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Setting Up London with a PM5D

Does anybody have any experience interfacing London with the Cobranet cards for the Yamha PM5D? (MY16-C and CII)

My specific question is in regards to the channel count on the I/O cards- if the card allows both Rx of 16 channels and Tx of 16 channels? The documentation is confussing stating 16 channels. I'm assuming the cards have 2 bundles for tx and 2 bundles for rx (total 32 working audio channels).

I would assume setting up London that we would simply set up the bundles as normal and make sure that the I/O cards are assigned to rx or tx accordingly?

Please elaborate...

Comments

  • Yes, you assign the same Tx bundle numbers in PM5d cards as you set up in LA to receive your audio. Make sure you have the same latency settings in both as well. We have a few such systems working just fine with 1.33msec latency. One of them has three Pm5d - all on Cobranet using the same 48 mic feeds from Blu-32's and Blu-80's (all unicast bundles with fiber connections between local switches.)

    Each Cobranet card for Pm5d can send two bundles of 8 channels at 48kHz. If you go to 96kHz you get two bundles of 4 channels.
    The assignment of signals to each bundle is the same as for any other MY type card.
  • Just a reminder to everyone: if you use 1.33ms latency, you're only allowed to have one switch hop between the transmitting and receiving devices. If you have more than one hop, the CobraNet hardware will increase the buffer to 2.66ms without telling you about it. If you have more than two hops, it'll increase by another 1.33ms. Again, without telling you about the change and there is no way to override this.

    Dan
  • oh, and one more thing: Be careful when talking to non-BSS tech support about this. When they say \"all of the devices on the network must have the same subnet mask for CobraNet to work\" you just might laugh so hard that your coffee comes out your nose. Because, of course, you know that CobraNet communication doesn't even USE subnet masks or IP addresses.

    True story.

    Dan
  • Just a reminder to everyone: if you use 1.33ms latency, you're only allowed to have one switch hop between the transmitting and receiving devices. If you have more than one hop, the CobraNet hardware will increase the buffer to 2.66ms without telling you about it. If you have more than two hops, it'll increase by another 1.33ms. Again, without telling you about the change and there is no way to override this.

    Dan

    We had two switches in the way to each console. 1 from Londons to local switch in the main rack and second switch at each console. We had Gigabit fiber connection between the switches. We measured the latency using SMAART and it was very very low- It suggested that the 1.33msec was kept. It was longer than 1.33msec, but under 3msec. We attributed it to the converters and processing latency. But, maybe Cobranet did switch internally to 2.66msec and the other latencies were just so small.
    In any case, you have to tell all devices to start with the same latency or it won't work.
  • Good point. All devices have to be set to the same latency even though they don't coordinate with one another when they start changing the latency. Weird, eh?

    Even weirder, you can actually have devices with different latency settings all on the same cobranet network as long as they only talk to devices that match their latency settings. I have no clue why you'd want to do that, but you could.

    Dan
  • Gentlemen,

    Your information was extremely helpful. We knew that sampling rate and bit depth had to be consistent, but latency was overlooked. Thanks for the heads up. We are executing one switch hop between stage tech position and FOH. We'll be completing this remodeling install in the next three weeks.

    I expect to give a glowing report back on the performance of London.
    It hasn't dispointed yet!
  • Dan LynchDan Lynch Posts: 472
    Another note: sample rate, like latency, only has to match between devices which are talking to one another. You can actually mix and match 48k with 96k on the same CobraNet network as long as devices only communicate with matching devices (so no multicasting).

    Bit depth is a lot easier since the receiving device sets itself to match the transmitter. Wouldn't it be cool if latency worked that way?!

    Dan
  • Setting up the PM5D with the Yamaha Cobranet Cards was no sweat and everything is communicating on the first attempt. The only cumbersome task was having to use the limited version of Cobranet Manager supplied by Yamaha which will only addressed a maxium of 4 devices on line.
    In our case we had (3) I/O cards, (2) Blu-80's and (3) Blu-32's While it did recognize the London stuff, you there was no distinction as to what you were addressing. That is the London devices simply showed up as blu-48K or blu-96K etc... so we simply addressed each unit one at a time and changed the name and location in the property windows until everything was orginized in Cobranet manager. It would have been so nice to use LA as the main manager program, but at this junction it isn't set up to deal with 3rd party devices.

    In the end, our objective was to create a digital snake with compliment split to the broadcast suite and typical return pathways from the stage all the way through the amplifiers and that was accomplished thanks to the London gear. The defualt design was left with devices operating at 48K and 1.33ms latency on a standard 10/100 backbone. At some point, I'll install a gig backbone and start pushing the limits of sampling rate and latency to get the most out of the gear.

    One interesting tid-bit...the BSS London sounds tons better when the acoustic guitar channel by-passes the PM5D in a little experiment we did. Too bad the Vista VI-4 wasn't available to our customer at the time they wanted to go digital. In any event, the system is better off completly digital verses a hybrid digital analog contraption where signals get converted too many times along the chain to have any sonic quality.

    The London stuff again comes through for us!
  • Just a note: BSS Audio does not recommend that you ever use any software other than London Architect to configure CM1 modules in Soundweb London devices. It's relatively simple to change the wrong parameter and cause the CM1 modules to cease communicating with the Soundweb London devices.

    Also known as making a brick.

    Dan
  • Dan makes a good point and clarification.

    However, in this situation the manager supplied by Yamaha for its I/O cards only allows the cards to be set up. But it does recognize ALL devices on a network. No sleep should be lost in this situation because you can't change any of the London Cobranet settings minimizing the risk of having to send a brick back to Utah for a brain lock proceedure.

    The guys over the pond should consider making this a feature for L.A.
    At present, L.A. only recognizes its own children on a network. Since Cobranet is licensed to more than just one manufuacturer, it might be nice for L.A. to represent and manage an entire network as-built to the client. Especially when we are required to leave design files with the completed installation.
  • While one particular piece of Yamaha software, in it's current version today, may not be capable of changing parameters in a CM1 card in a BLU-80, there are other software utilities available which can make those changes. These utilities should never be used with Soundweb London hardware. You can/will brick the device and tech support will giggle about it after the phone call.

    On the other side of the topic, you have a critical misunderstanding which is illustrated by \"Since Cobranet is licensed to more than just one manufuacturer\". CobraNet is an audio transport protocol. The CobraNet protocol defines that a bundle carrying 8 channels of 20bit audio at 48k must always look the same after it leaves the device. CobraNet does not define how that device must accomplish the creation of that bundle. CobraNet also does not define the manner in which the CM1 card will/must be used to create a bundle. Any manufacturer who is doing anything other than the most basic operations with the CM1 module will have modified or replaced the CM1 firmware. Two pieces of identical hardware with different firmware are two completely different devices. If these two devices respond to the same control signals, that will be by luck rather than design. So, there's no way for London Architect to control/program a Yamaha console other than for BSS Audio to reverse engineer the firmware in that console and figure out how to control it and then hope Yamaha never changes the firmware.

    Dan
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