Last night, I was mixing a show on a Studio Live 16:4:2. This was a one off show with a bunch of random musicians that I had a whole 2 days notice on. Needless to say, the night was a bit of chaos to start with. This is the first event I've used this board in this type of environment. I've had the board for about 6 months now.
I had set the board so that I was using subgroups for vocals, keyboards, drums, etc. The subs patched into the mains, and I used the mono output connector, as I typically would.
During the first set, about a half a dozen times, the entire output of the board cut out for about 10 seconds at a time.
What appeared to happen is that if ANY of the subgroups went into clipping, it would take out the whole board. Not just the mains, but the auxes as well were cutting out. The meters on the board didn't show anything wrong, but no output.
I realized that I hadn't engaged the limit button for the inputs or the subgroups. After I did that, things got better. Why those aren't engaged by default, I don't understand. Why would you ever want them off if all it does is cut out the board when you do hit limit??
Anyway, after I engaged the limiters, it seemed as though that the problem was solved. however, it did cut out a couple more times later in the evening. One time the cut out was right as I got a text message on my phone, which was right by the console. Not sure if that is related at all or not. When it happened that time, I wasn't running anything that hot, so it shouldn't have been a clipping situation.
As far as power goes, I thought that might have been a problem, as the venue wasn't sure which outlets were on which circuits. With the bass hits, I did see the light on the board dim slightly, but looking at the voltage meter, the voltage swing was only about 2 volts, never dipping below 120. Not the harshest electrical environment I've been in, by far.
I'm really disappointed in how this board behaved. Yeah, it was nice to have the features of a digital board at my fingertips, but I've NEVER had one of my analog boards do anything like this. Has anyone else had these sorts of problems? I'm really concerned about using this board in the future if this is the kind of problems to expect to happen.
