Re: Mixer units
Re: Mixer units
- Subject: Re: Mixer units
- From: Bob Camp <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 20:35:02 -0500
Hi,
Great !!!! I don't think I'll make WWDC but it is an incentive.
I still think that the analog mixer is reasonable as an analogy. As you
point out it is not a reasonable definition of a specific piece of
code. It is however something that we are all familiar with.
Studios seem to gather up a massive collection of odd little boxes over
time. Compressors, limiters, sample players, graphic equalizers, noise
gates, patch bays, amps, pre amps, and various distortion boxes (vital
to the well being of guitar players). It is not unusual to see rack
after rack full of this stuff all wired up in some odd fashion.
In the analog world a number of discrete items make up a studio. One
of these items is a mixer. The computer implements (or at least can
implement) the entire studio. The question is how easy is it to do so.
A reasonable way to check out your ability to do so would be to see how
close you can come to duplicating each item in the analog studio with
code.
As with any analogy you can carry this one to far. An analog mixer by
it's very nature starts off with a definition of how many channels and
how many busses. I do not see that as the fundamental unit of structure
to a software mixer. The analog mixer always does pretty much the same
thing on each channel. About the only exception is ones that have a
limited number of microphone inputs. Again not a reasonable thing to
duplicate in an software mixer. An analog mixer lines everything up in
time without any thought at all. The software needs to take a bit more
care.
A one to one correspondence between each chunk of code and each box
would be counterproductive. It puts a set of definite boundaries in
places that they probably do not make sense. It probably also does not
break down each box into small enough pieces. I might suggest though
that a series of example programs making up a series of common boxes
(one of them a multi bus mixer) would make a great WWDC presentation
......\
One of the most basic ways to check out a set of gear is to plug it all
together. Any studio I have ever been involved with came up with a
number of surprises the first (and usually well past that) time it was
fired up and listened to it. It's amazing the stuff you can hear almost
immediately. I only have about 35 years in at this code stuff but it
seems to also give a surprise from time to time .... The structured
example stuff might also be a reasonable way to check things out.
Enjoy!
Bob Camp
On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 03:22 PM, Bill Stewart wrote:
Firstly
We have heard you loud and clear about the shortcomings of the AUs in
the Mixer space and are planning on addressing this... I'd recommend
for those that want to know more about our upcoming "features" to
attend WWDC this year:)
Secondly - I completely understand the concept of what a hardware
mixer is - but you should bare in mind that a hw mixer is a rather
complex collection of components... So the analogy in Software is that
a "Mixer" is a collection of components... From the user's point of
view if I'm using a SW emulation of a Mixer (like Logic, Cubase,
etc...) we've become accustomed to seeing not only these features that
are seen in hardware mixers, but also the ability to load thousands of
plugins (inserts)... But remember, these AREN'T just one piece of code
(or even from one vendor - or EVEN from vendors that even know about
each other!!!)
So writing software, you are in the business of putting components
together to present complex functionality... So, what does this mean
for a Mixer Unit? It means that (with some pieces that we missed
previously that we'll talk about at WWDC) you are NOT going to get a
Mixer Unit that just does all these things with half a dozen function
calls.... But what it does mean is that the primary piece that *IS*
missing - well we'll address that!
Bill
On Tuesday, March 11, 2003, at 06:59 PM, Robert Grant wrote:
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your input. Makes a lot of sense and I just checked the
specs of an Analog mixer I was fantasizing about before I saw
"Reason" :-) The Soundcraft Spirit M-Series is a well regarded
contemporary mixer with mono and stereo inputs. The Mono inputs
feature a Pan control and the stereo inputs feature a Balance
control. Sounds perfect to me. Of course the effects sends and
returns would be nice too. :-)
http://www.soundcraft.com/products/spirit_mseries_home.htm
Can anyone provide an example mixer AU project? Please.....
Robert.
On Tuesday, March 11, 2003, at 09:27 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi,
A lot of this comes down to having a model that people are
comfortable with. The longer it takes to figure out the presentation
the worse the user experience. Frustration is not a good thing.
When I sit down with a good old analog mixer I expect to have:
1) Pan pots - both for stereo and mono sources
2) Trim pots on each input
3) Mute and solo switches
4) Basic tone adjust
5) Aux sends and returns
If that stuff isn't there on my shiny new mixer I'm going to wonder
what I spent my money on.
I think the same thing applies to the software equivalent of the
box. A quick look at any number of analog boxes will give you a
feature set that they pretty much all have. Each feature cost them
something to put in there. None of them came for free. They put them
in there because that's what people needed and used. When they left
them out people complained or bought another brand.
The software "toolkit" probably will have the same sort of market
that the analog mixer did. It's a building block that more or less
does the same thing. You use it to as part of a setup. In the end
they should look a lot alike.
Enjoy!
Bob Camp
On Tuesday, March 11, 2003, at 08:23 PM, Robert Grant wrote:
My problem is that a hosting app should provide a nice place for
mixing the output. If the mixer can't pan or balance stereo sources
then we should have a way of getting mono output from every music
device. I can't imagine attempting to do a mix by leaping to 20
different stereo devices and fiddling with each of their individual
pan controls on 20 different custom GUIs. Does that sound practical
to anyone else? As an example many Reason users take the individual
outs from the ReDrum and route them into the ReMix even though the
redrum has a stereo output and pan controls for each drum sound
because the ReMix gives them better and more consistent control.
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