Well yeah, the FPGA fabric is finite.
For stability/reliability, speed of workflow, audio quality and coherency reasons, the way all our digital consoles work is that all the processing is there ready to be used at all times and bypassed (with compensation) if not in use.
We have no plans to assign processing on an ad hoc basis, this has been done by others and the feedback is that most engineers hate it. I guess because at the point they want to do one more thing, they find they’ve run out. Or you can get into situations where the system is more stressed part way through a show and suddenly falls over.
So although I think everyone would agree it would be great to have this option, it’s never going to happen on the CQ.
It’s not a bad idea, which is exactly why you’ll find it on the high end DiGiCo’s. As things progress and everything becomes more powerful, we’ll no doubt see it on products like the CQ at some point.
Just not yet!
Thanks,
Keith.