frederic
New member
There are several things I dislike about digital consoles of today.
1. No monitoring built into the input channels.
Those of us who have had the pleasure of touching Neve, SSL, Amek etc, might recall each input channel having two faders. In recording mode, the tape returns were connected to a seperate pan and fader (smaller in size) and the mic/line input was connected to EQ, compressor, buss select then pan and fader. In recording mode, there was a neat little "flip" switch that would reverse the tape return and the mic/line input so one could then apply compression/EQ to a tape return for final mixing, if they chose to.
2. Expandability.
The older consoles could be purchased in say, 12x12 configuration, with many "slots" available for input, monitor, or master cards to be installed later, to expand the board to 56x12, or 24x24, or whatever truly floated your boat. This was done on a backplane concept, much like a common PC with PCI slots. Expand to your liking and purpose.
3. Knobs and faders.
While I've adapted to the "digital pod" mentality, I do miss knobs, switches and faders terribly.
4. Automation.
Most mid to high end digital mixers have automation, so I can't really gripe about it, but ever try to edit the automation stuff? With a DAW is very easy, with a digital mixer, its not so easy. Back to my above gripe about the "Pod" concept.
My question to the group is this ...
What do you think about the concept of a large-format digital controler that looks, feels, and blinks like a larger format analog console, but really is just a control surface, controlling either a digital rack-mount box with DSP chips in it, or a similarly sized rack-mount box with lots of OP-AMPs instead?
Picture expandable mixing units with full repeatable automation, configured the way you need with a control surface thats a combination of the best mixers of the old days?
Does anyone think the market could bear a product like this? This clearly is not a home-studio product, but it would be my guess that there are quite a few people here who have touched the big toys at some point in their life.
What do you think?
1. No monitoring built into the input channels.
Those of us who have had the pleasure of touching Neve, SSL, Amek etc, might recall each input channel having two faders. In recording mode, the tape returns were connected to a seperate pan and fader (smaller in size) and the mic/line input was connected to EQ, compressor, buss select then pan and fader. In recording mode, there was a neat little "flip" switch that would reverse the tape return and the mic/line input so one could then apply compression/EQ to a tape return for final mixing, if they chose to.
2. Expandability.
The older consoles could be purchased in say, 12x12 configuration, with many "slots" available for input, monitor, or master cards to be installed later, to expand the board to 56x12, or 24x24, or whatever truly floated your boat. This was done on a backplane concept, much like a common PC with PCI slots. Expand to your liking and purpose.
3. Knobs and faders.
While I've adapted to the "digital pod" mentality, I do miss knobs, switches and faders terribly.
4. Automation.
Most mid to high end digital mixers have automation, so I can't really gripe about it, but ever try to edit the automation stuff? With a DAW is very easy, with a digital mixer, its not so easy. Back to my above gripe about the "Pod" concept.
My question to the group is this ...
What do you think about the concept of a large-format digital controler that looks, feels, and blinks like a larger format analog console, but really is just a control surface, controlling either a digital rack-mount box with DSP chips in it, or a similarly sized rack-mount box with lots of OP-AMPs instead?
Picture expandable mixing units with full repeatable automation, configured the way you need with a control surface thats a combination of the best mixers of the old days?
Does anyone think the market could bear a product like this? This clearly is not a home-studio product, but it would be my guess that there are quite a few people here who have touched the big toys at some point in their life.
What do you think?
