Connecting a DHD console to Myriad v6

Introduction

DHD make a variety of mixing consoles for radio that are used in stations across the world.  Starting with v6.5 Myriad Playout can interact with a DHD unit using the Ember+ protocol.  This will allow Playout to control Fader on/off functions of the mixers Myriad Playout channels as well and the physical channel on and off buttons of the mixer acting like fader start and recue controls for the on screen players in Playout.  Myriad Playout can also read the Mic Live/Mute status of any Mic channels added to Playout setting to display within a Layout and also be passed to the Broadcast Radio Hardware Service.

DHD Details

In order to configure Myriad Playout to talk to a DHD Core we need to know it's IP address and the channel numbers of any Mic and Playout channels that we need to interact with.  At the time of writing DHD provide software called DHD Toolbox v9 that is used to configure the console, and we can use this to find the information we need.

On our example mixer here, we can see that there are 3 Mic channels that we might want to read channel mute information from and 4 Dante inputs that we have used for the 4 Myriad Playout players.

If you are insure how to find this information on your console we recommend that you speak to the DHD reseller you purchased the consoles from.

Myriad Playout Configuration

Now we have the IP address and Channel IDs from the DHD we can set up Myriad Playout to talk to the console.  In the Settings menu, open the Application Settings window and choose the Mixer Connections tab along the top of the window.  In here you should see DHD Console in the Mixer Type dropdown.  Once chosen, type the consoles IP address in the box and set the Port to 9000 (this is the default port for the Ember+ protocol on the DHD).

In the second box you will see settings for how Myriad Playout will interact with the console which you can set as you prefer.

The lower box is where you need to type in the names of the Mic channels on the left and Myriad Player channels on the right.  These need to be added as "Channel xx" with a Capital C in Channel and space before the number or or they will not be recognised by the DHD.  We have added 2 channels to the Mic section (1 and 2) and 4 channels (35 to 38) to the Myriad Players section.  This is because we have Myriad configured to use 4 players connected to 4 Dante channels, but you could have more if needed.  The Player channels must to be added in the order that they are listed in the Myriad Media Setting window to connect the faders in the correct order.

Once these options are set you will be best to restart the Myriad Playout software and then you should find Playout as able to interact with the channels on the DHD console.

DHD Fader Options

The DHD consoles are very versatile, meaning the Fader Start and Channel On/Off functions can be set up to work in a variety of ways, so you may want to experiment with the these option to find the mode you feel works best to allow the Player and the Fader to work together.

DHD configuration

We recommend the following settings in the DHD configuration:

• In the Mixer Console settings section, the On and Off buttons "Key Functions" to "Channel ON" and "Channel Off".
• In the Fader Channels settings section for each Myriad channel, under Fader Start set turn OFF "On Start", and turn on "Auto On", "Auto Off".

In our testing we found setting the 2 buttons below the fader to control the Channel On and Channel Off functions separately to the Fader Start function allowed Myriad Playout to turn the channel on when playback started and off when it stopped.  It also allowed the On and Off buttons to act as Myriad player remote start and pause/recue controls.