Kniferide wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:16 pm I don't even like video gear. I just shout at it until it finally works. I rarely touch audio anymore, which is fine since Corporate Audio is boring as hell.

I hear you there. My work with video and display systems was just a tack-on to my audio experience. Corporate audio is generally boring straightforward stuff. Getting people to wear/use mics properly is a constant challenge.

All this gear-hate aside, nothing gets more contempt from me than incompetent integrator/contractor firms. Poor project management, communications, setting conflicting expectations between stakeholders, not vetting designs or design changes, piss-poor GUI design and worse programming/implementation, and worse testing and commissioning (and the usual lack of full documentations), not following through in training and warranty commitments. Ugh. There are so many shitty integrators on the west coast too. I can only tighten up a spec so much to limit participation, and then you get public low-bid projects - which I need to start finding ways to better protect ourselves from the outcomes of awarding to a piss-poor low bidder.

Geiginni wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2023 7:08 pm

Kniferide wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:16 pm I don't even like video gear. I just shout at it until it finally works. I rarely touch audio anymore, which is fine since Corporate Audio is boring as hell.

I hear you there. My work with video and display systems was just a tack-on to my audio experience. Corporate audio is generally boring straightforward stuff. Getting people to wear/use mics properly is a constant challenge.

All this gear-hate aside, nothing gets more contempt from me than incompetent integrator/contractor firms. Poor project management, communications, setting conflicting expectations between stakeholders, not vetting designs or design changes, piss-poor GUI design and worse programming/implementation, and worse testing and commissioning (and the usual lack of full documentations), not following through in training and warranty commitments. Ugh. There are so many shitty integrators on the west coast too. I can only tighten up a spec so much to limit participation, and then you get public low-bid projects - which I need to start finding ways to better protect ourselves from the outcomes of awarding to a piss-poor low bidder.

I have experienced that in the industrial controls dept. the west coast integrations companies are TERRIBLE.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2023 11:30 pm

Geiginni wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2023 7:08 pm

Kniferide wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:16 pm I don't even like video gear. I just shout at it until it finally works. I rarely touch audio anymore, which is fine since Corporate Audio is boring as hell.

I hear you there. My work with video and display systems was just a tack-on to my audio experience. Corporate audio is generally boring straightforward stuff. Getting people to wear/use mics properly is a constant challenge.

All this gear-hate aside, nothing gets more contempt from me than incompetent integrator/contractor firms. Poor project management, communications, setting conflicting expectations between stakeholders, not vetting designs or design changes, piss-poor GUI design and worse programming/implementation, and worse testing and commissioning (and the usual lack of full documentations), not following through in training and warranty commitments. Ugh. There are so many shitty integrators on the west coast too. I can only tighten up a spec so much to limit participation, and then you get public low-bid projects - which I need to start finding ways to better protect ourselves from the outcomes of awarding to a piss-poor low bidder.

I have experienced that in the industrial controls dept. the west coast integrations companies are TERRIBLE.

I'm also on the West coast. The company I work for has a "Money is no option" problem so they are susceptible to falling for purchasing super complicated Hi Tech integrations that are 1. unnecessary for what we need to achieve, 2. Unable to to function correctly due to poorly chosen combinations of inter system communication protocols, and 3. usually near obsolete or not suitable for the needs of the space by they time the bugs are worked out. If they would just let our teams integration and Techs have any say in what they purchase from these Solutions retailers, everything would work on day one and for years to come. Fuck, just give me a ton of 12G HDSDI lines and a ton of CAT 6 Tie lines all over and go home. We can do the rest if you give us the money. Also, Corporate IT Firewalls on Tech Networks... I hate that shit too.

Stop it guys

Sorry...

Did you guys see that Guitar thing?

Kniferide wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 1:57 pm Sorry...

Did you guys see that Guitar thing?

Sure did
I HATE it

Kniferide wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 11:33 am Fuck, just give me a ton of 12G HDSDI lines and a ton of CAT 6 Tie lines all over and go home. We can do the rest if you give us the money. Also, Corporate IT Firewalls on Tech Networks... I hate that shit too.

I've been taking a robust infrastructure-first approach for years, especially with my clients that have technically competent in-house staff. Most AV technology is toast in 3-8 years time, or less. Definitely less than 5 years on the end-user tech side of things.

My approach to events, conference center and flexible spaces is: 12G-SDI (I'll spec 20 Gbps cabling/connectors/patching if it's available and in budget), on recessed BNC, CAT6A F/STP Ethercon, back to similar rated patch-panels, and if remoted amps are needed with flexible speaker positions, accompanying Speakon NL2 or NL4. Everything - depending upon need, goes on a gang-box panel or NEMA flanged box panel, with a couple gangs or one NEMA box size up to allow for growth and moves/adds/changes. Again, everything lands on a patch-panel in the rack. I try to co-locate AV racks with IT in IDFs, so cross-connection of services is simplified and we have access to backbone/riser fiber. Conduit is sized to allow similar growth.

If non-tech users need access to connectivity, maybe an HD-Base-T transmitter with HDMI/DP1.4 and an XLR I/O Dante panel (Atterotech or RDL, or maybe Symetrix, though the RDL ones seem to be the best). I don't do IGMP-snoop based AV-over-IP encode/decode/transcoders as fixed user endpoints because they're not idiot-proof to manage. AV-over-IP is best suited where tech staff need flexibility without a ton of installed hardware - using the aforementioned connectivity.

Planning ahead means a nod toward OS1 SM fiber, and endpoint throughput of 10-40GB with backbone moving toward 100GB+ and up. When that becomes more of a need, I'll plan dual-LC Opticalcon connectivity, next to the Ethercons. I haven't done much with SMPTE fiber as most of my clients don't use SMPTE fiber and any big national broadcast truck/houses have their own converters to use SMPTE with off the shelf SMFOC and LC or SC/ST connectivity.

Geiginni wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 4:18 pm NEMA flanged box

Yeah man I hate flangers

Geiginni wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 4:18 pm

Kniferide wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 11:33 am Fuck, just give me a ton of 12G HDSDI lines and a ton of CAT 6 Tie lines all over and go home. We can do the rest if you give us the money. Also, Corporate IT Firewalls on Tech Networks... I hate that shit too.

I've been taking a robust infrastructure-first approach for years, especially with my clients that have technically competent in-house staff. Most AV technology is toast in 3-8 years time, or less. Definitely less than 5 years on the end-user tech side of things.

My approach to events, conference center and flexible spaces is: 12G-SDI (I'll spec 20 Gbps cabling/connectors/patching if it's available and in budget), on recessed BNC, CAT6A F/STP Ethercon, back to similar rated patch-panels, and if remoted amps are needed with flexible speaker positions, accompanying Speakon NL2 or NL4. Everything - depending upon need, goes on a gang-box panel or NEMA flanged box panel, with a couple gangs or one NEMA box size up to allow for growth and moves/adds/changes. Again, everything lands on a patch-panel in the rack. I try to co-locate AV racks with IT in IDFs, so cross-connection of services is simplified and we have access to backbone/riser fiber. Conduit is sized to allow similar growth.

If non-tech users need access to connectivity, maybe an HD-Base-T transmitter with HDMI/DP1.4 and an XLR I/O Dante panel (Atterotech or RDL, or maybe Symetrix, though the RDL ones seem to be th

e best). I don't do IGMP-snoop based AV-over-IP encode/decode/transcoders as fixed user endpoints because they're not idiot-proof to manage. AV-over-IP is best suited where tech staff need flexibility without a ton of installed hardware - using the aforementioned connectivity.

Planning ahead means a nod toward OS1 SM fiber, and endpoint throughput of 10-40GB with backbone moving toward 100GB+ and up. When that becomes more of a need, I'll plan dual-LC Opticalcon connectivity, next to the Ethercons. I haven't done much with SMPTE fiber as most of my clients don't use SMPTE fiber and any big national broadcast truck/houses have their own converters to use SMPTE with off the shelf SMFOC and LC or SC/ST connectivity.

As the campus firewall engineer, how do I convince a donkey of an AV guy to spend time migrating his Extron stuff to the dedicated network for it, rather than forcing me to deal with it on my user networks? He is now trying to buy a bunch of Dante shit.

biscuitdough wrote: Wed Aug 09, 2023 7:44 pm As the campus firewall engineer, how do I convince a donkey of an AV guy to spend time migrating his Extron stuff to the dedicated network for it, rather than forcing me to deal with it on my user networks? He is now trying to buy a bunch of Dante shit.

I have very serious conversations early on with the IT infrastructure, IT systems, and IT-Sec team members, along with AV.

Not everyone should be putting their AV on the Enterprise. In fact, most client orgs should NOT be putting their AV on the enterprise. The number of moves/adds/changes and updates that occur on the enterprise do not bode well for stable AV systems. Trying to smash AV onto the enterprise usually results in pissed-off users and AV and IT teams that can't figure out what's going on and just spending time pointing the finger at each other.

We specify a lot of Netgear M4250 and M4300 switch hardware to alleviate the enterprise IT guys from having to set up and program (and maintain) standardized switches to run the protocols we require, along with figuring out VLAN allocations that will maintain port-to-port bandwidth and backplane requirements. It shouldn't fall on you guys to have to figure out where the IGMP querier should be, what multicast ports need to subscribe to which endpoints, or why your Dante, control and AV-over-IP networks shouldn't be converged on the same hardware.

The only shit that needs to touch the enterprise are the OOB ports on the AV switches that need to pass thru remote monitoring/management functions. In fact most Extron shit has air-gapped NICs for precisely this function (using GVE and GCP), and services that need access to the guest Wi-Fi for things like assistive listening (anyone not using Wi-Fi based ALS is living in the past), wireless presentation and collaboration, and Port 80 (amongst some others) to allow user-access to services outside the firewall.

We typically specify three separate stand-alone (or VLANed) AV networks in our projects: AV-over-IP, on smaller 1G PoE++ stackable switches with 10 or 40 GB SFPs to serve time-critical video and AV signal routing/transport; and larger 1GBE PoE+ switches with 10 GB SFPs to serve Dante VLAN and a separate Control VLAN. Switches get OOB ports that go to the enterprise (along with the aforementioned ALS, wireless presentation, and any other cloud-dependent user services).

We like to keep AV-over-IP and Dante separate as there are management pieces and tech-user flexibility that allows things to remain easier to manage if they're not operating alongside other network traffic (things like Dante Controller and Dante Domain Mgr, Extron NAVigator, Crestron NVX Director,etc...).

The ease of programming and friendly query driven WYSIWYG fo the Netgear M4250 and M4300 stuff should give your AV Donkey peace of mind that these are things they can handle, and should prefer to handle themselves. Giving them the budget to do so (assuming you have to buy the ports no matter who they come from), and providing sensible infrastructure convergence (providing the rackspace, patching and backbone where most practical) should help.