What is my problem?

[Blah067]

/...with my sound system..../

We're doing a week long program at our church.
I'm running sound as well as playing the keys.

Today I walked in, turned on systems, all went normal.
After a while, I tried turning the wireless rack of lavs on. Nothing.
the lavs only go through the mains, no monitors (I"m using three monitor lines).

Soon, I realized it wasn't just the lavs, it was EVERYTHING not going through the mains, and it was actually going through monitors.
so. I began the trouble shooting. I checked my signal, and found the signal to be connected, routed, etc etc properly all the way to the main outs of the board.

After this point, the cable goes under the floor, back to the sound room, (amps, processors, etc etc.)

Nothing had been changed from last night til this morning.
Why is no sound coming out of my mains????

PS. The outputs of the board go to an automixer, which also has channels from the Ambo, and three wireless channels (which don't go through the wireless rack).
These channels work just fine.

WHAT is my problem???????

[DaveySimps]

Does your system have a sequencer that everything plugs into to turn it on and off in the right order? If so, perhaps this is not turning everything on as it should. I have had one go bad on me before and it took me by surprise. You will also want to make sure all of your amps to your mains turn on as they should, and your Signal processors (DSP, crossover, eq's, etc.) are all on and unmuted. It never hurts to check the actual connections in the back of the board and on each unit. For installed rack items, it is not unusual for thigs to come loose over time. Also, just check the cabeling, perhaps a solder connection in the connector for your board is bad, even though the connector is good. Just some additional trouble shooting thought off of the top of my head.

~Dave

[Eboy87]

DSP muted was my first thought. You say nothing has been changed since the last time you ran the system. I'd still suggest actually making sure the patches are correct for the snake. Run a CD into a channel route it to the outs in doubt, and watch the meters every piece of gear in the signal chain. When you get to one that the meter isn't showing anything, the problem lies upstream from that.

Oh yes, check to make sure the mains are still connected to the amps, and the amps are actually turned on. Had a friend of mine get burned that way once.

[Hughesie]

Check the desk meterbridge for any activity first, then your dsp then amps.

[derekleffew]

I believe this very predicament is why the Qbox

was invented: to check the signal patch at each and every step along the way.

Most would say to go in order from the mic element to the speaker cone, but it may be faster to start in the middle, and keep dividing in half until you find the culprit. I think ship just mentioned the proper term for the methodology for this, but I can't remember it just now.

[Blah067]

All amps are working properly. I power cycled the entire system.
Maybe I mentioned in my original post, the outs from the board go to an automixer, along with the Ambo mic, and three channels of wireless.
All the other channels of the Auto Mixer are heard through the mains. Just not the output of the board.
PS. My monitors still work out of the board.
I have checked my entire signal path, and found that my signal is reaching the main mix of my board. (When doing this, I did find my meters were acting up. great...another problem).

All DSP is unmuted.
Only part of the system I don't know that well is the distributed audio system.
It deals with sending the main mono mix to classrooms, offices, fellowship halls, kitch, etc etc.

To my knowledge, all it does it mute outputs, not specific inputs. I have no knowledge of how this system is set up, I understand the system in whole, just not this small aspect of it.
Is this control panel (with all the mutes in it) considered a DSP?

Any other advice?

[DaveySimps]

It really sounds like the issue may be with the automixer channels the board is into. Is there any way you can bypass that, if only for troubleshooting purposes? Also, I would highly suspect that the cabeling from the board to the mixer has possible issues, but that is hard to check in an installed system (unless you have x-ray conduit vision). Is there any way you can reroute these lines? Perhaps using tielines in a patchbay?

It is hard to get a sense of your distributed audio system. Does it have a make and model on it? Perhaps then we might be able to give more advice.

~Dave

[Chris15]

Derek, you would be talking about a binary approach...

It does sound like the automixer might not me automixing properly... Does it have XLR ins and outs such that you might be able to bypass it for troubleshooting?

You say your mons are working fine, are you able / have you tried patching those outputs into the main system or vice versa to try and track down the fault?

Now I work with cabling day in and day out and with the exception of things like obvious nicks or prolonged abuse, cabling normally fails at or very close to a flex point. Things like a horizontally mounted connector with a sharp fall off out of the boot. Given time and potentially an originally poor solder joint, the mechanical stress on that joint can literally cause the wire to disconnect. That, or you get internal flex damage at the flex point...

I don't recall reading anything about whether you have a stereo system, I presume not if you are adding in mono sources with the automix, but I could be wrong. If you do have a stereo setup (from board right through), does one channel work? If it does, can you do a swapsies along the signal chain until you find what causes the fault to swap sides?

Let us all know what you manage to uncover...

[museav]

the lavs only go through the mains, no monitors (I"m using three monitor lines).

Soon, I realized it wasn't just the lavs, it was EVERYTHING not going through the mains, and it was actually going through monitors."

Are you saying that the lavs normally went to the mains but not the monitors and are now going through the monitors but not the mains? Or did you mean that by routing them to the monitors you can get the lavs in the monitors but not in the mains?

Since you are apparently getting signal from other automixer direct inputs then it at least seems likely that the problem is upstream of the automixer output. Using an external meter or powered speaker or something like that, verify that you are actually getting signal out of the console on the main outputs. If you are, then connect some other audio source in place of the console to the automixer inputs. If that doesn't work from the console end of the wiring, then try going directly into the automixer inputs. This should help narrow down where the problem is occurring. Once you know where in the signal chain the problem occurs, then you can start looking in more detail at what might be causing it. Divide and conquer is the goal.

It might also help to know the models for the automixer, DSP, etc.

[Blah067]

Allow me to clarify this.

We have three hanging clusters on the mains.
There are two pulpet mics, three wireless, and the outputs from the board going to an automixer.

These cannot (and willnot) go through the monitor mixs on the board.

I also have my own rack of 8 wireless lavs that have a dedicated board. The Mono out from this goes into channel whatever in the main board.
Among other channels, the outs of the main board go to the automixer.
Outputs of the automixer go to a bunch of units (not sure on all this), which send that signal to the Mains, the fellowship hall, the offices, bride/groom rooms, lounge, classrooms, etc etc. All these rooms aren't configuarble at all. Its just on or off (individually) by going into this digital controller thing.

The extra lav rack is the only thing that only goes through the board right to the mains, with no monitors, thats why I realized the problem. Monitor mixes don't go through the digital control pad dealio, just from the board right to amps, and then to the floor boxes.

When I investigated further, I realized that nothing from the main board was reaching the mains (or anything served by the mains, classrooms, etc etc).

The only lines that go up to the amp room is the LR out from the board, and a cable labled ST1 out (plugged into stereo return 1 on the board...not sure where this plugs into on the other end...).
The board also has a control room out, which, again, I don't know where it goes to.

We have no patchbay (this is the really funny part). We have 100+ inputs in our floorboxes. 14 can be patched at one. We have them all in the cables behind the board, and pick which ones we want for each show.

Bottom line, nothing from the main outs of the board goes anywhere.
Other inputs of the automixer work just fine.

Idk really how the control of the distributed audio thing works...we have four 1RU units that say "sound web" on them...idk what they do.

There are also two control panels (in seperate rooms) that have similar color schemes as the sound web thing, this is how we "mute fellowship hall" or "center speaker only" the church area. (Anybody know anything about this???)

Thanks so far guys.