Roland M-400 v2

Since cutting my digital mixing teeth on the Roland M-400 last year, I’ve been getting more and more used to having all the power and flexibility of a digital system, and for many live-sound jobs I can’t imagine being without it... but for an independent operator such as myself, investing in an M-400 and a Digital Snake system to go with it is a significant financial decision, and I wouldn’t have spent so much of my hard-earned cash if it hadn’t been for the ‘future-proof’ nature of a software-based system. Roland have recently upgraded both the V-Mixer and the Digital Snake systems to v2, and I decided to bring all my gear up to date by downloading and installing the latest software patches. For an old-fashioned type like me, software is usually something I regard as best left well alone if it’s already working. My previous experiences with upgrades haven’t been good; I once spent several days trying to install the latest operating system on my Fostex D1624 recorders and only got there after much profanity and stress, and more recently had to completely abandon an attempt at updating the maps on my TomTom, which very nearly guided itself into the skip... The suppliers of my system, Midas Pro Audio, had already contacted me to let me know that the upgrade was available and had offered to install it for me as part of their normal customer backup (they even kindly said that if I screwed it all up myself they could always put it right!) but I decided to have a go anyway.

There were two reasons I wanted to be using the latest operating system: firstly, I just like to be keeping up with stuff (and not having some knowing person lean over the desk at a gig and say, “Still on the old version then?”) Secondly, I shall be trying out the M-48 Personal Monitoring Mixing System next week in a theatre production, and the v2 software is a requirement. The first step was to look on Roland’s website for the relevant information and download links (http://www.rolandsg.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=344), and this gives an overview of what’s included in V2 (including a PDF brochure) as well as the download itself, which appears to be free and unrestricted.

I’ll be exploring the new functionality and the M-48 Personal Monitoring Mixing System in a future article, but in a nutshell the new software adds the ability to operate in LCR mode, supports the M-48, enables the internal graphic equalisers to be changed to eight-band parametrics, and adds no fewer than six new Vintage Effects, including the SRV-2000 reverb and RE-201 Space Echo.

At this stage it’s necessary to point out that the Digital Snake system has also been updated to v2, and also the Remote Control Software, which is used for controlling the M-400 from a connected laptop/PC. I downloaded all three upgrades, unzipped them within their original separate folders and transferred them onto a USB memory stick.

I thought I’d tackle the M-400 first, as the Read Me file that was bundled with the download seemed very concise and straightforward. There are some dire warnings about not disconnecting the power from the mixer during the update process and, as I really didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of calling Midas Pro Sound and asking them to get me out of trouble, I went a little over the top and fed the gear from an on-line UPS — better safe than sorry! The first step was to check the current version installed, and this was easily done by calling up the System screen and looking at what the information panel says, which in my case was that my version was 1.501 and so required the update. Before doing anything else I made a backup of my existing desk configuration to the USB memory stick, just in case it went wrong and I needed to restore to the previous state (assuming that would be an option).

The downloaded programme, called ‘M-400.PRG’, was the one I wanted, and I had, as instructed, placed it in the root directory of the memory stick, which I plugged in to the USB port on the M-400’s top panel. I accessed the System screen (via the dedicated System button on the M-400 panel) and selected the F7 option, which is labelled System Update. This resulted in a confirmation message appearing, asking me if I really wanted to proceed with the update. The only available options were Cancel (F7) and System Update (F8), so F8 it was, and all the clever stuff began to happen. An information box appeared showing the update was progressing, and this happened in two parts — the dialogue box first informed me that it was ‘Writing system program’, then it carried on with ‘Writing fader program’, and very soon after that it told me that the update had been completed and to ‘Please Reboot’. At this stage I was still a little concerned because the system information screen was still saying ‘Version 1.501’, but after switching the desk off and on again I saw that the system version was now at 2.0 and the fader version had advanced to 1.1.

I had a quick dig around in some of the screens to see what the major changes looked like, and I found all the changed screens easy to understand — the new functionality hasn’t made anything more difficult to use or buried anything too deeply in menus as far as I can tell. I’ll be looking at some of the V-Mixer’s new tricks after I’ve used it for real in next week’s show, but for now here’s a quick rundown of the new functions.

31-band GEQ updates: any of the available 31-band graphic EQs can be converted to an eight-band parametric equaliser complete with interactive graph displays, and any GEQ (even if it’s operating in eight-band PEQ mode) can display a 31-band frequency analysis of the (selectable) source signal. This is my favourite update and in the short time I’ve had to play with it, it’s fabulous.

So that all adds up to a significant upgrade, and it’s all there on the RSS website for free download.

Having brought my M-400 bang up to date, I turned to the Digital Snake system. As with the mixer software, this had to be brought up to v2 in order to support operation of the Personal Monitoring system. I had already downloaded the update programme, but this time the accompanying instructions were a bit more involved. In order to update the S1608 software you have to use the remote control programme, which is written for the larger S-4000 system, so that too was duly downloaded. The Digital Snake can’t be updated from a USB stick, so the laptop was loaded with the necessary files and connected via a serial cable of the straight-connected male-to-female, nine-pin variety (quick trip to Maplin needed here).

Luckily, my old travelling laptop that I use to run the M-400 remote software actually has an RS232 nine-pin port, so I thankfully didn’t have to mess about with a USB converter, and I was able to connect straight into the port on the front of the S1608 unit. All the connectors needed to perform the update are on the front panel, so it wasn’t even necessary to remove my S1608s from their rack.

With the S-4000 remote control software installed on the laptop, I connected the serial cable to the S1608 and powered it up, again using the UPS because the dire warnings about not losing power during the update process were now threatening me with “eternal system failure”, which didn’t sound good. Launching the S-4000 RCS application produced a neat-looking control screen with a little drop-down selector for choosing which COM port you’re using — in my case I assumed COM 1, which worked OK. Clicking on the Info button (a little square with an ‘i’ symbol) brings up a dialogue box showing the current system version, which turned out to be 1.01 and therefore needed upping to 2.0. The next step was to select ‘Updater’ from within the ‘Controller’ menu, select the correct updater .BIN file (the one I had downloaded), check that the correct COM port was still displayed, and confidently click ‘Update’. A helpful screen prompt appeared telling me to switch on power to the S1608 whilst holding in the Mute All Outputs button, which is in the lower centre of the front panel, so I switched it off and then on again as instructed. A final confirmation prompt box appeared, showing both the current and soon-to-be system versions, and all I had to do was click ‘Update’ one final time and the process began. After the progress strips had reached the end of their travel, a reassuring message appeared saying that the update had been completed, so I rebooted the unit and checked that the update had indeed been applied, and then repeated the procedure with my second S1608.

And that was all there was to it. I had successfully updated the M-400 and the Digital Snake to v2, with no problems and not a sign of any eternal failures or plagues of locusts. The whole operation took about 20 minutes, and that was with me double-checking everything at every stage. The on-screen guidance was very good, as were the downloaded notes. I also installed the latest Remote Control Software on to the laptop and took that home to play with — and I can’t wait to start using the new v2 features. The next project, which I will cover next month, will be to hook up the new M-48 Personal Monitoring system and explore in more detail some of the new functionality — especially those parametrics and analysers, so watch this space... 0

Roland M-400 v2

Digital mixer update