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Author Topic: Midas M32 and Waves  (Read 8429 times)

Dwayne Aasberg

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Midas M32 and Waves
« on: January 19, 2022, 11:26:25 PM »

Hi all.
I seek some advice regarding Waves and Midas M32 consoles.

First, background.
Our church uses an M32 and DL32 in the main sanctuary.

Next, we use an M32C in the Video Room to mix the audio content of our live video streams.
(We do not post-assemble/process the services for later publication.  The services are live-streamed and available afterward for YouTube viewing.)
The M32C main LR output is sent to the video computer via USB.

Anyway… The DL32, M32 and M32C are all connected by AES50.  Further, the routing in the sanctuary M32 is set to direct copy all the inputs and their channel allocation via AES50 to the M32C in the Video Room.  With this config the console settings of the M32 can be copied as a scene and loaded into the M32C as a seedfile for that particular service.  All that need happen is redirection of the channel inputs to AES50 instead of physical inputs – a carefully written snippet accomplishes this in one action.  Then the video sound tech can mix, effect, whatever; independent of the sanctuary mix, all in real time.

Been working pretty good for the last pandemic-burdened year.

Fast forward.  We’re experimenting using Waves Tune Real-Time with the sanctuary M32.
We run Reaper on a USB connected PC and send the tuned vocals back to an unused channel.  Obviously tweaking the USB to reduce latency, and eliminate clicks and dropouts is an ongoing challenge.  The tuned vocal channels are also available to the Video Room M32C.  But the combo of PC, USB, Reaper, Waves Tune is tech-intensive and we seek a more robust solution that can be used by our less experienced techs.

Obviously a Waves SuperRack combo would work.  But….
If the USB card is replaced with the Waves WSG card, we lose the ability to multitrack record in the sanctuary using Reaper – something we do frequently to create special content in controlled settings (not Sundays).  We could run SuperRack on a PC and connect via USB (I think…).  I’ve rejected Dante connection based on other advice in this forum.

Now the ask.  Any suggestions on how to achieve both the following?
1.   Robust, easy to turn on and off, Waves Tune Real-Time on selected M32 channels
2.   Ability to use the M32 to multitrack record using Reaper

Apologies for the missive; I was hoping to bypass 20-questions and inevitable yes-buts.
Thanks in advance for any and all replies.
Dwayne A
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Tim Weaver

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2022, 02:27:23 PM »

Couple of things here.

What console is providing the monitor mixes that the band hears?

How big is the room? How much distance between the band on stage and the main speakers in the house?

How many channels do you need to process with plug ins?

How many channels total do you run? (whole band + preachers + any video/computer in/out)




You can use the Dante card in the X/M32 which will allow you to process things externally AND record on a computer running Dante DVS. As long as you can get everything done within the parameters of the X32 patching issues AND Dante's 64 channel limit.

Yamaha has just announced this. It will run VST3 plug ins and receive/send over Dante. It takes another computer to use as the "controller" but the yamaha box is doing the number crunching. The computer running Reaper could also host the control app for the Ruio-16-D.


It's not available yet, but dealers have been told to expect pricing in Febuary.
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Dwayne Aasberg

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2022, 11:52:48 AM »

Hi Tim.
Thx for the reply.
More information for you then some questions.

What console is providing the monitor mixes that the band hears?

The band's in-ear monitors are off the M32 in the sanctuary.
We did note confusion among the vocalists if they get the 'tuned' version of the vocals.  So we make both the 'un-tuned' and 'tuned' versions available in separate channels, and all the vocalists use the 'un-tuned' in their monitors.  The 'tuned' version is used in the sanctuary and live-stream mixes.
Is this phenomenon the reason you ask about monitors?

How big is the room? How much distance between the band on stage and the main speakers in the house?

Why is this important?  No really - I want to understand what you're thinking.
The sanctuary is about 80'x80' with a 20' ceiling.  The mains are hung from the ceiling about 10' in front of the stage.

How many channels do you need to process with plug ins?

Really just 4-6 vocalists.  We get along pretty good with the effects built into the M32 so really only want to run Waves Tune off board.

How many channels total do you run? (whole band + preachers + any video/computer in/out)

One bank of channels is hard assigned to the wireless rig (5x), lectern and grand piano.  The other three banks are fully assignable.  (We use Aux-ins for PC, etc.)  So a 'typical' setup would use an additional 12-16ch.
So 'used' channels would be 8+12(16)=20(24)

You can use the Dante card in the X/M32 which will allow you to process things externally AND record on a computer running Dante DVS. As long as you can get everything done within the parameters of the X32 patching issues AND Dante's 64 channel limit.

This is where I wanted to go off the hop as I think 'count-wise' it would be more than adequate.
But this thread elsewhere in this forum seems to suggest that DVS on a PC would introduce over 10ms of latency.  Am I missing something?

We are planning to use a dedicated PC box for this purpose - is a Dante card for PC available?  I should look for that...

For clarity, we do not intend to record to Reaper and run Waves Tune simultaneously.  Those are different activities.

Yamaha has just announced this. It will run VST3 plug ins and receive/send over Dante. It takes another computer to use as the "controller" but the yamaha box is doing the number crunching. The computer running Reaper could also host the control app for the Ruio-16-D.

Is the Yamaha box doing the plug-in processing, or the PC?  That's not clear to me.

In my mind I see three possible options:
One.  Full-on Waves SG.  Aside from the serious capital investment, it's not clear though how we can do multi-track recording after we lose the USB port on the M32.  Am I missing something?

Two.  MultiRack native and Dante using DVS on the PC (or a potential dedicated Dante card in the PC).  In this case we could use Waves Tune when needed, and record to Reaper when so desired.  But the latency questions remain.

Three.  MultiRack native using USB.  This would be slightly less complicated than our current USB/PC/Reaper solution...  I think, but we're still relying on USB.

Is this about right?  Is there another option or considerations I've missed?

Again, thanks for your reply and thoughts.
Dwayne A
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Bill Meeks

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2022, 04:54:56 PM »

My reading on the new Yamaha RUio16-D unit tells me all of the audio processing occurs on the PC (or Mac) connected via the USB interface; not inside the Yamaha box itself. The Yamaha box pulls audio off the Dante network and sends it over to the PC on the USB interface for plugin processing, and then does the opposite by pulling the processed audio back from the PC over USB and putting it onto the Dante network. Here is a series of YouTube videos produced by Yahama Global showcasing the new box:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rjqgoqj7LLKOuaMnKpwD0R0aiInbj_Z.

USB is used for the plugin interface because it has slightly lower latency than DVS. Exactly how much less depends on some things within the operating system you are using (Windows or Mac). But in general it's less than DVS, but not as good as straight hardware Dante I/O would be.

As for you question about available Dante cards for PCs -- Audinate previously made a nice PCI Express Dante card for PCs that has 128 x 128 (in/out) channels. But that card has recently been discontinued. Yamaha themselves sold (or still sells) a rebranded version of this card. You can perhaps still find one, but they seem to be more rare by the day. The cost was around $1100 USD. Here is a link to the Yamaha card:  https://usa.yamaha.com/products/proaudio/interfaces/aic128-d/index.html. This card, if you can find one, is ideal for getting audio in and out of a PC via Dante. It has super low latency. You could use it for the I/O, and then something like Reaper or Live Professor for the VST plugin host. You could also use it with Waves SuperRack in Native mode if you wished. But by the time you purchased a capable PC, that Dante hardware card if you can find it, and bought a copy of SuperRack, you are approaching what a Waves Soundgrid setup costs. They have several options for Soundgrid including a model that bridges Dante to Soundgrid.

There are AES50 to Dante bridge devices available, and Midas makes a Dante card for their console mixers. You could use that to convert your "sends" from the main console to the livestream console over to Dante from the AES50 you said you are currently using.

The dedicated software package available with the new Yamaha device has some cool features for presets and MIDI recall of scenes and plugin setups. It's a shame that it uses USB to operate. That introduces some reliability uncertainties as well as extra latency. But hopefully using USB will keep the price down compared to Dante hardware I/O. I suspect the latency is low enough for most FOH applications, and certainly would be no issue for livestream processing. And in fact, for strictly livestream audio processing, DVS is probably just fine.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2022, 08:25:37 PM by Bill Meeks »
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Tim Weaver

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2022, 12:30:24 AM »

Hi Tim.
Thx for the reply.
More information for you then some questions.

The band's in-ear monitors are off the M32 in the sanctuary.
We did note confusion among the vocalists if they get the 'tuned' version of the vocals.  So we make both the 'un-tuned' and 'tuned' versions available in separate channels, and all the vocalists use the 'un-tuned' in their monitors.  The 'tuned' version is used in the sanctuary and live-stream mixes.
Is this phenomenon the reason you ask about monitors?
Yes exactly this. The talent should never hear the tuned vocal back in their monitors. Firstly it will cover up any off-pitch singing, so they'll never know if they are on pitch or not, and secondly it introduces latency, and we want to keep the latency as low as possible for the monitors. 
Quote

Why is this important?  No really - I want to understand what you're thinking.
The sanctuary is about 80'x80' with a 20' ceiling.  The mains are hung from the ceiling about 10' in front of the stage.

 
I'm just curious as to how much of the main PA the talent is hearing. You can get away with a lot more processing latency for the house than you can in the monitors. Once you get past a certain amount of time between the vocalist and what they hear, it registers more as an echo which is a little easier to deal with versus just bad latency which really confuses the singer.
Quote
Really just 4-6 vocalists.  We get along pretty good with the effects built into the M32 so really only want to run Waves Tune off board.

One bank of channels is hard assigned to the wireless rig (5x), lectern and grand piano.  The other three banks are fully assignable.  (We use Aux-ins for PC, etc.)  So a 'typical' setup would use an additional 12-16ch.
So 'used' channels would be 8+12(16)=20(24)

 
Ok. I was just curious to see if you had a bunch of channel left over to "dual process", meaning you have one channel for the monitors (with little to no processing) and the same preamp patched to another channel for going wild with. This channel will NOT be usable for monitors.
Quote

This is where I wanted to go off the hop as I think 'count-wise' it would be more than adequate.
But this thread elsewhere in this forum seems to suggest that DVS on a PC would introduce over 10ms of latency.  Am I missing something?   
Correct. DVS on a computer will have UP TO 10 ms of latency. This will not be usable on monitors because after add the processing delay of the console, the snake, the plugins all added up it will be really bad for monitors. It will still probably be usable for the house and definitely for broadcast. 
Quote

We are planning to use a dedicated PC box for this purpose - is a Dante card for PC available?  I should look for that...
 
Focusrite Rednet PCIe. Requires a windows box with PCIe slots. And it's not cheap, but the latency is amazingly low. 
Quote

For clarity, we do not intend to record to Reaper and run Waves Tune simultaneously.  Those are different activities.
I may be wrong about this, but I believe that if you set up a soundgrid system to utilize a Soundgrid Server, it will also let you record on the host machine. I have never done it, but I believe it to be true. Soundgrid is merely Waves' digital "snake" transport.
Quote

Is the Yamaha box doing the plug-in processing, or the PC?  That's not clear to me.
I don't think its clear to anyone yet, but I assume that the processing is being done inside the Ruio and not the coomputer. It would work just like a soundgrid server at that point. If this new box is just a Dante enabled USB interface, then why all the hoopla about plugins? It would be unneccesary because there are already solutions that exists for much cheaper that will do dante in/out of a computer that runs plugins.

Yamaha HAS to be doing the number crunching inside this box. If they aren't I simply don't see them selling a single one of these things, as it's just another USB interface. 
Quote

In my mind I see three possible options:
One.  Full-on Waves SG.  Aside from the serious capital investment, it's not clear though how we can do multi-track recording after we lose the USB port on the M32.  Am I missing something?

Two.  MultiRack native and Dante using DVS on the PC (or a potential dedicated Dante card in the PC).  In this case we could use Waves Tune when needed, and record to Reaper when so desired.  But the latency questions remain.

Three.  MultiRack native using USB.  This would be slightly less complicated than our current USB/PC/Reaper solution...  I think, but we're still relying on USB.

Is this about right?  Is there another option or considerations I've missed?

Again, thanks for your reply and thoughts.
Dwayne A
All those options are correct. I had a DVS equipped machine running Reaper, AND a Waves server at one point. I ditched the Waves box (I actually ditched all Waves products) to make my life easier and am now running a dedicated PC with a Rednet PCIe card in it. I use LiveProfessor 2 as the plug in host which is pretty easy to learn and seems to work well with most plug ins. I've had a few plugs crash it, but it's always a graphics thing, not an audio thing. For some reason some waves plug ins will run fine, but when you open the GUI on the plug in it crashes LP2. I solved this by using lots of Reaper's fantastic stock plugins and a few other free or otherwise third party VST's.
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Matthias McCready

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2022, 10:59:57 AM »


Fast forward.  We’re experimenting using Waves Tune Real-Time with the sanctuary M32...[Snip].... We seek a more robust solution that can be used by our less experienced techs.


Dwayne,

I am not saying tuning is wrong, but I would be incredibly cautious.

In the environment I work in, I have professional paid musicians and vocalists. Things are rehearsed to the second, and I mix down multitracks after rehearsal to make the weekend feel as good as possible. Even with that I almost never utilize pitch correction, even though I know the exact parts the vocalist will sing. Note that I still very much deal with having "pitchy" vocalists.

The problem with pitch correction, is you have to be very confident that you know exactly where that vocalist will go sharp/flat. If you get it wrong; it will correct to the wrong note, which will be VERY obvious and not sound tasty.

Even in my environment I would consider pitching everything to be too "risky."

So I would pose to you:
1) How good are your "inexperienced techs" with music theory? How good is their ear for pitch?
2) Are you running snapshots/scenes for every song that will change the respective Key(s) in Waves?
3) How well do you know your vocalists and their range, what parts of their range they struggle with pitch?

----

Depending on stage noise, pitch correction can also cause some pretty strange audible artifacts for the other item that vocal mic is picking up, especially if the person singing is playing an acoustic guitar or something.

----

If your vocalists are struggling with pitch, have you taken a look at their IEM mixes?

As long as someone is a half decent vocalist, I have found that their monitor mix is usually the culprit for singing off key. Usually said vocalist has their vocal 6-18dB hotter than everything else. While they can hear themselves well what they cannot hear is the pitch reference (keys, guitar etc). Turning that pitch reference tends to make a world of difference.
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Robert Lofgren

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #6 on: January 24, 2022, 05:52:22 PM »

If you install the soundgrid driver on your Reaper computer you can record the output from your WSG-card.

Also, have a look at Waves QRec: https://www.waves.com/mixers-racks/soundgrid-qrec#simplified-soundgrid-app-live-recording-qrec

Obviously a Waves SuperRack combo would work.  But….
If the USB card is replaced with the Waves WSG card, we lose the ability to multitrack record in the sanctuary using Reaper – something we do frequently to create special content in controlled settings (not Sundays).  We could run SuperRack on a PC and connect via USB (I think…).
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Dwayne Aasberg

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2022, 10:42:23 PM »

Hello Matthias and Robert.
Thank you for your replies.

I am not saying tuning is wrong, but I would be incredibly cautious.

I hear you, for sure I hear you.  Pitch correction is an 'experiment' for all the reasons you've stated.  But the experiment is being facilitated by our Worship Leader (a very accomplished musician) - not me.  Our artists are very strong, too.  We and they have noted, though, that pitchyness that may have gone unnoticed in the live sanctuary is quite pronounced in the online stream.  Thus, the experiment.

If you install the soundgrid driver on your Reaper computer you can record the output from your WSG-card.

Also, have a look at Waves QRec: https://www.waves.com/mixers-racks/soundgrid-qrec#simplified-soundgrid-app-live-recording-qrec

I was not aware of this capability.  Thank you.
D
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Dwayne Aasberg

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2022, 11:52:16 PM »

If you install the soundgrid driver on your Reaper computer you can record the output from your WSG-card.

Further question.   Can a SuperRack Native PC exchange audio with an M32 that has an DN32-WSG installed and connected to an ethernet port on the PC?  Kinda SondGrid Lite - with no SG server.

Am I OTL?
Thx for your help.  D
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Matthias McCready

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Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2022, 09:38:08 AM »

Further question.   Can a SuperRack Native PC exchange audio with an M32 that has an DN32-WSG installed and connected to an ethernet port on the PC?  Kinda SondGrid Lite - with no SG server.

Am I OTL?
Thx for your help.  D

I am thinking not; if I have time I can give it a try today.

I think that could be the difference between Superack live vs studio?
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ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Midas M32 and Waves
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2022, 09:38:08 AM »


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