JohnRoberts said:
I will second and third the advice you already got to look at similar existing designs. You can mix and match different amounts of channels, buses, EQs, etc, but first you must master how to manage the digital control of the sundry analog paths.
Break down the consoles into the short list of tasks or functions you must accomplish, then check them off.
I don't see why people
panick in front of big project like these. John just gave the best advice here. Brake down the whole in its pieces and then work on these chunks one at a time, all of a sudden, the project becomes less daunting.
My sister is Crossing Canada from Vancouver to Montreal by bicycle!!. She is no competition cyclist and she is 51! She will succeed one pedal push at a time!! (5200km!!!)
Here is an inspiration heh!?
Look at a full featured big dog console, and figure out how you will deal with every pot and switch... perhaps you don't need to automate everything? You have received some pretty discouraging advice, but in every case it is coming from personal experience of how hard this stuff was for us to do, not some blind criticism of your capability. Proceed with caution. IMO you need to do a lot of homework before starting to worry about metal and PCBs.
good luck
JR
Here I will disagree slightly with JR and yes, I think you need to automate everything. But the one thing you don't need though is one control per function on the desk itself. Take a look at the way Yamaha O2R and Tascam DM4800.... You may not like these products but the way they use the board real estate and the ergonomics of it is a good starting point.
I think in some ways Euphonix had the right idea but a somewhat bad implementation. I like the idea of a remote rack with all the audio and a super duper control surface. Here are a few questions....
When is the last time you tweeked 2 or 3 equaliser
at the same time ? or DYNs at the same time?
Ha Yess.... that is what I thought....
So instead of having 10K boutons all crammed in as few square inches as possible and you need the help of Tinkerbelle to move a parameter, just make one bigish control panel for the EQ, the aux sends matrix, the bus assigns, DYNs etc...
Use nice sized knobs and switches and leave a comfortable space between each control. Easier to operate and identify.
We will need to design a fast approach to select onto which channel we want to work without going trough sub-menus and such.
Here is a few thoughts and ideas in no particular order about my various experiences with all kind of consoles and controllers....
The big boys are.... too big! Yes, it is VERY impressive but these monsters creates their own set of acoustical and ergonomic problems. A console 12 feet long and 2 tonnes will actually play funnies with the acoustics of the room it sits in. Also, you are constantly moving from the sweet spot to tweek things.
And the knobs get so crammed that it becomes quite hard to identify quickly and then operate a control without moving the adjacent ones.
The way Yam and Tascam do it on their digital mixers is a very efficient way of adjusting everything. One "super" channel with all the buttons, encoders and leds, you never move from the sweet spot for mixing and you still have and almost instant access to everything.
By the way, having only one super channel will also tremendously reduce the amount of work the microprocessors and the communication bus load will have to catter with. I2C is quite sufficient for this.
Touch screens are nice, but they are no good in this environment for control and actual interaction. They are formidable on the other side at replacing a mouse provided that they are placed within reach.
Mimicking faders on touch screen does not work, I tried!
I use a Mackie universal remote and it is quite good but there are a few things I would do different.
One of my beef is that 8 faders is not enough, 12 is the ideal in my opinion, more is unnecessary.
I wish I was called in when they designed it!!
The remote pres directly in the studio is indeed the way to go, and then the mixer is an all line mixer.
I use a track ball on the mixer, mouse are a hassle, but many do not like them (trackballs).
You will need 2 or 3, 19 inches monitors.
I use 2 PCs, one to run the daw (2 screens) and the other to run the remote, also 2 screens including one touch screen.
Communication is simply done with ethernet cable!
When I work, I do not like going from the Mackie remote, to the mouse, to the computer keyboard etc... Every command should be available just from the control surface.
#1 digitally controlled analog mic preamps are already solved for you with off the shelf IC solutions.
#2 Select among the sundry approaches for digitally controlled analog EQ and pick one. The canned solutions here are too low fidelity for console use, so you will need to roll something more sophisticated.
#3 fader and pan. Lots of published art on this.. pick one.
#4 bus assignment (bus itself can be conventional technology)
#5 human control interface (rotary encoders, motorized pots, touch strips, whatever).
Busses should all be balanced and low impedance, not just single ended, with the usual 10K resistor to a inverting summing amp. Too much crap picked along the way. Unbalanced and medium impedance is fine within a short path (say less than 4-5 feet) but passed that point there is too much problems. So every bus has to be lo-z and balanced.
The human interface will be a challenge, but a lot can be done just by building a mock-up and actually visualizing using the thing. Go ahead, make a make-believe "session" with it, see how it works, move things around and see how you like it.
By the way, if you never complete the project, we will all end up benefiting here of well designed module, tricks, lessons etc...
So instead of discouraging Gettestudio, I for one will pitch in as much as I can as I know there is something good and nice that will emerge and be useful for me.
Luc
