- Intro and Inputs
- Outputs (and a bit more on Inputs)
- Patchbay [this post]
- Presets (and some Input bonus)
- Files and Organization
This post builds off the previous posts. You should probably go through them for this one to completely make sense.
Start up D-Show if it's not running, and let's begin.
Click on "PATCHBAY" on the bar across the top of the screen. You're now looking at the Patchbay.
Look just under the menu bar. You should see four tabs: Inputs, Outputs, Directs, and Inserts. Click on Inputs if it's not selected.
Now look at the grid that takes up most of the screen. There are two tabs on the left of the grid: Channels and FX Returns. Click on Channels if it's not selected.
Now look at the top of the grid. There are four tabs: Stage 1, Stage 2, FOH, and ProTools. These are all possible input sources.
Stage 1 and Stage 2 are stage racks. A stage rack is basically a panel of XLR jacks that sits backstage, then feeds those signals to the mixer.
In the 46th St facility, there is not an equivalent to the stage rack.
FOH is a Front-Of-House (FOH) rack. The FOH rack is designed to sit near the mixer console to provide inputs that aren't backstage.
ProTools is a topic for another day. It's an exciting topic, one that I'm just waiting to experiment with, and one that I'm going to leave you hanging on.
Now that you know all about the tabs on the Inputs page, click on the label for the top row of the grid. It should be say "Aaron", if you did the first two walkthroughs. If you didn't, it'll say something exciting like "Ch 1".
Let's look away from the grid for a minute. The area to the left of the grid gives you the basics of the channel labeled Aaron. Fader, phantom power, gain, solo/mute buttons: it's all right there, being very convenient for you.
Look to the right. You probably have, by default, light-colored boxes making a line that goes diagonally down to the right. It's telling you that Aaron is connected to Analog Card A #1; Ch 2 is connected to Analog Card A #2, and so on.
For now, we'll disconnect Ch 2 through Ch 4 from the stage rack. Click the light-colored box on each of those rows. The boxes should turn the dark blue background color. Those channels now are not connected to any input.
That's the equivalent of pulling the cable out of channel 2, 3, and 4 on the current patch panel.
Try clicking in Aaron's row right under Analog Card A #5. Go ahead, see what happens.
A warning message! What this message is telling you is that you already have a box checked in Aaron's row (that is, you already have an input going to Aaron's channel). You can "change this assignment" and move the connection to #5 by clicking "Assign", or you can click "Cancel" and keep Aaron on #1. We'll keep Aaron at #1. Click "Cancel".
What's that, Aaron? Ah, yes. Aaron just helpfully reminded us that he's going to spend some time talking and some time singing. For talking, he should have different EQ settings and we need to make sure to cut any reverb or other effects we put on his voice. The easiest way I know of to do that--right now, anyway--is to give him a second channel. We'll give him Channel 2.
Today we'd do this by using a Y cable on the patch panel: one stage input Y-ed to two channels on the board.
There is one major difference: with this board, the Y-ed channels share one preamp. This means that if you adjust the gain on one Y-ed channel, the gain on the other channel(s) will be adjusted too.
How do you think we put one input into two channels? That's exactly right! Aaron's mic is plugged into Analog Card A #1, and needs to go to two channels on the board. So we'll click in the box in the Ch 2 row, in the column under Analog Card A #1. Aaron's mic is now routed to two channels on the board. Cool.
Just for now, disconnect Aaron's mic entirely. (Sorry, Aaron, it's for training purposes. We'll have you running again in a second.) Clear both boxes under Analog Card A #1.
Now here's a trick that will save you a little bit of time here and there. To reconnect Aaron's mic, click in the Aaron/#1 box, hold the mouse button, and drag down to Ch2/#1. Now let go of the mouse button. Nice, eh? Just something to keep in mind.
We're not going to deal with FX Returns for now.
Instead, let's look at our Outputs tab.
Now let's do more than look at the tab. Click the "OUTPUTS" tab and look at your grid. Across the top, you should see the same tabs as before: Stage 1, Stage 2, FOH, and ProTools. I told you most of the story before about the stage and FOH racks, except I left out the part about the racks having outputs as well.
Along the right side of the grid, you'll see tabs labeled Mains, PQ, MTX, AUX, and GRP.
We'll start from the bottom. Unlike toothpaste, we won't flatten as we go up.
Click "Mains". This is where you'll set up your connections to the main speakers (well, amps connected to the main speakers). These settings will hardly ever change, and if they do it'll be a big deal and everyone will make sure you know about it. This is the equivalent to the main output connections on an analog board.
We'll most likely have a very basic template Show file that will store most of the hardly-ever-changing settings like main outputs. Unless something goes very wrong, or you're trying to do something very tricky, you will not need to do anything with the Mains tab. Actually, you'll rarely need to do anything with the Outputs tab in the Patchbay at all.
Okay, let's move on. Click on the PQ tab. We won't use this. Remember what I said about PQs? If you don't, I talked about them when discussing the Outputs page. We're not using them--we have Avioms instead.
MTX is Matrix outputs. Once again, these will rarely change. There's more of a chance of changing these if you're trying to do something tricky, but really, don't change these.
Let's cover AUX and GRP together: Chances are you won't change these. But notice that your labels for Auxes and Groups show up in here. If something just plain isn't working with an Aux (most likely) or Group (unlikely that you'll have a Group going directly to an output), there are two reasons to check the output settings here:
- To make sure that the bus (Aux/Group) actually is assigned to an output
- To confirm which output the bus is assigned to before you head backstage to check the physical connections
Let's say we're in a situation where the band is using way more monitors than a single amplifier can handle. Fortunately, you can assign a single output bus to multiple physical outputs. Assign Band to Analog Card G, #2-#4. Good work! Now the band can have as many monitors as they need on stage.
We're done with the Outputs tab. Now we'll take a quick look at the remaining two tabs. I don't expect us to use these much, but you should know what they do. It'll help you look knowledgeable when you're teaching someone how to use the mixer and they point to one of these tabs and say "Hey, what's that do?"
Remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure books? If you want to be caught flat-footed and stammer an unsatisfactory answer, go look at funny pictures of cats. If you want to answer like a pro, continue reading!
Click the Directs tab. Direct outputs allow you to route any input channel or bus to an output. Directly. It's not just a clever name. In the system set-up, you can configure where you pick off the channel or bus. There may be times when you'll want to take an input and route it directly to an output (instead of going through the usual routing and putting it into Auxes/Mains), but those will probably be very rare. If you have a good use for Direct Outputs, let me know. You can route any input channel ("Channels" side tab), FX return ("FX Returns"), or output ("Outputs") to direct out.
Now click the Inserts tab. One thing you'll notice right away is that the only tab at the top of the grid is FOH. (You did notice right away, didn't you?) The Inserts tab is for hardware inserts plugged into the FOH rack. I don't think we'll use much for hardware inserts (software plug-ins will replace a lot of the offboard processing that's normally inserted). But if there's an external signal processor you'd like to insert into the path for an input channel, FX return, or output, this is where you'd do it.
I will buy you an item (beverage, dessert, etc) of your choice from the Main Street Cafe (or whatever it's called) if you are the first NCBC sound guy to post a comment listing two hardware inserts we have in the loft.
There are a few more things you can do in the Patchbay (name channels, be sneaky and suppress the channel-stealing warning), but I won't cover most of them. Except for one.
Look on the right side of the screen, about an inch below the "OPTIONS" button on the main menu bar. There's a square button, dark gray with lighter gray lines (it kind of looks like the left-justify button in Word). See it? Click it.
Did your web browser just pop up with a new page open? We don't have a big show set up, so it doesn't look all that impressive--but very cool nonetheless. If we properly label our stage racks, this could take some of the work out of giving the setup crew the patch assignments. (Those of you who haven't been following along in your software at home must be wondering what I'm talking about. Remember before when I said you'll learn much better by doing? I meant it!)
One last note on the Patchbay. I fibbed a bit before when I said no more patch panel. There's still some patching to do backstage, to the stage racks. So depending on your point of view, the patch panel just moved backstage. But the Y cables, at least, disappeared. Close enough!
What's next?
I'm still planning more walkthroughs.- Presets
- Possible: Files and organization
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