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Easy Live Recording With Dante, MADI And More

A variety of ways to streamline the process of multi-tracking live sound for virtual sound check and more...

It’s been said that if it weren’t for the musicians and the audience, concert sound would be a lot more fun. Even if you don’t believe that, virtual sound check allows live sound engineers to hear a previous show before any of those people get there.

While many of today’s analog and digital consoles offer two-track recording to a computer or a USB flash drive, most live engineers understand the dangers of letting others hear a simple stereo board mix that often doesn’t accurately represent how the venue sounded.

On the other hand, archiving shows using multi-track recordings made from individual console preamps is a valuable asset that can provide many benefits from their various uses.

Multi-track recordings of live shows can be mixed down for after-show physical or internet distribution, as well as for future releases of live albums. Playing these tracks back through the same front of house console helps engineers tweak their show file and its scenes, as well as providing a virtual sound check for hearing today’s sound system and room with yesterday’s show.

This allows tuning the PA for the room prior to the band’s arrival or rehearsing without some, if not all, of the band members. It’s also a valuable technique for teaching console operation to less experienced engineers without the pressure of a live event, at a house of worship, in a theater or even on tour.

Modern digital consoles and recording have streamlined the process of multi-tracking live sound, bringing the concept of virtual sound check to life. Talk about the ghost in the machine! One day live consoles will automatically archive and play back signals that passed through every channel going back months, but for now it requires one of several hardware and/or software solutions. Let’s take a look at easy live recording with Dante, MADI and more.

Putting It Together
Virtual sound check is a performance composed of individual inputs from digital desk and a digital path that directs individual preamps to a multi-channel digital recorder and back to the console. Today two common multi-channel digital audio formats, one old and one new, can be found on or added to a wide variety of digital consoles: MADI and Dante.

Thanks to digital multiplexing (interleaving multiple channels of data together), the cabling requirements for digital audio distribution are vastly reduced compared to bulky multi-core analog snakes of old. Both MADI and Dante provide up to 64 channels of 48 kHz digital audio that can transmit over distances of up to 100 meters (about 300 feet). MADI commonly uses either a fiber optic or a coaxial BNC connection, while Dante uses Cat-5e/6 Ethernet cable.

Multi-Channel Digital Audio
MADI (AES10) was developed a quarter-century ago by Neve, SSL, Sony and Mitsubishi to link large mixing consoles to digital multi-track recorders. In 2003, MADI was updated to provide 64 channels at up to 48 kHz, and today 32 channels at 96 kHz is supported. SSL, Studer and Soundcraft provide optical MADI I/O ports on their consoles, while Avid, Allen & Heath and Yamaha provide optional MADI I/O expansion cards.

The Audinate Dante network protocol delivers up to 64 channels of digital audio over a standard Ethernet network. It provides advantages over previous Ethernet audio protocols, such as passing through network routers, lower latency and automatic configuration and has been widely adopted by more than 100 pro audio manufacturers.

Dante is standard on Yamaha CL and QL consoles, where it’s used to connect stage boxes and mixers to each other. The new Yamaha PM10 RIVAGE console supports multi-track recording with an optional HY144-D card that records up to 128 channels at 96 kHz to a computer with a Dante Accelerator PCIe card.

Optional Dante cards are available for the Avid S6L (16-channel), Behringer X32, Mackie DL32R, Midas M32, Roland Pro AV M-5000, plus many Allen & Heath, Soundcraft and Studer consoles. Midas provides a Klark Teknik DN9650 network bridge to convert 24-channel AES50 protocol to either MADI or Dante for their big desks.

Dedicated Multi-Track Recorders
While many engineers run a DAW application on their personal laptops, using a laptop in public at a live show can be risky. Anyone who has incorporated “sweetening” playback tracks in live shows understands that “stuff happens” and that a “show” computer might get broken or stolen.

With that in mind, a dedicated solution that travels with the console can save setup and teardown time, while providing the additional security of being mounted in a rack or console case. Here are a few dedicated hardware-based multi-track recorders that employ easy digital connections.

The Solid State Logic Live-Recorder uses two optical MADI ports to record and play back 128 channels at 48 kHz or 64 channels at 96 kHz using a dedicated 1RU E Machines PC with a RAID array of up to four hot swappable solid state drives (SSDs). The Sound Devices 970 Dante and MADI audio recorder is a 2RU half-rack multi-track recorder that has Ethernet-based Dante connections as well as both optical and coaxial MADI connections to record 64 channels at 48 kHz or 32 channels at 96 kHz.

Some of the dedicated recording devices available, including (top to bottom) the Roland Pro AV R-1000, SSL Live-Recorder, Klark Teknik DN9696, and JoeCo BlackBox BBR64 Dante.

The Roland R-1000 stand-alone, dedicated 48-track recorder uses the company’s proprietary REAC signals from their V-Mixers or, by adding a S-MADI REAC/MADI bridge, any console with a MADI connection. The JoeCo BlackBox Recorder is a popular 1RU dedicated multi-track recording solution that comes in several I/O versions. Besides the 24-channel analog, AES and Lightpipe versions, the BBR64-MADI and BBR64-DANTE versions both record 64 channels and multiple units can be linked together for higher track counts. They can all be controlled using JoeCo Remote iPad software.

The Klark Teknik DN9696 multi-track recorder uses up to four 24-channel AES50 data streams from a Midas digital console to record up to 96 channels at 96 kHz for up to five hours, while the DN9650 network bridge converts up to three 24-channel AES50 data streams to other digital audio protocols, including Dante or optical and coaxial MADI.

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