Category: MX Series

Mic stand hammocks available direct from us for a limited time only. Note: Hammocks only suitable for system techs/engineers under 12 and under 20kgs.

You’re In Safe Hands

You’ve read the previous Techblog all about making your life easier by choosing redundancy, right?  Taking the weight off, by getting something to do the monitoring of your precious feeds and switch in some backup plan if something screws up?

Well, as you might have gathered, we have got this covered for you, and not just once, but three times!

Let me introduce you to the MX36.  The MX36 will look after all your signal redundancy needs, and for sets of four channels, not only for stereo pairs.  So, your Left-Right-Sub-Fill mixes can be hooked up to this handy processor, on Dante, AES and analogue all at the same time.  Without needing to connect a PC, or an iPad, you can set-up how you want to use the redundancy direct from the front panel with two simple button presses, and then leave it in charge.

Big Green Rings

This in itself could be a bacon-saver, but the MX36’s modus operandi isn’t actually the redundancy aspect – it’s all about the three big green rings.  Let us explain – have a quick look at the rear panel…there’s a lot going on:

That arsenal of connectivity should give you a clue as to what the MX36 is all about – it’s designed to switch up to three x four channels from your consoles to feed the upstream processor or amplifiers, allowing for quick and easy management of the desks.  It’s also designed to output these in all three formats – so you get a set of four analogue outputs, a set of 2 stereo AES outputs (with external wordclock sync if you need it) and four transmitter outputs on the Dante network, all simultaneously with no set-up required.

If you can’t use the redundancy aspect of things, just turn it off – one button press per A/B/C set of channels sorts this out.  Or, if your main act want that extra safety net, have it running on one set, and not on the others – it’s totally flexible and instant to configure.

Always Listening, Always Checking

As if that wasn’t enough,  every single line that connects to the MX36 can be individually confidence checked via a high power headphone monitor section.  Look at this diagram – everywhere you see the green “headphone” graphic is a group of monitoring points:

This means that you can check each individual channel in your Dante streams, each half of any AES stream, and every analogue input one at a time.  There is also a high resolution meter that allows you to check levels accurately, and you can even listen to your local mic input and the stereo background music input should you need to.  That’s pretty comprehensive!

So those big green rings from earlier – these are the three most important buttons on the panel – the three buttons that switch between your three consoles:

There’s a subtle cross-fade, performed by the DSP, to avoid any nasty surprises, and more than one console’s L-R-FF-Sub set can be active at any time, should you prefer to cross fade instead of fade out and back in.  And yet there’s more functionality…!

VoG + BGM

As if this wasn’t enough, there’s also scope to include those extra little features that just make things easier and don’t waste channels elsewhere – a fully featured mic-preamp with 48v phantom power, sweetening EQ and compressor (all preset for best results), and a stereo line input for plugging in your BGM source.  The mic input is on the front AND the back, and the stereo input is a mini-jack on the front and “proper” balanced XLRs on the back.  Where these inputs are routed is quickly set up via  a couple of front panel buttons again, and we’ve even programmed in the most useful combos of routing options to your choices for the mic, so you don’t have to switch through all possible choices.

You can monitor the audio before you commit to putting it out there, and it is also bussed out on Dante to cascade to bigger systems.

Did We Mention Expansion Yet?

And maybe we won’t for now.  Someone will always want more inputs, or the ability to handle more than 3 consoles, so with the connection of a Dante cable, all of this becomes possible, including monitoring across more than one unit, and doubling up on the stereo BGM and VoG mic inputs.  If you want to read all about how that works – check it out here.

You Deserve A Break…

We really did design the MX36 to make like easier for you.  No longer will you have to press into service a box full of DSP that’s not designed for the job and have to spend ages designing a workable solution.  Gone is the need to hook up a computer and navigate a host of pages just to mute and unmute some channels.  And best of all, the MX36 will accept the most popular audio formats so you are guaranteed to have at least one easy connection method to every console.  If you’ve more than one, then protect your connections with the redundancy features.

Now crack open a beer, read the brochure and have a rest in that hammock. Actually maybe not THAT hammock!

 

If you’ve ever faced the nightmare scenario of a gig plunging into silence mid-way through, or even had the audience all glaring at you due to a sudden outbreak of snap, crackle and pop (which of course is totally always your fault!) then you need to read on…

In these thoroughly modern times, with more and more audio being transported from stage to FOH and on to amps and processors digitally, we all appreciate that most times with digital it’s all or nothing.  Either you’ve got your audio (and that could be ALL your feeds from the stagebox), or…nothing.  No losing a phase of one line in the multi, and an overhead drum mike being  a bit quieter than expected, no little bit of noise on a few channels as you’ve some power cables running a bit close.  Nothing.

All it could take is someone changing sample rate on an AES stream – your master L-R AES stream to the processors and amps and at best there’s a glitch, at worst – dreaded silence again.

So what’s to be done, apart from the obvious check and double-check all cables, connectors and put mittens on the rest of occupants of your FOH cave?

Time for an intervention.

Employ some redundancy.  Fire all non-essential staff.  Not that kind of redundancy – the kind that actually looks after things and fixes things automatically if there’s a problem.

It’s not a new idea in the field of professional audio, not since AES was introduced on digital equipment, but often it could not be implemented as the assumption was that if you were using a digital source, why would you need to concurrently support same analogue source?  So, switching to digital inputs would often use the same XLR sockets as the analogue.  Most times, this is fine, but if you did want to have the ability to switch back to analogue in an emergency, then you’re repatching in the back o f a rack on the fly, not flicking a switch – not ideal as the silence descends, threatening to envelope and consume you in its silky folds.  Too dramatic?

So imagine if all the sockets to connect up your precious L-R audio were available for both analogue an digital simultaneously, and you could switch between them really quickly in case your AES feed died and you had also plumbed in your pair of analogue ties as…REDUNDANCY!
Wouldn’t that be really useful?

Take a load off.

Now, imagine that this switchover could be done automatically for you – if the AES goes off, analogue is quickly and quietly selected and the music continues to play.  So that’s automatic failover.
Handy eh?

So…what about when the stakes are even higher – not just your L-R audio, but perhaps multichannel network audio, coming down a Cat5?
Let’s get specific and consider Dante is this network.  Dante is a marvellous method of funnelling and transporting a frankly quite terrifying number of bidirectional audio channels around on a network infrastructure never originally designed for much beyond moving documents and spreadsheets.  That said, no-one considered that you’d be able to send ultra HD video down a computer cable either, so let’s just wonder at the wonder and leave it at that!

Audinate, the people behind Dante, were completely aware of the very real-world pitfalls of computer networks – IT departments don’t exist for no reason.  If you’ve ever looked at the Enthernet ports on any audio equipment that supports Dante, there’re almost always two sockets.  [These aren’t IN and OUT – if you think they are, please go here and ask yourself if this is a better use of your time.] – I know they sort of can be thought of as IN and OUT when you are using a Dante module in “switched” mode and not “redundancy” mode, but we’re not doing that, are we?!

They are often labelled 1& 2 or Primary and Secondary, as Dante supports a level of redundancy in an attempt to circumvent the (pretty catastrophic) loss of all audio that would result from the network going down.  Remember, this might not be a dodgy cable or someone tripping over something – it could be a router crashing, someone plugging in a laptop to the network and streaming the Lion King in UHD – there are a host of things that could cause an issue and with that “all or nothing” idea ringing in your ears, there could be a whole lot to lose.  Too dramatic again?!

Dance, while the music still plays on…

In the same way as redundant PSUs on a console’s supply aren’t going to help you out much if they’re just plugged into the same distro, should the mains fail, to really make use of the network level redundancy, you’ll need to have two independantly routed networks set up, via different routers and switches, not just two cables plugged into the ports (although this  better than nothing!).
If you’ve not got the ability to set this up, then running the AES feeds (and analogue versions for full belt and braces) would mean things have to have gone really t*ts up, and you’re covered – you can lose the Dante network, the AES can fail and you’re still playing on!

Who wouldn’t want to be that guy?

Next up – find out about how all this clever care-taking can be used with the greatest of ease with lots of extra tricks to make you feel like a real super-hero!