Remote Digital Mixing and Recording At Contemporary Service

[Wes Wood]

I designed a sound system upgrade with multi-track recording and wireless remote mixing with Jim Stallings, Contemporary Music Leader at Duluth First UMC that I though I might share here for anyone interested. I would appreciate any comments or questions.

Typical of many church sound systems, DUMC was using a 32 channel Mackie analog mixer, with aux 1 for front mons, aux 2 for rear mons, aux 3 stage left mains, and aux 4 stage right mains, stereo out driving flying center stereo rig with subs mounted in the wall. aux 5 and 6 were used to drive a stereo CD recorder. The mixer was located in a birds nest in the back of a gym-style family life center (FLC).

My goals were to add independent multi track recording and mix from a better location, ideally wireless mixing from a spot within the congregation downstairs, but to keep everything intact exactly as it was and operating for those who might follow me who would not be interested in these capabilities, or those who needed to use a simpler analog system for other purposes. I did this with a 24 channel patch bay wired to route the Mackie to the amp/speaker system when 8 numbered jumpers were removed, and enable the new system when they were installed.

For multi track recording we originally chose (3) Presonus FireStudios and found they do not support daisy-chaning of firewire, so we traded two Firestudioes for two FP10s with ADAT lightpipe. We continued the use of the Mackie preamps and used the inserts with a specially wired snake (to allow full insertion into the jack) to pick off the signal just after the Mackie trim to drive the Presonus 24 chans of analog inputs, then out of the Presonus analogs outs via another snake to the line-ins of a Yamaha 01V96 expanded with 8 additional AIs for the Live mix with remote control capability. We then patched the (2) Presonus FP10 ADATs to the single Presonus FireStudio, and then firewire out to an existing rackmounted computer that had been designed by Jim Stallings at DUMC. The computer had been optimized for music including removable HD, and pre-loaded with Nuendo 3. Dual 22in monitors were added upstairs for the multitrack recording. Signal trims were tweaked to optimize clean signals into Presonus pres and Yamaha 01V96 for live mix. Plenty of signal was available via Firewire for recording.

To get the new digital mix "close", we first utilized the new snake to run the 01V96 live mix from the floor in the back of the FLC. We expanded the 01V96 I/O to have 8 AOs as well that functions the same as the Mackie was configured, namely, AUX 1- Front Mons, AUX-2 Rear Mons, AUX 3-Stage L Mains, AUX 4-Stage R Mains, Stereo Master Fader drives flying stereo speaks and subwoofers. I have patched AUX 3 and AUX 4 through to the last set of outputs to drive the stereo CD recorder. AUX 5,6,7,8 remain to drive (4) internal stereo effects processors.

Recording/mixdown settings have been made and stored in Nuendo, so all that is required on Sunday mornings is calling up the stored template setting and creating a new directory for the audio file. The Video tech clicks REC a minute or so before the service starts.

The last step was to setup a laptop with Yamaha's Studiomaster (SMSW)control software either connect via a USB wireless modem direct to the 01V96 USB port for SMSW-only control, One option was to run the SMSW on the rack PC with a wireless Windows Remote Terminal interface from the laptop allowing both Nuendo mixing control and live mix control of the Studiomaster SW from a wireless laptop.

We chose the Wireless USB hub to link the computer and 01V96 Mixer, and it works great. (Also running on a MacBook so no Windows O/S involved anywhere) It is rock-solid so far after three weeks! With the wireless up and running, we are able to mix live on the MacBook G4 from anywhere in the room. Pretty cool!

Wes

[Wes Wood]

The "Remote" is now up and running - Wes.

[Wayne (b@man) McMichael]

hey buddieeee... sounds very interesting. I'd like to see that when you get all the details worked out. Thanks for sharing:)