Knobs and Faders

Feedback comes in many forms. We all know the one that causes us to wince and plug our ears, but there is also feedback that brings us more subtle status reports. Well-designed equipment offers us feedback that demonstrates that our adjustments have been recognized and acted upon. I am going to discuss the feedback we get from equipment and I'll leave you to adjust for that screeching from the sound system.

In the analogue world of yesterday, we expected to hear results from equipment whenever we made adjustments to the controls. We also expected a direct relationship between the control and the change in sound or at least an indication that the status had changed. This brought us the audio-taper pot and the self-illuminating switch. We now work with equipment that maintains only a virtual link to these bygone controls. It is quickly apparent which designers understood the need for feedback and those that thought we would trust the equipment/software to function without any feedback. Anyone that has sat behind a large console in the middle of thousands of paying customers, knows that you can receive very physical forms of feedback if you can't make the show happen. You need to be sure that any adjustment you make to the system will happen quickly and accurately. There is nothing more daunting than the need to adjust a control that could cause massive feedback (that loud screeching one, again) to meet the expressed (usually with cryptic gestures) needs of an onstage performer. The control needs to move predictably and accurately. A glitch could ruin the whole night.

This is a major reason that digital consoles are very slow to make inroads into the live sound business. While it is practical to program digital devices to run theatre productions or remix music recordings, in live music performance anything can happen. The controls need to be liveall of the time and respond to the intuitive gestures of the operator. There are very small time-constants for console operation in a successful live concert production. This is compounded by the signal delay caused by the transit time between the sound system and the mix position. The interface must be clear and fast. No one can claim that the large-scale mixing consoles offer an ideal operator interface, there is simply too many controls spread over too large of an area.

Digital technology offers us the freedom to escape the tyranny of audio circuit-board layout when creating a mixing console control surface. The problem has been how do you take this new found freedom and use it to satisfy the conflicting issues of the marketplace. People currently operating sound systems have developed a skill in negotiating the current analogue console surface that they are reticent to give up. However, the large control surface is beyond the reach of the operator and should be reduced to improve the operator's access time. Numerous attempts have been made to reduce the size by merely calling up the section of the console you wish to address. This hides those out of reach controls until they are requested. Unfortunately, this rational idea has not captured the marketplace and pushed aside the analogue devices. We await further refinement or perhaps an alternative approach that goes more directly to the issue.

We associate a mixing console with the buttons, knobs and faders that make up the interface. However, none of these items directly address the underlying issue - changing the quality of the sound. Instead they are simply the method of accessing the circuit variable needed to make these changes. If we step back to first principles, we are really asking for a way to change the balance between instruments, their tone and perspective. We would have to learn a completely new interface that allowed us to make adjustments of these parameters in a way that provided interaction between each parameter to yield the necessary results. If we wished to change the perspective of an instrument, such as bringing a back-line instrument forward for a solo, we would use a single control that would change the EQ, reverb send and level. After learning to mix a show with this interface you would never consider sitting behind all those buttons, knobs and faders, again. The problem is how do we provide a visualization of these multi-dimensional controls that can be easily understood. This is the dilemma of feedback.

United Entertainment Media Inc.
460 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor
New York, NY, 10016
Ph. 212-378-0400
FAX 212-378-2160

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