over the last 6 months I’ve had some random audio issues with my SQ5, which could be a big issue during a show, but so far I have been lucky they have all happened during setup/soundcheck. I’m starting to think there might be some audio stability issues when the SQ5 is connected to a network especially with my latest experience. Has anyone else had similar issues?
My network is setup consists of a
-access point/router
-8 port switch
-Laptop (connected by ethernet and only runs DMX Artnet software)
-ENTTEC ODE mk3 Arnet to DMX
-SQ5
-Galaxy Tablet running SQ MixPad / Remote desktop for lights
1)(no DX168, local IO only)
10-15 minutes after running some test music I had random pops and white noise was coming through FOH, muting the outputs did not stop the noise and it did show up on meters. After rebooting the desk, it ran fine for the rest of the afternoon/night
2)(FOH from local IO, Stage inputs/wedges DX168)
This time it was about 30 minutes after running a sound check with the band I started to hear popping from the wedges on stage around every 20 seconds and found the DX168 was constantly dropping connection and reconnecting, after rebooting the DX168 and trying a new ethercon cable with no success I rebooted the SQ5 and it ran perfectly the rest of the night.
3)(No DX168, Local IO only)
I powered on the desk and booted the laptop, after powering on FOH and the wedges and went to play some test music, this time the SQ5 wouldn’t pass any audio, I could see the input metering but couldn’t get any audio on any of the output buses. I then noticed the laptop had crashed when booting and was just showing a black screen. I hard reset the laptop and instantly the desk started to pass audio again.
Were you using the laptop to pass audio to the console in a “virtual sound check” type setup, or were you connecting a phone or other device directly to the console to play the music through?
The laptop is only running the lighting software, theres no audio/usb connection between laptop and the desk, and I’m not even running SQ mix on it. The music was played from a phone through a ST in on the SQ.
I had some random issues on Qu-16 a long time ago.
I reinstalled the firmware, and everything was OK for the next 8 years.
Have you tried that on your SQ5 ?
Luc
Have you tried to run your SQ and all audio gear completely independent of the computer network? I realise this would sacrifice mixing remotely but I have read of issues where certain computer network switch gear has been responsible for frozen screens and surface freezes etc. It should be easy to eliminate as a possible contributor to your problems.
I have used it without a network with no issues, but these problems happen so infrequent its hard to tell if if it has fixed anything by not running a network. I use this setup nearly every week and 99% of the time it works flawlessly.
I have heard of the surface freezing due to network issues, and I can understand this possibly effecting the S Link connection, but it surprises me that it may stop the surface passing audio or introducing noise.
If you disconnected a laptop running lighting control software and the system immediately “fixed” itself, that sure points to a problem with that software and the overall network. Perhaps it is overloading the network with data transmissions. Either way, it seems like the easy solution is to isolate the audio network from that lighting network. Either by running two physically different networks, or by using VLANs.