Nothing's in the past it always seems to come again.

TL;dr Thoughts from 17 years ago at the beginning of the digital console migration.

After enjoying a nice summer break from posting and recovering from now geriatic maladies I was looking through several hard drives to see what I wanted to ship over to Amazon Glacier for cold storage. I ran across a post from Halloween 2006 from the previous incarnation of the blog. At that point the migration to digital from analog consoles was in full swing but still in early days. The feature set requirements from almost 17 years ago are considered pedestrian right now. At the time it was ground breaking.

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Frankensurface

31 Oct 2006

The sound reinforcement console biz has finally lumbered into the digital age full bore. With sales of the PM5D at over 1000 units, entries by Digidesign, Loud/Mackie/EAW, Allen and Heath and the established players the large scale pioneer PM1D and Digico line there is now a fairly wide choice in every level of the market, though some have yet to ship. Undoubtedly there will be more. I'd hate to be a console product dev guy right now that was in the middle of a large frame analog design without having at least a strategy for dealing with the digital market. 

As us graybeards retire, die off or lose our gigs to younger, better, cheaper mixers the change over from analog console to surface will start accelerating compared to the last couple of years. Some of the apprehension was and still is well justified. Audio quality, reliability (and redundancy) and suitability to purpose are indeed primary factors not only for surfaces but for traditional consoles. Some of my peers though, guys I respect and have worked with for years are starting to use some pretty lame excuses when it comes to implementing surfaces. I'm all for letting people chose the toolset, but let's make sure we're basing our choices on facts and with an open mind. A result of this apprehension by some have led to the current crop of surfaces being designed with an eye toward the past largely to placate those that have latched onto the yesteryear of gear and aren't willing or capable of either changing or adapting to different work habits. 

Over the last week or so I started thinking about how often I was using surfaces these days compared to traditional consoles. For the last year and a half or so, about half of the touring dates I've done where we have carried production or had the ability to fully spec down the piece I've been able to use a surface. I would have used them more except that the current market makes an XL4 or H3k less expensive to rent than a PM1D or D5 and the bean counters have nixed the idea. There have also been a couple of availability issues where we wanted to rent them, they just weren't in those markets. On perhaps a quarter of the pick up dates I've done I've been given a digital option. To be fair, many of those gigs have been with B and C level regionals that haven't been willing or able to make the investment in new technology primarily because the margins and client base won't allow for it.

While there are a bunch of usable offerings in the surface market, no one has yet hit a true homerun, the be all and end all of surfaces. It will probably never happen, but if I could pick and choose what I think are the best features from surfaces either shipping or recently announced. Obviously, you couldn't just plug the parts together. Besides figuring out how to integrate it and hit the price point is what you guys with those high dollar, cushy manufacturer gigs are supposed to do. Pretty much all of my wish list is available on one or more surfaces, though there isn't one with all these features.

First and foremost is audio quality. Using what I like to call the XL4 Standard I'd give the nod to the Digico D5 as it sounds most to me like an XL4. It's got warmth and depth, though not quite the equalizers of the XL4. That's one area where all the surface dudes need to work. The equalizers. They're good, but they could be better. In terms of failover, I'd take the hot spare PM1D engine topology and pair that with the D5 mirror/failover topology and for good measure implement the faders and mutes active on a dead surface concept from the Digidesign Venue. Dual, autosensing PSUs on every piece of gear, modular so I could hot swap what it was running or easily replace toasted supplies. Every function of the surface, controllable from a PC either mirroring the mode of the surface, or with the ability to use the PC control separate so the entire state of the surface interface is not changed when using the PC, only the particular parameters changed. I'd also want a granular access scheme where I could lock different parameters and set various levels of users. I'd also like two independent cueing facilities with the ability to route any or all inputs or outputs to either both, or only a single cue ouput.

In terms of interface, I'm a layer and bank guy. I don't need to see all 60 or so handles, just 16 to 24 inputs at a time with a master section flexible enough for me to route outputs and control groups of inputs. I don't even need to see an input channel unless I need to manipulate it and for me it's easier to do that in layers and banks and three banks of eight layers works well for me. Layers are one of the things some of the newer users don't like. It's like when Neo makes his first jump. At first not being able to see all of the inputs will seem strange, but as you get used to it you'll find that it's a mental security blanket and little else. When I do need to manipulate the controls, something like the big knob that the Loud boys came up with would be awesome. A soft encoder that mimics the function of the feature it currently represents is an excellent idea. So much so that every multifunction encoder on the surface should behave in that fashion. And let's get the taper on the encoders to follow their analog counterparts. If the rotation of a control is 270 degrees for full effect, the encoder shouldn't have to be turned three or four full revolutions to match that. I'm a big fan of touchscreens. I think the visual representation of the function or device with a bank of encoders below or beside the screen works well. Highlighting the desired control and manipulating it with the "big knob" is also required. It needs to have completely flexible and independent I/O. It can come up as 1-48 as in the snake, or soft patched to whatever you want, on a per scene basis.

Speaking of scenes, the scene/preset scheme needs to have the flexibility to load just a single band input list for a festival, to completely reflash the surface or clear everything back to a pre determined starting point. I need to be able to lock it so visiting band guy doesn't blitz my festival settings while trying to load his band settings. I need granularity in my library configs, but not to the point of offering settings based on the instrument. I'm being paid a great deal of money to equalize the bass drum or compress the vocal. If I can't dial up basic settings of my own, I have no business doing what I do. I need to store them, not get training wheels on using them.

In due time I think we'll start seeing many of these in the same surface, though it's going to take some time for the manufacturers and more resistant users to get on board.

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