Hey everyone! Just wondering if you kind folks can help me troubleshoot something.
We had an issue recently where our playback channels were coming through the PA super loud, but sounded normal in our IEMs and in our recorded track. Turned out the playback was routed Direct Out (although didn’t show up in the routing, it was just a knob on the screen, and when we turned that all the way down that fixed the issue)
But we just got to rehearsal, loaded up the scene as normal and the playback channel is doing the same thing again, and this time the direct out knob is still all the way down.
Everything else looks normal as best we can tell. Any ideas why this might be happening?
I don’t understand why you would want to send a source out to the PA using a direct out. A direct out bypasses all processing, including gain settings. If you are really routing this source out via a Direct Out patch, the volume is completely dependent on the volume of the incoming source. None of the console settings will adjust the volume (or anything else) of the source before it is sent out via the Direct Out patch.
If on the other hand, you are not sending this source out to the PA via a Direct Out patch, then we need more information about how you really are routing this source to the PA. Are there any busses involved (groups, auxes, matrixes) for example? It may be easiest to post an image of the source/channel’s complete routing page here (it may take several images to post the entire thing).
I’m pretty sure (based on that post) that he doesn’t know what a Direct Out is. He experienced an issue, then noticed a knob that was turned up to zero and made some erroneous assumptions about what caused the issue.
I believe the direct out patching to the PA was not intentional (I didn’t set this up myself, there’s a band leader/MD type guy who did the whole setup and he’s also changed a few things recently and unfortunately I’m just trying to keep up with the troubleshooting!). I suspect it’s mis-patched somewhere, I just can’t see where. I will do some more poking around and get photos, thank you for your help!
For something like this, just provide the show file. A veteran dLive user can scope out the issue in Director in a few minutes.
(ps. For those worried about sharing show files with others online…its just settings on a console…not a precious work of art. Also, no one will mock you if you made a mistake or two. The community usually likes to help.)
Thank you everyone for the comments so far! I didn’t know that uploading a show file was an option but I’ll see if I can do that!
So the original time this came up, we found the channel that was too loud assigned in the “Ip direct out” tab, and by unassigning it there it resolved the problem.
When this happened again the other day (which prompted me to make this post), we eventually found the issue in the Inputs / MixRack / Local tab, and it turned out that the Front Fills had been routed to the LR mix (and at the time, only the FF should have been going to the PA). I’m attaching a photo - where you see the person’s finger at the bottom is where it was assigned. By unassigning it, everything was normal again. But weirdly it had been completely fine the day before, and when we loaded up the Surface the following day, that had happened.
Is there any kind of process that would assign something without doing it manually? Like if something were physically patched in by mistake and then unplugged, would it cause an assignment like you can see on the screen here?
Glad you figured it out. Double patching can be easy to do by mistake and definitely causes issues like you were experiencing.
To answer your question - I am not aware of any way the system “automatically patches” anything. However depending on how your are or are not using scene “safes”, loading a show/scene could change patching. That might seems like it happened automatically, but it was really from someone loading a show/scene that actually changed things.
Runes brings up a great point about the “Mix External In” routing. I honestly didn’t notice that when I looked at the image. “Mix External Ins” are not something used regularly. I’d say that 99% of the time, you would NOT need to use them. However it is very common for people to misunderstand the use of them and try to use them in an incorrect manner which causes them to experience “weird” behavior because the audio doesn’t work as expected.
Mix External In’s work like an “insert” on busses. I think the most common use is sending comms audio to your PAFL output so that you will always hear comms regardless of what you happen to be PAFLing at the time. It’s those types of very specific scenarios that require the use of Mix External In.
Long story short, if you can’t articulate WHY you are using Mix External In (ie why using them solves a problem that regular routing can’t handle), then you definitely should NOT be using them.
