qlab setup

[berwyn]

I work for a touring theatre company playing small and large venues.at the moment I tour a couple of tascam mds with hot start facility.ive recently been playing around with qlab as a replacement...anyone got any recommendations as to which sound card is best for running it through? are m-audio stuff any good?

[mackerr]

I work for a touring theatre company playing small and large venues.at the moment I tour a couple of tascam mds with hot start facility.ive recently been playing around with qlab as a replacement...anyone got any recommendations as to which sound card is best for running it through? are m-audio stuff any good?

Running QLab will give you a lot more flexibility and the power to do lots of automation, it will come at the price of simplicity, and money though. The most common setup I see is 2 Mac Mini computers with 2 a couple of M-Audio Profire 610s. Usually there is a KVM switch so you only have to deal with 1 set of controls for both computers, and a set of programmable buttons that use midi, via a [url-http://www.midisolutions.com/prodf8.htm]Midi Solutions F8[/url] to turn the switch closures into midi. The midi stream is split to both Profires which send it back to the 2 computers. Once you are set up, you are controlling both computers with a single "GO" button so you can change over to the back up and be in the right cue.

 

Depending on how you want to interface to your console, and how many tracks of playback you need there are other audio interfaces with higher output counts than the Profire 610, but for 8ch use the Profire seems fine.

 

The internal drives on the Minis are fine for your show files and audio files. While it is OK to use mp3 files with QLab, it is better to use .wav files as they require less processor time from the computer. Long audio files in mp3 format can bog down everything.

 

Do you have any specific questions?

 

Mac

[berwyn]

in order to carry as little equipment as poss on tour I was thinking of running everything off 1 macbook pro.I very rarely need any live sources and most shows really consist of some background soundscape mixing into each other and some spot qs.for most tours I very rarely need mor than 2 stereo channels + play-in/play-out from a cd player...do u think its feasable to run from one laptop?

[chelgrian]

Running QLab will give you a lot more flexibility and the power to do lots of automation, it will come at the price of simplicity, and money though. The most common setup I see is 2 Mac Mini computers with 2 a couple of M-Audio Profire 610s. Usually there is a KVM switch so you only have to deal with 1 set of controls for both computers, and a set of programmable buttons that use midi, via a [url-http://www.midisolutions.com/prodf8.htm]Midi Solutions F8[/url] to turn the switch closures into midi. The midi stream is split to both Profires which send it back to the 2 computers. Once you are set up, you are controlling both computers with a single "GO" button so you can change over to the back up and be in the right cue.

 

Standard guideline is to steer clear of anything made by M-Audio. There are just too many weird problems and driver bugs. On the Qlab mailing list many people seem to use MOTU, RME or Metric Halo. However nothing is ever perfect and even with more expensive firewire interfaces like these some people have seen issues. There don't seem to be enough people on the list using Mac Pros and PCI-E based interfaces to produce a big enough sample to say if they are more reliable, I suspect this is mostly due to the higher cost of entry for these systems.

 

If you want to make a redundant system then the other bit of equipment you might want is an auto switcher

 

http://www.radialeng.com/re-sw8.htm

 

The mechanism is you have a master and a backup rig both of which you cue via MIDI and the F8 and you send a pilot tone into the SW8 from the master rig. If it loses the pilot tone it automatically switches to the backup. This protects against transient failures of computers however it doesn't protect if you have a systemic failures.

 

Full Disclosure: I'm a QLab beta tester but I'm nothing to do with Figure53

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

in order to carry as little equipment as poss on tour I was thinking of running everything off 1 macbook pro.I very rarely need any live sources and most shows really consist of some background soundscape mixing into each other and some spot qs.for most tours I very rarely need mor than 2 stereo channels + play-in/play-out from a cd player...do u think its feasable to run from one laptop?

 

Yes. I have done quite a few shows, even ones including video, from a Late 2006 MacBook Pro and a MOTU Ultralight MKI. You can even do live sources without a mixer with this setup by using the CueMix hardware inside the MOTU and the two mic inputs.

 

It's just about possible to use the built in audio and something like an Art CleanBox to convert it to professional level however you then have to use the 'Keep CoreAudio Alive' option as there are issues with every Intel Mac ever made which cause clicks as the internal sound chip goes in an out of power saving. The keep alive option feeds the sound chip with silence constantly to avoid this. It's highly recommended to use a professional level external audio interface.

[mackerr]

Standard guideline is to steer clear of anything made by M-Audio.

 

That said, the Profire610 has been the standard 8 output interface that the Broadway sound shops have been using for a while. As people want more and more outputs the Profires are going away in favor of interfaces that support 16 or more outputs. This trend may also improve reliability, although I have not had problems with the Profire.

 

Mac

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

in order to carry as little equipment as poss on tour I was thinking of running everything off 1 macbook pro.I very rarely need any live sources and most shows really consist of some background soundscape mixing into each other and some spot qs.for most tours I very rarely need mor than 2 stereo channels + play-in/play-out from a cd player...do u think its feasable to run from one laptop?

 

Yes. Will this be a dedicated MBP that is only used for the show? If it is your personal machine you might want to create a user profile that has all the background utilities turned off. You don't want the show computer trying to do a Time Machine backup mid show. Just log in as the new user before the show and back in as you after the show.

 

You can find a lot if information in the QLab Google Group. it is also available as a mail list, but I find it much easier to follow the threads in the group.

 

Mac

[chelgrian]

Yes. Will this be a dedicated MBP that is only used for the show? If it is your personal machine you might want to create a user profile that has all the background utilities turned off. You don't want the show computer trying to do a Time Machine backup mid show. Just log in as the new user before the show and back in as you after the show.

 

Similarly you can set the Energy Saver preferences in that 'show' account to never turn anything off and never spin down the disk. The number one cause of 'Qlab didn't fire my cue immediately' is spun down internal hard disks and number two cause is external disks which don't obey OS X's power management settings.

[Dj Dunc]

Got to say that I use my MBP for Qlab on shows, both with the internal sound card (no noise with power supply plugged in) and with an 8 Channel MOTU sound card. Ive run all of my shows in the past two years like this, and (thumps wood) Ive never had a single issue with Qlab or the mac.

 

Dunc