Experiences with MADI cabling installs for DiGiCo?

[John Evans]

Hi all, 

I'm currently in the process of specing a new console for our small theatre and both on price and capability it looks like the SD9 is going to come out ahead. My question is regarding methods of installing cabling for MADI, as if we follow the letter of the DiGiCo tech notes we'd be installing a somewhat tedious and expensive amount of cable! Essentially the requirement is for a D2-Rack that will sit in the rack with our analogue patch, a D-Rack that can be connected either in the pit, on stage, or in our studio (both connected via CAT5) and a MADI soundcard in the control box connected to the BNC port on the desk. Cables from each of these destinations will run to the console in the control box with tails coming out of the wall at either end for connection as recommended by DiGiCo.

A key requirement is that the console is easy to remove from the control box to mix from the auditorium mix position, however the DiGiCo tech notes are very strict about no joiner, patching, etc. etc. - having only used DiGiCo touring thus far I haven't run across this as a problem yet myself. If I have a single patch panel in the control box with CAT5 and BNC sockets connected to the cables running to the auditorium mix position, surely this will not degrade the signal too much? Essentially the console would then be connected via CAT5 cables that then have a single Ethercon cable connector and panel connector in the middle, and the same with BNC. Obviously the whole install will be done with the correct grade CAT5 cable etc., and all runs would be probably less than 70m at all times. 

Does anyone have any real world experience of doing this or any advice? I can't believe that a single correctly terminated Ethercon or BNC connection in the middle will prevent the system from working. If we follow the instructions to the letter we're going to have to double pull each of the cables, half going to control half going to the auditorium, and that's going to get very tedious and expensive....

Thanks,

John

[Johnny Boy]

Hi John, I work at the city theatre in Malmö, Sweden.
We have two stages and we have an SD10 at our main auditorium and an SD11 at the smaller stage. Before we also had an SD9. You really can't beat Digico in these environments I'm my opinion.
But of course we also had the issue of moving the desk out into the room to mix in the sweet spot where the audience sits. Great for the rehearsal period.
However it got very tedious.
So now we use the offline software running on a pc laptop.
It mirrors exactly the state the desk is in. Use an external monitor as well to view the mix console.
Though use a wired Cat5. Not stable via WiFi in a large room.
Then we use the ipad app for fine tuning monitoring and levels onstage.
A brilliant setup that saves hours of work.
So you don't have to keep re-patching, re-cabled and such.
Cheers John C.

[Johnny Boy]

And I'll also add that the pc we use is the cheapest ASUS laptop available and the offline Digico software runs with zero problems.
Which is amazing for a pc imho...

[Johnny Boy]

And my final peice of advice is to not go down the self-made cabling route. I've spoken to the guys at Digico and our regional Digico dealer and they both state that if your desk encounters a fault or failure of some sort, the first question they will ask is did you have the desk connected with the proper cables. If you have DIY'd it they may not cover the warranty, even though as far as tech support goes these guys are just awesome.
Call Digico and ask them before doing your install.
Cheers J

[justin....@kanatatheatre.ca]

Hi John, 

I am the TD for a theatre in Ottawa, Canada. We just finished commissioning our new system in August, but instead of going the MADI route, we ended up going DANTE and I am very glad we did. I have heard some horror stories from a counterpart at another theatre in town of MADI dropping out in their booth from their MADI link that is in their computer running qlab mid-show. I am guessing this is a venue specific thing, but from my understanding and hands-on experience, DANTE is just a lot easier to deal with. You stick with your standard star topology network using a good quality layer 2 managed switch w/ QOS and you are off to the races. If the audio network is completely isolated, you can get away with an unmanaged switch, too. 

We went with a Yamaha QL1 due to the fact that is has Dugan auto-mixing built in, and it is incredibly scalable. We would have loved to have gone the CL route, but budget did not allow as we stripped the theatre of all previous audio wiring and started from scratch, so the project was not a simple booth upgrade.

The yamaha RIO racks for additional in/out capacity is just as easy to deal with over DANTE. Currently waiting for ours to show up as we ordered it after the fact and I know it will be getting used on pretty much every show as a stage box. 

Using Dante Virtual Soundcard on your qlab machine is incredibly simplistic and has made our designers very happy. DVS has a max 64X64 capacity, but DANTE itself can handle up to 512X512 audio channels on a single network. MADI caps out at 64. Most places that is not a problem, but if you are running main/backup machines with multi-channel audio, it can add up very quickly or course, so you might end up being a bit limited in channel count. 

Also, doing multi-track recording over DANTE is incredibly easy. DANTE runs native on macOS, so all I have to do is open an extra laptop on the DANTE network, open DVS and our recording software and I can record all channels pretty much instantly.