[linux-audio-dev] Re: Mixer controls

[Fred Gleason]

On Monday 07 November 2005 14:26, Dan Mills wrote:
> This might be a specific leftpondia thing, how does the semantics of a
> 'cue' bus differ from a 'pfl' bus as found on a live sound console?

A lot of it is in the little ergonomic details:  dedent position at fader 
bottom routes to cue, separate cue audio output, things like that.  The 
separate audio output is important so the mandatory crappy-quality Radio 
Shack amp can be used with a two inch speaker.  This actually serves a real 
purpose:  cruddy sounding audio is immediately recognized as being 'in cue', 
not part of the air mix. 


> Actually, I tend to feel that the broadcast specific stuff is more on the
> lines of removing most of the routing flexibility and eq, and adding some
> fader start logic (possibly tied into the mute automation)...

You're dead right about that.  The problem with using most production boards 
for radio control is that they have WWAAAYYYY too many controls.  Channel 
ON/OFF, a fader and some basic buss routing is all most control room boards 
need or want on for each input channel, and even then I always try automate 
and bury as much of the buss assignment stuff (e.g. mix-minus generation) as 
possible.  Per-input EQ is another notorious problem area -- there should be 
*none*, otherwise every source ends up sounding different!

All of this, of course, applies mainly to control room boards.  The production 
room is a different story, but there you usually have operators who have at 
least a clue about what all the little knobs do.  :)

Cheers!


|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Director of Broadcast Software Development  |
|                           |             Salem Radio Labs                |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of very, very long cat.  You pull    |
| his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you    |
| understand this?  And radio operates exactly the same way:  you send    |
| signals here, they receive them there.  The only difference is that     |
| there is no cat."                                                       |
|                                                                         |
|                  -- Albert Einstein, upon being asked to describe radio |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|