Live Inputs in SCS with SoundMan-Server

[Mike Daniell]

I've just completed a very successful run of the Australian play Farmer will Swap Combine Harvester for Wife, written by Hugh O'Brien. This play has six actors and I had radio mics on all of them (plus 2 hand-held radio mics), all controlled using Live Input cues in a pre-release of SCS 11.3.0. The Live Input cues were used primarily to turn on and off mics as required. Levels were controlled using a Behringer BCR2000 which linked to a new feature in SCS - a Faders Window. Here is how the units linked up:

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Live Input cues in the Editor
Setting up a Live Input cue in the editor looks like this:

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Q16 turns on the mics for the characters Cyril and Skye, and I always used 0.5 second for fade-in and fade-out. The levels of the inputs were set to -3dB, but I could have comfortably set these to 0dB as in the Production Properties I have the Maximum Audio Level set to +12dB. You can see from this screenshot that Live Input cues can also used to turn off individual inputs, so if Skye leaves the stage before Cyril, I just need another Live Input cue to 'turn off' Skye's mic. If both Cyril and Skye leave the stage at the same time, or the scene ends, I would use an SFR cue to 'fade out and stop' this cue.

A new feature in SFR cues is the option to have the selected action affect 'All playing live input cues', which is useful to turn off all mics at the end of a scene but potentially leave an audio file cue of music playing.

Run-Time Screen
Here is an example of the SCS run-time screen:

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Faders Window
The obvious addition is the new Faders Window, which is displayed on request from a new menu item under the 'Meters' button of the main window. Please note that the Live Input faders display and control the Input Gain of each live input channel, not the individual cue levels. This may be changed (or give you the option) to display and control individual cue levels, but I found the current setup worked well with this show. The yellow circular marker 'L' indicates which input channels are currently live. This marker is displayed automatically.

All the faders shown in this screenshot were linked to rotary knobs on the BCR2000, so adjusting levels was done from the BCR2000, not by using the mouse on these faders (although that could be done if required).

Mute, Solo and EQ
The M and S buttons provide Mute and Solo facilities. 'Mute' buttons were also mapped to push buttons on the BCR2000. The 'Select' button enables selection of a Live Input channel for setting EQ control. Any number of input channels may have EQ control. This screenshot shows the EQ setting for the character Delmay. The low cut filter has been selected and set to 90Hz, and the second EQ band has been selected as shown. All EQ adjustments can be made using the Mouse or the control surface.

Hot-Key Tips
If you look at the Hot Key panel in the screenshot you will see that hot keys 1-8 are set as toggle hot keys for the live input channels. This is extremely useful as it provides manual control of turning on and off individual mics. For example, pressing key 7 turns on 'HH 1' (hand-held 1). Pressing key 7 again turns off 'HH 1'. I used these hot keys pre-show for testing of each mic, as well as for announcements using a hand-held mic.

SoundMan-Server
A suitable SoundMan-Server (SM-S) license is required for Live Input cues. SM-S provides excellent support of live inputs, with 'instant' response, ie absolutely no delay between an actor's speech and the audio output - at least, no delay that I observed. I had the Octa-Capture's ASIO buffer size set to 256 samples and a sample rate of 48000Hz. All input and output gains are controlled via SM-S, and EQ is also controlled using SM-S commands.

Conclusion
Using SCS with SM-S and a control surface like the BCR2000 effectively provides digital mixer facilities. It was great to be able to just press the space bar for each mic change, as well as for other cues.

If you want to know more about using Live Inputs in SCS, please contact me at the email address below.