M32/X32 Automation

[MarkBarl]

Hi,

I will be running a theatrical show using an M32. My knowledge on the Automation on the M32 is not that deep. I have aprox 160 scenes in the show mostly mutes on and off along with DCA assignment.

 

As I see it, there are a couple of ways of doing this. Either program 2 separate shows, run it on scenes and load the second show at 1/2 time. The other way is to build the show out of a mixture of scenes and snippets and run the whole thing as cues.

 

Both have advantages, just scenes seems simpler. Cues mean I can add mute automation to my DCAs without automating the fader. via snippets.

 

Any other alternatives or what would you do?

[dbuckley]

Another alternative, but a cost alternative, is Palladium software to drive the mixer. Not tried it myself, but it seems to have a band of enthusiastic followers.

[S&L]

a huge caveat - I haven't done this myself... if I DID want to program a performance I would use cues - simply for the fact that you can slot a new cue in for that automation you forgot betwween scene 83 and scene 84. I would also tend to use snippets so long as you can be sure you are not moving things around the board. that way you can make sure head amps and faders aren't selected as part of the cue. I automated some 'out of the box' studio mixes before I had got to grips with snippets - the biggest problem is that you can end up altering paramaters such as fader movements, without neccessarily intending to, or without realising how much a difference that alteration makes in the middle of a stack of scenes. with snippets you can make sure that you aren't automating anything other than mutes fx and dca's

that's as far as my thinking takes me.

[Peter F]

Interesting that this should come up at this moment. I'm just in the process of looking at different ways of setting up my showfile for a particular monitor mix. I've been looking closer at the use of scope for scenes/cues on Aid desks and its given me a few ideas. I was vaguely aware of a similar facilility on the M32/X32's.

 

I have found a really hand page here: Link to really hand page. It describes clearly the differences between scenes, cues and snippets on the X32.

 

Can I add an extra bonus question?

 

Does anyone know a way of doing this:

I would like to assign one of the user defined keys to, very specifically, increase the send of channels 10 & 11 to bus 5 & 6 by 5 dB relative to the current setting. Then I want to be able to press another user defined key to put the sends back to where they were. In a perfect world I'd be able to toggle this on one user defined key, it would light up when the boost has been applied.

 

I'd love to be able to program this on all digital desks.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter

[timsabre]

Does anyone know a way of doing this:

I would like to assign one of the user defined keys to, very specifically, increase the send of channels 10 & 11 to bus 5 & 6 by 5 dB relative to the current setting. Then I want to be able to press another user defined key to put the sends back to where they were. In a perfect world I'd be able to toggle this on one user defined key, it would light up when the boost has been applied.

 

I am pretty sure you cannot do this on an X32 without the use of an external device. It would be fairly easy to do over ethernet from an external box (laptop/PC/raspberry pi etc), with a bit of programming.

[MarkBarl]

Thanks for the responses. I was headed down the cue direction. The blog post that was linked to gave some interesting advice regarding a slight lag loading scenes as opposed to Snippets. One interesting thing I found by playing. If you are wanting to automate DCA mutes without affecting the fader level, this cannot be achieved using Scenes. DCAs are either safe or they are not. However if you safe the DCAs you can still automate the mute using a snippet.

I foresee many hours this week programming.

[S&L]

Does anyone know a way of doing this:

I would like to assign one of the user defined keys to, very specifically, increase the send of channels 10 & 11 to bus 5 & 6 by 5 dB relative to the current setting. Then I want to be able to press another user defined key to put the sends back to where they were. In a perfect world I'd be able to toggle this on one user defined key, it would light up when the boost has been applied.

 

 

it can be done. weill almost. assuming you are running on scenes or cues you could program a couple of extra snippets but the 5db up/down would have to be pre programmed. you can then set user defined buttons to trigger a snippet (they can also do cues and scenes) and toggle two buttons backwards and forwards. this only helps if you know the levels before show time. if you want to set the levels during the show it would be easier to do what I do when changing from harmonica to vocal on the same mic. recieve the signal on two identical channels - the 2nd one can be side by side or buried on anther layer. then copy all the channel details from one to the other (I also change my reverb send on the 2nd channel) mute the 2nd channel and st up a user btton to the channel mute - s the user button unmutes the 2nd channel with a higher fader setting. if you want to mute/uinmute both channels then you could link the mute on the 2nd channel to a fader. you would still have to set these points by hand though - you can't mathmatically add 5db to wherever the channel happens to be, without a remote midi command or similar.

 

edited to add - the above applies to FOH levels - you can do the same procedure for bus mixes using the 2nd channel mute/unmute on bus send - with 2 channels and 2 buses then that's better done with a snippet