gordwait

Of course if there is a bug in Trim Tracking, it could do all sorts of random things to your channel level, including an increase in level..

Agreed, trim tracking is not expected to turn the input back up at any point, according to the manual. I suspect a bug in my case with our drummers vocal mic..

Ah yes, Trim Tracking is what I should have said. I'd change the title of the post but I don't see an edit button.. I saw one specific input clipping badly (drummer's vocal mic) that led me to think something's wrong. That channel was working fine for the first part of our sound check, then the drummer complained his vocals sounded distorted. I had a look, the input was clipping heavily into the red, and trim tracking was engaged, so it should have fixed the problem automatically.. An update though, some of the random level changes during a song turned out to be some issue with the guitar player's amp. Not the m20d's fault.

We use powered Yorkville NX55s and subs for mains with the M20d. No problems. The parametric EQ on the output channels - and - the live real time analyzer make it very easy to tune the room. I rented an L2T for a bit as a vocal monitor, sounded very nice, much nicer than the Yorkvilles..

No worries, I do that too.. I also made sure there's no compressors on, I hate trying to sing through a compressor on my monitor, tends to cause people to blow out their voice if you try to sing a bit louder to be heard. I also think it would be extremely difficult to keep a compressor threshold level set properly in a live situation, nevermind a multiband! The level changes were fairly sudden, the drummer for example exclaims - "hey, I have no guitars in my monitor mix!!" Since multiple things were acting up I don't think it could be cables. The smoking gun to me is that the drummer's vocal mic trim "got cranked up" (or is that down?) so his voice was suddenly clipping deeply into the red. Autotrim was on and should have fixed this, but it did nothing, I am going to assume that autotrim is the source of some of these problems and disable it on all channels, and see if things get better. I also had effects coming and going in my ear monitors. Our soundman does like to fiddle too much, so initially we were giving him the gears, but these level changes sound like the same problems others have mentioned on the forum here..

As I said in the original, monitors are not linked. First thing I did was get rid of every link setting. I don't like monitors set to post fader for exactly the reason that I don't want my monitor mix to change with the tweaks applied to the front of the house mix..

Also had the monitor effects levels randomly changing last night. No link enabled, first thing I did was unlink everything (me no like that idea). Mid song I lost all my delay on my voice, and with in ear monitors it sounds _very_ dry! Then it came back.

Had the monitor effects levels randomly changing last night. No link enabled, first thing I did was unlink everything (me no like that idea). Mid song I lost all my delay on my voice, and with in ear monitors it sounds _very_dry! Then it came back. Along with other glitches last night (see my new post), we had a bunch of grief with the M20d. I think the M20d has glitches when updating levels, perhaps these things only happen when someone is making mains tweaks? Or only when poking about on the iPad? The main volume dial bug is also a pain (have to turn it really slow else the mains levels "go backwards"). Seems like the optical encoder routine is missing counts from that dial. Classic bug..

Lots of annoying glitches last night at a gig. We've switched to all in ear monitors, so we're probably more sensitive to odd level shifts. What we found is that instrument levels on a few channels seem to dramatically change up and down, for example, the drummer's monitor feed suddenly had no guitar levels at all. At first I was thinking our soundman was mucking with trim levels with the remote iPad, but he insists he wouldn't do that, knowing how disruptive it would be especially with in ear monitors. IE with floor monitors and no earbuds blocking stage sound a change of say 6 db of guitar level in a single monitor feed would only take out a fraction of the overall guitar stage level, and would not be very dramatic, since the guitar amps themselves provide a lot of the stage level. But with in ears, you would hear it. At previous gigs we didn't have a sound man tweaking the mains levels out front with an iPad, so perhaps these level changes are going off when some other setting is being adjusted. It's as if the "database" of level settings is glitching when say a main fader level is being tweaked. The other thing that happened was at some point the input trim for one of the vocalists got cranked way up high. I could hear his voice clipping in my monitor. I have the M20d beside me so I took a look at the tweak page while playing and saw his input level clipping badly. I also noticed autotrim was engaged, but it wasn't doing a thing. So, perhaps autotrim is the culprit? Since it wasn't working properly in an obviously overloaded channel, perhaps it is glitchy and causing these random level changes? I think we'll set our trim levels and disable autotrim to see if things improve. The final issue is we really need 5 monitor sends now that we're going all in ear monitors. I'm going to resurrect my older presonus 16 channel rack system we used to use for our full mixer as a monitor mixer for myself, and free up one of the M20d channels for someone else to use. We've tried sharing channels with two performers on the same mix, but it's always an unhappy compromise. It would be interesting if: Line6 added one or two more monitor feeds over the L6 Link cable, and provided an L6 Link compatible DAC output for our wireless units... I thought there was an earlier post with similar issues, but I can't find it here..

For our band we mic our guitar amps in and plug them into one of the mic channels. I haven't yet tried any of the amp channel presets in the m20d.. If you have some good tube modelling gear you could possibly skip the mic and go direct from the gear output..

In this specific instance (the original question) - a decent "audio grade" cable only has to have usable frequency response up to say 20 khz, (ok double it for those people who have bionic dog ears installed). A quick look at the AES spec tells us that the signalling is up to 6 Mhz. This is probably the most important detail.. More details: To transmit that high a frequency you need to both match the required impedance (110 ohms vs I think 600 for analog XLR) and you have to control the impedance, ie it can't vary too much from 110 ohms. This helps keep the signal strength along the cable and allows the common mode rejection to work effectively. Finally, it should likely be twisted pair to avoid magnetic coupling with the surroundings else all your signal turns into radio waves. You can get away with a short run of analog mic cable, but you're risking a digital drop out.. Your thoughts about jamming are true, but the difference is you will have a hard time jamming a digital signal in a properly designed digital cable. It would probably be easy to jam a digital signal in an analog audio cable.. Note this doesn't mean the digital cable has to be expensive! (Say no to Monster anything!!) Consider a cheap cat5e ethernet cable is good for up to 100 Mhz digital. (but not very mechanically sound)..

I've set all our monitor sends to unlink (old dog, new tricks) so my monitor sends are prefade, But where does the monitor send tap in to the input channel processing? IE does all the channel processing also apply to the monitor send? Noise gates, compressors, etc? I personally hate having a compressor on my monitor path, no faster way to burn out your voice by having the system turn down your voice when you sing a bit louder.. As well, I have serious doubts about getting a correct compressor trigger threshold in a live performance, but that's a separate debate.. Thoughts?

More on this: http://line6.com/support/topic/3429-mixing-a-recording-in-daw-after-12-update/

I do hope the disappearing posts is a technical glitch in the forum. Terribly bad timing though, has all the "look and feel" of a "Streisand Effect Event"..

The M20d is not without the odd glitch and challenge as people report, so don't mistake me for a foaming at the mouth fanboy, but: I have to say, the M20d preamp sound quality is excellent, I _like_ the M20d mic preamps as is thanks. Our band switched from a 16 channel rack mount Presonus firewire setup to the M20d, and one thing we didn't expect was how much better the M20d sounds. I also use a small Allen and Heath mixer for small venue restaurant gigs, which is also a great sounding mixer, and Allen and Heath are known for good quality preamps. M20d holds its own as far as the audio path goes.

I'm guessing your L3s has either a cold solder joint, or perhaps a corroded connector in the power supply somewhere. (I design and test prototype electronics for a living as part of my tasks as an FPGA designer). If you move it, bump it, or cause it to change temperature (cold to hot etc) this can reopen, or alternatively "make good" a bad connection at random. I'm guessing you're not done having trouble with this. The fact that you had an issue with both of your L3s's indicates to me that Line6 have a production issue, perhaps a bad batch of connectors, or cables etc. Most modern power supplies have voltage, current and temperature sensors that are used to keep the power supply at the right voltage, and to keep it from overloading, shutting things down when trouble is "seen". Thus your power cycling loop issue. I would guess some of these sensor circuits are going across a connector from one board to another, and they may go "open loop" causing the power supply to loose it's mind and burn out. If a repair person just swapped out a burned out supply board, but didn't change any cables or connectors attached to it as well, your L3s probably still has the original bug that toasted the supply in the first place.. All of this of course is sheer conjecture on my part, just based on experience and your description. It could easily be something else..

On the recording issue, pretty sure that the M20D manuals say only 32 gig or less, you might be having issues with that. I've recorded all 16 channels, a whole night of our band without it stopping on me. It's usually a pain to get the M20d to be happy with the sd card directory, but that gets sorted out by navigating back to the root of the filesystem on the sd card.. I too have issues with stage levels and feedback. I'm both the soundman and one of the lead vocalist/guitar players. Our band does classic rock and pop, and all five of us sing, so that's a lot of open mics on stage. One of the things I've worked on with the band is that they need to know they can't have a nice clean balanced "studio" mix on open monitors. Although, I do my best, after all, if your own stage mix doesn't sound good, it's not a lot of fun playing. But, as a soundman, I only want to send the absolute minimum to each monitor to avoid feedback, and keep the stage level down. For example, each musician gets their vocal level set to something useful, so they can hear themselves sing above the background, with a reasonable amount of headroom. Then I add just barely enough to their mix of the other four vocalists so they can just hear them to harmonize against, usually 3 to 6 db less than their own vocal level. This means if someone else is singing lead, they don't hear that lead vocal out on top like you would on a recording mixdown. As well, when I sing, if someone elses vocal is at the same level as mine, it can make it hard for me to discern which one is mine during a harmony. Then I add only a bit of the "missing" instruments to their mix. If they're beside the keyboard guy, they don't need keyboards in their own monitor. No bass guitar in monitors as a general rule although sometimes the drummer needs it due to the room. Usually our bass player is too loud on stage, so there's no problem for the drummer to hear it. At the other end, I'd want to send a full balanced mix to each musician, for musical enjoyment, but a full "studio" mix at each musician means there's way too much feedback. A compromise is always needed. Some of the guys are still doubtful, they don't understand that 5 vocal mics on 5 monitors all at full level is say 25 times worse than one vocal mic on one monitor, not just 5 times worse than one. Now, yes, I made that factor up, not sure what the real multiplier would be, but I know it's worse than 5x. The other thing I've learned over the years is that musicians need to avoid having a great big huge sound on stage, with lots of every frequency band. The 6 string guitars should not be fighting over the bass frequencies with the bass player. It's fun as a guitar player to have that big "stadium filling" crunch that shakes the room, but just like in recording, they're hogging too much of the soundstage, leading to clutter and excessive levels.. Mixing is a challenge, but it is a fun one if you can stay one step ahead of the problems!

I hadn't noticed yet. I'll keep an eye out for this. Sounds like a bug which we should let line6 know about so they know to look for it. You shouldn't have to explicitly save the current setup according to the manual, but I do anyway because of years of using computers in general ;)

Aside from wanting just one more monitor out (5 pc band, 4 monitor sends, someone gets left out) I've totally enjoyed the m20d experience. Two gigs with it so far, and friends who have heard us before say we sound much better. I agree the parametric eqs everywhere with live real time analyzers is genius. Having said that though, we would have looked seriously at these new QSC's if they were out when we went shopping. Competition is good for us end users..

1) Don't know.. 2) Yes, you bet! 3) I think so.. More details: 2) We have all Yorkville analog powered speakers, and feedback suppression works great! (Just wish I could also enable it on my acoustic guitar input) 3) I once rented the L2t to try as a floor monitor, it integrated in with the rest no problem, and it sounded great, but I didn't have the budget to get one ;( The L6 link speakers can be assigned to any of the 6 output channels, and the other analog outs are still going. What I don't know is if you assign an L6 linked speaker to say Mains left or right is if the analog out keeps working at the same time..

Just got the same Apple based setup working too, no problems at all.. Interesting you mention the missing spectrum analyzer view on the iPad edition, that would be nice. It's a lot of live data to shovel over the network without getting laggy, but it should be possible..

I think you need to add a "laptop" icon to the stage, the one that shows input 17/18 to use the 1/8 inch audio cable from the Airport Express. (and set levels etc..) Then set the iPad to stream to the Airport Express...

You can also use the USB from the Mac to the m20D if you want to go digital. Not sure if you would have to first remove the analog Laptop icon and put it back once USB is connected. (I'll have to try that).. As for a recording interface, that is a bit of a problem alright. My mistake for assuming the m20D would also double as a multitrack interface and replace my presonus gear. Still very happy with the m20D, it sounds great for live, absolutely love that there are parametric EQ's everywhere with a live RTA audio display underneath - so easy to fix an eq problem. As well recording all channels to an SD card is very slick! By the way, Mac OSX writes a bunch of files for Spotlight search etc to the SD card when you plug it in, which seems to annoy the m20D. See my comments near the end of this thread: http://line6.com/support/topic/4310-m20d-recording-issue/?hl=%2Bhidden+%2Bfiles&do=findComment&comment=29439 Once I clean out those hidden files the m20D likes the SD card again.

I fought with this for a while, (I have presonus gear still sitting there too, but that's another story). The trick is to add another stage icon - the laptop one. I had to mess with it a bit at first by making a new clean setup. It confused me because it seems like the laptop icon "wants to be the analog 17/18 in" even though I was wanting USB instead. I did get it to work though. Make sure you have the latest M20d firmware installed etc. The bad news is the m20d is no good for "multitrack recording sessions" in that if you play back one track via USB from say Logic Pro, and try to record at the same time, the audio latency is like a quarter second so your newly recorded track is way off from the bed tracks. It works great to just raw record 16 tracks to an SD card.. I was going to sell off my presonus gear, but I'll have to keep it around for recording sessions.. Here's my thread on this: http://line6.com/support/topic/3026-trouble-with-streaming-audio-tofrom-usb-macbook-pro-since-v12-upgrade/

I hope Yamaha does as announced and let's Line 6 carry on without interference.. Yamaha software has to be some of the more difficult to use stuff around. I had the AW16G recorder for a number of years, a very capable 16 track to disk workstation with almost incomprehensible software running on it. My guess is you'll start seeing Yamaha speakers support the Line 6 digital speaker stuff from the M20D..