X32 and S16 syncing issue

[Niels van Asseldonk]

Hi,

We use a setup where two S16's are daisy-chained and connected to one AES50 port of the X32.
The whole setup is sync-locked.
The X32 was powered down and powered back up at a moment in time, while both S16's stayed on.
When this happened the connection between the X32 and the first S16 did not get back into a locked state again.
This resulted in a very silent situation and we had to reset the first S16 manually before the connection was re-established.
Imagine this would happen during a show where the FOH gets a short power drop and the console reboots.

Can you explain what happens in this situation and how to recover from it as fast as possible?
Could it be that the first S16 in the daisy-chain automatically becomes clock master for the daisy-chain when the X32 is lost and, as a result, the X32 can't re-lock the connection when it is recovered?

Thanks!

[Chase McKnight]

Hi Niels van Asseklonk,

How are you currently clocking? I'd suggest keeping the console at Local synchronization and having both S16's slave off of it, if it isn't already. Was the console manually powered off using the switch on the rear or was a power cable yanked, etc.?

[Niels van Asseldonk]

Hi Chase,

I think we already are feeding the clock from the X32, but I'll check this again at tonight's show.

The console was in this case manually powered off using the switch on the rear, but without running the software shutdown option first. The reason it was powered off was because the desk did not recognize the USB-stick at the top connector for an instance, so the engineer instantly decided that the fastest way was to use the hardware shut-down and reboot.
It turned out not to be the fastest way because like I said this way he lost all feeds to and from the stage.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the switch on the back a hard power switch so, in generally, the effect would be the same as if the power cable was yanked?

Regards,
Niels

[Jim Taylor]

My X32 is set up as the Master.
On one occasion a musician (by mistake) unplugged the two S16's on stage however I did not loose power to the X32. When the power was restored to the S16's, everything went right back into sync.

Last night the X3 and S16's were up and running (house amps were not on). Wanting to install the latest Firmware from Behringer, I shut the power down to the desk, inserted the USB and turned power back on. After the firmware installed, the console went back to it's previous state. While the firmware was installing, the two S16's lost sync (lights flashing) but immediately went back into sync when the desk came back up.

This is not exactly the same situation as you described and I will try to duplicate it this weekend. I know that many larger sound companies use battery backup units on digital consoles and digital stage boxes for this very reason.

[Niels van Asseldonk]

Ok, I checked the clocking source for our setup and it turned out the X32 was already the clock master.
While reading Jim's story I'm really starting to wonder what happened in our setup.
The only difference I find between our stories is the fact that when the sync lock got lost in our setup, the LED on the S16 didn't start flashing but it stayed on red.

Of course I understand the idea of using an U.P.S. at FOH. We use it a lot for lighting desks on bigger shows with complex networks, but then I'm afraid we'll have to start using them for sound too