X32 Discussion

Credit Card glowing...

My earlier rambling post notwithstanding...

I just ordered an X32, an OSP case, and an Eaton 3s550 UPS, all as recommended in this thread.

Looking forward to joining the ranks of the actual users, not just the tire-kickers.
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

Simon Eves said:
Oh, and any suggestions for laying out 26 wireless mics on a mixer with only 16 physical channel faders...? I'm hoping the mic-to-character distribution is such that the least important 10 can be on the second layer and controlled collectively with one or more DCAs. Can any given channel only be under the control of one DCA at a time? Maybe I can extend my Qlab/OSC system to switch the DCA routing on the fly too. God, I hope I'm not making this too complicated... :\
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Obviously, if you are using scenes, you could switch the channels between scenes to have the important ones on the top layer all the time, but I guess that is something you don't fancy doing. As for the DCAs, you can assign a channel to all the DCAs if you so wish, but remember that all the DCAs assigned to one channel will sum up (on the logarithmic dB scale) or multiply (on a linear scale), so eight DCAs at -10dB all assigned to one channel will give -80dB for that channel.

The X32 passes DAW control MIDI through the XUF, but some people have experienced problems, an external interface often works better.

Luigi Chelli has a program that uses the whole X32 for daw X32MidiOsc | A development blog
You have Kevin Hunter's Scene Manager for more scenes X32 User Net • View forum - Scene Manager , on x32user.net you might also find other stuff that could be useful.

My earlier rambling post notwithstanding...

I just ordered an X32, an OSP case, and an Eaton 3s550 UPS, all as recommended in this thread.

Looking forward to joining the ranks of the actual users, not just the tire-kickers.
Click to expand...
:thumbup: :)~:-)~:smile:
 
Re: Tracktion Software...

Donnie Evans said:
I have a question about the free vs. 50% discount license for the Tracktion 4 software. I understand the start-date for this promotion was May 1. I ordered my mixer on April 17th, because I needed it that soon. Now, for my appreciation of purchasing a $2999 MAP mixer, I get to buy it for $30, but anybody off the street that now purchases a $30 UCA-202 usb interface will get a free copy? Surely Behringer would license a copy to all that have purcahsed an X32. That doesn't make sense at all...
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Hi Donnie,

First off, thanks for buying an X32! We appreciate your support and hope you enjoy using it. As always we encourage users to send us pictures of their X32s in action and I invite you to do the same.

I understand your frustration in not receiving the offer of a free license of Tracktion because you bought your X32 two weeks before it came into effect. Interesting to note that the 50%-off offer came out of a similar discussion we had before launching the free offer. We felt that some users would be disappointed that new buyers get a free license while those who had bought would get nothing. So, we went back to the Tracktion folks to see what could be done.

In the end we came up with the 50%-off deal for those that had purchased gear before the May 1 effective date. This is in my experience an unprecedented deal where buyers are rewarded for past purchases. I know it's going to be tough to make everybody happy, especially those who, like you, bought really close to May 1. But in the end we believe that Tracktion is a great product and the cost of admission is incredibly low for what you get.

Best regards,

Costa Lakoumentas
Senior VP, Marketing
MUSIC Group
 
Re: Tracktion Software...

Costa Lakoumentas said:
Hi Donnie,

First off, thanks for buying an X32! We appreciate your support and hope you enjoy using it. As always we encourage users to send us pictures of their X32s in action and I invite you to do the same.

I understand your frustration in not receiving the offer of a free license of Tracktion because you bought your X32 two weeks before it came into effect. Interesting to note that the 50%-off offer came out of a similar discussion we had before launching the free offer. We felt that some users would be disappointed that new buyers get a free license while those who had bought would get nothing. So, we went back to the Tracktion folks to see what could be done.

In the end we came up with the 50%-off deal for those that had purchased gear before the May 1 effective date. This is in my experience an unprecedented deal where buyers are rewarded for past purchases. I know it's going to be tough to make everybody happy, especially those who, like you, bought really close to May 1. But in the end we believe that Tracktion is a great product and the cost of admission is incredibly low for what you get.

Best regards,

Costa Lakoumentas
Senior VP, Marketing
MUSIC Group
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, but if I do want the software, I'll end up buying a cheap interface then getting it for free rather than paying the (same) half off price and only getting the software. So in a sense it's still not really passing any savings on to prior owners. Still great to get something free or discounted, just the stipulations are somewhat odd to me.
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

Per Søvik said:
Obviously, if you are using scenes, you could switch the channels between scenes to have the important ones on the top layer all the time...
Click to expand...

You mean change which physical input each channel sees. Yeah, that might work too, although perhaps more confusing for the operator for the manual control.

Per Søvik said:
As for the DCAs, you can assign a channel to all the DCAs if you so wish, but remember that all the DCAs assigned to one channel will sum up (on the logarithmic dB scale) or multiply (on a linear scale), so eight DCAs at -10dB all assigned to one channel will give -80dB for that channel.
Click to expand...

Right. That's how I thought they would work. It would be cool if DCAs could be configured to group as "logical OR" rather than "logical AND" so that a channel would pass if ANY of the DCAs it was assigned to were up, rather than if ALL (although they wouldn't be DCAs then, but you know what I mean).

Per Søvik said:
The X32 passes DAW control MIDI through the XUF, but some people have experienced problems, an external interface often works better.
Click to expand...

Noted. Thanks for the warning. I guess another $30 isn't going to break the bank, although I was hoping for simpler cabling.

Per Søvik said:
Luigi Chelli has a program that uses the whole X32 for daw X32MidiOsc | A development blog You have Kevin Hunter's Scene Manager for more scenes X32 User Net • View forum - Scene Manager , on x32user.net you might also find other stuff that could be useful.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've been following both of those. I haven't played with X32MidiOsc yet, and I'm not sure it fits my requirement, but it's interesting. Scene Manager, similarly, seems designed to push scenes to the mixer for selection there, whereas I'm trying to bypass the built-in scene mechanism completely.

Maybe people would find my system useful too. I'd be happy to publish it once I get it working. It'll just be a few Python scripts using the commonly-available modules (rtmidi, pyosc, miniboa for telnet etc.) and what I have so far runs fine on both Windows and Mac. Any and all suggestions for behaviour are welcomed at this point.
 
Re: FX Specifics?

Robert Lofgren said:
Search this thread about a post I made some weeks ago where I tried to list most of the fx and what they were modeled after.

There are some fx missing but I also never got any feedback about my list so there were no updates to it....
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Is this the post you are referring to?
Robert Lofgren said:
Here is a compiled list of the current fx and what they are modeled after. Some are still missing but it's a nice list...

Enhancer: SPL Vitalizer
Exiter: Aphex Aural Exiter
TruEQ: Klark Teknik DN360
Vintage Room: Quantec QRS
Plate Reverb: Lexicon PCM70
Vintage Reverb: EMT250 Plate Reverb
Wave Designer: SPL Transient Designer
Chorus/Chamber: Lexicon PCM70
Precision Limiter: Sony Oxford Dynamics
Hall Reverb: Lexicon 480L
Flanger/Delay: Lexicon PCM70
De-Esser: SPL Dual-band De-Esser
Guitar Amp: Tech 21
Click to expand...
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

Simon Eves said:
It would be cool if DCAs could be configured to group as "logical OR" rather than "logical AND" so that a channel would pass if ANY of the DCAs it was assigned to were up, rather than if ALL (although they wouldn't be DCAs then, but you know what I mean).
Click to expand...

Perhaps I could create this behaviour myself too. Leave the DCAs unassigned, but leave that fader bank set to DCA anyway (so that they didn't affect anything directly) but then capture their fader movements over OSC and send the levels right back over OSC to the desired channel faders.
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

Simon Eves said:
Perhaps I could create this behaviour myself too. Leave the DCAs unassigned, but leave that fader bank set to DCA anyway (so that they didn't affect anything directly) but then capture their fader movements over OSC and send the levels right back over OSC to the desired channel faders.
Click to expand...
Yes, the virtual dca in XiQ works in a similar manner. DCA level is translated into a relative fader movement. I guess in your case you will just make them absolute fader positions.
 
Re: Bass guitar through DI settings?

Heck, I just got me a couple of Behringer DI400P
No issue with them.
Last band, the bassplayer turned off his rig and had me pump it thru his monitor. Cool hey
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

Simon Eves said:
My apologies, Kevin. I'll take a closer look at it. I just don't have a Windows machine at home...
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Apology not need Simon :D~:-D~:grin: just trying to save you some time. If you go ahead and write your own one head over to X32 User Net and there are a few people there that can help with any issues you might have . And hopefully you could also help us :D~:-D~:grin:

Kev
 
Re: X32 DAW/OSC Questions

I think you are very brave to consider this level of automation to a show that invariably in my experience of amateur groups, who are doing this show with young people very frequently in the UK, get a bit chaotic. Locking yourself into this level of accuracy, also introduces inflexibility. I'm just wondering how you cope when they lose a mic, or they do an unscheduled swap, or the band do weird things? I've been mixing musicals for many years, and while I like a degree of assistance from the machinery, I hate the idea of the loss of control. My pet hate is faders flipping to a working level. I've always wished automation for sound followed lighting practice where cues have a time setting, so a slow fade up or down could be a simple prod. When a fader pings up, or just unmutes, I need to take my eyes away from the stage, to be able to catch it and drop or push it a little and often end up fighting the motors! So do you set the next cue to bring faders from their stops to a point lower than you need, so you can manually cheat it up at your pace - seeing them off their stops as the visual cue for your manual movement. I've never had a show where two were identical - especially entrances and exits - and changes to the balance when a dep steps into the pit.

I personally would want the 01 with me for these kinds of things. I suspect you're more a studio guy by your use of 'stems'. For Les Mis, I'd have the strings, woodwind and brass as separate groups (in stereo if possible), with percussion maybe split even more, because of the amount of it - all doing different things. I suspect I'd also use the automation to give me the leads on one layer and the supporting cast, in their chorus roles on a separate layer, and then maybe bring those up in stereo on the main layer. The only tricky one is the number where everyone seems to have something separate to sing - most of the others are less complex. The idea of an orchestra mix I cannot adjust would worry me as the balance changes so much between the full on numbers and the thinner, quiet ones - where you'll need to pull out the little piccolo and flute lines, and perhaps throttle back on the bones in Master of the House. For some strange reason, trombone players rarely get to play rasps like that, and they can be far, far to loud compared to the usual orchestra mix. I'm a firm if it ain't broke, don't fix it person - and I really do not trust a pile of computers to work reliably with each other. Far too many delayed starts where the MD just has to reboot his Mac! Qlab on it's own seems fairly stable - but start to control outside kit and the claims about Mac reliability make me smile.
 
UPS v Power conditioner

Joseph Schuurman said:
While trying to find a suitable UPS, my associate is leaning towards a power conditioner instead. He believes that a UPS will only kick into battery if power is completely lost, and some UPS's don't don't handle over voltages (surges), though the Liebert Powersure Psi PS1000RT3-120, I'm looking at seems to include AVR. Would something like a Furman P-1800 PF R power conditioner also do the job? All I've heard talked about is UPS's, and not power conditioners, but I guess what I'm asking is, is the problem some of us are having regarding voltage, just a slight voltage drop, or is it a full drop off where the battery in a UPS is actually needed. I guess that's a hard question to answer though.

And thanks for the suggestion for digital snake and shielded cat-5, I think we'll start with unshielded as we have bulk wire kicking around, so doing our run will be super easy, rather than getting a custom shielded cable if we don't require it. But if something come up, I'll look to that first.
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With regard to USP, you are right and wrong at the same time.

Low end UPS are offline UPS, ie the batterys only supply power when input power falls below spec, most usually have some form of surge protection in them
Better, ONline UPS feed power out from the batterys all the time, so outgoing power is also isolated from incoming, these sort out over/under power, even frequency glitches and feed out a "perfect" power
IMO its large dips that are the biggest issue, a switch mode PSU can handle varying voltages pretty well without issue, but one of the venues I work in has had issues with other desks before with power "glitches" not a full blackout, but more than a brown out, analogue desks cope fine, but digis from various manufacturers have a tendancy to freeze or crash (one decided to go full fade on everything IIRC, not pleasent), A reboot in the middle of a musical is not what you want.
 
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