Photos from the Waves SoundGrid Class
CRAS welcomed Michael Pearson-Adams (Michael P.A.), Product Specialist from Waves to talk about Waves SoundGrid. He first opened by explaining that SoundGrid is a network protocol developed at Waves for transferring audio between devices (audio nodes) on a 1 Gigabit Ethernet network. SoundGrid has the ability of real time low latency monitoring with the added bonus of processing capabilities. Its round trip latency time is .08 milliseconds or around 40 samples. He noted that this would be great for live sound, a typical situation that would require real time monitoring and processing.
Next, he discussed what a SoundGrid system or network consists of. First, there is a host computer, SoundGrid DSP Server (where the plug-ins are processed), a SoundGrid IO Device and a SoundGrid compatible switch.
He went on to explain the SoundGrid Host programs. First MultiRack, the oldest of SoundGrid Hosts is a host platform for Waves audio processing plugins designed especially for live sound application. It provides a software rack equivalent to outboard hardware processing racks. The eMotion LV1 is another SoundGrid host that is a full blown live mixer with up to 64 input channels that can be mono or stereo and output to 35 mix busses that are logically ordered as groups, auxes, main and matrixes. Finally, SoundGrid Studio is a mixer that enables recording and monitoring in extremely low latency with plugins.
The topic moved on to SoundGrid DSP Servers, where Michael P.A. made a note to explain that in live sounds none of the audio is going through the console, it's going through the DSP server. If your console or computer went out, audio would still be running and it's not reliant on the console to work. If the server goes out, most likely it
would be a power supply issue. That's why Michael suggested having a redundant server just in case and that each of the serves should be an identical pair.
He ended with a brief Q&A and briefly talked about Waves Central.
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