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