Replace Analog Snake for Submix Link

SQ SQ General Discussions
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Possibly unusual, but at the venue where I’m the resident engineer we have a submix type setup for pre/post show and interval music along with a MC mic and a radio mic. There are also cue feeds in both directions between this ‘House’ position and Front of House where I mix the shows from that are just tie lined as they need no processing. Obviously House has control over all their local preamps and at FOH I have control over all the preamps local to the SQ7 and in the IO rack.

It’s important that I have control over the music and radio mic coming from House so they are fed into channels, but the MC mic must always stay constant and not be affected by level changes etc so that is fed to Mix Ext In on the matrix that goes directly to the DSP/Amps.

This works well but currently audio in both directions is carried over an analog snake (the thick red line on the attached image) which, for various reasons, I would like to get rid of.

I am about to propose we install an SLink option card in the FOH SQ7 and run an ethernet link to House (the dotted light blue line). What I’m struggling with is how we can achieve an identical situation with a digital link instead of the analog connections. Can it be done?

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I meant to add…
Alternatively we could run ethernet from the unused cascade port on the DX012 in the IO Rack to a DX168 at the House position and continue exactly as we are, keeping the House console separate and connecting its local IO to the DX168, but it feels kind of wrong to do that when we could link the consoles.

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Hi Dave,

Yep! You can definitely replace the analogue multicore with a network cable in this setup.
As you say, with an expander connected to one of the SQ’s, you’ll need an SLink option card to provide a secondary SLink port to connect to.
Next it would simply be a matter of switching all FOH Tie Lines and any other inputs/outputs which were previously using analogue sockets to connect to the House console to use the I/O Port instead - and you’ll have 128x128 digital I/O sockets available to use!
Then, you’ll need to set the House console to Sync to the FOH console (i.e. the SLink port connection) so all digital connections are sync’d and finally set all House I/O that was previously going to/from the GX4816 to use SLink sockets instead.

Cheers,
Keith.

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Oops - I replied to the wrong post!

Thanks Keith.