Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 8, 2008 19:41:26 GMT 1
Things are slowly swimming into focus about Yamaha digital desks. A colleague who is able to do this sort of thing informs me that the gain structure of the desk is such that minus 18 on the meters corresponds to 0db. I hope this helps?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on May 8, 2007 18:29:59 GMT 1
Apparently Yamaha used fixed, rather than floating, point calculation on this desk. I am insufficiently computer spoddie to know what that really means, but in real life what it means is that if you drive the channels too firmly (not even hard) then there is a cumulative problem which manifests itself as low level output distortion. Not a problem as long as you know to be gentle with it, it is a budget desk after all! By the way, it is MUCH easier to use than an 01V.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Apr 21, 2007 10:03:19 GMT 1
Any one out there been using one of these things? my experience of them seems to be that they get to low level output distortion very easily. Obviously digital gain structure is very different to analogue (I have used PM5D's, M7CL's and Digico D1's and D5's quite happily) but if I run any of the channels even slightly over minus 18 there seems to be a cumulative problem. Cheap electronics I guess? Anybody got any thoughts
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Apr 8, 2008 19:56:29 GMT 1
If you could figure that bit out you would be very wealthy indeed!
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Apr 8, 2008 11:39:00 GMT 1
I saw this and thought you might find it handy?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
|
Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 30, 2008 16:17:29 GMT 1
Hullo chaps, does anybody know of a company that rents d&b kit somewhere around Northampton please?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 30, 2008 16:26:55 GMT 1
Sorry to be dim, Jim. But what exactly are you asking? What I think of college courses? What I think of work experience students? What I want from a crew newbie before I book him on a job? Or what I think should be in a college course? What is your new course going to be about? What HND level of qualification are you talking about?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
|
Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 8, 2008 19:33:14 GMT 1
That's it, I am going to invent an Internet shopping breathalyser which stops your credit card working after too many cheering beverages. Anyway, I now possess a set of SE 530's. Don't get me wrong, they are excellent earphones. But not as good as the hype. Subjectively I would say they are as good as my Sennheiser HD25's (25's not SP's) which makes them pretty d**n good, but HD 25's are just over £100 and the Shure's are over £200! Now you know, I hope it saves you some money.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 3, 2008 18:02:50 GMT 1
For your curiosity. [glow=red,2,300] www.helpinstill.com/products.html [/glow]I did a gala dinner recently at which Jamie Cullum was the act. He had about the most relaxed engineer I have ever come across, he just had a bit a shout down the hand held, set the monitors, installed a Helpinstill (see above), a couple of mics for Jamies piano "percussion" plus a C-tape for emergency and then left me to get on with it. A very entertaining gig! But the interesting thing was the Helpinstill, I had never come across one before and it worked very well indeed. Being a magnetic contact mic there was buckets of level and next to no need for EQ. I thought you might be interested?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Feb 20, 2008 13:01:50 GMT 1
I realise that not many of you will care about classical music, but the stuff about how your ears work is interesting. www.hearhere.org.uk/ Speaking of which I tried this yesterday, NOT SCARY at all! www.digital-recordings.com/ I tried the www professional hearing test. Go on I dare you.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Nov 16, 2007 12:38:54 GMT 1
They supplied a peculiar box with an orange light on top, which had a 16 in and out, I was required to run FOH through it. There was supposed to be a couple of seconds of flashing orange light during which you could pull the level down. Unfortunately I did not have a fader for the punters, so when they got noisy that was the end of that. Luckily the LS 9 32 I was using seems to switch off and on very quietly so it do not blow all the drivers out of the d&b Q system I was using. A really stupid situation. If it had been some dodgy old boozer I would have been into the toilets and had a hand dryer off the wall for power, but there was no chance of anything like that. Haruumph, curses etc.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Nov 13, 2007 11:33:26 GMT 1
A word to the wise. If you have ever have to do a show here (It is the venue for the ABTT show) be aware that they have a sound limiter that cuts FOH power. It is set to 95 db! I was only doing an awards show, so it was not exactly death metal levels. A bit of walk up music for the presenter, blah blah blah "and the first nominee is...." Hurrah said the crowd, pop went the power. Uttterly hopeless. We eventually got the mic down, wrapped it in a fleece and stuffed it in a flight case. That enabled us to finish the show. It was a ridiculous situation where the punters were easliy noisier than the system, which was running within the defined limits. I am at a loss as to what to say about councils who set such low levels, except that it will mean the death of venues. Neither the production company or the end client will ever go back there. What a farce!
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Sept 24, 2007 16:02:48 GMT 1
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Sept 25, 2007 10:28:39 GMT 1
They forgot the AES output card, the multicore, some of the speakers and amps, the rigging for the rest of the speakers, the comms, oh yes and the speaker cable. Well done them!
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Sept 24, 2007 13:30:11 GMT 1
I thought I would report back from my previous threads. The M7CL/d&b Q gig was a wash out from the digital link point of view. Due to the incompetence of the PA company (maybe I am fussy, but I think they should send all of the equipment in time for the fit up, plus all the wires to join it up) I ended up with very little time to troubleshoot. It did not work first time and I had to go back to analogue. Post mortems revealed that the digital stream is pretty fragile and long runs (75m) are dicey even with proper 110 ohm cable. As far as we could tell the AES output card was working in the desk but absolutely nothing was arriving at the D12 amps. Next time, maybe. Also there was digital fun on my job using the Outline Butterfly system. The speaker system, supplied by Brit Row, worked fine. We had a bit of tweaking to do as they had never flown the cardioid subs before and The Roundhouse is not the most acoustically friendly venue. I was using a Digico D1 (lovely sounding desk) via optocore into the Brit Row Dolby lake processors. By the time we got to the end of the fit up day (it was for TV, lots of set and lighting) the system, which had sounded fine at lunch time, was awful. It turned out that the D1 clock was freewheeling whilst the Lake was locked to the optocore. This meant that their time clocks had drifted apart, destroying the sound. Locking everything to the optocore solved the problem. This is all new and scary for me, with a whole new range of interesting chestnuts to deal with, but the optocore certainly solves the problem of getting a digital signal to travel any distance. It helps keep the interest up!
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