Background. Installer is moving a GLD80 and stage boxes and avioms to a new church campus. An SQ and 4816 stagebox will take the place of the GLD80 system. The SQ rig will be using a combo of existing in-ears and new ME units. To make the transition a bit quicker I have an existing show and scene saved on a USB stick. I can access the settings on my laptop. I could just manually rough-in my settings and fine tune with the musicians at practice. The question has been asked if settings saved on the stick can be transferred to the SQ. I keep saying "Ask the installer-don't assume." Even if one could dump a GLD80 show into the SQ, what happens when there are no Avioms and other hardware the board used to have?
At my small local metal shows I've heard BEs talking about storing shows on a stick. If the venue has Brand X board, they load their band's Brand X settings into board. I assume a venue is more flexible and able to accommodate "whatever" rolls in.
So on top of my GLD to SQ question, what IS saved on a show vs scene? For personal gigs I have my Si Expression's baseline "show" saved on a stick. If for some reason the board was accidentally re-set to factory settings (happened at an event once) I could reload the show based on my MADI card and stagebox. That is my impression anyway.
Set me straight on all this!
They are pretty different consoles, to my knowledge a GLD file will not work on an SQ.
As to the software side for the SQ series it is unfortunately limited, you will probably need to build a session once you have the console in hand.
I would recommend spending a day with it before rehearsal. I recently installed an SQ series console, and it was quite different from my GLD. Personally was not a fan.
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As far as loading a show file on another identical console? Everything should be the same, you would just need to digitally rematch the local I/O, which should not take long at all.
1. Repatching an input only takes a couple seconds a channel (a console will show you what sources/cards/stageracks you have available).
2. For A&H Aviom just uses ear outputs 1-16. The A&H ME 500 handles 16 channels (no different than the Aviom) and the ME 1 handles 40 inputs. See note on the ME 1 Below
3. Patch outputs (mains, sub, front fill etc)
If you are setting an up an ME 1 system, that it has 16 buttons (groups if you want), and you need to program what goes where. Took me about 30 minutes learning how to use it and to set up a session file. I recommend making a parent file with 16 blank presets and one of them saved. You will then need to flash all of the additional units to the other units, if you want the user experience to be identical per unit (there is not a networked way to do this that I know of).
Also keep in mind when using 16 channels vs 40 for the ears, with 16 your are probably using some auxes to group things such as drums, speaking mics etc. With 40 channels most venues can send everything 1 for 1. This is an easier aspect of the transition.
Most consoles I know of have two levels of hierarchy, the nomenclature varies by brand. but most consoles have a
Showfile (parent file) and scenes/snapshots (sub files).
In some the places I work, snapshots would be used for various songs or parts of songs.
Hopefully that helps
