The Symphonic Tribute to Pink Floyd, a concert with a social background, was the first to believe in Dante thanks to the group of engineers who contributed their knowledge.
Juan Tamayo*
On May 20, the Pink Floyd Symphonic Tribute – When the senses make sense was held in the City of Medellín, made by Música Para Ver of the 1+1 Foundation. For some it was another concert, but for the technical team that held the event it was a challenge, since they opted for a digital communication solution between the platform and the different consoles and processes.
This article will talk about streaming audio over a digital IP network "Dante" at live events. I have generally written about Dante in fixed installation solutions, and recently, thanks to LatinPress, a webinar was provided on the subject that you can find on the publisher's website or on YouTube as "Webinar: Digital Microphones by Audio Technica".
Although I would like to dedicate this article about all the technical production, starting with the arrangement of the artists on stage and of course, the use of Audio-Technica microphones to have an excellent capture and clear reproduction, I would not like to take away the prominence of the main theme, the Dante protocol. For this purpose we invited two great engineers who are responsible for this column, and who very kindly decided to share their experience in this event.
We will start with Diego Fernando González ([email protected]) market coordinator Incolmotos - Yamaha and who carried out the support engineering for the Dante network.
JT: What consoles were used for this concert?
DFG: A QL5 for mixing of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Medellín, with which stems were prepared to send to the main consoles of the room and monitors. 2 CL5, one for monitors of the entire event, in this one was mixed for the rock band and the stems of the Philharmonic were received to prepare a single reference mix for the orchestra and the other was used to mix the rock band in the room and finish the mixing process of the stems sent by the QL5 used for the Philharmonic.
JT: What other accessories were used for the operation in Dante?
DFG: The Dante network uses a total of 4 HP and TPLink brand gigabit Etherneth Network Switches. A double star was formed to generate redundancy: 2 switchers for the primary network, 1 of them to concentrate the FOH network devices and another for the same function in the Stage. Another 2 switchers served the same function for the secondary network.
As for network devices, we had additionally 3 computers connected to the Dante network, one of them for monitoring and administration of the Dante network using the Dante Controller software, and the other 2 used the Audinate DVS software that allows standard gigabit ethernet network boards to be linked to a dante network as if they were just another device, these 2 computers made the multi-track recording of the 96 channels that added the Rock band plus the complete Philharmonic Orchestra. For the inputs of these 96 channels, 4 RIO3224D were used, which served as the system's analog input and output platform.
JT: What were the challenges or difficulties you encountered in developing your work at the event?
DFG: I think the challenge was always to keep the network stable throughout more than 48 hours of sound checks + show, but the truth is that dante Controller software allows us to monitor and manage all the parameters that are required to adjust a network well like Word Clock, Latency, bit dept, sampling rates, reports of news or failures etc.
JT: What experience does this event leave you?
DFG: This event, which by the way was unprecedented, is the first in Colombia that entrusts a protocol like Dante to support a large number of input and output channels with a shared mixing flow between several operators, each with its own table, allowed all of us involved in the process to show how the audio industry is changing radically, which makes us meditate on our levels of knowledge in terms of design and management of networks applied to audio.
And it goes without saying that despite all the usual challenges, such as the long waits to start certain processes that are related to each other, the development of the event was successful, and the show was shocking for the public. That's the real magic.
For the event we also had Carlos Gustavo Rodríguez ([email protected]) who currently works as a mixing engineer and consultant in new digital audio technologies. He was the one who made the mix of monitors for the event and supported the design of digital networks.
JT: From a personal point of view, what was the biggest challenge of the event?
CGR: The configuration of the routing matrix of the different signals between consoles, rack and systems, as well as the mixing balance between orchestra and band.
JT: What was your experience in having the Dante network, do you think that digital systems help in the operation of the event?
CGR: Dante TM is a very versatile protocol, before the event the production was not very confident in using the network to transmit the signals between consoles and racks, for this they preferred to use analog snakes, but the technical team had full confidence in the benefits of the Dante system in Yamaha consoles, and we have the support of Santiago Aristizabal of Yamaha Incolmotos Colombia, who put at our disposal Cat5e shielded network cabling to avoid any external interference and the knowledge of the engineer Diego González as support of the Dante network.
One of the first challenges was the use of different types of Switcher, we had a manageable HP 1920 Switch and a manageable TP Link switch for the primary network; an unmanaged TP Link switch and a Trend Net switch for the secondary network. The decision was made to leave the switches manageable with their default IP for communication.
JT: How were the networks distributed?
CGR: The networks were physically divided into two parts, 1) Stage: which had 4 Rio 32-24 and a CL5 console for band and orchestra monitors. 2) Room: with a CL5 for band, a QL5 for orchestra, a MacBook Pro for band recording, a MacBook Pro for orchestra recording and an HP PC for Dante network control. Once we made these physical connections it was very easy to share signals between all the elements because we could have the inputs and outputs of the RIO for each of the consoles and send the stems of the orchestra to the room consoles and monitors without having to make any extra physical connection.
The Dante network behaved as we expected, we forgot about it throughout the concert and we were able to dedicate ourselves to our mixing and recording work. The audio quality was very good and the audience was very pleased with the show. Times have changed and events are becoming more demanding every day and require more versatile tools that maintain high audio quality and the Dante network and Yamaha consoles meet this challenge.
I invite our readers to search for the commentary and videos of the concert. I also take this opportunity to thank the 1+1 Foundation (http://www.fundacionunomasuno.org/) and Wire Music (http://www.wiremusic.co) who gave us the opportunity to participate in this great event with the microphones of Audio-Technica. To wire engineers Fabian Ramirez ([email protected]), Joel Solis and Giovani Bedoya for their dedication to those responsible for the philharmonic's technical production, microphone location, recording and mixing and many other tasks. Thank you for your time, patience and why you believed in the brand ([email protected]).
A greeting and special thanks to Alejandro Mejía "Ktato" ([email protected]) who was responsible for the mixing in the room and much in the technical production, a great master of audio. And in general to the whole technical team, each one did a great job. With these events I think that Latin America has how to make great productions, although we lack a little more education and faith in our work.
If you want to know a little more about this concert, you can contact me at [email protected] that I will gladly offer it to you.
