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[Chris M. Tucker]

Hopefully I'm posting this in the right spot. It's my first post here.

My band recently had a technical train wreck that I'd like to avoid in the future. The venue had a contracted production company who subcontracted and didn't pass on any of our planning in an effective manner. Their engineer was receptive to our input on settings, but it was just too complex to piece together at the last minute.

They ran an S32 stage box down ethercon to an X32 FOH console. We wanted to insert our own X32 into the system as a monitoring console to output to our IEMs, but never figured out the routing and connectivity in time to not stop our headline slot form being delayed because of technical difficulties. We have our own engineer who we'd want to run our monitors, and we're happy to let the FOH guy do his own thing as he sees fit based on what he hears. We want to be minimally invasive into his system, obviously, while still getting the stuff we need done.

If the S32 AES50A connects to the FOH AES50-A and the FOH board is the master digital clock, does it make better sense to:

• Split directly off of the S32 AES50-B to our Monitoring console in at AES50-A, or
• Take AES50-B out of the FOH console with through routing into AES50-A on my monitoring console

Then, from there, can I use the AES50-B out of my monitoring console to feed my own S32 which is in the same rack as my IEM transmitters and pre-wired, or do I have to use the local outs on my X32 and patch that way?

I know I'll need to do some pretty fancy User-In/User-Out routing, but in the case of a monitoring console that's just fine by me. I just want to make sure that the hardware will actually communicate when networked like this, and that my assumptions about where the master clock typically resides are accurate (though that's easy enough to find out in real time).

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Erik Jerde]

The best approach in this sort of situation is just an analog split.  Digital splits can be great but when interfacing with someone else’s gear there are just so many ways they can go wrong.  Typically bands running their own monitors will just have an x32 rack and a simple passive analog split.  Being able to just hand the house engineer a set of labeled tails is super easy and makes the whole system integration thing a piece of cake.

[Riley Casey]

As Erik suggested the analog splitter is the right answer. They are easily rented from a good sized sound vendor if you don't need one on a regular basis. More importantly unless you have both a FOH and monitor engineer working with you who are both familiar with the types of patching and interfacing required to do a digital split of the signals required you're skating on thin ice. Even if your monitor engineer were skilled at the required set up and had made the patches for the FOH engineer du jour so that sound check went well you would still be one scene recall away from having it all fall apart after the opener was finished and you were ready to take the stage. Don't take that chance.

[dave briar]

The best approach in this sort of situation is just an analog split.  Digital splits can be great but when interfacing with someone else’s gear there are just so many ways they can go wrong.  Typically bands running their own monitors will just have an x32 rack and a simple passive analog split.  Being able to just hand the house engineer a set of labeled tails is super easy and makes the whole system integration thing a piece of cake.

As a “house tech” I 100% concur. You’ll have your copy of the inputs to run your IEMs and I’ll have mine (hopefully plainly labeled?) to run FOH. Also note that while in theory a split with one set of outputs transformer isolated would be the most robust solution, the consensus seems to be (and my experience concurs) that the additional expense is not generally justified.

[John L Nobile]

I had a problem a few months ago where the band wanted the monitor console to control the headamps. X32 on FOH and another for monitors with a DL32. We had the setup working that way but I couldn't get any signal to the main PA. Time was tight and their tech didn't know how to do it so I just ran the main feed through my analog snake rather than trying to figure it out. Glad I never got rid of that thing.

[Russell Ault]

The best approach in this sort of situation is just an analog split.  Digital splits can be great but when interfacing with someone else’s gear there are just so many ways they can go wrong.  Typically bands running their own monitors will just have an x32 rack and a simple passive analog split.  Being able to just hand the house engineer a set of labeled tails is super easy and makes the whole system integration thing a piece of cake.

Another +1 for an analogue split. Sharing headamps on the X/M32 platform isn't foolproof, particularly when you're changing FOH engineers every show. And what happens if you roll into the venue and the FOH console turns out to be a Yamaha?

-Russ

[Chris M. Tucker]

...And what happens if you roll into the venue and the FOH console turns out to be a Yamaha?

@Russ, by your raising this I assume Yamaha doesn't support AES50? The sound companies we tend to encounter are all X32/M32 users luckily, so I'm a bit less concerned about this eventuality. However...

Loud and clear about the splitter as the option of greatest simplicity. I'm gathering that the FOH/Monitoring console sharing a single S32 as its In/Out point is probably best suited to a static installation. That being stipulated, can anyone indulge me and tell me how you might wire, route and clock that static install?

[Brian Jojade]

The concept of the digital split is cool. However, reality as others have pointed out has issues.  If you want your own monitor console, having the analog split is a must because you never know what the other production company may be using. If they don't have an X/M32, you'll need it anyway.  Just get used to that as practice.

Now, if it's your own rig on both ends it becomes a slightly different story, however, I've found sharing pre-amps more of a struggle than anything. Setting initial pre-amp gains when using split gain is somehwhat cumbersome.  For shows that are more predictable it's not much of an issue, but for a festival scenario, it's a struggle that's not worth it.  So in those cases, I revert back to an analog split.

[Russell Ault]

@Russ, by your raising this I assume Yamaha doesn't support AES50? {...}

While technically an industry standard, AES50 adoption in practice has been pretty tepid. To my knowledge, the only consoles that can talk AES50 (including with option cards) are manufactured by MusicTribe (and even then, Midas Pro-series consoles are 96kHz only and therefore can't talk to an S32).

{...} Now, if it's your own rig on both ends it becomes a slightly different story, however, I've found sharing pre-amps more of a struggle than anything. Setting initial pre-amp gains when using split gain is somehwhat cumbersome.  For shows that are more predictable it's not much of an issue, but for a festival scenario, it's a struggle that's not worth it.  So in those cases, I revert back to an analog split.

+1 to all of this. The last arena tour that came through was using a pair of M32's with shared preamps to handle supporting acts, but this only worked because (a) it was the same two support acts for every stop on the tour, and (b) neither of the support acts toured with their own BE or ME and the soundco's provided FOH and monitor people both had very similar philosophies about how gain-staging should be done.

{...} That being stipulated, can anyone indulge me and tell me how you might wire, route and clock that static install?

It really depends (sorry, Ivan).

The simplest version of "2 x X32s and an S32" is probably "monitor X32 is clock, headamp control, and gets exclusive use of the S32's outputs; FOH X32 clocks to S32 and uses local outputs for system drive". The slightly more complicated version is "monitor X32 is clock, headamp control, and gets exclusive use of the S32's outputs; FOH X32 clocks to S32 and sends outputs through S32 to the monitor X32 (since on the S32 channels 1-16 on the input side of AES50-B are looped through as channels 33-48 on the output side of AES50-A); monitor X32 loops some of the channels from AES50 inputs 33-48 back out as outputs in the 1-16 so that they show up on the output XLRs of the S32".

Conversely, if the S32 is on stage somewhere and the IEM TXs are located near the monitor X32 (or if the S32 doesn't have enough outputs to share between the PA and the IEMs), it might make more sense to do the opposite (i.e. "FOH X32 is clock, headamp control, and gets exclusive use of the S32's outputs; monitor X32 clocks to S32 and uses local outputs for IEM TXs").

Either way, with a single S32 I wouldn't typically bother trying to loop the signal through one console to another (part of the advantage of using the S/DL32 is the simplicity of signal splitting), although obviously that would be necessary if using smaller boxes (like the S16). In that case the most practical solution would be to route everything through the monitor X32 (which would be clock master and have headamp control), but even there the blocks-of-8 routing should keep things from getting too messy (at least on the input side).

-Russ

[Mike Caldwell]

+100 for an analog split, plug and play.  Just don't get Guitar Center Seismic Audio junk!!

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