Dedicated parameter sections

[Theory?]

So we've been slaving over many pots of coffee trying to work out the design for our final MIDIbox console.

The final product will essentially serve as a master console for our entire studio.  We plan to integrate a rack unit inside the chasis to host our analog I/O (and potentially our computers if we move to XServes down the road  ::))

Either way.  Our initial plan involved putting enough knobs on each channel to have a dedicated EQ per channel.  However, it was brought to my attention (the obvious point) that when we switch the banks for the faders, the EQ banks won't change, and things might get confusing.

So after searching for some ideas, I came across some examples of a few dedicated encoder sets located in the console's master section which would allow us to have full control over the EQ, Dynamics, and AUX controls per channel without the need to have a million knobs.

Essentially, we need to figure out a way that when a channel is selected, the dedicated knob sets would become active for that channel.

I.e. we select a channel (channel 1 for example) and the encoder sets in the master section switch their assignments to control their dedicated parameter controls for that channel.

We'd like to have 3 sections: 4 band EQ (freq, gain, and Q per band), 6 aux send/return (and potentially and extra "assign" encoder which will scroll through the available Aux's and assign one to the aux send), and a dynamics section (Threshold, ratio, knee, attack, release, makeup gain)

We have other functions we intend to integrate into the final product, but for now we're attempting to work out the logistics of this feature.

Anyone know any ways to accomplish this?

[Jidis]

Hi,

The host application may be able to help you on the shared controls thing, depending on what you're using. I run Nuendo here, and I know the generic remote in the Steinberg apps allows you to assign an incoming event to an item on the "selected" channel, so if you had all your faders mapped directly to the individual channels, you could still have a bank of knobs etc., linked to an EQ or the send controls on whatever channel was selected. For plugs of course, the plug needs to be in the exact same insert point within each channel, so you'd probably need to lay out a few templates and spend some time writing and saving maps. The plug parameters are just seen as a sequential list of items which can be linked to, so if something else ends up in that slot location, your controls will go to it instead.

I'm not sure if there's any way to have the selection jump to incoming fader activity etc., but you could probably assign additional events (and switches) to change the channel selection from the master section.

The Steinberg G.R. seems to do a good job of dumping out the selected channel's current settings as the selection changes, so if you were running LED's (or LED rings) in your shared master controls section, they'd change accordingly, as the channels were changed. :)

My guess is that most of the big audio sequencer apps will have similar features, but I'm pretty dedicated to Nuendo these days, so I haven't looked around much. I do have one gripe with the way Nuendo deals with the outgoing messages. It can send the corresponding signals out with their status changes in the program, but only if the changes are made from within the app. I built a MB clone for that new UAD Neve 1073, only to discover that the lights don't work when I hit the buttons on it. Same holds true for mutes/solo's, or anything else you'd be expecting status lights for. Per suggestions here, I'll probably be looking into ways of getting the outgoing messages bounced back into the controller from it's own output (like a MIDI thru), but I'm not looking forward to it. I was recently told that Ableton Live and FruityLoops Studio have better remote implementation, but it may have been regarding the way that you actually assign remote signals to the mapped items (another shortcoming of the Steinberg apps).

Good luck and hope that helps,

George

[Theory?]

Thanks for the advice.

We got the idea from a few different controllers that do similar things.

One is the Digidesign ICON which has dedicated controls per channel but uses a flip switch to send those controls to a larger master control section to offer more control.

The other one is this new thing I found by a company called Mixed Logic

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/M24/

It's essentially just 3 LC's in a big box, but over there on the side it has a dedicated EQ section which, if I understand it correctly, applies itself to the selected channels EQ.

I understand that with dynamics I would probably need to setup a template if I wanted to avoid doing some arduous coding.  I was just curious about the execution.