[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 4/7/2014 7:30 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
Maybe analog consoles go boutique, but digital
consoles are just weird. I would not want to try to do a live band with
one unless I knew - and had tested - that power failures didn't scramble
it's brain.

Analog consoles have been "boutique" for several years now, it's just
that there are some that are quite inexpensive. I was just talking to
the Allen & Heath folks at the NAB show today about the ZED-R16 and
GS-R24 studio consoles. Sales are pretty slow. Since they now have USB
multichannel I/O for the QU series of digital consoles, they might use
that to update the analog recording consoles, but there's no projected
date even as to when it will be put on the calendar.

As far a power failures affecting a digital console, I did some testing
with the PreSonus StudioLive. The darn thing will keep running during a
brownout down to about 45 volts, but it quits after that. It
periodically stores the current setup in a "scene" memory that it
recalls from when it's powered up again, so unless you've very recently
made a change to something, it will come back like it was when the plug
was pulled.

Unless we know certain things about how it's doing that, there's a
mililisecond out there when it's got one foot on the platform and the
other one on a train.

This is by no means impossible to test for but it's near impossible to
test for.

However, it does take what seems like a lifetime (actually
less than 15 seconds) to boot up from a shutdown, and it can send some
rude noises to the outputs in the process.

Ouch. So use a UPS, I imagine.That's uglier than it should be and
maintaining a UPS is not pretty.

They were going to change the
firmware so that all outputs were muted as soon as it came up far enuogh
to do that, and keep them muted until the boot sequence was completed.


Why wasn't that *first*? Oy. Spontaneous rude noises are Very Very Bad.

If you have the slightest doubt about the power in a venue (or that no
clumsy patron will triip over your power cord, it's probably a good idea
to power the digital console from a small UPS. That will allow you to do
an orderly shutdown and startup.



--
Les Cargill