Problem #1 – No audio at Cue Speaker and/or Headphones #
WheatNet-IP consoles with headphone jacks and cue speakers stream audio from the Console Blade to the console. You need to verify that the audio is routed from the headphone bus and cue bus (sources) to the destinations that feed the headphone jack and cue speaker.
Peripheral Devices #
Some console models require that you add a peripheral device to the system in order for the cue speaker and headphone jack destinations to appear in the destination list. These models are as follows:
- IP12/IP16
- L8/L12/L16 prior to v1.4.6 (current version is 2.0.4, so this only applies to very early software versions of the L series)
- LX-24
Follow these steps to add the console as a peripheral device to the console blade:
1, Click on the Devices tab in Navigator.
2. Click on the Peripheral Devices tab.
3. Click the Add button
4. Enter the name so you can identify the console. Type the IP Address of the console in the address field. Leave the TCP Port at the default setting of 60021. From the Host Blade drop-down, pick the console blade that the console is connected to. Click OK.
After clicking OK, you should see the console added to the list with a green dot. If it doesn’t show up or you see a yellow question mark, check to make sure that the console is powered on and that it’s connected to the network.
Once you have the console in the list with a green dot, the cue speaker and headphone destinations have been added to the crosspoint grid. Go to System/Crosspoint and locate your console blade.
Here it can get confusing, because there are multiple destinations marked for headphones and cue.
These are the ones you don’t want:
BLxxHdpn – this is the headphone jack on the front of the blade
IP12HP – (or similar console prefix, HP in all caps) which is the headphone output on the back of the blade.
IP12CUE – (or similar console prefix, CUE in all caps) which is the cue output on the back of the blade.
The destination you are looking for will have the console prefix and Hdpn and Cue in mixed case. This route should be made when the peripheral device is created, but if it gets unchecked, you won’t have audio. Correct it by routing the Headphone and Cue sources from the console in the grid.
LXE #
The headphone jacks and cue speakers on the LXE are connected to the panel host cards on the console. When we ship the console from the factory, we program the panel host cards to feed cue to every cue speaker and headphones to every headphone jack. But since everything in the LXE is customizable, you can disable these connections in the LXE console setup tool, which then causes the destinations to go away, and then you have to manually create them again and set up the routes.
Here’s how to check:
On the Module Layout tab, hover your mouse over the picture of the meter bridge and double-click.
This pops up an edit window.
Set the number of headphones to the number of panel host cards in your console. Set the number of Cues to 1. The Audio Destinations section will grow to match what you have set. Assign the headphones and cues to the host panel cards.
This will then create destinations on your LXE Console Blade:
LXE HPStr x (where x = the panel host card number)
LXE Cue Str
Route the LXE Mon2 source to the HPStr destinations and LXE CUE source to the LXE Cue Str destination. You’ll be back in business.
Problem #2 – Cue/Headphones come and go intermittently or are garbled #
The Ethernet jack on the back of the console (and for that matter, the Talent Stations; this issue can also pertain to Talent Stations like the TS-4, Sideboard, and TS-22) is a 10/100 connection. Blades, on the other hand, use Gigabit connections.
Since the only audio going down the line to a console/talent station is headphones (and/or cue), 10/100 is sufficient for our needs with these devices.
If your network switch is properly configured, the only multicast audio stream that is going down the wire to the console/talent station is this headphone and/or cue feed. If the network switch isn’t properly set up, every audio stream in your system is being sent down the line, which is a condition called flooding. There’s more traffic than the link can handle and the audio can’t get through.
So the first question is are you using a Wheatstone approved Ethernet switch in your system? The second question is has the port that the console/talent station is connected to on that switch been properly configured as an Access port according to Wheatstone’s switch setup documents? We need a proper IGMP querier on the system to prevent this condition and the ports properly configured to manage multicast traffic.
Refer to our Ethernet switch documentation to see how the ports should be configured. Once the flooding stops, the audio will properly flow.