Hello,
I’m writing on behalf of a friend of mine. Great engineer, absolutely killer player, visually impaired.
He runs a pretty big studio out of his house, where >24 channels are often times a requirement, and he’s been using a StudioLive 32.4.2AI for the longest time. Mainly due to 1) firewire compatibility and at the time it was a great solution and 2) full control of the console over specific knobs and buttons. Now: he does not EQ, compress or gate channels, he mainly runs inputs into the console, mixes from the console and records the raw channels.
SQ is by far the best option for him today. And SQ7 has 32 faders, he can keep all the faders under his fingernails, we set all 12 mixes to be stereo and on layer 2 we can have channels 33-48 for returns from his DAW and he can send anything back as he desires while keeping 32 channels always set for record. We’ve even discussed making scenes to change the routing in block in case he wants to expand his current analogue stageboxes with an AB168 and allow him to run cat5 anywhere (the studio is already wired with CAT5 exactly for this reason.
Now here comes the feature request: there are a couple things he would need to be able to do.
- He needs to switch phantom power on and off. This is not possible as of now on the physical options on the softkeys, but it would be a great addition for a future firmware release. Buttons like phantom and pad would be super useful to allow accessibility to any visually impaired users.
- Alternatively, an accessible software would give him the solution. If MixPad were accessible for visually impaired users, he would be able to trigger phantom, pad and see the value of the gain on a specific channel from the software, as well as recalling and saving scenes.
If these things were accessible it would open up a whole new market for the world of SQ, where people who are visually impaired would be able to access most features of the console. Even just with phantom and pad as options for the softkeys this would allow them to use all of the EQ bands, any sends to mixes or FX and a quick gate, compression and hpf setting for any instrument.
If I can also ask for a last one, is it possible to set the desk to always load a specific scene upon startup? I haven’t managed to find the option but I feel like it might be in the users section of the desk, I’ll have a better look when I’m in front of an SQ.
Thank you so much for your time and for making this product, I feel like it’s just a few steps away from being the best it could ever be for everyone.
I still believe that everything (!) that can be switched (or rotated) on an SQ screen should also be programmable to Soft Keys (or Soft Rotaries).
All current limitations seem rather arbitrary, and your example demonstrates once again that this is questionable.
(To keep the corresponding selection menus clear, a kind of learning function for Soft Keys or Soft Rotaries might even be conceivable.)
The PAD function can already be programmed via the Soft Rotary Key “Preamp” - only phantom power is unfortunately missing.
I could imagine (at least theoretically) that it would be possible to send a MIDI command via a Soft Key, which would then be externally converted into a corresponding phantom power function (e.g., via the Mixing Station app, where other MIDI controllers could be connected if needed to control further parameters via buttons or encoders).
Perhaps there are already users who are doing this.
Yes, you can also assign a so-called User Scene to a user, which is called up upon login (see also pages 107/108 in the Reference Guide).
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You can make a custom layout in mixing station that displays only phantom power, pad and any other buttons needed. The buttons and text can be made very large and can be configured to display the status of the selected channel.
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As well as use MixingStation with hardware midi devices if tactical control is necessary
Very useful information here. Couple points:
1- agree with you, any physical control needs to be able to be controlled by softkeys, or at least if that is possible it’ll allow for accessible controls
2- didn’t know you could turn on and of the pad on the selected channel, that’s pretty cool, but how is it on a rotary? I suppose it’s a function of the button below a rotary, so the rotary is the gain of the selected channel and the button is the pad? If we could add phantom it would be great
3- MIDI is ok, but the ideal situation would be to not need any external control, since that means one more software to open and to work.
4- I know you can have a specific user scene, but will an SQ boot into a user directly by default? I need the desk to load the scene from scratch directly without any prompts.
I’d rather steer clear of MS for the time being, another piece of software that then needs a physical midi controller. We then go into the whole world of 1) how accessible is Mixing Station and are we running it on iPad or Android (I assume iPad since voiceover is much better on IOS devices), 2) which midi controller to map to MS and 3) how can we have MS work flawlessly
All I’m trying to figure out is if we can get a couple more options on physical buttons. I’ve already found out that we can trigger the PAD from a soft-rotary, if they added phantom power to the on/off switch it would solve 99% of my friend’s needs and they’d have a pretty sizeable chunk of clients added since it would then become pretty accessible as a console.
Yes, I mentioned the “Soft Rotary Key.” )
It can also be programmed for polarity, but unfortunately not (yet) for phantom power.
That would be very useful in your friends case.
Although - some will probably stone me now, and I certainly don’t want to recommend it - but as a practical person, I’ve often (of course unknowingly!) used dynamic microphones with inputs with active phantom power, and I’ve never actually had one break. )
I could also definitely imagine dedicated hardware for this - specifically programmed for this purpose and based on the principle of “plug and play.”
I’m not aware of any way to do that.
The console always starts in the state it was in when it was last closed.
More complication, but a Streamdeck with physical buttons and companion? There are apps for the mixer.