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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Installed Sound/Contracting => Topic started by: Lee Douglas on August 09, 2017, 06:04:53 PM
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I can't go into too much detail, but say you needed 40 channels of mic processing, 1 in to 1 out each with no mixing required nor desired, what would you use? Looking for high/low pass, comp/limit, ALC, parametric EQ at a minimum. I was thinking of stacking multiple BSS Blu series boxes, but have a feeling there a more eloquent way to do this. I'll provide more specific details if asked and if I can.
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Yamaha mrx 7d with Dante IO
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Two Biamp Tesira SERVER-IO with AVB frames; one frame with 10 SIC-4 input cards (4 input channels each) and one frame with 10 SOC-4 outputs cards (four output channels each) would be a pretty elegant solution and would take 6 rack spaces. You'd also have some additional analog expansion capability, not to mention AVB signal routing options and even Dante if you added the card. The densest BSS BLU solution would be 5 RU, which would fill the available analog ports and expanding would require another device.
You would want to mock up your processing configs in the Biamp Tesira software to determine how many DSP cards you would need installed in the frames. This can be done offline without a hardware device.
We work with large Biamp and BSS DSP systems on a regular basis (and sell neither, we're primarily a design, programming, and commissioning company). In this application with the information provided I think I'd prefer two Biamp frames to a stack of BSS. The Biamp would be faster to install due to less hardware, networking is simpler (connect the two AVB ports directly; with the LAN port as few as two short ethernet cables required once programmed, though you would need a switch during programming and afterwards if control is needed), and I believe that mic cable termination would be easier in a dense environment due to the layout of the Biamp cards (put blank rack spaces in between the BSS units and then this particular Biamp advantage goes away).
There are other considerations I would assess before making a final decision. I don't intend this to be a BSS vs Biamp thing, other systems exist, too, and the same considerations are there including:
A. Cost (my hunch is that the Tesira ends up a bit cheaper, wouldn't take long to figure that one out)
B. Networking - is this system standalone or does it live on a customer's network?
C. Is rack space at a premium or is there plenty?
D. How much room is there to work within/around the rack to make terminations?
E. Is there expansion in the future via? If so, is it anticipated that expansion will be analog, Dante, Cobranet, AVB, etc.? Biamp probably has an advantage here due to being able to add/swap cards with various protocols, while with BSS the protocols are determined by the particular BLU device.
F. Control - How do you anticipate interacting with this system? Are realtime adjustments required or is this system tuned and left to operate?
G. Security - This becomes more important if the system will reside on a customer's network. Biamp Tesira supports SSH while I believe we're still waiting for that feature in BSS so everything is in the clear.
Another possible solution is QSC Q-SYS Core. The new offerings at InfoComm this year were pretty exciting. We don't touch Q-SYS as much as we do London or Tesira, so I'm going to refrain from any making any design suggestions. I will say that our experience with the Q-SYS product has been very good and I like the direction QSC is heading with commercial off-the-shelf server processing (albeit restricted at the moment).
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I can't go into too much detail, but say you needed 40 channels of mic processing,
Can't go into detail, or won't because its a silly request from a silly client? Hahaha
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QSC Q-SYS core with some I/O expanders. You could mock it up in the designer software to see if you can do it with the processing available on the smaller core or if you need to step up to the mid level one.
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Can't go into detail, or won't because its a silly request from a silly client? Hahaha
For once it's not a silly request! We're are attempting to clean up individual signals before they hit encoders for archiving. They are serious enough that they're requesting a completely redundant system along side this one.
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Two Biamp Tesira SERVER-IO with AVB frames; one frame with 10 SIC-4 input cards (4 input channels each) and ...
Thanks, Steve. I want to digest that a bit before I reply. Last time I checked Biamp had a lot of dealer requirements, that we are probably not prepared to meet, which is why I was leaning towards BSS. Have they loosened up those restrictions at all?
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QSC Q-SYS core with some I/O expanders. You could mock it up in the designer software to see if you can do it with the processing available on the smaller core or if you need to step up to the mid level one.
Thanks, I'll check it out.
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For once it's not a silly request! We're are attempting to clean up individual signals before they hit encoders for archiving. They are serious enough that they're requesting a completely redundant system along side this one.
What encoders are they hitting?
Can they just be directly digital?
Maybe Dante?
BSS and others who could do Dante natively could then utilize a minimum of equipment since your outputs could be DANTE rather than cards.
Also, what sort of cleanup? AEC processing cleanup?
Lee
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For once it's not a silly request! We're are attempting to clean up individual signals before they hit encoders for archiving. They are serious enough that they're requesting a completely redundant system along side this one.
Q-Sys can do a completely redundant setup (including network) if you want to spend the money on the equipment. It's pretty easy to do. What's your signal format?
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Q-Sys can do a completely redundant setup (including network) if you want to spend the money on the equipment. It's pretty easy to do. What's your signal format?
QSYS and BSS both can.
BSS will even provide automatic loading of programming to new hardware if a failure occurs and you have to change out a piece of hardware. It's a part of Contrio server.
Lee
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Thanks, I'll check it out.
I was in the software doing some programming tonight so I popped open a new project and did a little mock-up. 40x40 with a standard console channel strip and AEC (300ms tail) can be done with plenty of processing left over on the mid-level core. Can't do the AEC on the low end unit. High end unit is good to go of course but you'll need more I/O frames since that one doesn't have analog I/O onboard.
If you want true no-blips redundancy then you really need two separate systems (same hardware requirements though). A redundant system will have an audio blip if you loose an I/O module or a DSP core as it switches over.
Like Lee B. said, regardless of the system dante will cut your needs for analog IO and the requisite IO frames. Might pay for itself. At least on the output side it's not a bad idea unless they are wedded to a record system that is analog input only. A couple of Reaper systems using DVS and slaved together with midi control would probably be pretty slick.
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Thanks, Steve. I want to digest that a bit before I reply. Last time I checked Biamp had a lot of dealer requirements, that we are probably not prepared to meet, which is why I was leaning towards BSS. Have they loosened up those restrictions at all?
We're not a dealer, so I'll leave that question open for someone who is.
I will discuss redundancy though. Biamp Tesira Server offers redundancy and auto-failover. Then again as Erik and Lee B. point out if you simply need to run the DSP appliances in parallel with zero interaction then automation may not be required. Knowing how you are interfacing to the encoders is a key component to the system design.
How far do you need to take the redundancy? Does the system need to be redundant from analog input to analog output? What is your tolerance for faults, and what is at stake during a failure?
Q-SYS can even provide you with redundant power supplies on the DSP appliance if you can wait until the new next-generation enterprise cores become available this fall. There used to be others, MediaMatrix frames and IED for sure, but I'm not sure anyone else is doing this now.
Side story - I recall a mission critical application where practically everything was N+2 except the building itself. Standby generators, networks, other support systems and yes some of the AV fell under this requirement. I'd been involved in many varying implementations of redundant AV systems but trying to attain a true N+2 was a first for me and an interesting experience. We pretty much got there but some elements of the plan relied on technician intervention with standby spares.
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It's a part of Contrio server.
Lee,
Do you know if it is possible to run redundant Contrio Servers?
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Lee,
Do you know if it is possible to run redundant Contrio Servers?
Yes it is, so I have been told. I have not set up redundant servers.
Depending on what you are "cleaning up" and how the customer requires the recording you may be better of using something like a couple of JoeCo Blackbox recorders and a couple of stand-alone DSP systems providing the automated cleanup.
If this is archival cleanup then it really can't be fully automated as you need to sample the noise, adjust the click and pop reduction, and possibly even redraw the waveform during the archiving process. Magix Sequoia comes with some very powerful archival noise, click, and pop reduction software. There are plugins available for most DAW's. Some are significantly better than others. Not all archival tools are created equal.
Lee
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What encoders are they hitting?
Can they just be directly digital?
Maybe Dante?
BSS and others who could do Dante natively could then utilize a minimum of equipment since your outputs could be DANTE rather than cards.
Also, what sort of cleanup? AEC processing cleanup?
Lee
At this point it would be hitting analog inputs on IP camera. I'm looking into other options on the server for bringing it in there.
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Speaking of Dante- Tesira server has Dante, cobranet, and AVB cards so you could bring it in analog and do your processing and send it all out digitally. Not sure if that helps or not just an idea.
Also, I'm a Tesira dealer. It wasn't bad. You've got to pass a test in order to sell tesira and they'll want an annual commitment. I know this is vague but it was either $20k or $40k. I got the impression they're looking for a certain type of dealer and that seems to be almost as important as any of the numbers or training. I've been on since 2014 and it's been all good. I order equipment, it shows up, we install it. :-) You're welcome to hit me back channel if you have other dealer questions....
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I can't go into too much detail, but say you needed 40 channels of mic processing, 1 in to 1 out each with no mixing required nor desired, what would you use? Looking for high/low pass, comp/limit, ALC, parametric EQ at a minimum. I was thinking of stacking multiple BSS Blu series boxes, but have a feeling there a more eloquent way to do this. I'll provide more specific details if asked and if I can.
Hi Lee,
If you're looking for a more simple one/two box solution, an Allen & Heath DME64 mix rack could pull this off. It only needs an expander to hit the analog I/O count. If you can use Dante, you could drop to the smaller rack (as it has the same internal DSP).
Jeff