[QLab] audio hardware?

[Troy Dittman]

Guys I am new here and new to QLab and am tring to set up my first Qlab system. I am really interested to know what Mac you are using as well as what audio hardware you are using. I have had some experience with Motu and it hasn't always been the best. I am going to be using this system for the multi track playback for a 2 hour musical play. Thanks for your help.

Troy Dittman

[Steven Devino]

Troy,
Do you have a budget range?

Metric Halo is outstanding. But pricey for some. a great deal for others.

Steve

On Jan 19, at Jan 19, 2010 10:52 AM, Troy Dittman wrote:

> Guys I am new here and new to QLab and am tring to set up my first Qlab system. I am really interested to know what Mac you are using as well as what audio hardware you are using. I have had some experience with Motu and it hasn't always been the best. I am going to be using this system for the multi track playback for a 2 hour musical play. Thanks for your help.
>
> Troy Dittman

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[Matt Otto]

I haven’t used MH but everyone raves about it. If you are on a budget I would recommend the audiofire line from echo audio they are rock solid. As far as macs go, any intel mac can run audio on qlab  pretty effortlessly. 

Matt Otto
(609) 707-2978
Off List: motto...@gmail.com
http://www.mattottosound.com

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi Troy, 

Welcome to the world of Qlab. You're going to get a huge variety of answers to that question, as everyone has different preferences, and different ideas about what is "good" sound and what is "great" sound, and what systems are necessary, etc. 

lf you have a significant budget, it's pretty easy to get equipment that sounds good, and I'll leave it to the sound pros to recommend things along those lines, but if you're looking for a solid system on the cheap, I've had nothing but good experiences with both the presonus firestudio and firebox. I used to use the firestudio (firepod is basically the same thing) when I needed 8 outputs for shows, and unless you're in a very high quality sound environment, you won't notice much difference between that ($300 used, $500 new) and a $2000 piece of gear. In other words, if you're not a professional sound designer, you'll probably feel fine about it. I recently bought a firebox used for $100, and it's basically the same thing, but with fewer outputs (6 instead of 10 or 12 or whatever is on the firepod) and it can run off of bus power in a pinch, which is nice for quick and dirty jobs. 

I think the consensus here is that the mac minis are good machines if you're buying something specifically for Qlab work. If you prefer to go the laptop route, and you think you may be eventually using video, go with one of the macbook pros. If you're only doing audio, and not running too many streams at once, you can get by with one of the cheaper macbooks, or even a used one. If you have the money, and will be doing video, a Mac Pro is obviously state of the art, as it can run 4 (or more) internal hard drives and can handle up to 32GB of RAM.

In other words, it all depends on your budget and your needs. 

Good luck!

Stephen

Stephen Pruitt

Fluxion Scenic and Light

www.fluxiondesigns.com

See my photography at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seamonkey78704/sets/

[Charles Coes]

The Metric Halo boxes are fantastic.  RME is certainly worth a look.  The Focusrite and Presonus fall at the same level as the MOTU gear, they work just fine most of the time.  the M-audio stuff isn't for use on a professional situation as far as I'm concerned.  I won't speak to current Echo hardware, but I've had such consistent bad experiences with their sound quality in the days of sfx that I'll avoid it if I can.

Best of luck

Charles Coes
cco...@gmail.com
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Buckminster Fuller

On Jan 19, 2010, at 10:52 AM, Troy Dittman wrote:

Guys I am new here and new to QLab and am tring to set up my first Qlab system. I am really interested to know what Mac you are using as well as what audio hardware you are using. I have had some experience with Motu and it hasn't always been the best. I am going to be using this system for the multi track playback for a 2 hour musical play. Thanks for your help.

Troy Dittman

[*]

For audio only, my Macbook White with 4 gig of RAM & the onboard HD has
worked fine. Obviously if you want headroom, you buy a machine with the
faster processor & most ram you can afford. For video, even a MBPro might
not be enough. A Mac Pro seems to be the platform to choose for that.

Re: i/o

I've used the RME FF800 with no issues. I've also used Presonus Firebox
for more than a season without any hardware issues. These boxes also seem
to play nice with SFX 6 in case you might need to do that at some point.
Less than $200 per device for 6 analog outputs.

I'm testing a Presonus Firestudio Project with both SL & 10.5 & it appears
to work perfectly with Qlab. $400.

Avoid Maudio. Too many people have had too many issues.

Avoid the older MOTU 828. It won't work with anything I've tried anymore.

MOTU seems to break things that were working with driver updates. If you
do find an MOTU driver that works, keep a copy. They make it difficult to
get any useful information without registering your device & don't seem to
make older drivers available (that would make it easy to prove the new
driver doesn't work:).

For basic (2) channel output, I've had no issues using my Line 6 Tone Port
UX2. This device also works fine with SFX 5.6 & 6.

FYI, Presonus is discontinuing the Firebox & replacing it with the
Firestudio Mobile. Only problem is, the Firestudio Mobile only has (2)
analog outputs. Sorry to see the Firebox go. I guess I'll buy them cheap
on EBAY now. I've seen them on sale online for $150 new in the last few
days.

*

________________________________________________________

[sam kusnetz]

> Oooo... Watch out for the Lacie drives. The power supplies on these things are TERRIBLE!

no kidding? i've had lacie's for *years* with no problems. perhaps it's only new lacie power bricks that suck?

anyway, thanks for the heads up. i didn't notice the recent lower prices on glyphs, and i like owc's stuff in general, so it's good to know i've got other options.

cheerio
sam

[sam kusnetz]

>> i used a USB displaylink adaptor for my
>> control monitor on a mac pro with two burly video cards running two
>> projectors each. worked fine. (well... the hardware worked fine. the
>> show itself is a whole other story...)
>
> Sam, I think this situation may have been unique to the USB monitor.
> I've not tried using a USB monitor, but I'm pretty sure that if a
> "normal" graphics card is added to a system that does not support QE/
> CI, that it will cause ALL other screens to fail to display video from
> QLab.

iiiinteresting. well then i'll be *sure* to hang on to this displaylink adaptor!

i'd love to know more about this if anyone comes across any info...

[Andy Leviss]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 4:59 PM, sam kusnetz <s...@notquite.net> wrote:
> no kidding? i've had lacie's for *years* with no problems. perhaps it's only new lacie power bricks that suck?

I'm with Jeremy, while I've heard of a couple people (you being one of
them, Sam) with good LaCie experience, I've heard of many, many more
nightmare stories for the last few years. Not just recent.

> anyway, thanks for the heads up. i didn't notice the recent lower prices on glyphs, and i like owc's stuff in general, so it's good to know i've got other options.

With their prices dropping, Glyph's worth any little extra $$ just for
the warranty. If a drive dies on you, they overnight a replacement.
Doesn't help you with the backup side of replacing, but sure gets
things going hardware-wise. And IIRC they offer data recovery
services, not sure cost on that. I've been tempted to trade my couple
generic-brand 2.5" enclosures for one or two of their beefier
portables, although I haven't yet.

Oh, and apropos to nothing, I saw this post on NYCresistor's website
today, and though my fellow computer geeks here would dig it:

http://www.nycresistor.com/2010/01/11/fortuitous-moments/

--Andy

[Jeremy Lee]

They *used* to be good. And I've never had one of the cheaper/ older ones fail (250G variety). But I've had 2x d2 750G/ 1TB quads fail, and each one went through at least 2 power supplies before it died. Most folks in the pro world have started to switch to OWC if not Glyph.

On Jan 19, 2010, at 4:59 PM, sam kusnetz wrote:

>> Oooo... Watch out for the Lacie drives. The power supplies on these things are TERRIBLE!
>
> no kidding? i've had lacie's for *years* with no problems. perhaps it's only new lacie power bricks that suck?
>
> anyway, thanks for the heads up. i didn't notice the recent lower prices on glyphs, and i like owc's stuff in general, so it's good to know i've got other options.

--
Jeremy Lee
Sound Designer, NYC - USA 829
http://www.jjlee.com

[Paul Gotch]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 06:54:17PM -0500, Andy Leviss wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 4:59 PM, sam kusnetz <s...@notquite.net> wrote:
> > no kidding? i've had lacie's for *years* with no problems. perhaps it's only new lacie power bricks that suck?
>
> I'm with Jeremy, while I've heard of a couple people (you being one of
> them, Sam) with good LaCie experience, I've heard of many, many more
> nightmare stories for the last few years. Not just recent.

The problem with LaCie is that they will change drive manufacturer or
even firewire bridge board without changing the name of the product.

Also, like most drives, they don't respect OS X power management settings
but thankfully do generally come with a utility to prevent them
spining down.

A far cheaper option is a Buffalo DriveStation Combo 4. It has a
Samsung Spinpoint disk inside it and responds to OS X power management.
However it doesn't have the guarantees behind it that you are paying
for when you buy Glyph.

-p
--
Paul Gotch
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[RRC-R]

On Jan 19, 2010, Matt Otto wrote:

> As far as macs go, any intel mac can run audio on qlab pretty effortlessly.

Within reason, this is quite true. Mac Mini's are popular choices for audio-only work because they are cheap & compact, but they actually are Apple's least powerful Macs, using hardware designed for low end laptops to keep heat they generate from frying things in those tiny little boxes. Yet I've used older, 2006 vintage Minis with relatively anemic 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo CPUs to run a show ("Menopause, The Musical") with 8 concurrent channels of 96 KHz, 24 bit output via a Firewire 400 interface with no glitches whatsoever, & this was while using the Minis' internal 5400 rpm drives.

Any more modern Mac with a Core 2 Duo CPU, including MacBooks, should give you no problems for audio-only QLab work.

The audio interface you choose is much more important than anything else. USB is OK if you need just a few channels of 44.1 or 44.8 Khz 24 bit output, but USB 1.1 isn't adequate for even two streams of 96 Khz stereo, & there are few if any decent USB 2.0 audio interfaces on the market, so for multichannel work, a Firewire interface is the only way to go.

Consider carefully if you really need anything more than 48 KHz, 20 or 24 bit streams for your shows -- its worth it to **compose** cue tracks using software that supports 32 bit resolution internally, but the final cue track will probably sound no different at 20 or 24 bit resolution because any extra dynamic range you gain by using greater resolution in the final mix-down probably won't be noticeable in a live show environment because ambient noise generated by the audience & venue will mask it. The same is true for sample rates -- 96 Khz or higher is great for avoiding alias defects above 20 Khz when recording sounds, but it probably will make no audible difference for even very picky ears for playback in a live environment.

So, if you convert all your cue tracks to 44.1 or 48 KHz, 20 or 24 bit files for show use, you not only can use a possibly cheaper audio interface, you put less demands on the Mac, the drives, & the digital interface.

Where you should not compromise is in the audio output of the audio interface. Always opt for one with pro level (+4 dB nominal), balanced outputs, ideally with +18 or +24 dB max output capabilities. It doesn't matter if they use XLR or TRS (three conductor) 1/4" phone plug connections; always use appropriate cabling to preserve the balanced output connection to the mixer's input. It makes no sense to invest in a high quality interface that doesn't provide this kind of output capability. If you can't get the signal into the system without creating ground loops or introducing RF or digital noise into it, it won't matter how good it would sound if it didn't cause these problems.=

[*]

USB version of the RME FF400.

http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_fireface_uc.php

On Wed, January 20, 2010 10:32 pm, RRC-R wrote:
> & there are few if any decent USB 2.0 audio interfaces on the market, so
> for multichannel work, a Firewire interface is the only way to go.