for the building feed – tvs, lobby speakers, hallways, etc.  All of the work to create a more dynamic and organic mix really didn’t work in these places because the volume fluctuated too much.  Sometimes it would be too much or too little in these spaces.  The answer became creating a second mono feed that was heavily limited and squashed and only sending it to the building spots.  This feed has much less ambience/audience and two stages of limiting – one individually over the music and speech mixes, then a second stage over the combined mix just before it leaves the console.  The individual limiters do the majority of the work inside the element and the overall limiter acts as a brickwall to keep the difference between music and speech nearly identical for playback at low volumes.  That way the feed from the auditorium is always present in these places and it sounds great for what it is.

I have found that the position of each set of ambience/audience mics is very important.  The ideal position I’ve found for everything up on the stage is as close to stage level as possible.  At one point I tried putting the shotguns way up in the air near the PA cabinets and this was a problem in two ways.  First, there was more PA bleed then I liked.  Second, because they were so high, I felt like the immediacy of the audience energy was lost.  I also tried putting them on very short stands and just placing them on the far ends of the stage deck.  This was my favorite position actually, but it was a pain because cables to the mics had to pass over traffic paths.  Also, because the mics were so accessible, I found them inadvertently moving over the course of a weekend if anyone bumped one or kids played with them.  The final landing point attached to the bottom of our side screens ended up being a good compromise because it kept the position nice and low but still put them out of the way enough where we don’t have to mess with cables and their aim will remain consistent.

I think we’re still making minor adjustments to the mix week to week as we continue to adjust for the best balance between the direct source and the ambience/audience mics.  Since this chain needs to be a set and forget thing, there are some times when it would be nice to have a bit more presence from the crowd, such as during the worship in the sample I posted in Part 2.  But where we’ve arrived at works for so much of what we do that I think we’re going to choose to compromise in a place that works pretty well for the far majority of what we do.  It would be really nice one day to have a separate position with someone mixing strictly for broadcast, but until that day ever comes, I’m pretty pleased with what we’ve landed on.

So there you have it.  Questions, feel free to ask away!  There are more samples of the new chain on my website.  The only clip not recorded through this chain is the Christmas 2007 opener.

Here’s the process we now take to create the mix…

We now use three sets of ambience/audience mics, each with a different purpose for capturing the room.  Inspired by some great discussion on the Digidesign User Forum, my implementation is…

• Mics #1 are a set of shotgun mics (purchased for this project) on the outside corners of our stage, mounted just under our side screens, pointed out into the room.  These are the primary audience pickup source because so much of the audience’s energy is directed towards the stage that these do a great job of capturing without adding too much PA to the mix.  
• Mics #2 are a set of Crown PCCs placed on the lip of the stage at the 1/3 and 2/3 lines from left to right.  These combine with the shotguns to provide some presence and immediacy to the signal since another set of shotguns wouldn’t be acceptable aesthetically in these positions.  
• Mics #3 are a pair of Shure SM81s hung from the first catwalk, almost at the half way point of the room, also on the 1/3 and 2/3 lines to the stage.  These mics serve almost entirely the purpose of room ambience – making the mix sound like it is happening in the auditorium rather than happening in a dead studio.
• We may still look to add an additional set or two but I’m stuck because adding them will mean needing to deal with delay times between those mics and the rest currently in place.  Two of my current three sets are directly in line with the PA so there’s little issue there.  The delay induced by the third set certainly does some phase stuff to the mix but the added space it puts in the mix when the speaker is up is worth the compromise to me.  So we’ve dodged the bullet to this point and I’d like to avoid having to go there with more mics.  This is one of the only limitations of creating the broadcast mix inside the Venue rather than in an outboard mixer/processor.  There is no way to have the degree of time alignment control that would be needed in the broadcast feed without making other more significant sacrifices.

All channels on the console are split up into one of three main bus paths – master L/R is music, center is speech, and subgroup 7/8 for standalone playback sources.  These three paths are then combined in the matrixes to feed the PA and outside world.  Our PA processing is also set up for speech and music, so there is a stereo music matrix (with playback included in it) and a mono speech matrix that feed the PA.  On the video side, music, speech, and playback are combined with the three sets of ambience/audience mics in a stereo matrix.  A nice Massey mastering limiter, phoenix cranesong, and 7 band EQ for any trouble spots are put over that mix as a whole and the finished result is what you hear below.

According to Smaart, music averages at 88-95 dB in the auditorium, speech and videos run 68-75 dB. That equals an average 20 dB natural difference that feels right in the main auditorium. In the processing of audio for video, I am actually adding back 6 dB cumulatively to speech, making the speech/music difference 14 dB rather than 20 dB and this is really important.  Too little added back makes speech too low compared to music, so you have to turn it up.  But too much added does the reverse – turn it down when the speaker comes up.

That is why playback has to be split up from music in the broadcast matrix.  If playback is lumped in with the band, it comes out too low on video compared to speech because playback is in that lower dynamic range in the room.  But if playback were lumped in with speech directly instead, it would be in mono and receive all kinds of undesirable processing in the speech world that isn’t desired.  So…on the PA side, playback and music are each sent to the music PA matrix at equal volume.  But on the video side, playback is sent to the matrix at the same level as speech but through its own path.  So if speech and playback were sent to the matrix at 100% level, music is sent at 90% level.

Here’s a sample of the finished result of worship from our New Community service last night…

In my next post I’ll outline the final steps necessary to fine tune for building feeds vs. broadcast.

I’ve mentioned our broadcast mix chain several times but have yet to really outline what we’re doing as of late.  Inspired by some good friends, I began a journey about 5 months ago to re-engineer the chain.  The signal chain I inherited when I started at Kensington was based around a model picked up from Willow Creek in Chicago.  You can read more about it here.  Basically, everything through the console is split up to two main outputs – one for music, and one for speech.  That way each can be processed independently, then combined and leveled to create the broadcast feed.  A single set of ambience mics are added to the feed and ducked by the music mix to mask transitions in the console when nothing was passing but otherwise stay out of the way so the mix would be very present and the result is a pretty solid product.

My next post will outline the steps we’ve taken to implement a new process.

Christmas at Kensington for this year is officially in the can and in light of all of the system changes made this year in audio world, I thought it would be fitting to outline some learnings and experiences.  I’ve started writing and will gradually put things up over the next week or two.

In the meantime, here’s a sample of the big epic tune that was the centerpiece of the service as part of an original 9 minute spoken-word, dance, video, & music package.  You’re listening to a live FOH board mix simply through the new broadcast chain (more on this later).  Little bit of Massey limiting and Cranesong Phoenix and presto!  This track was written by our music director, Danny Cox, for this service and has quickly become one of my favorite songs of the last few years.  Enjoy!

More photos of the service can be found here:  http://tinyurl.com/kccxmasphotos

This week has been far from exciting compared to last week’s installation saga.  This week we have our off-site baptism event so it is the only week of the year with no midweek service.  What does that mean?  Work week!

Our big project this week is revamping our Clearcom matrix intercom system in the main auditorium and chapel – adding stations, revising the programming and logic, etc.  We’re also working hard to finish remaining punch list items like configuring Synergy for keyboard/mouse control, re-connecting and testing tie lines that had to be cut at FOH to facilitate the cable pulls through conduit last week, and installing a paging system from the stage manager’s FOH position back to our green room and dressing rooms.

I’m also very excited that our new grand piano shell arrived today.  We have now completely made the switch from a 9ft acoustic grand to a 7ft 4in Slam Grand piano shell with a Yamaha CP33 controller/Muse Receptor Engine/Synthogy Ivory Sampled Piano plug-in.  The system never goes out of tune, looks great, and I can’t say enough positive about the Receptor/Ivory combo for usability, reliability, and flexibility of sound libraries.  For those of you not familiar with Ivory, you need to be.  Basically Synthogy sampled 3 different pianos (a Yamaha C7, Steinway D Concert Grand, and Bosendorfer 290) – each key at 10 different dynamic intensities.  Each piano library lets you fine tune the dampening, sound board, key noise, timbre, dynamic range, release and comes with a variety of excellent sounding presets per library.  In the hands of a great piano player, I don’t think there’s anything that sounds more like the real thing.  When you consider this system has no mic leakage or feedback, I think this is the best piano package you could possibly buy.  The entire system was less than $10k so it really is a great value as well.  Check it out!

The Venue performed very well this past weekend.  Coincidentally it was one of the most difficult services we’ve done all Summer, putting all of the new gear to the test right out the gate.  Normal 5 piece band with a lead vocal, a 7 minute musical theater piece with 9 actors, all on new headsets and new wireless, 8 channels of tracks running from ProTools, rented ears for click/count to the actors, and recording the musical element and Saturday night message for use on Sunday at campuses.  Everything went off without a hitch to the congregation but not without some scary, heart-in-my-throat moments for me.

First, I tried borrowing work flow ideas from some of my Venue friends and that wasn’t a good idea in such a complicated service, let alone my first such on the desk.  I got bit in the first service on Sunday by snapshot channel scope – somewhere in Sunday AM rehearsal I accidentally unscoped the band channels from the snapshot for a feature song, so in the first service I recall the scene as the drummer clicks off and nothing changes on the console.  Quick on my feet, I unmuted things manually and threw up the faders before the piano player hit his first note.

Second, in trying the new workflow, I also ignored my own advice for digital consoles in our fast paced environment – be careful not to get snapshot happy.  I think at one point I had 13 or 14 snapshots for the service and this was way too much.  1 for starting video roll, one to take video down at the end of the roll, one for each song, then another for each spoken moment.  Long story short, because the weekend was so packed there was never enough solid rehearsal time to actually step through all of my scenes and make sure everything happened exactly as I intended.  Lesson: keep it simple.  If you can turn down a video roll manually and mute the channel when its finished, do it.  Maybe in time I’ll be able to find more ways to implement automation but I don’t want to ever make a mistake in a service because of ill-executed automation.

The system still sounds amazing.  I’m so pleased with the sonic improvements.  Wireless is very solid as well.  The remote monitoring on the PC is spectacular and was a lifesaver this weekend!

Only 3 more days until we leave on 2 weeks of vacation and I am SOOOOO ready.  These past few weeks have worn me out and I’m running on fumes.  It will be very good to disconnect for a while and recharge the batteries.  When I get back, it’s full steam ahead into the Fall ministry season and I’ll resume my normal service schedule of 4 weekends and 3 midweek services a month.  I’m looking forward to spending a few months focusing on dialing in the Venue and PA to see what the two are really capable of!

Thanks Eric!

For those of you who are interested, here’s the documents we worked from for our system install this week.  You’ll see our I/O connections, rack plans, system network IP addresses, and mockup space drawings.

I/O & Rack Design

Booth Layout Mockups

IP LAN Assignments

The service last night went even better then the rehearsal on Tuesday.  I still have some punch list items to nail down tomorrow to be ready for the first weekend, but the response was overwhelmingly positive from everyone.  I’m hearing tones in our room that have never been there before and for the most part things sound naturally better when you push up the fader then they ever did before.  Its sobering to realize how big a difference this console is making in the quality of our presentation!

Well we made it!  The D-Show was installed, stage wired, and ready for rehearsal by 4p today which gave me a few hours to build a plug-in list and just mess around before the band arrived tonight.

Once the band started playing, all we could say was WOW.  There was an overwhelming clarity and natural character to the sound that we’d never heard before from our rig.  I’d been told by many people who had upgraded to Venue to be prepared that the system would sound better, but I had no idea it would be so true!  I expected something different just from hearing iTunes and my voice through the PA during the past 24 hours, but the difference with a live band was quite good…the kick sounded better in the room then I’d ever heard before, vocals needed less EQ, channel EQ in general is MUCH more musical, the rig sounds warmer and less harsh (perhaps I would say less “digital”) in the 2k and 6k range, low end while warmer is also tighter.  I multitracked the rehearsal successfully to ProTools so I’m planning to spend the afternoon tomorrow dialing things in and playing with plug-ins to see how much better I can make it.  I’m also interested to listen to the ears mixes and see what they really sounded like to the guys.  I set up everybody’s ears mixes during sound check just to keep things simple, but I saw the guys with PQ controllers tweaking their mixes as the night went on and getting what they needed.  I think I need to spend some time on the chain that’s actually driving their mixes because it seems there’s room to grow there, but regardless…

Besides the sound difference, my first “real” 4 hours on the console between 4p and 8p went very well.  At first I sensed myself being nervous of adopting to a new workflow since I’d become so comfortable working on the PM1D.  By the end of the first night, I feel like the system is very approachable and pretty easy to get under the fingers.  I think by the time I mix for a few hours with the recording tomorrow and then do the service, I’ll be in great shape for the upcoming weekend’s challenges. 

The new Shure UHF-R wireless system was definitely the right choice and I’m thankful that God made it clear this was the direction to go.  Nothing against Sennheiser at all because I was completely content to go either direction, but the UHF-R product seems very mature and a perfect fit for how we work.  I’m EXTREMELY impressed with the networking and Workbench software since our wireless receivers are off stage completely out of my direct site.  We never had reliable monitoring and control of our previous wireless system and I learned to deal with it, but the frequency coordination, data reporting from the transmitters, and overall stability of the platform is reassuring.  The new mix of capsules is wonderful – I now have at my disposal SM58s, Beta58s, SM86s, Beta87s, KSM9s, Neumann KK-104, and Sennheiser 5005 capsules.  Soon I’m also going to pick up one of the new Sennheiser MD5235s just to complete the collection.

Overall, the first rehearsal tonight was very positive.  Tomorrow has a short punch list of items to finish up that we didn’t get to today – labeling wireless packs with their RF #, some cable changes to the drum riser and keys rig to accommodate PQ mixers, etc.  But the list is quite short and then I can’t wait to spend a few hours playing!

Consider me completely sold.  Everyone present last night heard a difference in what we were used to hearing through our rig.  Those of us who knew what we were listening for can’t believe how much better our room sounds.  It’s hard to imagine what it will feel like once we get the new PA in the room next year as well.  It’s really hard to wrap my mind around how much better this system sounds and how much more intuitive it operates, yet it is such a substantial difference in price from our previous system.  For church world, regardless of the level of desired production, it’s hard to believe there could be a more powerful, efficient, and cost effective system.

Today was so busy tying up loose ends that I didn’t get a chance to take any more pictures.  I’ll go through tomorrow and do that so you can see how the system finished up.  Then I’ll post our docs later this week when I have a chance to see how we’re configured, input/output assignments, etc.

Thanks for your prayers and many of you contributed lots of advice as we considered such a substantial change to our system!  Call me a kid in a candy store…  :)

Today was a very long day but has a very happy ending.  Patch and I started today at 7:30a and by 4p, we successfully had audio passing through the new system.  The Advanced Lighting & Sound guys did a great job on the cable pull and had the SCSI lines out of the conduit by 10:30a and the new lines installed around 2p.  I definitely sense God’s hand in this entire process more then I have on any other church install I’ve done.  Things have just gone so smoothly.

By the end of the day, everything is operating correctly with the console (Nic Auger is the man at BNC terminations – 100% on the first try!), wireless is operational, the new PQ snake I built last week tested out correctly, and the ProTools machine is up and running great.

I didn’t get a chance to snap any photos of the cable pull but here’s some photos of where we left it again tonight.

The new FOH

I haven’t had a ton of time to just play yet but I love this console!  I can’t wait for rehearsal tomorrow night…

The new system maintains a similar footprint to the old one.

Walking in the room from the back past the booth.

Our new stage rack layout.  The rack on the left has lighting world and tie lines to everywhere.  Rack on the right is audio world…wireless, PQ, and 2 stage racks.  We just have a few more blanks to install tomorrow and patching the stage inputs.

Tomorrow we will assign frequencies to all of the wireless channels, patch video playback and test, finish installing Windows/Boot Camp on the systems Mac Mini for control of the wireless, the BSS London processor, and Smaart.  Then our first rehearsal on the system happens at 6:30.  I can’t wait!!!

All the new gear is racked and ready to be cabled. Tomorrow our contractor is removing the 1d SCSI and pulling coax for D-Show. Things are taking shape nicely! We’ll hear audio through the system by the end of the day tomorrow

Dinner

FOH when we finished for the night.  The Mac Pro is on the floor to the left of the chair, FOH rack is to the right.  Intercom, Mac Minis, and a Wireless unit in first rack to operators right, CD recorders and a CD player in second rack to the right.

Our new stage racks.  Left rack has DMX distribution and audio/video/lighting tie lines with room to grow (blank spaces coming tomorrow).  Right rack houses 18 channels of Shure UHF-R, antenna distribution, PQ and wired ears control, and then two D-Show stage racks at the bottom for 96 input/32 output.

Side view with everything cleared out of the space.  The cables in the mess on the floor by the wall are coming out of the conduit tomorrow.

Table gear in place…time to finish the floor racks

In the middle of the mess.  There were so many cables on the floor for the old system that it took quite a while to straighten everything out.  I’m so pleased with how little is really needed at FOH in the new system.  Our only analog cabling will be to connect a few playback and record devices.

That’s all for today.  Time for bed!!  We start at 8:30a tomorrow.