How are your racks setup?

[bgavin]

One man can pick this up now to put it in the trailer.

One young man. The rest of us need help with something that big..

That is one very handsome rack, though.

I've been giving thought to a rack similar to that, but configured with a set of large diameter wheels.
Think of gas lawn mowers that have the big rear wheels. Kinda like a fuely dragster.
The intent of the large wheels is easy mobility (and less shock) over rough or irregular terrain.
A plank would allow easy wheeling into the trailer.

Right now, I have all my power amps in separate ATA cases, so I can lift one without hurting my back.
This is still a LOT of carrying... a wheel-in to the trailer makes more sense for me.

[Bruce Weldy]

One man can pick this up now to put it in the trailer.

One young man. The rest of us need help with something that big..

Believe it or not, he's 45. When we took out the two QSCs and the Behringer amp, we shaved 100 pounds over the two Crowns. We laugh every time we pick it up. The heaviest thing now is the case itself.

[bgavin]

I have to do better... turning 60 this year (officially 3/4 dead), and sprained my back out last month picking up a light weight Dell computer. Crawled the first two days, next two on crutches, then 3 more weeks of Walk Like a Geezer. Ugly.

My console is the VLZ Pro 24.4, and much too large for a rack top as shown above.
I carry two 3x5 tables, 90-degrees apart, to hold console, computers, and FOH positioned signal processing.

Link to Photo

[Bruce Weldy]

Yeah, I built my rack specific to my band and not for renting out. However, with a snake and a larger board, it just becomes an amp rack.

I turn 53 next week and my back has been out off and on for over a month.....no crutches though. Just have to get help standing up sometimes.

[AntonZ]

I have to do better... turning 60 this year (officially 3/4 dead), and sprained my back out last month picking up a light weight Dell computer. Crawled the first two days, next two on crutches, then 3 more weeks of Walk Like a Geezer. Ugly.

My console is the VLZ Pro 24.4, and much too large for a rack top as shown above.
I carry two 3x5 tables, 90-degrees apart, to hold console, computers, and FOH positioned signal processing.

Link to Photo

Have you thought about SAC, Bruce? The hardware part should be easy for you. Selling off some old gear might pay for most of it.

[Israel]

sprained my back, Crawled, crutches, Walk Like a Geezer. Ugly.

Geezerrwalk....mmm the next moonwalk????
Im 35, rods on my spine thanks to vertebral scoliosis, I have a handtruck which I fixed to place an extra pair of wheels in height with my van's floor. very handy on solo gigs. time doesn,t goes by. time goes over... with a bulldozer

[bgavin]

Have you thought about SAC, Bruce? The hardware part should be easy for you.

Yes, as I have no end of computer hardware as part of my business.

Problem: the rest of SAC is a chunk of change that I don't have. And all my gear is paid for.

Being in the computer business, I'm not interested in being exposed to rebooting some hung up Windows piece of shit during a performance. It's bad enough I'm introducing the digital DCX2496 into my otherwise analog environment...

My builds are rock solid, and all unnecessary junk is tweaked out.
However... I don't know if SAC is native code, built on somebody's toolbox, or built on the .Net slug bait.
Compound this with wireless, and wireless drivers, and I get nervous.

[BrentEvans]

However... I don't know if SAC is native code, built on somebody's toolbox, or built on the .Net slug bait.
Compound this with wireless, and wireless drivers, and I get nervous.

SAC is coded in Assembly. The rig I installed in my church runs 24/7 with no problems. I reboot before every service for good measure and just to clear the Windoze gunk and keep it running fast, but I have let it go for over 2 weeks solid with no reboot, and no problems. It ran 5 services and did not drop a buffer of audio. In normal operation, it's also never crashed requiring a reboot. I've made it crash, but then again that's doing thing's I'd never do live, like rendering a 24 track recording, playing Winamp, passing audio in SAC, and burning a CD all at the same time. What crashed it was 3 simultaneous programs trying to access the same audio output device. That item is easy to put on the "don't do" list right up there with throwing the main fader all the way up and boosting 8k on the eq by 20db.

My system is a basic E5200 based system on a G31 based motherboard with as little onboard hardware as I could find. I disabled onboard sound, and left only video and network operating (obviously necessary). It's been perfectly stable for over a year now.

BTW. wireless is not necessary, but very handy in some situations. Many users run a cat5 to FOH for just that reason. Still beats the heck out of a multicore snake. I never have done this personally, N wireless is stable and fast on my machines.

For that matter, you can place the mixer computer at FOH, and do away with networking altogether. Still have to contend with the snake, though. At this point, you're really just replacing the mixer and processing... and a heck of a lot of weight in gear and cables along with it.

[bgavin]

Interesting. I'm an assembler programmer for decades now.
Asm is a FORMIDABLE task under Windows, even restricting external calls to std controls.
Add to this the lack of LINT or other tools to find non-obvious stack bugs, and things can get dicey.
Frankly, I'd be happier if the SAC code was done in Borland C++ with all errors and warnings enabled.

Where is the big expense in SAC?

[BrentEvans]

Interesting. I'm an assembler programmer for decades now.
Asm is a FORMIDABLE task under Windows, even restricting external calls to std controls.
Add to this the lack of LINT or other tools to find non-obvious stack bugs, and things can get dicey.
Frankly, I'd be happier if the SAC code was done in Borland C++ with all errors and warnings enabled.

I think the reason its done as it is is to achieve the incredibly low latencies it does, and prevent other processes from stepping on the audio passing through. There's a reason there's few programs on the market that can reliably pass audio at 1.5ms latency, much less do so on so many ins and outs with processing.

Where is the big expense in SAC?

Depends on how you put it together. I have a 24 channel rig that I put together with a $200 PC (used some existing parts), a $150 used audio card off ebay, 3 ADA8000 preamps (send you the price in PM) and the $500 software package, plus cables and so forth. Less than $1500 in the entire system, for 24 in/out. The preamps are probably the biggest expense in any build, especially if you go with the premium versions, but the ADA's are cheap enough and work fine.

You can also spend a lot more in options, like a rackmount case, or a better PC (like an E8500 or i5 based system), newer/better/more channels on the audio card, etc. I've been PMing with doug about a 40 channel MOTU based system with the touch screen, and I think I calculated like $5400 for that with new hardware all around, and including a slim PC for FOH remote, which is still less than a comparable digital board and processing setup.

[bgavin]

Skip the i5 systems. The Clarkdale process has awful memory performance.
You have to go at least to Lynnfield to get past this.
If you can afford it, the i7-9xx Bloomfield series with QPI bus offers by far the best memory performance.

[BrentEvans]

Skip the i5 systems. The Clarkdale process has awful memory performance.
You have to go at least to Lynnfield to get past this.
If you can afford it, the i7-9xx Bloomfield series with QPI bus offers by far the best memory performance.

Conventional wisdom on processor speed doesn't necessarily apply to SAC systems, due to the nature of the software itself. SAC works best on 1 or 2 core systems. It has been tested and seems to work very well on the i5 platform. This is an application where single core speed helps far more than multiple cores. It has something to do with the ability of individual cores to hog memory access, stepping on the audio data stream and thereby causing slipped buffers. In fact, the program has an internal option to force the audio process to a single CPU.

I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of it, but users' results say software is very stable on platforms like E5400, E8500, i3, and i5, but not on the quad core Intels, triple or quad core AMDs. I don't know that anyone's tested an i7 yet, but the i5s and E8500 can run full bore systems with plenty of room to spare. Since this should be a purpose built PC that's isolated from all other use, i7 seems to be a waste of money on a processor that may or may not work well, due to the multiple cores. I'm sure someone will test one sooner or later, but no one's had a reason to yet.

Just for reference, my 24 channel system on an E5200 which runs FOH + 4 seperate monitor mixes, and a reasonable number of processing plugins shows 24-25% CPU use on the internal meter. The systems are usually quite stable up to about 95%. I"ve had mine up to over 50% by adding processor hungry plugins with no issues. The system in Harrah's in Vegas runs an E8400 with 64 channels and 10 or so monitor mixes at what I think was 50% CPU use. These machines don't need to be bleeding edge... just respectably fast and configured.

[bgavin]

If SAC has problems with core queuing, then opt for an i5 two-core with turbo boost.
Turbo is the hot ticket for blazing performance in single threaded use.
This is why the i5-6xx series is so fast on single thread apps.

The i5-680 will get up to 3.86 Ghz at stock clocking when single threaded.
Combine this with the 1333 FSB (2.5 GT/s now, cuz there isn't any front side bus anymore) and it goes like crazy.
This one is still a 73w TDP, so able to run outdoors without a monster cooler.

As of this writing, I'm having some heart burn with the current DDR3 implementations.
This means I have no interest in iCore until the board makers (Gigabyte, etc) get their DDR3 problems cured.
I haven't found anybody selling DDR2 boards for iCore.

E8400 is a marvelous processor. I own several, and place them almost exclusively with my clients.
Combined with G.Skill DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 at 1.8v memory, they are a killer combination.

One big issue for me and computerized racks is the temperature aspect.
Except for this year, Sacramento gets simply blistering summer temps. 118 is not at all uncommon.
E8400 is a 63w TDP, and blissfully cool, even with the crappy stock cooler.

[BrentEvans]

One big issue for me and computerized racks is the temperature aspect.
Except for this year, Sacramento gets simply blistering summer temps. 118 is not at all uncommon.
E8400 is a 63w TDP, and blissfully cool, even with the crappy stock cooler.

That's a legitimate concern. I've heard of such extreme measures as rigging up a small A/C window unit to blow across equipment, or just leaving the racks in an air conditioned trailer. Guy I know put a camper A/C unit on his gear trailer for this. Before said trailer was stolen, it worked quite well.

[bgavin]

The rack is a good place to start for cooling.
The DIY crowd here would have no problem building a rack where an A/C feed could pressurize the rack with cool air.
This would also work for computers, not work for consoles such as my VLZ 24.4.

From my own experience and watching others, the secret to a good show is simplicity in the operation.
One can have way too much 'stuff' in the rack, and get bamboozled when a problem arises during battle.
This is where the self-contained big racks earn their kudos.. all the wiring is permanent.

As much as I want to avoid these big racks (weight) they are the most practical for setup and operation.
I'm thinking my large diameter wheel idea has a lot of merit with the big racks.