Mission Switching-Best Practices

[Paul Novotny]

Hi Everyone,
Has anyone developed a "best practices" convention for mission switching? I am experiencing inconsistent behaviour.
When restoring Music mission from saved snapshots and Aneman settings it seems more problematic than Monitor mission.

I have an Anubis and Hapi MKII — fast/accurate recall of Anubis snapshots and Aneman setups are bumpy and take time to problem solve.
My workflow changes between monitoring and music mission(s) several times a day — here is what I am routinely experiencing.

1) Sometimes reloading Aneman settings do not recall multicast connections — it flips them to unicast. I have 2 ADA 8S cards in the Hapi MKII one randomly comes back in unicast rather than multicast. As well some connections don't reliably repopulate in the Aneman I/O matrix.

2) When reloading an Anubis, snapshot peering often does not load back as saved. There have been times when ADA #2 card peers but ADA #1 refuses to. My work around has been to shut off Anubis and Hapi MKII, clear all Aneman settings — re-start the hardware, reload Aneman settings and then reload the Anubis snapshot. That has worked but sometimes it takes a few attempts. I use the Hapi MKII headphone output to drive my main stereo headphone feed to musicians and sometimes Anubis drops this peered connection, or when it shows as "peered," (green indicators) audio does not pass. Often I'll toggle that peering button and then all of a sudden the audio flows as it should.

3) When "peering" appears stable on the Anubis, the 'Aneman Matrix View' does not provide a "confidence check" of the Anubis peered connections.

4) Also, some times I experience random digital audio glitches — I suspect some sort of data-pack instability (No IP switch is used in this system), not sure how to chase that down as they are random.

These basic inconsistencies have lead to a lot of error chasing time and often involve restart of the hardware.
I leave my system on all the time and sometimes over night — connections drop — even though they show as connected in the matrix view.
This makes problem solving challenging as there are no hints as to where/what the problem is.

Here is my step by step order of operation for mission switching. Is it good? How can it be improved?
1) Clear all Aneman matrix settings-connections.
2) Change the Mission on Anubis
3) Load the appropriate Aneman settings file which are dedicated to the Mission of choice.
4) Reload the Anubis Snapshot (Music Mission) or the Anubis Preset (Monitor Mission).

Is there a better order of operation?

Merging T. has created a marvellous and revolutionary system (I really love the sound and the software mixer design is truly brilliant), but what can I do to make the transition between Missions reliable and fast.

Is anyone else experiencing these inconsistencies?

Kind regards,
Paul Novotny
Toronto, Canada

[Paul Novotny]

Greetings,
It's been weeks since I started this thread and see no responses yet.

Today I'm posting 3 detailed reports of my order-of-operation and results from the past weeks.
I'm still hunting for smooth transitions that are repeatable and reliable.

Some of these "connection misses" are deep enough to crash Anubis, while others—such as Anubis peering—visually appear functional after a preset recall, but often no audio passes until you manually undo the peer and then redo it. Recalling Aneman settings often seems to miss "multicast" and choose "unicast." When trying to manually select Multicast connections, sometimes Aneman refuses—but then magically—Aneman accepts multicast connections.

Mission Transition Logs

A) Music to Monitor

1. Clear all connections — Hapi Headphone peer cleared, but ADA cards 1 & 2 did not clear their peering.
2. Manually - de-peer ADA cards 1 & 2 in Aneman
3. Save a new snapshot called Neutral Anubis State
4. Transition to Monitor Mission
5. Load Aneman connections for monitoring
6. Load Monitor preset in Anubis
7. All connections except ADA card #1 inputs - Physical inputs of Hapi 1-8 returned as unicast — they were saved as multicast.
8. Manually delete inputs 1-8 of Hapi, redo them as Multicast and it worked.
Total transition time: 18 minutes. 02.19.22

B) Monitor to Music

1. Save Aneman monitor connections - (all connections were working)
2. Clear all connections in Aneman
3. Clear peering on Anubis
4. Load pre-saved Music Mission connections in Aneman
5. Load Music Missions—Anubis crashed
6. Restart Anubis
7. Load Music Mission Snapshot
8. Aneman reports invalid connections, a notification message appears saying contact MT to report the error.
9. Clear Aneman connections
10. Reload Aneman connections
11. Headphone peering to Hapi MkII does not recall.
12. Manually peer Hapi HP
13. Working
Total transit time: about 20 minutes 02.26.22

C) Monitor to Music

1. Re-Save Aneman connections (all connections working)
2. Save Anubis monitor preset (working well)
3. Set sample rate from the MRAES67 VAD utility — (System sync sync is always internal)
4. Select Anubis Music mission
5. Recall Anubis neutral state snapshot
6. Clear all Aneman connections “again”
7. Aneman lost connection to core audio
8. Quite Aneman-it crashed
9. Re-launch Aneman — it finds core audio.
10. Load Music mission connections — Reports Anubis Error did not find input in … (what does this mean? -error message is incomplete)
11. Hit OK
12. Recall saved Music Mission snapshot
13. Music Mission appears to load successfully with PTP lock/internal sync on all devices but All Hapi inputs are missing.
14. Audio from DAW is passing to Anubis and Hapi headphone routing is working—sending DAW to instrumentalist.
15. Manually connect inputs 1-16 in Aneman
16. Hapi Headphone (HP to instrumentalist) connection now fails, even though Anubis shows it to be peered (green arrows)
17. I un-peer happy HP and re-peer it — DAW audio is restored to the instrumentalist.
18. Hapi Inputs 1-8 appear to be peered properly and input signal is showing on the Anubis mixer channels, but no input audio on channels 1-8 is passing to instrumentalist through the Hapi Headphones. Hapi Channels 9-16 in/out are working fine. I'm now thinking the problem might be at the analog patch bay—I Line check all external patching_all good—it becomes evident that it's the peer that is not working, even though Anubis shows successful peering (green). I un-peer inputs 1-8 then re-peer them—magically—audio passes from input to instrumentalist. The green arrow peer status is misleading the problem solve.
19. Then the Aneman app crashed on quit but all connections are now (finally) operational.
Total transition time: about 40 minutes 03/12/22

Any feedback is appreciated.
Can I improve my mission switching operation or is system software refinement necessary to improve this situation?

Thanks
Kind regards,
Paul Novotny
Toronto, Canada