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[Riley Casey]

We are in the midst of a large corporate event.  Three days of install in a hotel ballroom, cables every where, twelve speaker zones, Optocore digital snake talking to an M7CL via MY cards at FOH.  Each night of the three night event has the room in a different format and the mix position is in a less than ideal ( as in no where near anything useful ) spot .  It's always been a struggle to get zones dialed in before hand and mixes balanced with a rotation of live music, both rock band and 24 piece big band plus strings, podium and video play back so this year after plenty of warm up at other corporate events I touted the merits of control via the iPad as a valuable tool in getting things just right in the money seats.  Things are going swimmingly on the first night which is a stand up reception for 3000 people with four bands playing rotation on a stage in the center of the room.  I'm wandering around with the iPad adjusting things.  My FOH guy is at the M7 mixing what makes sense there, the monitor guy is mixing at stage side with one band in four playing right into his face.  The room is so crowded that at one point I have to go into a side hall and come back in at another door almost certainly loosing contact with the wifi but I've lost contact a few times before during the night without issue.  As I enter near the mix riser the bands change again and it sounds a bit dull. It seems that when the mute scenes were changed by the FOH engineer the console had locked up.  It still passed audio but with the previous bands' mics open.  The surface would not respond to any controls either on the board or on the iPad.  After a few tense moments assessing all of this I restarted the console and things went back to normal.  Has anyone experienced this kind of lock up on an M7CL and more specifically has anyone tied StageMix/iPad control to this sort of thing?  Last night was the most survivable time for this to happen, by the time it locked up the crowd was well into their nth mixed drink and not paying much attention.  Tonight and tomorrow are the scripted shows and a lock up here would be nasty.  This is our 15th year doing the event and we've used the M7 for the last six years without a glitch, the new element is the iPad ( and a new 5Ghz router ).  Any observations would be appreciated.

[Scott Helmke]

Remote control in a crowded event is the only time I've ever seen those consoles bog down or have problems.  A slow or unreliable link is definitely not a good thing.

[Mac Kerr]

Remote control in a crowded event is the only time I've ever seen those consoles bog down or have problems.  A slow or unreliable link is definitely not a good thing.

Another good reason to not rely on a WiFi device for a show. OK for setup and optimizing, not so much for when it really counts.

On another note, 5 minutes ago I got some reenforcement for why we put a UPS on digital consoles. During walk in, with 2 minutes till the CEO takes the stage, we lost all power in sound and video because the company supplying the power to shows in the hotel pulled power with no notice. The M7 displayed a notice that the internal PS had lost power. My A2 got out to the dock where the tie in was and saw the guy still there and got it turned back on. We had music running in the room as soon as the power came up, and we started the show as soon as the projectors re-started.

Mac

[Greg_Cameron]

During walk in, with 2 minutes till the CEO takes the stage, we lost all power in sound and video because the company supplying the power to shows in the hotel pulled power with no notice.

Why did they pull the power?

[Philip Roberts]

I've had something similar happen to me.

It was using studio manager at the time (before StageMix was released).

As I recall if the network connection is interrupted while changing something on the console it will lock up as described.

Philip

[Jim Wilkens]

I had that happen once - very similar situation. My mistake was running Studio Manager and the ipad app simultaneously. Can't do that. Restarting the console fixed it.

Jim W.

[Andrew Makinson]

we've used the M7 for the last six years without a glitch, the new element is the iPad ( and a new 5Ghz router ).  Any observations would be appreciated.

Riley, You are probably running the latest version of the firmware, but this was known to happen with version 3.51/2.  It wasn't fixed until Version 3.54.  I've never had an issue with 3.55 and Stagemix.

--Andrew Makinson

[Mac Kerr]

Why did they pull the power?

Just an idiot at work. Apparently he thought he was disconnecting a different service. I guess his work order said some room was done at 11am. It wasn't our room.

Mac

[Gustaf Kempe]

I had a m7 that locked down, all physical knobs and faders wouldnt work. The screen worked though. It was extremely hot at the time (40 dgr C). I restarted it and thebsame thing happened again (during soundcheck). I saw on the screen when it booted up that it said "check sum error". So I restarted it again whilst holding the store button down and then reset the whole console. That made the trick for me. It worked the ehole show.

[paul bell]

With the majority of people today using smart phones, I would say in a room of 3,000 people the wireless airwaves were pretty busy.

All this wireless walk-around pad stuff is nice but yet another way to really screw things up.

[Ryan Jodrell]

With the majority of people today using smart phones, I would say in a room of 3,000 people the wireless airwaves were pretty busy.

Is this still an issue using a 5Ghz router?

[Tim McCulloch]

Is this still an issue using a 5Ghz router?

Uh... "router" does not have anything to do with RF.

Perhaps you're thinking of Wireless Access Point (WAP).

[brian maddox]

Uh... "router" does not have anything to do with RF.

Perhaps you're thinking of Wireless Access Point (WAP).

Most WAPs now are in routers, so us civilians tend to lump them together.  Us civilians can be kinda unsmart like that...

[Scott Wagner]

Is this still an issue using a 5Ghz router?

It's less of an issue, but there are plenty of iPhones and the like that operate at 5GHz.

[Craig Hauber]

Ditch the iPad app if it's even remotely considered a possible problem.

Try VNC to a wired PC running studio manager instead, that way if it's a WiFi issue or the PC locks-up the console still runs normally.

Or try putting a hardwired studio manager laptop at a more useable position in the room.  I've used a KVM extender over Cat-5 which allows you to just have only a monitor and keyboard 150' away from the physical PC -very easy to hide in a topiary somewhere:-) 
Couple that with a one-peice bluetooth keyboard&trackpad combo and you have a very discrete hard-wired rig that can survive quite a bit of abuse without taking-down the system.

We are in the midst of a large corporate event.  Three days of install in a hotel ballroom, cables every where, twelve speaker zones, Optocore digital snake talking to an M7CL via MY cards at FOH.  Each night of the three night event has the room in a different format and the mix position is in a less than ideal ( as in no where near anything useful ) spot .  It's always been a struggle to get zones dialed in before hand and mixes balanced with a rotation of live music, both rock band and 24 piece big band plus strings, podium and video play back so this year after plenty of warm up at other corporate events I touted the merits of control via the iPad as a valuable tool in getting things just right in the money seats.  Things are going swimmingly on the first night which is a stand up reception for 3000 people with four bands playing rotation on a stage in the center of the room.  I'm wandering around with the iPad adjusting things.  My FOH guy is at the M7 mixing what makes sense there, the monitor guy is mixing at stage side with one band in four playing right into his face.  The room is so crowded that at one point I have to go into a side hall and come back in at another door almost certainly loosing contact with the wifi but I've lost contact a few times before during the night without issue.  As I enter near the mix riser the bands change again and it sounds a bit dull. It seems that when the mute scenes were changed by the FOH engineer the console had locked up.  It still passed audio but with the previous bands' mics open.  The surface would not respond to any controls either on the board or on the iPad.  After a few tense moments assessing all of this I restarted the console and things went back to normal.  Has anyone experienced this kind of lock up on an M7CL and more specifically has anyone tied StageMix/iPad control to this sort of thing?  Last night was the most survivable time for this to happen, by the time it locked up the crowd was well into their nth mixed drink and not paying much attention.  Tonight and tomorrow are the scripted shows and a lock up here would be nasty.  This is our 15th year doing the event and we've used the M7 for the last six years without a glitch, the new element is the iPad ( and a new 5Ghz router ).  Any observations would be appreciated.

[ProSoundWeb Community]