Shure Wireless Workbench 6: Coordination Order

Edited Transcript

In this video tutorial, we'll talk about coordination order, which explains the order in which different systems are listed by the calculator in Wireless Workbench 6.

The calculator in Wireless Workbench has a variety of features. It's an effective mechanism that does intermod and other calculations to find compatible frequencies. But there's an automatic input that you may not think about—coordination order.
 

What is "Coordination Order," and how does it work?

In your coordination workspace, you can import frequencies for Shure systems such as SLX, PSM1000, ULX-D, Axient Digital, and many more. If you add channels to the inventory without defining any specific order, Wireless Workbench 6 will arrange the channels in a particular order.

Wireless Workbench organizes the types of systems in a particular order so it can find frequencies for the systems that have the least flexibility first.

For example, SLX is an older, mid-tier wireless product, which has been out since the mid-2000s. Axient Digital, on the other hand, is a brand new digital wireless system with a wide tuning bandwidth.

So, how will Wireless Workbench 6 arrange these? By the flexibility of the particular systems.

In essence, Wireless Workbench has equipment profiles that define each of the systems it can find frequencies for. It outlines where each system can tune in the spectrum and how many different possible frequencies each of them can tune to.

Think of it like feeding the pickiest eater first. If some of these systems, like older systems such as SLX, can only tune to a couple of frequencies, it would make sense to find frequencies for the inflexible systems with minimal agility first, before finding frequencies for systems with a larger tuning bandwidth.

Wireless Workbench builds in this logic by performing calculations to identify the systems that are the most and least agile. The order in which these systems are listed reflects the agility. Systems with the fewest tunable frequencies are listed at the top. Systems with the most tunable frequencies are listed at the bottom.

Wireless Workbench does more than just list systems in this defined sequence. As the calculator looks for frequencies, it will follow this order of device type and find frequencies for systems at the top before it moves on and finds frequencies for the next system.
 

Modifying the Coordination Order

The coordination order matters the most when you want to prioritize the calculation of frequencies. For example, if you want to find backup frequencies for your money talent first, and they happen to be using Axient Digital, you should modify the order of the systems. To modify this order, click and drag the system headers in the frequency coordination tab. If you want the Axient Digital frequencies to be found first, simply drag the Axient Digital header to the top, and then all the frequencies will be found before any of the other systems.

Now this custom coordination order can be a good thing, but if you've got "picky eaters," as in our analogy, or systems that are not agile, custom coordination can cause a situation where all the usable spectrum for the system get eaten up before the calculator gets to them. That's why Wireless Workbench can revert to the default order.
 

Reverting to the Default Order

This can be done by clicking the toolbar button in the middle of the frequency coordination tab. . When the Coordination Order is modified, the tooltip of this button will say, "Coordination order modified. Before clicking the button, the icon will have a gray dash, indicating that it is not currently in the default order.

When you click the button, it will revert the order to the default, and the gray dash will change to a green checkmark.

In summary, if the order ever gets changed, all you have to do is click the coordination order modification button to restore the default settings. If you want the order to be customized, you can shuffle and restack all the systems, save it as a "show file" or "coordination file." Wireless Workbench will preserve your custom ordering.

Finally, let's look at why the default order is i defined in the way it is in the first place.

If you go to the preferences in Wireless Workbench and click on the coordination tab, there is a Coordination Order sub-tab. This sub-tab shows all the different series of devices that Wireless Workbench can coordinate for.

By default, we arrange the order of these systems as per the agility metric mentioned earlier. If you want to modify the default order to make sure that certain systems are always coordinated ahead of others, from either a series perspective or the bands within a series, you can change that order by selecting the system you want to reorder using the up and down arrows. This will change the default order.