Meyer Sound has provided a monitoring system for its self-powered loudspeakers (Remote Monitoring System) for many years. It’s never been the easiest system to incorporate in a design, but it has offered control and diagnostic information about how your amplifiers (in the self-powered speakers, often high in the air) were behaving.
Until now, you’ve needed a separate PC computer running the RMS software. And to control it, you had to either be at the PC or use remote screen sharing. For me, it’s always just added up to too much hassle.
But those days are over, to a degree. Meyer has come out with RMS Server. It’s a small box that handles the server side of the RMS network and sleekly takes the place of the previously needed stand alone PC backstage. Furthermore, the RMS Server is now integrated and controlled by Compass. In Compass version 3, you can see the RMS server via a tab, just like you can with your Galileos or CAL speakers. It’s really a huge step up in terms of simplifying the RMS network and communicating with it. And Compass is meant to work wirelessly, so you can access the RMS Server from anywhere, like FOH, with ease.
So what’s involved? All of Meyer’s speakers and processors are able to be RMS-equipped. The processors (like the MPS-488HP) and M-Series speakers ship with the RMS module installed, and it’s an option on any of their other speakers. To set up an RMS network, you need to run twisted-pair wire to each speaker. Here in lies the last remaining hassle, but how else can you get the data from your speaker? You can daisy-chain speakers together and if you use an i.Lon 10 Ethernet adaptor, you can adapt from twisted-pair cabling to Cat-5. You can then use standard Cat-5 hubs to sum your different network connections. Eventually, one Cat-5 needs to make it to back to the RMS Server.
Once you get that taken care of, it’s relatively easy to configure your network using the RMS software via Compass 3.0. Each speaker has a unique identifier on the network, and you can arrange your speakers in groupings that make sense for your system. The new Compass software provides a very easy and clean visual environment for viewing all of the data coming back to you. It’s a significant upgrade to the older standalone software.
The beauty of RMS is that you can really stay informed about the health of your speakers and their on board amplifiers. Every two to five seconds, the server receives updated data about the amplifier units. This information includes amplifier voltage, output power, limiting, temperature, driver status, fan status and any warning alerts. It’s a true diagnostic tool. You can also mute and solo individual speakers, which can be of incredible help when you’re trying to isolate a certain speaker on a multiple speaker system.
RMS has been around for years. The new RMS server marks a great improvement in the feasibility of using this monitoring system for Meyer speakers. Never before has it been integrated so fully into your sound system.