I am having weird issues where master fader is creating duplicate shows when I synch my ipad and the mixer....  

I would rather not have to join yet another forum just to get one answer/problem solved.

I have googled the WWW pretty extensively for the answer, but have not been able to find anything.  I did find a couple of posts on some sound forum where they mentioned the problem in passing while discussing a different topic.  

Hoping my fine homies here on AR5 might have the answer...

I use it all the time.

Can you be more specific about what is happening?

Is it something that really messes up your night or something that can be overlooked?

If you don't want to waste your time writing, I'd recommend calling Mackie tech support. I have found them somewhat helpful at times.

It is not really messing me up (yet anyway) because we are only playing once location at this time,  but it is a pita.     Example:   I am working in off-line/demo mode at home and create a show for an upcoming gig.  Lets call it "Joe's Bar".  Then in "Joe's Bar"  I add channel names, some starting fader levels, set some basic EQ,  set mute groups, etc and save a snapshot and call it "Channel Names"...

Get to practice and connect/synch my DL1608 and my ipad and go to "off line show" and now low and behold there are 2 "Joe's Bar" shows...   One of them will have no snapshots and one will have the "channel name" snap shot.  I have to load each one to find out which show is the "real" one by looking to see which one has the snap shot I had saved.  

I delete the duplicate show and then we rehearse...  changing fader levels, adjusting monitor mixes, fine tuning EQ, etc...   Save another snap shot, call it "Sound check" So now have 1 show (Joe's Bar) with 2 snapshots  (Channel names and Soundcheck)

Get to the gig...  synch mixer and iPad....   Go to choose a show to load up and once again there are 2 "Joe's Bar" shows to choose from!!  once again, I have to load each one to find out which one has the snapshots that I had saved.....

Delete the duplicate show once again....

End of gig, create another snapshot "Final mix" in the "Joe's Bar" show...  

Next rehearsal, go to choose a show and....   2 "Joe's Bar" again!!!  


I can look at each show and figure out which one is the correct one and now how to use the app, the even more frustrating problem is that I had all the other musicians download the app to their phones so they can set their own monitor mixes and the same thing is happening to them when they are trying to choose which "show" to connect to.

Both app and iPad are updated and running current versions.

1st time using both this mixer and this app, so dont know if this is normal or not

Hope you can understand my rambling and thanks for the offer to help...

I understood your problem when I read your last post, so you described it well.

I love Master Fader, but the one screwy thing about it seems to be the system of saving snapshots and shows. Master Fader 4 in particular has given me a couple of different error messages (none of them show killers) when trying to store snapshots, in addition to what I view as the odd and counterintuitive way in which you're supposed to save. I don't get it, because everything else about the app is awesome. I've used it on literally hundreds of shows over the past few years, and it's great as far as mixing on an iPad goes.

I've been trying to replicate your problem tonight with no success. I started a new show, and saved a snapshot within that show. I powered the entire system down and loaded the show again, seeing if I would see a duplicate show. I didn't, so I saved yet another snapshot within that show, powered down again, and when I brought everything online again I still saw no duplicate.

Here's the deal, though. For the past year since we updated me and the other guys I share this gig with have been using the same show file every night and just creating different snapshots for each night. By now we have several dozen snapshots within the same show, which we'll call "thawntex club." Probably isn't the best way to organize our work, but whatever.

Lo and behold, when I check the offline show bank, there are about 15 files in there called thawntex club. I have no idea why there are so many files of the same name, but it seems like the same thing is happening with our system as with yours, that in the process of saving we are somehow getting duplicate show files (I didn't have time to check which snapshots were in each one).

In fact, I'm not even sure how to save a show. When you click on the show icon, the only options you get are name, image, duplicate, and export. Maybe that's why we've only been saving snapshots for all these different nights within one single show . When I sync up it always brings up that show, at which point I either start fresh with our default snapshot, or revert back to a stored one.

When I save a scene (similar to a snapshot in Master Fader) on my Midas next door, I get a big red "not saved" notification, which prompts me to hit the save button to then save the show. I guess Master Fader automatically saves the show when you save a snapshot? But why the duplicates?

You don't even get any "save" buttons in Master Fader as far as I can see. When storing snapshots you have that stupid replace button, and it's dumb prompt to "replace this snapshot with current state?" How about just a save button and an overwrite scene prompt? It just sounds more sensible. Jeez.

Unless the Mackie people have designed some brilliant method of saving snapshots and shows that's just going over my head, I think it's retarded how they have it set up. I shouldn't have to write a short novel on the subject. It should be simple. My answer to you OP is to just deal with it and figure out your own workarounds, unless you manage get to the bottom of the issue, in which case I'd appreciate you explaining it to me.

At the end of the night though, if show was a success, and I didn't have to work any harder than I should have aside from a minor inconvenience or two, I really don't give a shit. Master Fader has done me right 99.9% of the time, so I can easily deal with the above issues.

After we were done last night I looked at all the duplicates of the "thawntex club" show mentioned earlier. It was created at the first of the year, and like I said, we've been using that same show file every night since then and just saving different snapshots within it each night.

When I checked the offline shows bank, there were 13 shows titled thawntex club. The first one only had one snapshot in it which was basically blank. No settings, labels, etc. Maybe that is like the ones you've been seeing which are basically nothing? The next 12 were arranged in chronological order with a variety of snapshots in each show file. Just a disclaimer, as I said there are multiple guys using this system, so I'm not sure how each guy is going about saving each night.

I still have no idea why that show is duplicating itself. To be clear, since starting the file it has duplicated itself a dozen times over roughly the past 10 months. I don't know why it seems to be happening every time you save.

It seems logical that you would want to use the most recently saved file, and since they are arranged in chronological order, to just tell your band mates to go with the last one in line. You have two dates to use as your references, the date of the file's creation and the date it was last saved.

If it bugs you that bad, I suppose you could keep deleting prior show files of the same name whenever you see them, but why bother, honestly? I understand that you've probably dropped some coin on the system, and you want it to work perfectly, but that since there's always something with any system, I still say to simply dismiss it as a minor inconvenience if you can't get to the bottom of it.

@thawntex


Solved!!

I was stupid and doing things backward...

When you synch up with the mixer and get a prompt that the mixer is running a different version of the current show and your choices are:  DL1608 (or which ever model mixer you are synching to).....iPad.... or "go offline"

I would always choose "1608" because I thought I was "pushing" the show TO the mixer but what it really does is it "pulls" the current show FROM the mixer and into your iPad..,, thereby creating a duplicate show in offline shows....

Just tried it multiple choosing "iPad" instead and works perfect!! No more duplicates!

Regarding shows vs snapshots.... true, you don't save the show, you save/create snapshots within the show.  The goal is that we will have a seperate show for each venue with it's own snapshots... really the only major differences will be the master volume and master EQ.

Also discovered that the acces limits won't save in snapshots, so I have to redo those each time for those band mates that want to adjust their own monitor mix. Not a big deal

This is my first digital mixer and I picked it based on the master fader app and other than the duplication prob I am digging so far

Hope that helps with your situation!

Cool, glad you got it figured out. Thanks for following up.