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Wireless PA controlled remotely by tablet


Happy Jack

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23 minutes ago, Jack said:

It can and to be honest it's cheap enough but there are simpler devices that can do the same job. What's the ethernet only device? If it's a PC then there are USB adaptors or PCI card adaptors. If it's a dumber device like say a media player then you might need something like the hap to fake a 'proper' ethernet connection.

Unfortunately it's not a PC so it has to be an ethernet connection. Looks like the hAP is the answer. Thanks for your help.

S.P.

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42 minutes ago, Jack said:

 

Yeah. We went from an 8-channel Yamaha board that only ran vocals into two tops (5 xlr cables), to the XR18 that has everything through it with tops and subs (16 xlr). Going digital and wireless gave us...more wires.

Which is why the rack is still king!

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I play with a trio and do the sound from onstage. I recently convinced the guys to invest in an XR18 and it has been a god send. The ability to properly shelve and notch EQs, the Master Graphic eq with RTA (so I can see the frequencies that are feeding back rather than rely on my non-existant sound engineering degree), the amp modelling (for harmonica solos) have all been a game changer.

I bought an TP Link Archer router off ebay and followed the instructions on how to set it up for the mixer. Now its quick and clean; just considering some snakes to tidy things up even more (but for a trio it might be overkill).

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12 minutes ago, skidder652003 said:

We had the XR18, amazing bit of kit but way too complicated for us, as the drummer set the levels and then we just wanted to get on with it. We're just a 3 piece with no soundman so we went back to analogue desk (RCF). The XR18 is a learning curve, no mistake.

Which is why I commented that the Mackie system is by far the most intuitive and easiest to learn straight away!

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I have the X18, used to have (actually still do) the XR16, but I wanted to do multichannel recording. Its the same as the XR18 but in a desktop format which was more handy for us at the time. I run it from a tiny little £15 n router from PC world that does better bands (lost control of it at a gig once with the built in). Never caused me any trouble and once you have worked out how it works (which isn't that hard), you don't have to touch much again.

Beyond all the complication, when you are running you just have a bunch of sliders like a regular mixer that you turn up and down, and main output (and effects if you want).

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5 hours ago, Stylon Pilson said:

Unfortunately it's not a PC so it has to be an ethernet connection. Looks like the hAP is the answer. Thanks for your help.

S.P.

RouterOS, the operating system that all of the mikrotik stuff runs, is utterly customisable and frankly unfathomable unless you have a PhD in computer networking. I most certainly don't!

 

However one of the first menu options is called something like 'quick set profiles' and has a few of the most common use cases set up and ready to run. What you want is 'wireless bridge'. Then you'll need to type in your wifi password and plug a cat5 cable into the middle or bottom port of the router.

Edited by Jack
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We've had our XR18 for 18 months or so - done a fair few gigs and it's great.  I play with no backline and IEMs and use the in-built 'sansamp' effect for my bass plus the usual parametric EQ, comp etc.   All racked up with my wireless guitar Rx and IEM Tx - makes for a very easy and consistent sounding setup (plus i mix the band out front during soundcheck)

Get a dual band external router, set it to 5GHz only, use any compatible 5GHz tablet (i use an Amazon Fire 10 with a side-loaded google store so i can use Mixing Station Pro which i find better than the official app) and jobs a gud'un

2019-01-25 12.57.47 (1).jpg

Edited by intime-nick
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1 hour ago, intime-nick said:

We've had our XR18 for 18 months or so - done a fair few gigs and it's great.  I play with no backline and IEMs and use the in-built 'sansamp' effect for my bass plus the usual parametric EQ, comp etc.   All racked up with my wireless guitar Rx and IEM Tx - makes for a very easy and consistent sounding setup (plus i mix the band out front during soundcheck)

Get a dual band external router, set it to 5GHz only, use any compatible 5GHz tablet (i use an Amazon Fire 10 with a side-loaded google store so i can use Mixing Station Pro which i find better than the official app) and jobs a gud'un

2019-01-25 12.57.47 (1).jpg

How've you mounted the XR18 backwards?

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15 minutes ago, Stylon Pilson said:

The XR18 has all the inputs on the front. I don't think that what we're looking at in that picture is an XR18 at all.

S.P.

It is - if you put the rack ears on backwards, thats what you get. If you've routed everything to a patch panel, then jobs a goodun - risk of a costly board mounted failure is virtually eliminated. All Nick will have to worry about now, is the cheaper replacements of chassis connectors and the cables attached to them.

Proper rackin' ;)

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1 hour ago, intime-nick said:

We've had our XR18 for 18 months or so - done a fair few gigs and it's great.  I play with no backline and IEMs and use the in-built 'sansamp' effect for my bass plus the usual parametric EQ, comp etc.   All racked up with my wireless guitar Rx and IEM Tx - makes for a very easy and consistent sounding setup (plus i mix the band out front during soundcheck)

Get a dual band external router, set it to 5GHz only, use any compatible 5GHz tablet (i use an Amazon Fire 10 with a side-loaded google store so i can use Mixing Station Pro which i find better than the official app) and jobs a gud'un

2019-01-25 12.57.47 (1).jpg

@intime-nick - I'm guessing you have something earmarked for that slotted rack panel... that is a lot, lot more interesting...?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yes, it's working really well for us. We've been told that the Mackie is more intuitive when you first use it, and I'm prepared to believe that, but in truth it took just two days (when we were both off sick anyway) to be confident that we could march in to a venue and set the XR18 up first time without any drama.

There are some excellent 'How To' videos on YouTube (and of course some pretty dreadful ones) and so long as you start by setting up using a laptop and NOT a tablet it's pretty easy to get things sorted out. Each new setup for a new band requires some effort and some patience from the band but, as with any decent PA, once you've got it right for Band X at Venue A it becomes a doddle to also get it right for Band X at Venues B, C & D.

With The Junkyard Dogs we have allowed one hour for load-in, setup and soundcheck for years now. Last Friday we allowed 90 minutes because it was the first time with the XR18 (and we hadn't ... ahem ... actually told the band before the gig); we needed about 75. On Saturday we allowed 90 minutes again because we'd never played the venue before; after 60 minutes we were all twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do for the extra 30 minutes.

On both nights we played to full rooms with loads of mobile phones being flashed around. We suffered NO wifi dropouts at all. Doesn't mean it'll never happen, but it's a reassuring start.

Our biggest issue by far is that the screens are different for laptop and tablet, and the tablet is harder to use until you understand the system. On the laptop screen you can see and adjust everything for every channel with rarely more than a single click being needed to get you to the crucial area. On the tablet you see roughly a quarter as much which means that you have to navigate your way to the desired area before you can even start to make changes, and some of the places you really, really need to navigate to (like Gain and EQ) are anything but obvious.

We are also annoyed that we can't yet work out how to directly link the XR18 to my laptop using an Ethernet cable. A key factor for us in deciding to buy the XR18 was the knowledge that in the event of a total wifi meltdown we could go fully cabled in a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. I still don't doubt that the kit allows us to do this ... but I have no clue how!

Not to worry. A band I dep for occasionally are big fans of the XR18 and have it fully sussed out. Silvie and I are visiting the band leader on Wednesday for a private tutorial.

 

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3 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Yes, it's working really well for us. We've been told that the Mackie is more intuitive when you first use it, and I'm prepared to believe that, but in truth it took just two days (when we were both off sick anyway) to be confident that we could march in to a venue and set the XR18 up first time without any drama.

There are some excellent 'How To' videos on YouTube (and of course some pretty dreadful ones) and so long as you start by setting up using a laptop and NOT a tablet it's pretty easy to get things sorted out. Each new setup for a new band requires some effort and some patience from the band but, as with any decent PA, once you've got it right for Band X at Venue A it becomes a doddle to also get it right for Band X at Venues B, C & D.

With The Junkyard Dogs we have allowed one hour for load-in, setup and soundcheck for years now. Last Friday we allowed 90 minutes because it was the first time with the XR18 (and we hadn't ... ahem ... actually told the band before the gig); we needed about 75. On Saturday we allowed 90 minutes again because we'd never played the venue before; after 60 minutes we were all twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do for the extra 30 minutes.

On both nights we played to full rooms with loads of mobile phones being flashed around. We suffered NO wifi dropouts at all. Doesn't mean it'll never happen, but it's a reassuring start.

Our biggest issue by far is that the screens are different for laptop and tablet, and the tablet is harder to use until you understand the system. On the laptop screen you can see and adjust everything for every channel with rarely more than a single click being needed to get you to the crucial area. On the tablet you see roughly a quarter as much which means that you have to navigate your way to the desired area before you can even start to make changes, and some of the places you really, really need to navigate to (like Gain and EQ) are anything but obvious.

We are also annoyed that we can't yet work out how to directly link the XR18 to my laptop using an Ethernet cable. A key factor for us in deciding to buy the XR18 was the knowledge that in the event of a total wifi meltdown we could go fully cabled in a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. I still don't doubt that the kit allows us to do this ... but I have no clue how!

Not to worry. A band I dep for occasionally are big fans of the XR18 and have it fully sussed out. Silvie and I are visiting the band leader on Wednesday for a private tutorial.

 

All of these mixers have their plus points and negatives... but to be fair, they are so close in terms of functionality, it's almost a level playing field. The Mackie is more intuitive - but as you say, the Behringer isn't exactly that difficult if you've invested a bit of time playing with it.

Sounds like you are doing well though.

Psst - https://kb.musictribe.com/musickb/view/article/all/en_US/X-Air-What-Are-The-Different-Ways-To-Connect-To-My-X-Air-Mixer

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3 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Our biggest issue by far is that the screens are different for laptop and tablet, and the tablet is harder to use until you understand the system. On the laptop screen you can see and adjust everything for every channel with rarely more than a single click being needed to get you to the crucial area. On the tablet you see roughly a quarter as much which means that you have to navigate your way to the desired area before you can even start to make changes, and some of the places you really, really need to navigate to (like Gain and EQ) are anything but obvious.

What tablet is that? I never found it unobvious, it just has the big buttons along the top.

3 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

We are also annoyed that we can't yet work out how to directly link the XR18 to my laptop using an Ethernet cable. A key factor for us in deciding to buy the XR18 was the knowledge that in the event of a total wifi meltdown we could go fully cabled in a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. I still don't doubt that the kit allows us to do this ... but I have no clue how!

Not sure I am missing something here, but if you take an ethernet cable and plug one end in the laptop and the other end in the XR18!

As long as your addresses are in the same group, that is, jobs good

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

What tablet is that? I never found it unobvious, it just has the big buttons along the top.

Not sure I am missing something here, but if you take an ethernet cable and plug one end in the laptop and the other end in the XR18!

As long as your addresses are in the same group, that is, jobs good

 

 

We've tried on three different tablets; all show the channel strips and the sliders really very clearly, but do not show the 'colour bars' for Gain, FX and EQ that I see on my laptop.

As to 'just plug in an ethernet cable', I don't wish to be sarcastic but, incredibly, we actually tried that. It didn't work. We tried quite a few things that didn't work.

Happy to believe that this is down to our lack of knowledge and understanding, but that doesn't mean that this is a trivial problem to solve.

 

 

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15 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

As long as your addresses are in the same group, that is, jobs good

In addition to hubby's reply above, I'd like to say that our main problem in this case is we have no clue what address to enter and what group our PC and mixing desk should be part of! 😮

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10 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

In addition to hubby's reply above, I'd like to say that our main problem in this case is we have no clue what address to enter and what group our PC and mixing desk should be part of! 😮

Try either 10.0.1.2 or 192.168.1.2 on the laptop and see if either of these work. If it's a peer-to-peer network with no router and just two devices you might possibly need a cross-over ethernet cable, but I thought that these day most devices were auto-sensing and this was a thing of the past.

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8 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Try either 10.0.1.2 or 192.168.1.2 on the laptop and see if either of these work. If it's a peer-to-peer network with no router and just two devices you might possibly need a cross-over ethernet cable, but I thought that these day most devices were auto-sensing and this was a thing of the past.

Thanks, we will. It was also my impression that, for a direct connection with no switch or router in between we might need something more than a normal Ethernet cable.

We'll experiment again tomorrow. :)

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2 hours ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Thanks, we will. It was also my impression that, for a direct connection with no switch or router in between we might need something more than a normal Ethernet cable.

We'll experiment again tomorrow. :)

I'm a Linux user, so things might be a bit different if your laptop is Windows. On mine I have to be disconnected from any WiFi (as then you're in that network) and then set the mixer to ethernet. Search function on the app works. My tablet doesn't have ethernet, so I can't help you with that but it does work on laptops if you have the magic touch.

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12 minutes ago, Jack said:

I'm a Linux user, so things might be a bit different if your laptop is Windows. On mine I have to be disconnected from any WiFi (as then you're in that network) and then set the mixer to ethernet. Search function on the app works. My tablet doesn't have ethernet, so I can't help you with that but it does work on laptops if you have the magic touch.

IIRC we did all that, including turning off the wifi on the laptop, but we hit a brick wall in that the PA insisted that IP addresses be entered (no automatic recognition of any kind happening!) and we didn't know what to enter.

Before BRX's helpful advice above, we couldn't find any relevant information anywhere. Even the user manual just tells you to enter one or more IP addresses in the same group. The point being, what IP address, FFS? 9_9:P

Edited by Silvia Bluejay
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XR18 Jack, you know how complex my band's sound is and the XR18 has been an absolute pleasure.

Real world points to note:

Definitely get an external WiFi router, an old Netgear hobbies will be fine. Better than the internal.

Get a decent tablet, if the tablet is woeful it will make mixing very tough cos the UI will lag significantly behind all the info it is trying to display.

Do at least a couple of tech rehearsals to figure out what you are going to do mix wise and monitor wise. This is serious kit with bucket loads of power and options, you won't be able to get it right on a gig winging it!!

Whatever you end up with back it up to a laptop. It will change at each venue.

You can do a 'soundcheck' in 10 minutes tops at a venue and have killer FOH and up to 6 monitor mixes.

Awesome bit of kit, ours was closer to 600, if it died I would buy another tomorrow to replace it.

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