The LCD screen seemed pretty small, I was thinking Id rather just use Ipad then strain to see whats on that small thing regardless of having the knobs\faders
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Digital Mixers. Now adding NAMM 2015 entries
- Thread starter Tunaman
- Start date
The LCD screen seemed pretty small, I was thinking Id rather just use Ipad then strain to see whats on that small thing regardless of having the knobs\faders
From the pro side of sound reinforcement (and by that, I mean folks that made a living doing sound reinforcement for a living), I still feel, as I did 12-13 years ago, that the digital age of consoles was more or less foisted upon us by the industry. Yeah, a lot of well-known mixing pros talked it up and we generally accepted it without really having a lot of say in the matter.
On the other hand, it's worked out pretty well. Like anything else, it has good and bad. Motorized faders are around $28 and out of several in our shop for the last several years, I've had to replace only a half-dozen motor faders. Display screens seem to need extra TLC, but you acclimate. I do like the fact that refurbushing a 72-channel digital desk can be done in a day, where it takes me a week and a half to refurb a 52-channel Soundcraft Series 5.
And being used to digital desks now, I did a show with that Series 5 early last year and it was difficult to scan that huge surface for what channel I needed to get to, as opposed to punching it up on the screen. And remembering to look off to the right of me to adjust the FX, or a compressor channel or a gate.
It's all in what you get used to and what you get away from.
Analog consoles of any size have gone away forever. The ones that are in use are getting hideously expensive to keep up and running. Small consoles like the MixWiz and the Yamaha MG series will be around for a little while, but their demise is only a matter of time.
Mixing with digital consoles has become "sink or swim". At least we have a choice of digital surface or module and iPad or tablet. Or BOTH!...
On the other hand, it's worked out pretty well. Like anything else, it has good and bad. Motorized faders are around $28 and out of several in our shop for the last several years, I've had to replace only a half-dozen motor faders. Display screens seem to need extra TLC, but you acclimate. I do like the fact that refurbushing a 72-channel digital desk can be done in a day, where it takes me a week and a half to refurb a 52-channel Soundcraft Series 5.
And being used to digital desks now, I did a show with that Series 5 early last year and it was difficult to scan that huge surface for what channel I needed to get to, as opposed to punching it up on the screen. And remembering to look off to the right of me to adjust the FX, or a compressor channel or a gate.
It's all in what you get used to and what you get away from.
Analog consoles of any size have gone away forever. The ones that are in use are getting hideously expensive to keep up and running. Small consoles like the MixWiz and the Yamaha MG series will be around for a little while, but their demise is only a matter of time.
Mixing with digital consoles has become "sink or swim". At least we have a choice of digital surface or module and iPad or tablet. Or BOTH!...
the argument i've read from folks doing like 100-input theater gigs and other stuff way above my pay grade is that you need to be able to have two hands on physical faders and your eyes on the stage to catch cues and stuff, which you can't do if the "faders" are just pictures on a touchscreen.
it's not the "digital vs. analog mixer" argument, i think (and @Geri O confirms) that that one is over, but the idea of physical faders vs. touchscreen faders; also, there's the "wi-fi vs. directly connected" fail-safe argument, which boxes like the mackie DL32R force us to have since it at the moment has no plug-in mixing control option.
it's not the "digital vs. analog mixer" argument, i think (and @Geri O confirms) that that one is over, but the idea of physical faders vs. touchscreen faders; also, there's the "wi-fi vs. directly connected" fail-safe argument, which boxes like the mackie DL32R force us to have since it at the moment has no plug-in mixing control option.
Thats the $1300 dollar question! That "protection" value is directly related to the "fail rate percentage". Aside from charging issues... how much failure are we gonna get? If you bring a laptop to hard wire in case of bad wifi that has to cut your percentage seriously really low... right?
That's definitely safe to say. There's the danger of dropping the iPad, so a good case like the Griffin military rubberized case is a good investment. That one has saved my iPad several times. But I have yet to see one actually die from failure. And yes, I always have my Macbook close by.
There's a couple of drawbacks with the tablet idea to deal with... You need to turn off the auto lock, or the screen time-out feature on the tablet. If you don't, and with iPads, anyway, if it auto-locks, you'll have to reconnect to the mixer after it wakes up. So that makes another dilemma. Battery life with the screen being constantly on. dimming it down will help, but it's pushing things to get 4-5 hours from a constantly-on screen. On breaks, you can manually put the iPad (okay. whatever you are using, iPad herby means whatever tablet is in play here). For sound guys, you need to establish a "docking location" with a charger in the audience area somewhere that you can default to if the battery runs low. For musicians running your own mix, once your mix is set, you can put the iPad/iPhone to sleep and save battery life.
Also, I've found that if you run the iPad on the 5gHz band of your router, you usually have less devices trying to ping it, although that's less and less true as time goes by. There's tricks to try (no SSID, using Mac address filters, etc) to keep devices off the network. Let me see if I get this right, and any IT guys, please chime in here, but when a device sees your network, it actually connects, but it can't log in. So it can get bogged down and slow down your connection (that's when you move a fader on the iPad and 4-6 seconds later, something actually happens on the mixer). When I started running into this a few years ago, I discovered that my connection ills subsided when I moved to the 5Ghz band (even though the range is decreased, I haven't had range issues, even in big coliseums and arenas).
Hopefully, most of us playing clubs and small events won't run into issues of this magnitude, but a little planning ahead still makes wifi/iPad life a little easier.
Honestly, I think I'd rather find 1 out of 100 sliders on a surface / tablet of some kind than an analog board but that's me. I've been in front of a couple of monitor desks that were intimidating to say the least...
As a computer guy I think about the length of time the analog interface has been around and basically it's about the same. I expect HUGE changes in the User Interface for digital desks in the coming years. I could see a tap window that would let you input a channel number for instance and jump for channel 1 to 63 without scrolling, or maybe a page left/ right function that sends you 12 channels either way so a few taps and you're in the neighborhood... Off the top of my head...
As a computer guy I think about the length of time the analog interface has been around and basically it's about the same. I expect HUGE changes in the User Interface for digital desks in the coming years. I could see a tap window that would let you input a channel number for instance and jump for channel 1 to 63 without scrolling, or maybe a page left/ right function that sends you 12 channels either way so a few taps and you're in the neighborhood... Off the top of my head...
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hell, the whole idea of a "board" with a bunch of identical "channels" is itself a leftover thing from physical analog mixers! why should we stick to that?
there's the line 6 stagescape mixer idea with the little picture of the band arranged on the stage that you interface with; maybe that's the direction it's gonna go in, where you (i dunno) grab a band member's "icon" ("avatar"?) on the simulated stage and slide it up and down for volume changes, left or right for panning, pinch or spread or double-tap or whatever to mess with EQ, etc.
Thunderbolt supports firewire 800... I get that you need more stuff - a computer to use the RM-32. Another side of that is that frankly it is a more expensive solution but likely a more capable one... The CPU in the stage box isn't having to record afterall.. I could see burying a Mac Mini in the rack and virtual screening to it...
I'm with Walter on the idea that the "mixing board" paradigm is probably going to die off, or at least be minimized, in the semi-near future. It's the last holdover from the era of the full console, but it's probably going to take a change in generation of users before there is acceptance of its death. Is there something better? I don't know, but it should be fun to see what people come up with.
I have always found Windows to get the job done at a cheaper price point than Apple.
Unfortunately the only tenable Windows solution I could think of would be to get a Windows workstation with whatever hard drives and CPU, add a PCIe firewire card, rehouse the thing in a rackmountable case, and use a touchscreen HDMI monitor to drive it. Granted, that could be as powerful as one wished and the touchscreen would have no size limits, and be better bang-for-the-hardware-buck than Apple, and the DAW is right there with the (virtual) mixing board, but still cost a lot more than the Mackie which simply needs a USB hard drive.
I guess with the Mackie you'd still need a 2nd PC if you wanted any horsepower in the DAW for editing and mastering after the show, but at least you wouldn't have to lug it along to the gig.
I dunno. If everybody else can do capture over USB, why can't Presonus?
Having used ProTools on windows for years, frankly I can't imagine why anyone would subject themselves to serious work in a window based DAW. Lord but it was a fight. Upgrade this, patch that... Oh wait, not your video card, we need ya to get this other video card.... Seriously, as far as my experience goes, life with a bottom feeder macbook as my DAW has been tons easier...
For my money, a Mac based Studio live setup is way more reliable/stable, sounds fantastic and wasn't terribly expensive. Maybe Presonus sticks with Firewire in the recording signal path for the lack of latency ? Maybe stability ?
Yes a I hear all the whining about how apple is proprietary and expensive. You can do wonders with a Mac Mini bottom feeder. It's also stable and reliable to a degree that I haven't ever experienced with Dell, HP, Compaq, etc... In my less than humble
opinion... Failure is expensive and I see a lot more of it with windows.
My day gig is being a data analyst and programmer in a windows environment for high tech aeronautics company with .. So it isn't like I don't use windows like all the time... I wouldn't want a Mac for this work any more than I'd want a PC as a DAW...
For my money, a Mac based Studio live setup is way more reliable/stable, sounds fantastic and wasn't terribly expensive. Maybe Presonus sticks with Firewire in the recording signal path for the lack of latency ? Maybe stability ?
Yes a I hear all the whining about how apple is proprietary and expensive. You can do wonders with a Mac Mini bottom feeder. It's also stable and reliable to a degree that I haven't ever experienced with Dell, HP, Compaq, etc... In my less than humble
opinion... Failure is expensive and I see a lot more of it with windows. My day gig is being a data analyst and programmer in a windows environment for high tech aeronautics company with .. So it isn't like I don't use windows like all the time... I wouldn't want a Mac for this work any more than I'd want a PC as a DAW...
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I'm not a Windows fan myself, just a cheapskate 
. I grew up on Amiga and Linux and make my living as a UNIX admin. The only thing I don't do on Linux is DAW, because Studio One is so great. I have never tried a Mac, maybe it's time...
And then a quick Google reveals they don't have touch screen (sigh).
I will probably keep using my Audiobox 1818VSL & Digimax D8 with Studio One until something light-years ahead comes out. For now it's doing almost everything the new rackmount mixers are doing including the wireless iPad control.
. I grew up on Amiga and Linux and make my living as a UNIX admin. The only thing I don't do on Linux is DAW, because Studio One is so great. I have never tried a Mac, maybe it's time...And then a quick Google reveals they don't have touch screen (sigh).
I will probably keep using my Audiobox 1818VSL & Digimax D8 with Studio One until something light-years ahead comes out. For now it's doing almost everything the new rackmount mixers are doing including the wireless iPad control.
I'm not a Windows fan myself, just a cheapskate
And then a quick Google reveals they don't have touch screen (sigh).
I will probably keep using my Audiobox 1818VSL & Digimax D8 with Studio One until something light-years ahead comes out. For now it's doing almost everything the new rackmount mixers are doing including the wireless iPad control.
Being a heavy Mac user, it's astounding to me that Apple hasn't introduced a touch-screen display to their computer line-up, considering how well the iPad works. A touch-screen iMac would positively be the schizzle.
How about 16 GB in the Ipad & Iphone in 2015? Seriously Apple?
Doesn't shock me at all!
No kidding! I'd feel a lot better about live mixing if I had a larger tablet than the iPad to mix on, and the ability to have multiple view layouts going. 15" diagonal minimum would do the trick...22" even better! Though I slog through iPad mixing with the DL1608, I can't say that I enjoy it...at ALL! This alone is forcing me to consider other options.
It's not fun and I resented the boss selling the remote thing to clients who didn't want a mixing console out front at their hoity-toity affair (especially with 48 channels of an orchestra on a CL5 or an M7CL). But I guess I kinda got used to it.
Be on the look-out for a 12" iPad on the way. My Apple store buddies say it's fairly certain that one in on the way. And they were right about the iphone 6+, so here's hoping...
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