Newton : The heart of my work as a System Engineer.

I had the pleasure of working on a very prestigious festival event called Panch Mahotsav at Pavagadh, with the entire production done by J Live Team.

Being a 5 day festival, with multiple bands every day and with the kind of system deployment that was needed, Newton had to be there. And man it made my life as a System Engineer and also as the in house Mix-Engineer so much easy and I just love how I could execute the entire event.

This post is just a brief introduction into how I executed the event with Newton as my Central Unit.

First things first, the system deployed :

• Mains Hang : 12 L Acoustics K2 per side and 8 KS28 subs in an End Fired Configuration(2 x4).
• Center Fills : 2 RCF HDL 20’s.
• Outer Hangs : 4 RCF HDL 20’s per side.
• Delays : 6 RCF HDL 20’s per side.

If you have read My Newton story covered by various magazines, then you very well know how I had mentioned how Newton is gonna be a game changer for Me, especially in situations like this(where I use a mix and match of different brands and makes).

You haven’t read it yet?There you go! Link to all the covers by various magazines across the globe :

Outline website : https://outline.it/2019/11/21/newton-just-what-the-doctor-ordered/

ASIA/UK : https://www.proavl-asia.com/details/63875-newton-meets-smaart-instructor

US : https://fohonline.com/newsroom/international-news/india-based-doctor-and-system-engineer-prescribing-outline-newton-for-audio-gigs/

UK : https://www.lsionline.com/doctor-prescribes-outline-newton

UK : http://www.fast-and-wide.com/faw-news/fast-news/13571-outline-s-newton-is-good-medicine-for-indian-engineer

UK : http://www.etnow.com/news/2019/12/newton–just-what-the-doctor-ordered

Diving into the workflow!

All I needed from the mixing desk were 3 outputs to be soft patched by every visiting engineer : 1)Console Left 2)Console Right and 3)Console Subs (Matrix or whatever the visiting engineer prefers).

All these 3 Console Outputs came into my Newton as Analog Inputs 1, 2 & 3.

All outputs were driven from these Inputs with various sends via the Newton’s Matrix Mixer.

I ended up using all the 8 Analog Outputs that come with the Newton 16 + 8, and also used Dante to provide signal to my Delays.

The Output DSP’s and their corresponding physical outs were namely :

• PA Left : Analog 1.
• PA Right : Analog 2.
• PA Subs : Analog 3.
• PA Center Fills : Analog 4.
• Delay Tower Left : Dante 5.
• Delay Tower Right : Dante 6.
• Mains Outer Left : Analog 5.
• Mains Outer Right : Analog 6.
• Reference to Smaart : Dante 9.
• Video Left : Analog 7.
• Video Right : Analog 8.

Yes, a total of 11 Output DSP’s run using a combination of Analog and Dante.

The entire system tuning process was all done through Newton’s super intuitive Control Software ‘Dashboard’, with easy access and control over all the necessary parameters including EQ, Level, Polarity, Delay.

Apart from Console Inputs, I also used 2 more inputs from iTunes which were basically to play tracks, directly run using Dante Via from my Macbook into the Newton using Dante Protocol.

Not just did it let me play songs even without having to go to Console, but it just made the Entire System independent of the Mixing desk, letting me change show files in between without anyone knowing as I would play their Theme Song when the visiting engineer changed the files and got ready for his bands bang on start. (One could go on to argue and suggest the use of snapshots and all, but this is so much simpler and faster and better).

Also, this might seem petty, but its quite annoying when you are all waiting for the console to start with all the crowd staring at the stage with absolute silence from PA. This took that attention off as no one noticed and in my opinion this makes a difference to that Festival Experience.

One more thing that I would want to bring to everyone’s attention : I drove the signal to my delay towers using just 1 Cat 6 Cable with an Audinate Dante AVIO Adapter at the other end.

It worked flawlessly and no people, unlike popular myth, there’s no risk there. So Yes a Live Sound Event was run on Dante Adapters! (P.S : another backup Cat6 was also run end to end).

So that was just a glimpse into the basic functionality of Newton, that I used on my recent gig.

Here’s a small video on the same :

As and when I use more and more of my Newton, my workflow would definitely change, and i’ll use more and post about all those other awesome features the Newton is loaded with.

To conclude, I’m never doing a festival or a bigger setup without Newton as my core device!