Let me walk through a couple scenarios, do some thinking through typing, and see if anyone has any tips.
Setup:
Sunday morning. Arrive early for sound check/practice with band & choir. Load the “base” scene. Very open scene. Sets the surface & system to a known start state.
Sound check/practice:
Recall “song 1” scene.
Adjust channel levels, IEM mixes, PEQ, FX, mutes.
Save scene.
Recall “song 2” scene.
Adjust channel levels, IEM mixes, PEQ, FX, mutes.
Save scene.
Recall “choir song” scene.
Adjust channel levels, monitor mix, PEQ, FX, mutes.
Save scene.
During practice I notice today’s drummer is really hammering the toms 1 channel. I want to adjust the preamp for all scenes - or at least all the scenes the drums are being played in. Jump into Scenes->Update. Turn on Auto Tracking. Select all of the song scenes. Adjust preamp level. Press “Apply” - this saves the change to the scenes.
But now I have a decision. Is preamp level something that should be set in each scene? Or is it something that should be set at a base level for all scenes? i.e. I don’t really want the preamp bouncing around from scene to scene. So should I set the preamp level in my “base” scene, and have it filtered out in my “song” scenes?
Also, the music pastor has a habit of talking during transitions between numbers, so I don’t want his mic to be messed with when transitioning from song to song. (I’ll manually ride his FX send, so I don’t want that level being set by the scenes, either.) So I exclude his mic from the scenes? I guess I just remember and manually adjust his level for each song.
“Sermon” scene.
This should mute everything but the pastor’s mic, but otherwise not change anything (e.g. choir PEQ). To some degree it doesn’t really matter what this scene does to the other channels because they are muted? But maybe adopt a principle of “change the least possible”?
Pastor’s mic EQ, etc. should be set in the “base” scene and not touched in the other scenes. (In case he decides to talk during one of the other scenes.)
Now I have a situation where I need to know which scene controls which aspects of which channels. So if the “sermon” scene is active, I tweak the pastor’s compressor, and I want that to be preserved in the “base” scene (which is not active), can I do that? Can I save ONLY the compressor of channel 10 to the “base” scene? (Quickly trying it on Director it looks like the current state of the whole surface is saved to “base”. Not what’s desired.) So I guess I need to remember what I changed on his channel, activate the “base” scene after service, and make the changes to his channel there.
Where my brain is going is that I think there are some settings that I want to be adjusted in my “base” scene, but that scene is not active. e.g. “song 1” is active. I adjust a singer’s PEQ and I want that adjustment to carry through the whole current cue list.
I think “Auto track” might work. I adjust a value in the active scene. Get it where I like it. Engage Auto Track for all the scenes where I want that value set. Then wiggle the knob to get the change registered. Apply. That sounds really awkward.
If you’ve read this far, thank you.