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

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 had set up a starter mix session with the inputs that I expected to need and the necessary in/out assignments. I had done some general presets as far as monitor levels that I expected to  be requested. Set-up and the whole outing went a lot more smoothly than the first gig. I had set a second set of outputs for my record output and done the channel assignments so that I was ready to record. I also had taken a small Yahama mixer to handle the input/output interface with the CD recorder. Everything worked pretty much as planned and the event went without a hitch.

I will be putting up a gallery that will include a couple of pictures of the setup at the convention as well as some other gigs.

This show was really too early to have taken the SAC rig out. I had just put the system together. I had had an issue with slipped buffers. I got the machine stable on the day of the show, but there was not even a real burn in period. In addition to that I had no experience in using the system, but you have to start somewhere.

I got to the venue without so much as a starter mix session. I did not even have channel assignments for input or output assigned. I had to do all that at the venue. This took more time than it needed to because I did not know my way around the system all that well.

We got the band up an running and everything went relatively smooth. There were many comments about the quality of the sound. The system worked like a champ.

The second night there was someone there to record the show. This meant figuring out routing for more outputs so that he would have a source. I didn’t do that the best way, but I did get the job done. I should have used one of the monitor consoles and dedicated that to him. It would have been easier for both of us.

It was a good experience. I had a convention coming up the next week. I really needed the ‘hot’ time with the system