Hey all,
Long time listener & user of A&H products. I have just purchased an SQ5. Pretty excited!
Have been using D-Live for the last few years touring, and although I really wish I could afford my own - I feel like I would be able to squeeze the most out of the SQ5 to fit my shows into. Also given the distinct lack of gigs at the moment, it seems like a smarter investment financially.
Anyway, this post is pretty much just to amplify my excitement and talk about the proposed setup. I’ve been searching options especially on this forum, and i’m not sure I’ve read anyone running this setup at the moment, but would love to chat if there is.
Gear:
SQ5
Dante Card
Dante PCIe card in Thunderbolt Chassis
UAD card
Macbook Pro
So the idea here is being able to run UAD natively on a Macbook Pro, utilising a low latency Dante connection through the Focusrite PCIe card in a thunderbolt chassis. I currently own an older UAD2 Satellite Duo FW, which I will probably run some initial tests with, however there is the option of getting a UAD PCIe card to also go in the thunderbolt chassis.
Plugins will be hosted with LiveProfessor.
I’m interested to see the processing power and return trip latency!
Will keep you up to date as the gear starts rolling in and i’m able to run some tests.
Dylan
I’m very curious what your measurements reveal. I have a similar setup, I use a RME Digiface Dante as Interface. My Measurements are
Roundtrip without Plugins @128 - 4,209ms
Roundtrip without Plugins @64 - 2,875ms
Update…
This seems to be running pretty sweet - I’m looking at about 7ms RTL based on channel/mixbus insert and a further masterbus insert via dante/UAD & Live Professor as the plugin host.
LP reporting 0.49ms on the input and output. Buffer @ 64 samples, which seems pretty stable right now, but need to try and see what breaks it.
Based on a channel going through a sub-group LP insert, then master bus LP insert - calculated something like this:
Sub-Group Insert
SQ5 > Dante 0.25ms
Dante > LP 0.49ms
LP Distressor Insert 1.6ms
LP > Dante 0.49ms
Dante > SQ5 0.25ms
Master Bus Insert
SQ5 > Dante 0.25ms
Dante > LP 0.49ms
LP Shadow Hills Insert 1.0ms
LP > Dante 0.49ms
Dante > SQ5 0.25ms
Calculates to about 5.6ms, but then I guess factor in the fixed latency of the SQ5 which is 0.7ms, and we’re probably pretty close.
Update:
4 gigs successfully completed with this rig over the last 2 weeks.
I’ve been hosting a range of plugins by UAD, Neural DSP, Soundtoys and Waves. Dante is used as the audio transport, Liveprofessor is used as the plug-in host.
SQ controlling LP cues, sending midi messages to external processing.
Fun!
More info to come on this setup.
Dylan,
Can you post links to your equipment needed to run this setup, (and what you have in the picture)? What are the pros and cons that you’ve seen with this setup.
I would like to know more information about the specific type of music you are working with and the number of channels deployed. I used a boat load of UA plug ins for years however 5 years ago when I joined the Digigrid/WavesLV1 family I found the Waves plug ins to be equal if not better. During the unplanned 11 month “Time Out” we are in I decided to scale down the footprint of my acoustic Americana road rig to a SQ5/DX168 combo. I initially planned on acquiring a Waves card for my Multi-tracking needs in order to continue to use the studio Waves plug-ins however the stock SQ FX along with the optional Compression package is more than adequate to meet my current live gig needs. I resurrected my old Glyph GPT50 USB 2 HD that is a wonderful mate for the internal SQ-drive USB 2 multi-track protocol. When or if I ever need a more comprehensive recording format I can go the Waves card route: however, if it ain’t broke I see no reason to fix it.
My question is with your experience with D-Live consoles why is it necessary to have dante access to all of the UA Plugs and FX you allude to in your posts.
Hugh
I don’t want to speak for Dylan, but while the SQ addons are nice, they certainly are not complete. Many engineers are attempting to give their mixes an “analog” flavor by using plugins. We have reached a point where it is actually possible to recreate the sound of an analog board, but you can’t do it with just the addons currently available.
I certainly understand the desire to replenish the “analog Warmth” that is missing from much of today’s transparent digital processing. This is the primary reason I have decided to deploy as many as six tube mics for capturing my live and recording work: their tubes and transformers provide some of the missing “analog warmth”. However I suspect, like most of us, this may be more a case of comfortable familiarity with Dylan’s specific gear. It is very hard to abandon gear that has served you well when it really counted in order to get to a more portable or less complicated level. The truth as I see it is you will never know unless you give it a good try. The only rule I honor is “if it sounds good—it is good”!
Hugh
Hi all,
I’ve posted a rig rundown video on YouTube to help explain some of the specifics.
@rosey2625
The pros for me are being able to add additional tones, control and processing that are outside of the realms of what the SQ can do. Don’t get me wrong, the SQ is an absolutely fantastic console for its price point, and the reason that it is the main driver behind this setup.
The cons for this particular setup is the additional gear involved, but for me its a non-issue as its a sacrifice i’m happy to make - in the name of doing something a bit outside-the-box, being a bit experimental with audio transport and processing in the live world, and generally just trying to trying to push the boundaries.
@Hugh
Great question, thanks for asking.
Is your question alluding to why I use Dante for audio transport instead of using Waves?
For the particular show that I was working on, its a solo artist that is adapting full-band songs. I wanted to take a small input list (Guitar amp, looper, vocals) and create many other textures with the guitar to make the song arrangements more engaging and dynamic. A clean guitar DI from stage allows me to push this signal into many other layers of processing to build a mix into something much more detailed and varied that the original 3 channels. In particular, there are amp sims that i’m using in the plug-in world that audio consoles such as the SQ and the D-Live have no way of replicating.
In addition, I’m lucky enough to have great connections with a number of plugin manufacturers and it excites me to be able to attempt to bring them into the live domain.
@Brian
For me it’s by no means about achieving an ‘analog’ sound.
I do agree though, that while the additional SQ plugin options are nice (I don’t own them on my SQ, though I have used them on the D-Live), there are many characteristics to what specific plugins can do in terms of control and processing that are part of what give it the unique flavour. For example, an API 2500 compressor exhibits more aggressive characteristics than anything thats available on the d-Live or SQ in my opinion.
Really interesting set up, a few questions:
- I have no experience with UAD but I’m looking at options and I wonder would the UAD Live Rack and a MADI card offer a lower latency? ( Although costing more than the console! )
- How easy is it to get the touch screen to work with the MAC? Is it a Dell P2418HT? Any special drivers needed?
Thanks.
@Europe
I’m using the touch-base driver on the Mac to give me touch functionality. A little bit of money, but it is totally worth it.
Correct - no reason that you can’t use the UAD liverack - especially now that A&H released the SQ MADI card (this wasn’t out when I invested in this setup). HOWEVER - the UAD liverack also only has optical MADI connectivity, so you would also need some kinda of converter to go from BNC-Optical. $$$!!!
Dylan:
Thanks for posting the video. I’ve been thinking about doing something similar for our small church and our SQ5. We are live-streaming services now with the pandemic, and plan to continue to do so when this is all over. I’d love to be able to route Dante audio from the SQ5 to a second computer so that we can have a separate mix with nice effects, etc, and with minimal latency. I’m also interested in doing so for some additional processing of our live mix, so your post and video are certainly timely.
Cheers!
@dylanmaudio - Thanks for all of your detailed posts with timing, etc. That is very helpful. I’m also glad to see there are other alternatives to using the Waves system. I just hate the idea of being tied to a single plugin manufacture. (I realize the Waves does support some third party plugins, but the list isn’t very long. That is for sure! https://www.waves.com/support/soundgrid-compatible-third-party-plugins).
I would really appreciate it if you could run some time trials using the Dante I/O card, the Dante PCI card, and Reaper or other DAW to run plugins. This is going to be slower than using the UAD PCI card, but I am curious to know how much slower it would be.
We currently use Dante and DVS on a computer running Reaper to run pitch correction on our vocal channels. I measure the roundtrip at just under 13ms (not including plugin latency). It’s fast enough for that use, but I wouldn’t want to get plugin heavy without getting a Dante PCI card to speed things up. Obviously DVS is the slowest link and I’m guessing that a PCI card would cut that time in half (to perhaps 6-8ms). It wouldn’t be as quick as using the UAD PCI card, but certainly faster than DVS. Honestly that is just a guess however. If you could test that without too much effort, I would really be curious what numbers you come up with (Dante I/O → Dante PCI card → Reaper → Dante PCI card → Dante I/O card).
Thanks,
Hey all!
I’m joining Keith Johnson from Allen & Heath tomorrow for a webinar based around my new touring setup: using plug-ins live with the SQ5 console. Join in at 8am AEDT (Melbourne), or click the link below to find out the equivalent time in your part of the world.
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Looks like a very cool solution-- not really cheap but seems you can have any one of {fast, cheap}.
Seems to get into this I would need:
- SQ 5 (have);
- Ethernet hub (have);
- Dante card for SQ;
- PCIe Dante card
- Newer Laptop (and Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C enclosure if using PC or Mac without PCIe) or desktop with PCIe (Mac pro most likely)
- LiveProfessor
- Plug ins running on the box or via low latency hardware acceleration such as UAD Apolo or Waves
Umm 
Just to clarify, the UAD PCI card doesn’t lower latency. It simply runs the computations on the card instead of relying on the computer’s CPU to do it. By using it you can run more plugins than without it, but at the same latency levels as you would with or without it.
The Dante PCI card interface is the key to low latency in this set up. It is much faster than using a USB connection or running Dante Virtual Soundcard as the interface. It also allows you to run more channels at 96k than you could via DVS.
Hey Brian
Exactly - most instances of UAD induce the same latency per instance as Waves (natively) for example - somewhere around 1-2ms per instance at 96k + 128 sample buffer.
DSP usage is definitely where it helps out though - as you mentioned.
A UAD plug-in might use up 2% DSP on my system per instance, whereas a Neural DSP amp sim may use 20% DSP per instance…
