It’s all in the title: on May 30th, there was a big sunny day, when the sound check took place… The display is clearly insufficient and even with a sun visor it’s complicated. Isn’t there a solution, like for example a specific sun visor in smoked plexiglass?
You have to have cover (ie a tent, etc) over FOH. It shouldn’t be white either because that simply causes a white reflection on the screen. The darker the color, the better.
My two solutions have been a laptop sun shade, which offered only a marginal improvement, and controlling the mixer with an iPad configured to invert the screen colors. This pretty much eliminated the problem. It still helped to be in the shade but as long as the sun wasn’t hitting it head on I was able to see it pretty well.
Not just CQ, all the small digital consoles I’ve used fail the full Aussie sun test. It can be frightening when you realise you can’t see the screen, and holding bits of cardboard etc to try to shield it doesn’t work. The iPad is much better so in terms of screen technology it can be done. Shade or iPad drive is all you can do.
Yeah, the iPad is the best solution, IMO. I also put one of those anti-glare screen protectors on mine and this helped even more.
And if someone doesn’t have an iPad, I highly recommend buying one even if just for this purpose. I didn’t have one, didn’t even want one, but a lot of live sound/mixing/music/band related apps are only available for iPads so I bought a refurb model, it’s either a 2020 or 2021 model from ebay for around $150.
I can add that the IPAD also connect very well with CQ via USB, opening up multichannel audio from various apple APP.