The Mixer in a Box

The Daytona 2010 BikeWeek is now something for the history books. People came to the rally and partied. I did not talk directly to vendors but heard that it was a crowd of lookers, not buyers. The weather was somewhat less than co-operative. The temperatures were low for the whole rally. There was, however, only one rainy day and that mostly in the morning.

There were two bands that played the Full Moon Saloon where I worked this rally. Their schedule was broken up rather than straight through. This would have made for several remixes with an analog board, but with SAC, as any digital console, it is just a matter of saving the mix at the end of the night and calling up the proper mix session at the beginning of the evening. This was a good thing here but is really great for a regular rally or multi-band festival situation.

The stage and house PA in the Full Moon had been moved over the winter. The sound booth had not been moved. It is now located off to the side of one of the main cabinets. One cannot hear the mix through the PA from the house mix location. With the SAC system’s remote capability this was not such a problem. I mixed from the middle of the crowd using my NetBook. It is more comfortable to have at least a small table and even with the light weight NetBook my arm got a bit tired by the end of the evening, but I was able to hear the PA and the mix.

The NetBook worked fine for mixing the shows but the battery life is a bit of a problem. After the first few nights I spent some time uninstalling several programs that wanted to run in the background and shutting down several non-essential services. I also started putting the computer into hibernate during the breaks. There was a significant improvement in battery life.

The sets were one hour through out the week with a half hour break. Before the adjustments I needed shore power about 2/3 of the way through the second set. After the tweaks I had to plug in for the last ten minutes of the third set, and the last half of the last set if it went to four sets. The battery never makes it back to full charge with just a half hour, but it is much more workable now. Putting the computer into hibernate also helps as the lighting load is removed and the hard drive probably powers down, allowing more juice to trickle into the battery.

There were a large number of amazed people. They would see me in the crowd with the NetBook and wonder what the heck I was doing. I would explain that the little computer was a remote control for the sound system. Thanks to good bands and good equipment one of the patrons told me that the Full Moon was the best place to listen to music on Main Street.

The annual spring motorcycle rally in Daytona Beach Florida is underway. This year the event started on February 26th and runs through March 6/7th. I am mixing sound in the Full Moon Saloon on Main Street in Daytona. Main Street is the traditional center for the rally and is a must visit for the rally crowd.

The Full Moon has a house PA system. It is a good club system and covers the room without any problem. The room has just been redone and the stage rebuilt. The previous stage was a corner stage but the new stage is on the short wall and that is much better from a production standpoint. It has introduced one production problem though. There are exposed rafters and beams in the venue. The main speakers are flown and are between the beams and the ceiling. This means that the horns are reflected back to stage from close range and has resulted in some feedback problems. The horns are a bit hotter than I would normally run them as well. It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out the exact problem and make the necessary changes to deal with the problems.

I elected to take my SAC system into the venue for the event. Primarily this is because the SAC system is my preferred mixing environment. The house board is a small Yahama with limited features and the house mix location is left over from the old corner stage and is poorly positioned for the new club layout. The floor in the mix booth is also very resonate so that the low end in the booth bares little resemblance to reality in the room. With the SAC Remote operating over a WiFi connection I can mix from anyplace in the room (crowd permitting).

Mixing by remote control in this situation, as well as many other possible situations, is a great benefit. A sound man needs to be able to hear the overall sound from the stage and PA in order to do a good job. Monitoring a mix by headphones tells you what is in the mix but not what is in the room. Club sound is a combination of the stage sound and the PA sound. One reinforces sounds in the mains to maintain a proper balance in the room. Having the capability to hear exactly what is going on in the room is a great advantage. Being able to do this without taking up valuable real estate in a club has been impossible in the past. The SAC system enables this to become a reality.

February 4th was the evening of the annual spring Gospel Choir Concert at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach Florida. I have provided sound reinforcement for the Gospel Choir. This year was the first opportunity to use the SAC rig. This is a choir of singers. There is not too much problem getting the voices out. This year the Alto section was a little lite and the Tenor section was very strong, the reverse of years past.

Instrumentation included drums, percussion, and keys. Of course the prime instrumentation was the voices. As always with SAC the sound was excellent.

There was a mime group that performed to three numbers during the intermission.

There was video that was shot of this concert. I have a VST recorder available with the system. I recorded the performance and the video production crew had a USB external hard drive to which we copied the output file. They will sync it up and mix it with the camera audio for the sound track to the video.

My description of the auxiliary section has been uploaded to the Mixer in a Box site. This page is complete with screen shots of the primary screens associated with the auxiliary section.

The SAC aux section consists of six full stereo modules. Each can be patched with either plugin effects or as hardware send and returns. This offers a great deal of flexibility. While six aux busses may not seem like a lot, there are twenty five consoles in the Software Audio Console package. Many of the functions that require an aux buss in a hardware console can be better served by using an additional console with SAC.

Check out The Auxiliary Section Page at Mixer in a Box.

I have recently uploaded a description of the Scenes System in the Software Audio Console. The SAC scenes system is very powerful and easy to use. You have the resolution to control a single parameter on a single  mixer up to a global snapshot of all twenty five mixers. Check out the page on the main site at: The Scenes System in SAC

I have just posted a page on the Effects system in the Software Audio Console on the Mixer in a Box site. There are a wide variety of plug-in effects that can be used with the SAC system. There are several native plug-ins and most any VST or DX plug that does not cause latency can be used in the environment. I used some screen shots to help explain the system.

I also added a second SAC in Action video. Both videos are on the same page and can be reached from the left nav column.

There is another new page on the site. It is the mixer views page. It details some of the different views that are available with the virtual mixer. I have illustrated the new material liberally with screen shots and even have one trick up my sleeve. Check it out and find the trick!

There is a new page and a slightly different look to the Mixer in a Box site. I have added some pictures on the home page to break up the text and make the site a bit more friendly. I have also added a new page.

The Z Mixer page has a picture of the Z Mixer strip and a description of the controls on the strip. I put the mixer picture in a scroll box, so that it looks and acts much like the Z Mixer in the SAC GUI.

I made the picture by taking screen shots of the various parts of the Z Mixer and stacking them together with my photo editor. I use IrfanView and it has a vertical panorama function built in. If you look closely you will be able to see a couple of the seams, but over all it came out quite well.

I will be adding pages for the Wide Mixer (or is that whole mixer), the Send/Return section, and the output section with pictures and descriptions in the near future. More pages and information should make the site more interesting.

While I was working on the site I did some minor update work and found that I had never activated the comment system. I activated the comment system and added a Quick link at the top of a couple of pages to the comment box. Stop by and check out the site and say hello in the comment box at Mixer in a Box.

I see that the last post was the end of May. I have been slack in posting to this blog. That does not mean that there have been no outings with my SAC rig.

In June I did two major events using the SAC rig. The first was the Laconia, NH motorcycle rally. This was a eight day event. I did carry the analog board along and it was used for the Bang Camero and Edgar Winter shows. I mixed all the bands between on the SAC rig.

Then it was on to the Harley Rendezvous in New York. That is an old school biker party held annually on a ‘country club’ grounds. It is a two day event with two shows plus several opening bands. The first night was Gator Country with several former members of Molly Hatchet doing primarily Hatchet material. They did not carry a front of house engineer so I was able to do that show with the SAC rig. The second night’s show was the Kentucky Headhunters. I offered the rig to their engineer, but he declined. He did come out to the mix location during the opening act’s show and commented that the rig sounded great.

In August I normally go to Sturgis for the Rally. I lost the contract this year so did not go. I did do a fund raiser in Tallahassee with a band from Daytona using the SAC rig. This worked out well. The organizers of fund raisers never leave space for a mix location. I set the rig up at the side of stage and used a netbook to remote control the show. Look Mom, no wires!!

In October I worked the fall rallies in Myrtle Beach and Daytona using the SAC rig. In Myrtle they were especially pleased that there was no snake to worry about. I did my mixing on the netbook there. In Daytona I ran the snake but it was only used for the FogHat show. I mixed the BlackFoot show on the SAC rig.

I have also done several smaller gigs with the rig and used it for the opening acts on a couple of other shows.

There have been several updates since I bought the software in March/April. Each of the updates adds features. The developer is very responsive to sensible feature requests. Each update makes the software more of a pleasure to use.

The BCASCA Jamboree is an annual event with which I have been evolved since its inception. BCASCA is the Brevard Caribbean American Sports & Cultural Association. The event was held Labor Day weekend for several years, but consistent bad weather and a hurricane caused them to change the date to Memorial Day weekend a few years ago.

There is a good bit of Island music both from live entertainers and a DJ. There are also the necessary announcements and some raffles and drawings. This is a two day event that runs from 9 AM to 7 PM (or so).

The weather the week of the event had been very wet. There was rain in the morning of set-up day that delayed the start of festivities. Because of the rain we got started at about noon. The weather did co-operate for the rest of the event. There were threatening skies and a few drops along the way, but nothing that slowed the event down. One of the bands was canceled on the opening day. They were from Miami and the weather was too uncertain at the time that they would have had to get on the road to drive to Palm Bay.

One of the filler acts that played to compensate showed off the quality available with the SAC system. There are always hand drummers in this crowd. There was a Sax player that was asked to play a medley to fill some of the time. He invited a couple of hand drummers to accompany him. With the SAC rig I had the best hand drum sound that I have ever heard. The Sax player had already played so I knew that I had a great Sax sound, but the hand drums were amazing. You could hear the fingers slid across the skins.

The second day of the event both scheduled bands played as well as the dance groups and track artists that were scheduled. The first band, Alize, I work with several times a year. The other band from Jacksonville has played the event the last three years. During the second band’s set there was an old gentleman in the crowd who was introduced as Byron Lee’s former bass player (of 35 years). Byron Lee is one of the primmer acts in the islands. After the show I stopped to say hello to the artist. He was effusive in his praise of the quality of the sound. This was made possible, in part, because of the quality of the SAC mixer that was driving the system.

This is always a good event. The island people are wonderful. There were vendors and rides for the kids. It is a good family event. The Palm Bay Regional Park has come a long way in the 12 years that the event has been held there.