P16 Blues

This has been a busy Summer for the EWF tribute band I do sound for. My personal rig is a Midas M32r and DL32 Stagebox. While I've used my gear for most of our engagements in previous years, this year we have been doing a lot of City Concert Series all around the Atlanta Metro where sound reinforcement is provided by contracted companies.

M32 consoles are pretty common for these productions particularly at Monitor World. In two instances the sound company has been willing to load my Scene to their M32 which has worked out pretty well, particularly on the show I mixed FOH for. However, there is one thing that doesn't seem to translate. The Music Director/Keyboardist for the band uses a P16 to control his IEM mix. In both instances, even with my Scene loaded, the P16 doesn't communicate with their board. I can see the routing is correct on the Ultranet tab in routing, and the P16 is connected as it is receiving power via the P16d's proprietary PoE, but no signal comes through on any of the 16 channels. Anyone have any idea what's going on? Is there a box the Scene doesn't update that I need to check somewhere else to enable the P16 to communicate on their board?

I know this is probably a question for a Music Tribe forum, but I thought I'd use my dilemma to give my colleagues at the Sound Design Community a shout since I've been kind of silent since we transitioned from Goesto11. (Missing those App notifications)

JD

Hi JD! That does sound strange. Can you upload your M32 files for us to see?

Like Nathan said, it would be very beneficial if we could see the Scene file. Not sure what it would be tripping up the setup.

Sure, here it is. However keep in mind, the P16 works fine on my M32r, but on the M32r I used in late April and the full sized M32 I used yesterday, it didn't work. That's why I'm puzzled. Of course my normal setup uses AES50 for pretty much all inputs and outputs while in both of the other cases the board used local inputs via a metallic snake arrangement. Therefore the routing in the scene is modified for the local connection at Monitor World which worked fine in terms of the analog connections yesterday. The P16 was the only insurmountable issue.

It seems I can only attach images so here's the URL to the scene stored on my google drive.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbmw_oFVMOZv–_gHcppVDDR8JklVZeG?usp=sharing

Hmm, I wonder if a work around would be to bring your M32 and patch it into their system in some way? It may be a pain in the ass, but if that's the only way you have make it work at the moment…

Some of the sound companies frown on anything more than hooking up our wireless rack to their equipment so that would be kind of iffy. Fortunately I have enough busses to just give the Music Director his own feed, which was Mix 8 on that file so that is our work around. He liked the freedom of dialing in his own mix and not having to get my attention to make changes.

It may have been a cat5 issue in both instances. Maybe it will work the third time. Our next engagement has a M32 running both FOH and Monitors. I've already sent them the Scene file. Maybe the P16 will work this time. I'm familiar with the venue so this time I'll bring my own Cat6 to the dance.

I wish I knew more about the p16 to be more helpful. I wonder if it might also be helpful to have your working scene open on your laptop. Then you go through verify every setting line by line on the local M32.

That's cool Nathan, it is just nice to discuss my dilemma with someone that understands the frustration. The more I think about it, the more I lean toward the Cat5 being the issue. All of my scenes have Mix 8 as the back up mix for the Music Director so if it only works when I'm using my own rig, we can live with that.

I will post it on the Music Tribe forum and see if they have an answer. There's also a X32 / M32 Facebook group that's pretty knowledgeable and responsive.

It seems like event a short CAT5e with confirmed quality would work as a test, to confirm your suspicions.

Hey everyone. The p16 only sends out audio on 16 channels. The monitor mix itself is controlled by the p16 module. The mix does not store with the scene.
If you want a monitor mix to be stored with the scene you would have to use mix 8.
If you can get your music director to switch to an ipad for monitor control the mix would be stored with the scene.

Hey Lou, yeah that's true, but my issue is when I connect the P16 module to the other board, the 16 channels don't reach the module. I go to channel one, turn up the level and there is nothing there even though the board's routing indicates it is mapped to it. The mix can be saved on the P16 module itself, but none of the 16 channels (Actually in my case 13 because I use the last three for IQ to my turbosounds.) reach the module on these other boards. A conundrum I'll keep working on. I have a M32c in the rack with my stage box as a back-up. I'm going to try connecting the P16 to it with a scene from my M32r and see if that works.

Ah. Sorry for my misunderstanding.
That is a very bizarre issue.
Ultranet is supposed to send 8 channel per twisted pair. I think it uses two pairs.
So if you are getting any channels on 1-8 you should have all of them since it's all digital.

Wait…what ultranet port are you using. The one one the back of the stagebox?
That actually patches starting at AES 33-48. I attached the patch chart for the S-16 stagebox. Don't know if that's the issue.

PS I have the Turbosound IQs as well I love running an ultranet string to all my monitor with powercon through to boot. Clean stage all day!
Have you noticed you have to run them much hotter from the console. Since it's digital the whole way I think 0 dbFS is the hottest signal it'll take.

Stagebox patch chart

For the last one I was using the ultranet port on the back of the M32 console. Their stage is all copper, no digital stageboxes.

To ONE AND ALL, we did a gig at Thrasher Park this weekend using the sound company's M32 console AND MY P16 WORKED!!!! I did take my own 30ft shielded Cat6 cable this time. That may have to be my secret sauce on getting it to work in future. At the previous venue the Monitor World tech had all the gains extremely low. That could have been the whole problem since most of the channel appearances were tapped at Pre-Fader or Post EQ the Keyboardist would not have seen any signal on the P16 channel signal indicators.

Thanks for jumping in on my problem guys.

That's great!

Huzzah. Glad you found a solution and shared it.