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[Matthias McCready]

I ran into a puzzler last night  Sorry for the long post, but trying to figure out what went wrong.

So had an event for a local house of prayer last night (bands or musicians in 2 hour sets). As usual for these events we used our 8 unit Aviom system. Before the event I completed a line check, but there was a not a full band until after two hours in (ie. Avioms were working but not fully being utilized).

So a few hours in the first band, with a drummer, began to a play. Upon the drummers entrance I had lots of signal console side. Almost immediately the drummer flagged me down, note I work with this drummer frequently and previously he has always loved the sound of the setup. So I went to see what the problem was. He had no kick in his IEM mixer?

At this point while I did not have the kick gain maximized at the console (ie. I could turn it up a little more without clipping) there was plenty of signal. The chain was as followed GLD-80 to AR2412 to Aviom A-16D to 8x A-16II. The drum routing was unchanged from a previous event and I had triple checked before the event, routing should be correct. I first went and checked another Aviom on stage and plugged in my cans, plenty of  delicious kick. Went back to drummers monitor, plugged in my cans and I soloed and there was no kick? I went and double checked the routing again.

For the routing I had the drums broken down into three Aviom channels.
1) Kick: Direct from D6 (post)
2) Snare: Direct from SM-57 (post)
3) IEM Drum Bus: Includes Subkick, D6, Kick Click, Snare, Toms, and Overheads (post).

This is usually a very good sounding IEM setup for drums, even if the kick channel was not working, it should still be coming quite strongly through the drum bus channel on the Aviom. As I could hear the kick quite prominently in other Aviom Units on stage (not the drummers) I was quite perplexed, as all units should be receiving the same signal.

I tried changing the headphone cable, headphones, giving the kick more gain, running a new ethercon/RJ45 line to the cage, and eventually a different Aviom unit. The original Aviom had no kick, the second Aviom had some kick, but it was much quieter then it had been plugged in on another spot on the stage. Eventually the drummer settled for the quiet mix, but I have been completely mystified. The kick was never loud and never sounded good for him. Before it is asked the channel was not muted, however I am not familiar with how the presents and groupings work on the Aviom A-16II, if this could have caused it please enlighten me.

Simply the units seemed to not be getting the same thing. I rechecked the routing several times, as that would seem the easiest place for there to be a problem. If it was a simple gain problem then it would not have sounded good in some of the other Avioms and there would have been some kick when soloed.

To note the Aviom system I have (A-16D and 8x A-16II and the Ethercon/RJ45 cabling) were purchased well used from another production company. Could it be a bad cable or unit? The venue where I was last night also had the sketchiest power of anywhere we have used the Avioms, my Aviom rack does not yet have a power conditioner or UPS although that is in the works. Are Avioms very sensitive to bad power and could this have potentially caused the issue?

Sorry for the long post, simply trying to figure out what could have possibly caused a problem (where this operator errored) so I can get it fixed! Also open to receiving help from audio gear exorcist. 

Thanks!
Matthias McCready

[Erik Jerde]

Avioms of the type you have will all receive the same thing.  I have had an 01v96 with the MY-16 aviom card have screwy channel order that would only fix if you rebooted the console so sometimes things get screwy but then they get screwy for everyone.  My experience with the 01v probably doesn't apply to your situation.

It sounds like you troubleshot this situation pretty well.  I can't remember all the aviom models well.  Are you using a distro that provides power to the units or are you powering locally?

If I'm understanding correctly you swapped a unit that was working well (A) with the one that wasn't (B).  A then didn't work well.  How was B in the new location?  Did you try the drummer unit in a different distro port?

If the problem doesn't follow the mixer then it's upstream of the mixer.  You swapped cables.  Have you tested those cables (including  while wiggling the connector) since the gig?

[Matthias McCready]

Avioms of the type you have will all receive the same thing. 

Atleast that is supposed to be what happens... 

I have had an 01v96 with the MY-16 aviom card have screwy channel order that would only fix if you rebooted the console so sometimes things get screwy but then they get screwy for everyone.  My experience with the 01v probably doesn't apply to your situation.

It sounds like you troubleshot this situation pretty well.  I can't remember all the aviom models well.  Are you using a distro that provides power to the units or are you powering locally?

If I'm understanding correctly you swapped a unit that was working well (A) with the one that wasn't (B).  A then didn't work well.  How was B in the new location?  Did you try the drummer unit in a different distro port?

If the problem doesn't follow the mixer then it's upstream of the mixer.  You swapped cables.  Have you tested those cables (including  while wiggling the connector) since the gig?

It was power over Ethernet from the Aviom distribution box. I didn't try B in a new location should have done that too and I didn't think to try a new port although the other ethernet line had a different port.

I will pull all the Avioms and cabling out one of these days and see if I can recreate any problems (including cable wiggling).

I have been thinking of designing some new Aviom mounts that accept Ethercon, which should provide a more stable connections. Not a huge fan of the RJ45 connections.
...

Matthias

[Erik Jerde]

Sounds like it's time for some bench time.

You could maybe mount an ethercon passthrough to the bottom of the stand mount and then use a short patch cable to jump from that to the aviom.  Not sure it's worth the $$$ but then again my initial though related to "Aviom Exorcism" was more of a how to get rid of avioms completely than weird aviom poltergeist.

Also, Aviom isn't Ethernet so saying power of Ethernet really isn't correct.  You probably know that already, but some people think that everything running on category cable is Ethernet and it can create some confusion.

[Juliusokoti]

I ran into a puzzler last night  Sorry for the long post, but trying to figure out what went wrong.

So had an event for a local house of prayer last night (bands or musicians in 2 hour sets). As usual for these events we used our 8 unit Aviom system. Before the event I completed a line check, but there was a not a full band until after two hours in (ie. Avioms were working but not fully being utilized).

So a few hours in the first band, with a drummer, began to a play. Upon the drummers entrance I had lots of signal console side. Almost immediately the drummer flagged me down, note I work with this drummer frequently and previously he has always loved the sound of the setup. So I went to see what the problem was. He had no kick in his IEM mixer?

At this point while I did not have the kick gain maximized at the console (ie. I could turn it up a little more without clipping) there was plenty of signal. The chain was as followed GLD-80 to AR2412 to Aviom A-16D to 8x A-16II. The drum routing was unchanged from a previous event and I had triple checked before the event, routing should be correct. I first went and checked another Aviom on stage and plugged in my cans, plenty of  delicious kick. Went back to drummers monitor, plugged in my cans and I soloed and there was no kick? I went and double checked the routing again.

For the routing I had the drums broken down into three Aviom channels.
1) Kick: Direct from D6 (post)
2) Snare: Direct from SM-57 (post)
3) IEM Drum Bus: Includes Subkick, D6, Kick Click, Snare, Toms, and Overheads (post).

This is usually a very good sounding IEM setup for drums, even if the kick channel was not working, it should still be coming quite strongly through the drum bus channel on the Aviom. As I could hear the kick quite prominently in other Aviom Units on stage (not the drummers) I was quite perplexed, as all units should be receiving the same signal.

I tried changing the headphone cable, headphones, giving the kick more gain, running a new ethercon/RJ45 line to the cage, and eventually a different Aviom unit. The original Aviom had no kick, the second Aviom had some kick, but it was much quieter then it had been plugged in on another spot on the stage. Eventually the drummer settled for the quiet mix, but I have been completely mystified. The kick was never loud and never sounded good for him. Before it is asked the channel was not muted, however I am not familiar with how the presents and groupings work on the Aviom A-16II, if this could have caused it please enlighten me.

Simply the units seemed to not be getting the same thing. I rechecked the routing several times, as that would seem the easiest place for there to be a problem. If it was a simple gain problem then it would not have sounded good in some of the other Avioms and there would have been some kick when soloed.

To note the Aviom system I have (A-16D and 8x A-16II and the Ethercon/RJ45 cabling) were purchased well used from another production company. Could it be a bad cable or unit? The venue where I was last night also had the sketchiest power of anywhere we have used the Avioms, my Aviom rack does not yet have a power conditioner or UPS although that is in the works. Are Avioms very sensitive to bad power and could this have potentially caused the issue?

Sorry for the long post, simply trying to figure out what could have possibly caused a problem (where this operator errored) so I can get it fixed! Also open to receiving help from audio gear exorcist. 

Thanks!
Matthias McCready

That is a cable issue , have you tried swapping the cables ? I have had the same issue with personal monitoring systems and most of the time it is ethernet cable failure.

Sent from my SM-J700F using Tapatalk

[Matthias McCready]

You could maybe mount an ethercon passthrough to the bottom of the stand mount and then use a short patch cable to jump from that to the aviom.  Not sure it's worth the $$$ but then again my initial though related to "Aviom Exorcism" was more of a how to get rid of avioms completely than weird aviom poltergeist.

My partner has access to a machine shop so doing that just costs us time and some connectors. I know Aviom has an actual connection hub but that is $120, which is about more than we got the Avioms for...  As a musician I used to really dislike how Avioms sounded, until I heard them running off a console with a good preamps (Midas Pro3). We picked them up very cheap and they actually (when working...  ) sound fantastic through the GLD-80 (not a Midas Pro3). Definitely have had a few times where a musician walks in a little frustrated that they will have to use Avioms, only to have them be floored by how good it sounds. The other night was the first complaint.

I would love to get into the Digital Labs or Allen & Heath ME-1 system, however the current system has sounded good and is enough channels for most events we work with. At this point I don't think the clientele would want to pay more for a better option and there are better things $6-8k could be spent on... 

That is a cable issue , have you tried swapping the cables ? I have had the same issue with personal monitoring systems and most of the time it is ethernet cable failure.

Good to know. A few of the RJ45 connectors have been quite strained, it is a heavier duty cable then an RJ45 connector should have to hold.

Thanks,
Matthias

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