Re: New Yamaha QL Console at Frankfurt
Someone please explain to me how to cascade the desks
Someone please explain to me how to cascade the desks.
When you cascade two desks one is master and the other is a "sidecar" with extra channels.
Basically, you mix whatever input channels are on desk one on the control surface of desk one and that desk behaves as if it was alone.
Desk number two has it's channels mixed on the surface of the second desk, but when you put a channel in a AUX, group or LR the signal is not sent to the physical outputs of desk two, the signals are instead routed via a cascade connection into the audio stream of the corresponding AUX, group, etc of desk number one.
That means that the AUX, group, etc masters of desk number one are just fed extra incoming audio streams along with the audio streams coming internally from the channels of desk number one.
Muting AUX master number 5 on desk number one would mute any AUX 5 bus content including that coming from desk number two. Operating AUX master number 5 on desk number two would have no effect as the signals are tapped and routed over to the cascade connection before the master fader.
Usually, PFL signals are also routed from desk two to desk one, so you can PFL something on desk two without having to unplug and replug your headset.
Typically, on a Yamaha desk, there will be a MIDI connection between the desks so that when you store or recall a scene on desk number one, desk number two follows suit so that it seems to you like you are just operating the scene library of one desk.
One can also send finished mixes coming out of the masters of desk number one back over to desk number two and route those signals to the physical outputs of desk number two without going through any channels, etc on desk number two.
The purpose would be to gain extra physical outputs that may not be located on desk one, so you can just utilize the physical outputs of desk number two as extra output ports.
Big analog sometimes had analog cascade ports.
Some Yamahas have a dedicated cascade port with a special multi-connector, but the most typical way to do it is to use a mini YGDAI-card of some sort to transfer the signals back and forth.
On the 01v96 it was common to use the built-in ADAT port + SPDIF port so that you could set up the cascade solution it without buying a card.
