11 Aug
2010
11 Aug
'10
5:22 a.m.
On August 10, 2010 10:08:51 am you wrote:
On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:14 AM,
<fons(a)kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> - The meters are there to show levels at the AD/DA converters,
> i.e. to allow you to check you are using those in a sensible
> way. They happen to be on the same window as the mixer, which
> can be useful as they suggest to the user which signal is
> being controlled by a fader.
But you ultimately turn to the analog volume
tab in order to
affect what's arriving at the meters and the faders.
If we put a pre/post fader button on each digital mixer strip,
then in post mode the user would have to understand that
what is shown on the meter is affected by the sum of the
digital mixer slider level and some corresponding analog slider level.
That is what is ultimately feeding the mixer after the fader, isn't it?
So this information would be useful to show, wouldn't it?
It is readily 'available', am I correct?:
post-fader meter value = pre-fader meter dB value + slider dB value
However I realised yesterday that each digital mixer strip is STEREO.
That means for post-fader metering, we would need to split the current
single meter into two meters - left and right.
If we couple this with MONO analog volume meters, and each of
THEM with pre/post buttons, AND to combat clutter we split
the DAC/ADC tab into two (he ducks, expecting projectiles)
or use Niels' suggestions below ...
OK, I know there's issues, I must first understand how the routing
affects all of this. It's only ideas for now.
It just seems like something is missing, like it really could use
some kind of extra metering + options, you know?
> But otherwise they are not part
> of the mixer, and a better place for them would be with the
> HW gain controls.
The meters show the levels at the A/D&D/A's but also at other things
that don't necessarily end up being routed to the analog I/O.
See the "Peak" labels on
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/envy24mixer-architecture.png ...
That's:
* 10 channels of hardware peak-levels of inputs (including an SPDIF pair).
* 10 channels of hardware peak-level outputs (including an SPDIF pair).
* 2 channels for the digital mixer output.
So in reality (assuming reality==documentation==
http://alsa.cybermirror.org/manuals/icensemble/envy24.pdf )
the peak meters are part of the mixer. However, the peak meter
information is most useful in the "Analog Volume" panel, but that
would miss four-six channels + spdif-pair of outputs. As a stopgap, I
put the dBFS value alongside each channel, since adding the full
meters to this panel was a much larger and more radical change than my
initial patches.
A better design overall, IMHO would be to combine all 20 input and
output faders feeding the digital-summer into a single panel. Instead
of two faders per channel, just one fader and a panpot, which would
normally be swung hard-left or hard-right, but should also have a
detent or page-position at center mix. The panpot would also indicate
inactive and set at center-mix when "L/R Gang" is selected. Each
channel would have the numeric dbFS input value displayed as a
"button", which when selected, expands a meter that fills the column
vertically; and deselected, it goes back to being a text display of
the peak levels. That mechanism of dynamically adding a meter per
channel could also be used in the "Analog Volumes" section to
optionally allow meter info to be displayed alongside each slider.
Another good idea. And Pinocchio said, "I'm a
real mixer, I'm a real mixer!".
Again, per-strip post-fader metering, I tells ya' !
Cheers. Tim.
- The post-fader signals in the mixer are not
available anywhere,
they just get summed to the bus.
They are "available" in that the output of the digital mixer is
metered and that meter is always displayed in envy24control. If you
want to see the resulting level of any particular channels'
attenuation, "solo" it (by manually muting the other incoming
channels) and observe the resulting levels under the "Digital Mixer"
meters. (Actually, a "Channel Solo" option-menu would be a useful
addition to the digital mixer GUI: "off", "solo left" "solo
right"
"solo center".
-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com