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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with the Field Sales Engineering Manager at Yamaha Global, Preston Gray. We discuss the benefits of finding a mentor, redundant Dante networks, and how scuba diving is like pro audio.

I ask:

• What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to Yamaha consoles?
• When it comes to Dante networks, I have some small problems every time I use them. Could you talk a little bit about proper system connection and boot up procedures?
• Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
• FB
  • Dave Gammon: How does he see rapid prototyping and the ability of printing parts effectively change the possible configurations in pro audio for the better.
• What’s in your work bag?

Talking about redundancy we want to look for single-point failures. If we have a network switch and it’s handling both primary and secondary networks, chances are it has one power supply. If that power supply goes down we lose both primary and secondary.

Preston Gray

Notes

1. All music in this episode by Mile Twenty Four.
2. Switched-mode: primary and secondary port are doing the same thing. Redundant: primary and secondary are separate. If you start with only the primary network connection then you can open Dante controller and confirm that everything is in redundant mode and check all network settings.
3. Workbag: Bose noise-canceling headphones, Leicia D810, iSEMcon EMX7150, Lectrosonic plugin wireless, Trupulse range finder
4. Books: Scuba Confidential
5. Podcast: Breach, 20,000 Hz
6. Quotes
   1. Being able to find a mentor and build a relationship that has been able to be in the industry much longer than you and is willing to share them with you is probably the most influential decision I have made.
   2. We need to constantly be updating the gain structure.
   3. I want to make sure I’m hitting the preamp hard enough to make sure I’m getting the characteristics out of the preamp, but I don’t want to overdrive it. I want to ride the line.
   4. We have to be careful in how all of those busses and inputs are summing with respect to latency. We can quickly create comb filtering inadvertently if we don’t pay attention to the audio paths and the time it takes to go to Waves servers and whatnot.
   5. With Rivage, we have a really powerful latency compensation engine.
   6. Let’s get the primary network first and then the secondary, but let’s explore why that is.
   7. Rule #1 when working with redundant systems: Don’t cross the streams.
   8. If we set static IP addresses we want to make sure they are all in the same sub-domain.
   9. If you’re on a rig consistency. If it’s a network your setting up for an installation that’s going to be left alone. I like to set a static IP address.
   10. I might have a 192.168.1 address for all house left amplifiers. And 192.168.2 address for house right amplifiers and maybe a .3 address for DSP.
   11. If we have devices that are looking for the DHCP server and it’s the last thing to get powered on, it may have already defaulted to a link-local address while it was waiting for the DHCP server to come along. Whatever device you are using for the DHCP server, that really needs to come on first.
   12. Connect everything from the start, primary and secondary, just don’t power up the secondary network.
   13. Talking about redundancy we want to look for single-point failures. If we have a network switch and it’s handling both primary and secondary networks, chances are it has one power supply. If that power supply goes down we lose both primary and secondary.
   14. If we are going to deploy a redundant network, primary stays on one set of switches and secondary stays on another set of switches.
   15. Hunting or golfing range finders can be used that are fairly inexpensive.
   16. [Scuba diving] is very technical but at the end of the day, you also get to experience art and connect with emotion.