eMotion LV1 Tutorial 1.2: Setup Window – Configuring I/O Devices

Mar 01, 2017 | 16,457 Views

In this video you’ll learn how to add and configure any hardware or software I/O device to Racks A and B in the Device Racks section of the eMotion LV1 mixer’s System Inventory page.

The previous video was an introduction to the System Inventory page, where the network is set up and devices are assigned. Now we’ll focus the on the Device Racks.

Device Racks are used to assign and set up:

Hardware and Software I/Os
Servers
Controllers

Racks A and B assign hardware and software I/O devices to the mixer. Any I/O device on this SoundGrid network can be assigned.

A rack consists of eight slots, each of which can hold one I/O device. Racks A and B are identical. A rack slot number determines the device’s place in the Patch Window. The sequence is not important, although some engineers like to put FOH I/Os in one rack and Monitor I/Os in the other.

The small arrow opens the Devices drop-down menu. Choose among three types of devices:

Network Devices are the I/Os on the SoundGrid network.
Local Devices are the available drivers on the host computer.
Offline Devices are used to create mixer sessions when hardware I/Os and a server are not available.

Select an I/O device. Available devices are Black. There are several status indicators and buttons on the icon itself and just below it. The color of the text tells you the device’s network status:

Maste
Slave
N/A; or Not Available

The master device can sync to a digital source, to word clock, or to its own Internal clock. A slave in this SoundGrid network will almost certainly derive clock from the master via Sync over Ethernet, which is usually called “SOE.”

The Sample Rate of the device is displayed here.

M identifies the device as the clock master of the SOE network.

The Device’s Activity Status is indicated on the left side of the slot.

On shows that the Device is active.
N/A means that the Device is unavailable.
Offline indicates that a virtual device is assigned to this rack slot.

Click the Gear button to access the device’s control panel—to adjust preamps, configure channels, and control clock.

The ID button activates lights on the front panel of the SoundGrid hardware device that’s represented by this icon.

FW displays the status of the device’s firmware:

Grey – The Firmware is compatible with the installed mixer software.
Blue – The Firmware is compatible, but a newer version exists. Update as soon as possible!
Red – The Firmware is not compatible or is out of date. Try power cycling the hardware device. If the device is unassigned, then its name will appear Red in the device assignment menu:
1. Select the device and the firmware updater will open.
2. Click “Update”.
3. When update is finished, power cycle the hardware device.

Once an I/O device has been assigned to a rack slot, additional menu items are available:

Set Master designates the device as the SOE network clock master. Other devices become clock slaves. You can Assign any I/O device that has a MIDI port to the SoundGrid MIDI driver. The I/O then can serve as a port for other MIDI devices.
Remove releases the device from the local host.

The Offline Devices menu is a list of I/Os that are currently not physically present but can be configured and patched offline. When the I/Os and server are added, the session is fully functional. Working offline is described in the next video.

Certain menu items apply only to drivers:
When a second driver is assigned to the mixer, you can assign one as the main driver, and the other as a backup. The input signal is then split and sent to the local driver as well as to the designated backup driver.

Driver Channels
This sets the number of channels assigned to the SoundGrid audio driver. To keep buffering to a minimum, don’t assign more driver channels than you need for the current session.

The Driver Network Buffer helps the OS send synchronized information through the network port—between the ASIO/Core Audio drivers and the I/Os.

When lots of channels are going in and out of the driver—to several destinations—you may need to increase the value of the Driver Network Buffer. This reduces the chance of audio drops or artifacts, or of overloading the network port driver.

In this video we examined the I/O Device Racks, and we learned how to assign I/Os, set clock master, and troubleshoot devices.

In the next video we’ll cover the other racks and talk about working offline.

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