8 Apr
2014
8 Apr
'14
10:50 a.m.
On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 12:55:56AM +0300, Paul Davis wrote:
This doesn't fit with what I've seen in live
mixing situations. I
understand the importance of the ergonomics, but I would suggest that if
you were using the best designed mixer and it was altered in one small way,
my question above would remain rhetorically on target.
modification would be to (a) remove all value indicators from the mixer
(b) replace all the knobs with "endless v-pots".
It would no longer be 'the best designed mixer'.
You need to see values when setting things up. With a bit
of experience you know e.g. what sort of EQ will be needed
for a particular channel, and being able to prepare such
things or set them very quickly without too much trial and
error makes all the difference. If you need half the sound-
check or rehearsal time to do that there's a problem.
Once the show is running you typically only make small
changes. What is important then is being able to find all
controls quicly without having to search for them, and
preferably without having to take your eyes from the stage
for longer than a split second. Which is where the ergonomics
come in. Of course it's reassuring to be able to see all
settings. But you don't need to see all of them all the
time, what matters is how and how quickly you get acces
to them.
In addition, live sound and the editing+mixing
workflow are two different
things, related by a common set of concepts and tools. This is easily
demonstrated by the existence of consoles built specifically for live
sound. Certainly one could make a studio console work, but the workflow is
sufficiently differentiated that people have pressed for changes to make
things easier.
That is very clear today, when a DAW is used not just to record
and mix (by a sound engineer) but to actually 'compose' a piece
(by a musician), and the whole workflow is essentially based on
random acess on the time axis.
In the 'tape' days there was much less difference between 'live'
and 'studio' work. The mixers we used (Neve, Harrison, SSL) where
all 'studio' ones, and they were perfectly suited to this kind
of work. Consoles like Digico are different because they are
build for PA which has its own requirements. But I wouldn't want
to use those to mix a live broadcast.
...
To be honest, I think that if I were a blind user and needed to edit, I
would probably be looking at tools that used the same kind of workflow as
RTCmix or something similar. A fully text-based representation of the
operations/mix that can be easily manipulated without any visual
presentation. RTCmix has the downside that (if I recall correctly) it can
only play back the entire mix, but I would have thought that this sort of
thing would be a better starting point for a "music editor for blind users"
than Ardour.
It will all depend on the type of editing that is required.
Blind users could easily edit tape, and also use the early
generation of hard disk recorders before these developed
into full-featured DAWs. These couldn't do the sort of thing
a DAW can do today, but for some types of work they were
actually better.
Ciaom,
--
FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)