NSI Melange Pro submaster question

[Jay Ashworth]

Yes, yes, it's a 20 year old board. The theatre's 90 years old; I *could* be asking about resistance dimmers.

The manual explains how to use the Channel Window, which is roughly akin to, say, selecting Chan 1-48 or 49-96 on a Smartfade, instead of Mems. But you can have 96 pages of Submasters if you want, so obviously, you can't have dedicated buttons.

What I *can't* see is *how you select a page of Subs for playback*.

I see how to save a scene into a submaster, even on a specific page.

But the only way I can see to navigate to a page for playbacks is to use "Load Submaster", and when you do that, it appears to load (something; not clear what) into *all* the Submaster faders on *all* the pages, and then you can't use the Channel Window anymore.

Until you do Clear All Subs, at which point a) you can and b) the Subs on page 2 *do still contain what you saved there*, even though 1) they say they don't, and 2) you'd expect they wouldn't, cause you just cleared them.

4.11 FW, and the manual is for 4.0, but I wouldn't expect that to be the reason why the manual really just doesn't say -- I've read it from cover to cover now -- how you navigate to a page of Submasters to play back from there.

Anyone around who I) used to have one and II) still remembers anything at all about it?

 

[Jay Ashworth]

This is promoted from comment; either the people in the old thread I hijacked aren't around anymore, or everyone saw it was old and didn't look.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

[ In lieu of this, anyone got a Smartfade 1296 or 2496 I can borrow/rent in west central FL? At least those I know how to drive... ]

 

[microstar]

This page from the Melange Plus manual might be the same or might be different than for your model and software version. The important take-away is that the number of submaster pages must be set in the memory set-up. It could be that you don't have any submaster pages set up.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

That's how you do it?

Loading with that sequence puts something into every submaster on *every* page, not just the one I specified. And then I have to clear-all to go back to using the Channel Window.

I did a full reconfig, with 4 pages of sub.

 

[microstar]

If I have time tonight, I'll get out my Melange and see if I remember how to select a page of submasters for playback.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Ok, in the house now.

I can save to a submaster by using the F-key to select the page.

I *can* load by using 'Load 0 2 Enter'. But that actually seems to load things into all the pages -- Once I've loaded page 2, I can no longer do 'Load F1-Channel Window', as I get error beeps.

That's the part I'm confused by.

It's easy enough to do 'Clear F2-All', before I go back to 'Load F1-Channel Window', it's just that the manual (which is pretty opaque there) doesn't lead me to expect it.

The saved looks do seem to recall when I reload page 2, though, so...

[ Now, to figure out why my floppy will format, but not read the directory... ]

 

[Jay Ashworth]

And, for the record, they rewrote that page in the 4.0 manual, but it *still* wasn't written by a human who actually knew how to use the board. ;-)

If free time permits tomorrow, I'll make a quick video, and link it here from dropbox.

Assuming I don't find out that the NVRAM didn't hold my subs, in which case I have bigger problems. [ It held. <phew> ]

 

[Mickkkey]

It isn't possible to load just some submasters from memory unless the faders you want to keep (from the last page loaded) are up slightly. Once brought to 0 they revert to the new loaded page. Hit Load (above the subs) then type in the number of the page you want then Enter, or just Enter to load the next page. (These are pages previously saved. To save new levels in any sub, bring up the lights you want in live, hit Record, then the bump button of the sub you want to save to.)

Channel Window is incompatible with a full (24 subs loaded) submaster page. You first need to clear all submasters (as you already discovered) -OR- hit Cancel then just the sub you want to clear (do this sequence of buttons for any number of subs you want to clear) Channel Window must start from Submaster 1 and progress sequentially IIRC. Channel Window for some reason disables the bump buttons of even the subs still loaded.

You can create a single-channel captured-level-releaser by cancelling just the first submaster and loading Channel Window (it will make just a one-channel-wide channel window which can then be moved around with the arrows and used to release a single captured channel using Sub 1 bump button).

 

[RonHebbard]

It isn't possible to load just some submasters from memory unless the faders you want to keep (from the last page loaded) are up slightly. Once brought to 0 they revert to the new loaded page. Hit Load (above the subs) then type in the number of the page you want then Enter, or just Enter to load the next page. (These are pages previously saved. To save new levels in any sub, bring up the lights you want in live, hit Record, then the bump button of the sub you want to save to.)

Channel Window is incompatible with a full (24 subs loaded) submaster page. You first need to clear all submasters (as you already discovered) -OR- hit Cancel then just the sub you want to clear (do this sequence of buttons for any number of subs you want to clear) Channel Window must start from Submaster 1 and progress sequentially IIRC. Channel Window for some reason disables the bump buttons of even the subs still loaded.

You can create a single-channel captured-level-releaser by cancelling just the first submaster and loading Channel Window (it will make just a one-channel-wide channel window which can then be moved around with the arrows and used to release a single captured channel using Sub 1 bump button).

Although I know neither you nor your console, I'd like to thank you for your participation here, presuming your info' to be correct, and wish you the best of the season.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

I've figured it out, @Mickkkey.

The problem comes from the manual not making a clear distinction between "submaster faders" and "submasters".

When you save something, you save it into a "submaster".

You can then load pages of "submasters" into the single available set of "submaster faders", or you can use them as a Channel Window to program more submasters.

But the manual doesn't distinguish between these two meanings of "submaster" at all, inspiring complete confusion among those who don't actually understand what's going on.

Once you understand this, then you understand that when you set up to go back to Channel Window, you aren't clearing "submasters", but merely the "submaster faders", and all that programming work you did isn't going away now.

It was clear that had to be the case, otherwise it was useless, but that didn't help me understand what they were on about.

 

[Mickkkey]

Although I know neither you nor your console, I'd like to thank you for your participation here, presuming your info' to be correct, and wish you the best of the season.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

Thank you! Yes it was, and I hope your holiday season was nice too!

 

[Mickkkey]

I've figured it out, @Mickkkey.

The problem comes from the manual not making a clear distinction between "submaster faders" and "submasters".

When you save something, you save it into a "submaster".

You can then load pages of "submasters" into the single available set of "submaster faders", or you can use them as a Channel Window to program more submasters.

But the manual doesn't distinguish between these two meanings of "submaster" at all, inspiring complete confusion among those who don't actually understand what's going on.

Once you understand this, then you understand that when you set up to go back to Channel Window, you aren't clearing "submasters", but merely the "submaster faders", and all that programming work you did isn't going away now.

It was clear that had to be the case, otherwise it was useless, but that didn't help me understand what they were on about.

Yes I believe you are correct, it's about as clear as mud in the manual. There are indeed two meanings of submaster in this board. This made quite obvious when you record a look to a submaster, bring it up to no effect, realize you didn't actually have a submaster page loaded yet, load subs, and your look is there on the submaster you saved it to! (That one has got me more than once!)

This board has been very good at data retention. It does have a few hung states it can get into, but this doesn't cause any loss of data that was correctly entered beforehand in my experience, and in some cases you can keep running the existing cues in spite of the hang. And if you do need to reboot? Sure it's a limited board by modern standards, but it boots up in like 0.5 second or something!