Gear that you wish existed

[travelin travis]

I was just having a laugh over an up/down pan control in another thread. It got me wondering about gear that people wish existed. I'll go first.

A glove and tracking surface for virtually reaching into a pc for mixing. You put on the glove and lay your hand on the tracking surface. The surface tracks your hand/finger movement. When your fingers are over a knob/slider/button, your fingers are snapped to the control. When you turn your fingers, like turning a knob, the control responds like your turning a knob. Spread your fingers apart over some faders and your fingers are snapped to the faders. If you reach out of the area that is on screen, like on a big software mixer, the screen pans to follow your hand movement.............retarded you say?

What piece of gear do you wish existed? A swiss army mic?

[noisedude]

Strangely I have a colleague who is building one of those at this exact point in time. He's writing proprietary code in PureData's commercial sibling software, and has wired a load of sensors into a glove which now triggers MIDI instructions in the computer. It's pretty hard going for an enthusiastic amateur, but it CAN be done!

[travelin travis]

Originally Posted by noisedude

Strangely I have a colleague who is building one of those at this exact point in time. He's writing proprietary code in PureData's commercial sibling software, and has wired a load of sensors into a glove which now triggers MIDI instructions in the computer. It's pretty hard going for an enthusiastic amateur, but it CAN be done!

Holy sh#$. Ok people. See what happens when you wish for things.

[LemonTree]

I wish I had tits

[fraserhutch]

An easy button.

[travelin travis]

How bout a pair of tits that made everything easy when you grab hold and jiggle them?

Come on babies..........make it easy for daddy.

[bigwillz24]

A control surface....

But the faders would be blue laser lights under glass that had all the necessary markings on it. When you touch it the light would move with your finger up and down. and you would also be able to tap and the "light fader" would jump to level you tapped. Some chrome pan knobs with yellow LEDs surrounding them. Same for EQ. Oh and Mute, Solo transulent buttons on each channel. Firewire MIDI Cable and so on...

yeah that would look cool and be the bomb...

[travelin travis]

you Hip-Hoppers and your bling-bling

cool idea man.

[travelin travis]

How about a time tracking feature in software so that you could look back and see how much time you spent tracking, mixing, editing, etc.

[bigwillz24]

I think I'm going to print a sign in my next studio that says...

"I'm trying to tell you it sounds like shit in the nicest way possible..."

yeah that would be a cool sign...

[$a1Ty]

or you could have "its not my fault you suck"

[bigwillz24]

Or...

"Go ahead and fuck off it's your dime..."

[lpdeluxe]

How about a D-Verb, for that song you mixed to the singer's taste, and now sounds like it's under water? Or a D-Compessor to attach to the radio to return some dynamics to music?

[travelin travis]

Both sound very handy, especially the D-compressor.

[reshp1]

Not quite what you wished for but kinda in the ballpark
http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

[altitude909]

Originally Posted by bigwillz24

A control surface....

But the faders would be blue laser lights under glass that had all the necessary markings on it. When you touch it the light would move with your finger up and down. and you would also be able to tap and the "light fader" would jump to level you tapped. Some chrome pan knobs with yellow LEDs surrounding them. Same for EQ. Oh and Mute, Solo transulent buttons on each channel. Firewire MIDI Cable and so on...

yeah that would look cool and be the bomb...

Something like a Lemur?

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAM.../PR/Lemur.html

[wx3]

I wish there was some sort of device that would automatically record me whenever I start playing air drums to one of my mixes.

[reshp1]

Originally Posted by altitude909

Something like a Lemur?

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAM.../PR/Lemur.html

Na Na Na Na Na Na I posted it first!!!

Just kidding

As far as wishlist, off the top of my head, I'd wish for acoustic treatment material that could be electronically programmed to absorb sound of specified frequencies and intensities, or better yet a system that could be user controllable to emulate different acoustic spaces.

[scrubs]

Originally Posted by reshp1

As far as wishlist, off the top of my head, I'd wish for acoustic treatment material that could be electronically programmed to absorb sound of specified frequencies and intensities, or better yet a system that could be user controllable to emulate different acoustic spaces.

These guys are working on the tunable absorption.

[travelin travis]

that control surface looks pretty cool.........the touch screen even has some "bling" for bigwillz24 taste. the e-absorber thing sounds cool but I'm trying to figure out how in the hell it works. it's a speaker and software? does it create nulls with comb-filtering?

[COOLCAT]

a good Direct In electric guitar distortion box.

[travelin travis]

Drums in which the heads can be evenly tuned by turning one lug on each drum.

[mshilarious]

A lot of ergonomic improvement could be realized with better use of tools that already exist. The combination of a keyboard and a mouse wheel can be fairly potent. There are 12 function keys; assign those to a group of twelve channels. Then use the combination of ctrl, shift, and alt along with the function key(s) for that channel to control parameters on that channel, along with the mouse wheel (or keyboard-mounted trackball) to change the value. My keyboard has shuttle controls built-in, some keyboards have a knob that is intended as a volume control but should be assignable to anything.

If anyone remembers the old days of word processing where everybody had the function key cheat sheet taped on their keyboards, you know what I mean. It was a steep learning curve, but it was possible to work much faster than in a mouse-driven point and click environment.

Of course software is changing away from the mixer model as it is. I'd much rather set a volume envelope for a track than set fader automation.

On the minus side, plug controls are completely non standardized and often not controllable with hotkeys. And while I love the UAD plugs emulation of vintage analog gear, I'm less enamored with the analog-style interface and the ridiculous amount of screen real estate they demand. UA should make optional skins that are less frilly, as should everybody else.

[reshp1]

Originally Posted by mshilarious

On the minus side, plug controls are completely non standardized and often not controllable with hotkeys. And while I love the UAD plugs emulation of vintage analog gear, I'm less enamored with the analog-style interface and the ridiculous amount of screen real estate they demand. UA should make optional skins that are less frilly, as should everybody else.

Completely agree, I've never liked virtual knobs. I can't ever get them to do what I want, hell they turn the completely opposite direction than I want sometimes.

[travelin travis]

I wish someone would put out a multi-input audio > midi box for e-drums. Just a simple converter box for use with programs like BFD, DFHS, Reason, etc. I know a couple of guys out there have already designed a box like this for DIY builders but there is'nt one commercially available. It seems like this would be a cheap little box to build, especially in mass quantities.