i have 3 big isues with the lv1.
1: not being able to send fx channels to groups.
2: not being able to send cue bus to a matrix
3: no meters on dca groups.
Let me explain:
ad1: i do a lot of hybrid meetings with some part of the meetings going some places, other parts og the meeting going other places, and some parts of a meeting NOT going to special places.
Easy solution use groups.
eg: ch 1-12 used for conference,
ch 13-16 used for public part
ch 24-48 used for band playing
Now conference part (gp 1) need to go to live audience (mtx1), and stream (mtx2)
public part (gp 2) need to go to live audience (mtx1), stream (mtx2), and public overflow room (mtx3)
Band part (gp 3) need to go audience (mtx1), stream (mtx2), and atrium room (mtx4)
it is important that mtx 3 and mtx4 do NOT receive the conference part as audience do not have security clearance
it is important that mtx4 only recieve the band playing as the room is used for other purposes.
it is important that mtx3 DO NOT recieve the band due to nabo complaints.
This is all fine exept i cant use any effects on the fx sends as these only go to main outs.
Ad2: having a lot of things routed to some places and not others give me a headache as i need to hear all of it in my local monitors and headphones as i need to hear anything being send anywhere ( there is only one mix, no part of the mix will have diferent things happening at same time)
Now i need to hear everything in my monitors and therefore i use the cue bus and mains go to my cue bus when nothing else is cued. this is great and it works. I also have 3 channels for coms.
ch 51 a mic on stage where the musicians can go tell me what they need i their monitors,
ch 52 a mic by the showcaller where he tell the showflow,
ch 53 a mic by my sound 2. sound engineer helping micking up peoble and so on
these 3 channels are send to my main mix as well but NOT to any of the above groups and matrixes, therefore i hear it in my local monitors and all is fine.
Then we take a diferent aproach Because i cant us effects i need to use my main mix for the band. This is a working workarround, BUT now i cant hear the conference or the public part as they are not going to my mains.
being able to do a listen matrix including the cue bus and the 3 coms channels (seperate or as a bus mix) would make it possible for me to use the main mix for the band and still hear the coms.
The workarround is to send cue buss to 2 outputs and take it back in as 2 inputs, and then i can do my listen matrix. but it would be nice to do it without workarrounds.
Ad3: I KNOW a dca do not contain any audio, however it does effect the audio level of individual channels.
when mixing on dca’s, i often have a dca for drums exept snare, a dca for snare, a dca for bass, a dca for gtr, a dca for keys, a dca for each singer, and a dca for fx. this way i can roughly mix a 64 channel band with my 16 dca’s. however i have no meters. i cant see if it is one singer or the other that is louder than normal, if the bassdrum or snaredrum is kind of clipping as it is to loud internaly.
Meters would help on this. Keep everything as it is, but create a virtual group with all the channels being part of the dca, and show the meter for this group as the dca meter. We dont need group fader as we have the dca fader, and well it being a dca group we cant process the signal, all i would like is the meters.
ALTERNATIVE for dca meters in my opinion would be make the user choose. do you want 8 groups and 16 dca’s or would you like 16 groups and only 8 dca’s. For me the chioce (without the dca meters) would be 16 groups and 8 almost unusable dca’s every time. but with the dca meters i would use the 16 dca’s and almost never use groups. for other than creative use of matrixes as above.