Paranormal activity in my setup

iLive iLive Troubleshooting
1

Whew, gents, I opened the whole new meaning of “sh***ing bricks” for myself last night.
A bit of background. Imagine iDR32, iDR48, R72 (all v 1.94) and a MacBook with editor. So I had a show into iDR32 with 10 IEM mixes, a PA and a broadcast mix, 8 FX sends/returns that was rehearsed, recorded in Tracks Live (M-Dante & DVS) and then tuned to perfection. A day before show it was clear I’ll need more inputs, so i saved the show in the editor and from there loaded into iDR48. Then I attached R72 and set the layout, patched some local I/Os, etc. Did not archive the show, just shut down the system and packed for the show. Arrived in the venue, booted the system and right then I noticed my surface I/Os are not as I left them. Next thing I remembered I have to switch channel inputs from Dante to preamps (I’ve left them in such state in iDR32 after virtual soundcheck and copied over to iDR48), all the gains/phantoms/pads were shuffled - I thought allright, maybe that is because when I copied the show everything was switched to Dante, no big deal - took me 20 min. to get everything back.

My next surprise was the FX rack was empty, all the send/return levels and FX names were OK, but no devices in the rack. So I opened older version of the show, exported all FX to user library and copied to two USB sticks, none could be read by R72, so I went online with editor and found 5 of 8 user presets are there. That’ll do for the beginning, remaining I’ve restored from the memory.

So things were more less straightened when I put my elbow on the go button (bottom right corner of R72)… I should have remembered the desk preferences are not stored in the show and I also should thought someone really uses those buttons… That moment I wished the alarm clock would ring so I could wake up. These were most stressful 20 min before doors. The show went quite OK keeping in mind the starting point, but that definitely gave me some grey hair.

Anyone experienced anything like that?
I’ve hear from our theatre colleagues that some “bigger” or more complex shows do not load correctly time after time, so the workaround is to create one extra scene and store all there and if the show does not look right, that scene recall puts everything in place. I might start to do this as well. I’ve experienced this in smaller rate - sometimes I noticed the Bass has the same HPF as OH one channel before after show recall, but this was not really significant and easy to restore. The most alarming is the desk did not store last state correctly - never had this before. I guess, the story is way to long and complex to report it to A&H support, but just wanted to share, maybe that will save someones day.

ddff

2

OK, I started to get deeper in the show principle and if I’m right the show is stored in the surface AND iDR. The conclusion is based on fact that I can store the show without surface via editor. The left pane of the shows is hardware, the right is USB (physical or a mapped folder). So I can recall the show from iDR if I’m connected with editor, but I can’t if the surface is attached (it’s not listed). The surface can have different list of shows that can’t be recalled from iDR if surface is not connected. So basically there are 2 sets of shows. I guess if I store the show from the surface it will be loaded also into iDR so I can recall it later without surface- I’m not sure about this, have to test. The tricky part for me is what happens when the surface boots - does it read the show from the iDR or it loads something from its internal memory? Maybe there is something lower level than a show, like dump file where actual settings are stored before power down of the surface? If I understood this principle, maybe I’d have an idea of those unusual behaviours.

ddff

3

Hi there - well I think you had quite an experience there - nice setup by the way! It may be worth you contacting A&H support team for a scientific explanation about where each bit of data is stored, but I think there are some basic principles that might help:
‘Shows’ are stored as showfiles in the surface or editor. they can also be moved or copied to USB for transferring. They do not ‘live’ in the iDR. the iDR remembers its last ‘current’ settings it had before it was switched off.
When you create a setup like you describe with the iDR32+R72 etc, you should save the show on the R72 and also copy it to a USB key. Then if you need to change to a different MixRack or Surface, you connect them up and get them working as a system, put in the USB key and recall the show which will then ‘best fit’ the hardware. in this case you kept the R72 so all you needed to do was recall the show saved earlier on the R72. The same showfile can also be opened from the USB in editor offline or online (with or without a surface).

When you saved the show only to editor it will hold data settings from the iDR and the editor ‘virtual’ surface, such as current settings and scenes. When you then connected the R72 to the iDR48 the MixRack has its old settings, the R72 has its last show that was recalled etc but you didn’t have a complete save of the show which you needed to restore all the hardware to what you wanted.

I think that’s what happened but like I said A&H support team can explain the distributed data rules.

HTH Leon