Loss of power to digital desks

[MarkPAman]

As mentioned in the Electrical and Power forum.

 

Here’s the story:

 

Yesterday I had a lunchtime gig in the theatre at work. Jazzy sort of thing with electric piano the only thing that really needed to be in the PA, although I did have everything miked up. Now about half way through, one of our lovely students decided to try to climb up the back of the tired seating. In doing this she managed to kick out a plug from a small distro that was under there & FOH power was lost. So, whole band gets a bit quieter & piano is almost completely lost (pianist does have a couple of his own small monitors). So I turn the desk power off, and go to find out what’s happened. Student is still attempting to climb when I get there & doesn’t know what she’s done so I tell her :) , reconnect the power & return to the desk.

 

Next I turn down the gain down on all the graphics & power up the desk. The desk seems to half boot up, then digital feedback from all outputs. Nice. I turn the desk off rather quickly. Now I disconnect the returns multi & try the desk again, but it will not start properly & does not go far enough through bootup to recall anything I’ve saved. So I give up on the desk, & use the powered wedges to help out with keys & the MDs announcement mic. Band finishes gig, I go outside and kick things.

 

After the gig the desk boots up fine & goes to the last saved setting. This is what it has done in the past when I’ve tested it. I no longer trust it.

 

OK, so this is the Behringer DDX3216. It should restart at the last saved setting, but this time it didn’t.

 

I know that the Mackie TT24 reboots to the state it was in when power was lost as I’ve tested it many times & never had a problem.

 

 

Here are the questions:

 

How do other digital desks behave in these circumstances? I’m particularly interested in the LS9 as I’m planning to get one (for myself, not work) soon.

 

Also, how many people already use a UPS with their digital desk?

[Kevin Ross]

I was using a large format sony digital desk when the power went down. It took about 60 seconds to boot back up and would go back to the last SAVED position. So if you had not been saving your work it would not come back to where you left it! That desk had no UPS on it, the last time I used a PM5D it did have a UPS but we had to turn the generator off and so the battery ran out however we had saved our work and that came back to the last saved position.

 

 

 

I remember reading somewhere that a UPS is more likely to fail than the mains power so statically its better not to have one. Having said that I do get a bit twitchy when using a digital desk without one!

[Lamplighter]

I had several power brown-outs during the dress for a show last year. My LS9 took 22 seconds to reboot on each occasion. Seemed a lifetime but it came back where it left off. Brown-outs generally seem worse than a straight cut as some items respond at different stages to others. If I was operating a digital desk professionally I would certainly consider a small UPS, perhaps 15 minutes capacity, just to protect the desk.

Brian

[mervaka]

the A&H iLive just carries on if just the surface is disconnected or powered down. however, I cant say what happens if the mixrack loses power. it has a backup supply though.

[Rob_Beech]

Unlike some of the newer desks (yamaha from experience) the old 3216 is far from happy about having power removed in this manner.

[Petrolhead]

I have had exactly the same boot-up failure with a DDX3216. It has happened several times, but always with the same desk. It seems to hang halfway through it's boot-up. In my case the difference is that this happens on routine power-up, possibly hours or days after the desk was last used.

 

The only solution I found was to leave the desk for half-an-hour or more before trying again - not the ideal situation mid-show! On the other hand, I have found the DDX3216s seems to handle voltage drops and fluctuating mains frequency quite well (I wish clients wouldn't hire generators from builders).

 

The one time I lost power to an LS-9 was during a de-rig so reboot time wasn't exactly critical, but it seemed to restore the signal path pretty quickly and it returned to it's pre-powerloss state rather than it's last saved memory.

 

I often now use a UPS with any mixer, digital or analog.

 

Slightly OT, but I have had one nasty experience with an LS9 when plugging in a USB stick with the intention of saving the desk settings caused the desk to crash - all the signal paths stayed the same but no control over the desk whatsoever.

[mervaka]

a reply from Carey about the iLive:

 

The MixRack always powers up in its last state, so all settings are restored via the power down memory.

 

The MixRack takes just under 15 seconds to restore audio to its outputs. Relays hold open prior to that to protect the speakers.

 

iLive should tick those boxes nicely :-)

Cheers,

C

[Dan Appleby]

I can only speak for the Yami digital desks as these are the only ones I have used, but as I recall the LS9 (as already stated) takes around 22secs, the M7CL and PM5D are both around 26 I think (maybe the 5D a little longer?)... handily if you lose power on the 5D or the M7, you wont get speaker cones flying past your ears on shut down or start up (unlike on a analogue boards), always an added bonus :P Allthough, I can say this is NOT the case with the LS9, a nice satisfying pop here.

 

There are hire companies around (Skan, Entec) who won't hire any of their consoles without a UPS, I guess it kinda makes sense to have one... it could save your show!

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention... all yami desks reboot to the last state before it lost power. I would want to be saving your show regularly anyway, just to be on the safe side!

[mackerr]

I too have had the same boot failure on a 3232DX. It was 3 hours before a live worldwide broadcast. It went immediately in the trash, and we bought a DM1000 to replace it. Fortunately it was in stock and because I was familiar with it I was able to get the 12 mix minus feeds up and running. All the Yamaha consoles return to their last state, saved or not. It does take some time though so I always have a UPS. It is not to protect the console or the data, but to eliminate the lengthy reboot. I have also had a UPS fail, and for that reason on consoles with 2 power supplies, one goes in the UPS, the other does not.

 

Mac

[basilbrush1982]

As said the LS9, M7CL and PM5D all reboot to their current state but they do take around 25 seconds each. My company always send out these desks with a UPS. It just makes sense. I personally would hate to use a digital desk without one.

[henny]

I have also had the same problem with a coupple of ddx3216's

 

on powerup all the in's/outs go in to clip and it locks out,

 

when it happens I find if I pull all the inputs then try and reboot it comes back,

 

oddley enfught last time I had the problem I tryed pulling each input in turn then replacing it, I only got it to boot when I removed a sen 300g2 rx,

 

ian

[ChrisTS]

Hi all,

 

Really glad someone has posted this as I was just about to!!

 

I've got a DDX3216 and on power up it produces a strange "bobbly" sound on all its internal inputs which clears up about 10 minutes after it has been on, which is fine... I can easily live with that!

 

If the power gets turned off after these 10 Minutes and then on again all the internal ins go straight to clipping (signal light not on but all channel fader meters full and clip light on next to the gain nob) I say internal preamps as I use an ADT1616 and 2 x ADA8000 and these don't clip, ie, if you swich to the other fader page that has the digital ins selected, the meters read normally. I didn't have any speakers attached when I had the external preamps connected so I don't know if the internal set of inputs clipping affected the audio, it just didn't clip the external's meters etc

 

I've also never had any problems with it not booting up properly, even with this internal clipping fault it boots up to the last saved scene and you are abel to change scene fine.

 

The way I saw it was that when the desk is cold, it needs to warm up to use the preamps and when they've got up to temp it can't be turned on as it would "damage" the preamps or wouldn't be recognised digitally or.. something? :D

 

The other thing is that it has always done this, since it was new, hence I thought it was normal so didn't send it back at all, so it's good that other people are experiencing the same type of things... Not a unique case etc

 

Have just bought a UPS too, which'll stop any issues I'd have had with power cuts etc

 

Anyone else having behringer DDX3216 power issues??

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

ps mods if you want to make this it's own topic still then by all means do, just sort of ties in with the OP as was same desk etc! tar! :P

[Russ83]

I read a while ago that this is a common fault with the main board on some of the later DDX3216 desks. I'm guessing some of the components must be very heat sensitive.

The solution used to be to send the desk off to the German repair centre and they would swap out the board but since this desk has been out of production for a year now the stock of replacement boards may be getting low. I have read on other forums that because of this the desk is "not worth having unless it has a repair certificate/guarantee from the workshop in Germany".

 

Shame really because I actually liked the desk quite a lot when I had one, (especially for the price!) and it linked up quite easily with Cubase for recording.

 

Sorry it's not good news people but as long as you can stop the desk from loosing power just before and during a show it shouldn't be a problem.

Personally I didn't want to risk it so I got a nice reliable A&H GL2400 but I do miss the motorised recall. I'll keep saving for a Yamaha digital.