Re: StudioLive 16:4:2 troubles
I ran a test on the board in the shop. One input driven to the tilt, and the board worked just fine. I then decided to feed signal to ALL channels and run everything up near clip. The board cut out when I did that. Mind you, the red OL lights didn't come on, just the top level yellow, and poof, no sound for 10 seconds.
Now, in my test, I was driving it MUCH harder than I was at the show and it took about 10 minutes before sound cut out, but it did cut out. Same symptoms. Displays all looked just fine on the board, but nothing coming out. Of course, live music would have been more dynamic, so there might have been stronger peaks diving further into clip. The fact that I could drive one channel into oblivion with no problems, but driving all channels hot - but not clipping on the meter - is really a concern.
The problem could have been made worse at the live show if the voltage sagged a bit, but this still is concerning that something as simple as a gain pot set wrong somewhere will mute the ENTIRE board. Mains, auxes, everything muted.
Yes, this is a lesson learned in 'don't do that' but should it really be? It is as though the system doesn't have enough power to drive all the pre-amps or something. Kind of reminds me of a certain other brand of board that doesn't have a strong enough power supply to drive all channels to full at once. But at least on those crappy boards, all it does is distort more when you get there.
Like I said earlier, for the other jobs that I have done, this board has performed fairly well for me. It's in these 'oh shit' scenarios where it decided to let me down.
FYI, I also was running 6 phantom powered mics at the show. There were a couple instances where 2 of the mics stopped working. The first time, I disconnected and reconnected the mic. Problem solved. The 2nd time, I swapped out the mic and the problem went away. The 3rd time, I swapped out the mic and plugged into a different patch with a different mic cable. Not sure if it was the mic, or the cable, or what. I'm guessing this too could have been a power issue, if for some reason phantom power wasn't being supplied. Since it was mid-show, I didn't get to measure the phantom voltage to see if it was there or not. It was only 2 mics that gave me those troubles. Testing the mics today and they are just fine. So, either I have 4 bad mics and 2 bad channels on the snake or the mixer was the source of the trouble. Since the snake and the cables and the mics test out fine, again, the problem leads to the mixer.
I pride myself in having gear that works. It was a test of my ability to handle stress with these meltdowns during a show. The party was for Grammy nominee Peter Phippen. He's an amazing flute player. That part of the show (the important part) went off without a hitch. The rest of the musicians were all pretty low key, and they took it in stride, and even complimented me for dealing with the problem without freaking out. I have worked with all of the musicians in the past, and they realized that this was totally not normal for the service I provide. Still, not something I want to happen EVER at a show.
