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Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 12:48 pm
by BrentEvans
I have to have two independent start/stop stereo recordings. I could do it with a separate laptop and Reaper just as easily as two zooms or one zoom or whatever... but it's much nicer and simpler just to have it in the box.

I'll join the forum over there eventually. Just not this week.

As for SAC and stable... mine's been perfectly stable since day one... except for the time the computer crashed becasue the processor fan broke loose, and that's not SAC's fault. I don't run all sorts of crazy stuff on it like some of you guys though... lol...

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 2:11 pm
by MiaB
As for SAC and stable... mine's been perfectly stable since day one... except for the time the computer crashed becasue the processor fan broke loose, and that's not SAC's fault. I don't run all sorts of crazy stuff on it like some of you guys though... lol...


This reflects my experience with SAC. I came in along about V1.4 or V1.5. SAC has and continues to serve me well. I would like to check AMP out, and probably will if/when budget allows, but I have no pressing need to change.

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 4:07 pm
by Frank DeWitt
I agree a good versatile recording setup is important. More important, Bob Puff agrees. It is coming.
SAC was stable for me as well. What drove me to AMP was that I never liked the GUI. It wasn't quite right on my FOH screen, or on the 10 in. laptops for the IEMS, Also I wanted a automatic start including engine on, I wanted a different mixer for visitors, Just 4 ch and a main. Since switching I have found more to like. I find I am real fan of DCAs and mute groups. I also like running 3 or 4 fader packs without any issues.

Also I know sooner or later I am not going to be able to find the right hardware for SAC. I bought a new PC for the recorder position and it is nice to know I can slide it in to use as a host if I need to.

BTW AMP has been stable for us at church for about the last 4 months.

We use a second PC for the recording mixer and we have TOTAL RECORDER from a company called High Criteria on that. It will hold until I can do it on AMP.

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 4:57 pm
by RBIngraham
BrentEvans wrote:I have to have two independent start/stop stereo recordings. I could do it with a separate laptop and Reaper just as easily as two zooms or one zoom or whatever... but it's much nicer and simpler just to have it in the box.

I'll join the forum over there eventually. Just not this week.

As for SAC and stable... mine's been perfectly stable since day one... except for the time the computer crashed becasue the processor fan broke loose, and that's not SAC's fault. I don't run all sorts of crazy stuff on it like some of you guys though... lol...


I see. And I get why you want it all in one box. Of course you mentioned the compact console and I don't know of any of them that would allow for 2 seperate transports going on at the same time. You would have to use the built in recorder and a laptop via some type of digital connection to get that type of control on any thing I am aware of.

As for the stable thing, I would say my SAC system was pretty good. But not as solid as say a Yamaha digital console. For me it is all the little bullshit items that some might not really think of as being unstable per say, but once you use a system where it just fucking works you realize that for all practical purposes they are bugs in SAC. For example, it was rare that I ever got SAC to behave with its remote properly so I could create scenes from the remote. Even with playing with all sorts of drive sharing and spending hours dicking around with dumb ass network settings I maybe got it to fully funtion properly 25% of the time. With AMP it has been so solid with that sort of stuff since the first beta I played with and I have almost forgot what a pain in the ass SAC always was with this shit.

I would say at least once every 6 months or so I would run into an issue where I lost control of some faders or worse those damn Group Latch submasters would get out of sync with inputs and at best you were scambling to regain control or wosrt, the old +20db fader jump would wake everyone up real quick. Luckilly this always seemed to happen during techs, not during a show. So it must have had something to do with multiple remote users logged in and maybe just too many people doing tweaks for SAC's brain. I also had one op who would crash SAC at least once during every run of a production, ussaully while recalling a scene. We never did figure any of these out and of course Bob was never able to reproduce.

Put the SAC-SAW link in use during a show and then other little bugs would pop up, often where SAW would crash and the only way to get it working again was restart SAC and SAW. Since that problem was never totally fixed that is why that one update allowed you to restart SAW after a crash without restarting SAC. It was something, but not really what I would call a fix.

And that of course leaves the obvious lack of progress on the software out of the conversation.

As I've said before. I realize why some will miss their VST stuff, but I can say with no BS that I do not miss dealing with SAC at all. Once I got to play with something better I realized just how much more buggy SAC was than I was really admitting, even to myself.

Anyway, enough on that... I have a shit load of scene writing to do... for my console that has up to 32 REAL DCAs...... :lol: :lol:

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 5:30 pm
by BrentEvans
While it's true that other consoles don't have two transports, the start/stop mechanism on the AH Qu for instance is effective enough that I can do it without a gap in the recording. Tapeit isn't fast enough to do that. Then there's also the fact that you can do two transports with a laptop, which isn't a big deal to set up beside the FOH console. With SAC (and as I would with AMP) the rack stays backstage and I mix on a remote. I rarely run a wire to FOH (only if the venue's wifi is crazy strong) and just use a 5G wifi connection. It works for me.

That said, Amp is interesting enough to buy in at the prerelease price to play with.

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:23 pm
by RBIngraham
BrentEvans wrote:While it's true that other consoles don't have two transports, the start/stop mechanism on the AH Qu for instance is effective enough that I can do it without a gap in the recording. Tapeit isn't fast enough to do that. Then there's also the fact that you can do two transports with a laptop, which isn't a big deal to set up beside the FOH console. With SAC (and as I would with AMP) the rack stays backstage and I mix on a remote. I rarely run a wire to FOH (only if the venue's wifi is crazy strong) and just use a 5G wifi connection. It works for me.

That said, Amp is interesting enough to buy in at the prerelease price to play with.



Oh you're one of those crazy dudes that mixes entirely via Wi-Fi.... that temps me to just show up with some Wi-Fi and jam stuff mid show... :P

Luckilly I have better things to do that attempt to ruin one's day. ;)

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 10:54 am
by BrentEvans
Good thing. :)

I mainly do church services so if you want to ruin that, go ahead. I won't laugh too much when the lightning storm shows up. :D

Although... incidentally, I did find out that our wireless com will bog it down. It's on 2.4ghz and my laptop got logged onto the 2.4g hotspot one day this week... got it switched to 5g and all was well, but geez. that was a moment of panic.

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 11:12 pm
by RBIngraham
Hence why I almost always spec the clear com 900MHz tempest gear

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 12:44 am
by BrentEvans
We almost never use the thing. Got it for a song on eBay. Normally the rts wired com is sufficient but I've got a mobile "mess cam" and it was a way to eliminate a wire going to that. Doing a little more testing it really just needed a few feet of separation from the laptop. One transmitter was really close an probably just overwhelmed it. Moved it to another patch point on the rts chain and all was well. Still used 5g wireless though.

Re: the wait is over

PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 8:53 am
by Craig
Does anyone know how long they plan to offer the beta release discount? I've had an unexpected expense come up and can't get it this moment. I'm not even looking into the SAC update at $100.