Make an Avantis iOS App!

[Kris]

We’re highly considering on getting an Avantis, but the biggest setback for us is not having an App on your phone to control your mix like the SQ4You.
They already have an iPad app. Can’t they just format it to a phone?
Does anybody know if this is already in the making?

[Showtime]

Make your own with custom control.

Richard

[Praiseguitar]

Strongly agree! We are in the late stages of specifying this system for a church/concert hall installation, but lack of an iOS and android app could be a show stopper as the band has had the ability to control their own monitor mixes via their phones for several years with our existing Midas console. I understand that we could develop something in custom control, but this isn’t really the best solution for this functionality that is now common.

[SteffenR]

Make your own with custom control.

Richard

they don’t hear you…

[Brian]

You have to realize that Allen and Heath views the Avantis console in the same way they view the DLive series. It is designed for the larger, more professional applications and therefore they aren’t too concerned about creating bunch of “Monitor Mix” style apps because the board isn’t catered to the installation where that is needed.

They do have an iPad app called the OneMix that allows a person to control their monitor sends. As you noted, it is “iPad only” and doesn’t work on iPhones, but I suspect that has more to do with layout design than anything. Trying to cram everything on the OneMix UI onto a phone size screen wouldn’t work well.

As others have suggested, you really need to look at the CustomContol app for these needs. You can easily create your own layout to allow people to control the send levels on their own aux/monitor channel. The CustomControl app works on both Android and iOS devices – both tablets and phones. It’s not that hard to set up either. I’d recommend watching this webinar on the CustomControl app that Allen and Heath did a while back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGZ_mQyL_Gs

I use an Avantis in a house of worship environment and this is how we handle monitors – using a CustomControl template that allows the musicians to select their monitor mix (using a tab container) and then have all the faders and pan control for all the channels we use.

As far as future software enhancements, Allen and Heath needs to release the Director for Avantis before they do anything else. Then I would like to see MixPad and OneMix released on Android before A&H spent the time trying to reconfigure the UI to work on any iPhones.

[Praiseguitar]

Howdy Brian!

We’ll also be using the Avantis in a house of worship setting with volunteer band/choir members and a single PT sound engineer. Performance space is used daily for community events, concerts, etc with worship on Sunday, so all instruments come off stage each week.

Moving from a smaller Midas-32 system where all band members controlled their own IEM mix using the Midas phone app. Some band members already use ipad-based scores, so ipad app will be no problem. Others might require a CustomControl app. Would you be willing to share screenshots or templates of what you’ve built for band monitor control to give us an idea of how you have structured them and any tweaks your band has suggested? We have a spectrum from non-technical to very tech literate.

Thanks!

[Brian]

I definitely can. I’ll probably attach some sketches of my layout because the layouts are housed on the console itself so I’d have to be at church to pull the layout up on the app to take a screenshot. This will take a little while for me to get together, but I can describe my layouts and also share a few “wish I had known” quirks about the software.

We use a Tab Container with 10 tabs (we generally have up to 10 musicians) as the basis for our layout. The tabs are located at the top of the screen (landscape mode) and labeled “Leader”, “Singer1”, “Singer2”, “Singer3”, “Bass”, “Guitar”, “Drums”, etc. The selected tab will have an orange color background making it easy to see which tab is selected.

Under the tabs is the “daughter level” (a name I made up) that changes for each tab selected. On this daughter level, we have each input that we normally use (about 32 in total – in two rows of 16). There is a name, fader, and pan control “widget” for each input. One of the “gotcha’s” is that the dynamic label is not working on Avantis yet. This means I had to hard code each name – so “Kick In” is the first input name and that is a fixed text widget that I typed. When the firmware is updated hopefully the dynamic name feature will be fixed and I can simply use the dynamic name widget for “channel 1”. This means it will automatically write the input name for channel 1 (which should be Kick In) and it will automatically change if someone changes the name of input 1 on the board.

The fader is assigned to channel 1’s aux out that is represented by the tab. So stereo aux out 1/2 is our Leader’s IEM mix so that is what it is on tab 1. But tab 2 is for our Singer1 and that fader is assigned to the applicable stereo output for the Singer1 IEM, etc, etc, etc.

Below the fader is the pan control for that input/aux send combination.

These three items for each channel (name, fader, pan) are duplicated 32 times for each of the needed channels. That’s all I have on the screen, although the background of the screen has a picture of our church on it and the name of the Aux Mix (Leader, Singer 1, Singer 2, etc) is also written at the bottom of the page to help make it clear which mix the user is on.

The other “gotcha” that I ran into is just with adding these widgets (name, fader, pan) to the different tabs. When you are working on one tab and want to go to another tab, you simply click the desired tab name (just like a musician would to change to their mix). However, the screen’s focus is still set to the previous tab and you have to click on the screen of the new tab to bring the focus to that tab before you start adding design elements. This was really confusing at first because I would simply add new elements and they would appear like normal. But then I would bring up the actual app only to find that all my widgets appeared on the first tab and not the other tabs. Once I realized what was happening, I could change it, but I still forget sometimes and don’t bring the focus to the new tab when in the design editing mode. It’s pretty annoying actually and the software should be designed to bring the focus to the selected tab automatically, but it doesn’t.

Hopefully that all makes sense. I will try to get a sketch or screenshot up soon. Let me know if you have any other questions.

PS – I actually would like to change the layout to include a second Container Tab so that the first tab selected the musician and the second tab would allow me to break up the channels into more manageable numbers (Drums, Vocals, Band, etc) so that I wouldn’t have to have all 32 channels on the same screen. I wasn’t able to do this initially, but I’m not sure if it is a limitation of the software or my editing ability. I’ve since read that it should be possible (at least with DLive) so maybe it was my editing ability (perhaps related to the focus issue I experienced as described above) or perhaps that feature isn’t available on the Avantis yet.

[Praiseguitar]

Thanks Brian!

We’re still about a month or two out from getting our console, so this is very helpful! Our sanctuary/venue was under several feet of flood water during Hurricane Harvey, so we are in the mid stages of rebuilding and upgrading our A/V tech. We’re shooting for an Easter ’21 reopening, so I’m trying to get some of the tech issues sorted in advance, where possible, and encourage the band members to start moving to digital technologies as well.

Thanks again for your response and in advance for screen shots and suggestions!

[Brian]

I had a chance to revisit my layout design and I am much happier with the results the second time around. I was able to embed a second tab selector into my design. Now the top tap has 10 tabs – one for each potential musician. The bottom tabs allow the musician to select one of four screens to show (Vocals, Band, Drums, Misc). This allows me to break the channels up into manageable screens and have the faders be much larger in size. This should make it easier for the musicians to change their monitor mix.

I also added the name of the selected musician’s feed in red in the lower middle of the screen. I’m hoping that the musicians will see the name and make it more unlikely that they select the wrong musician to change the monitor mix for. I changed from an image of our church to our current icon. This makes for a less busy screen background.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

Allen and Heath CustomControl design for Monitor Mix App

Attachments:

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[Brian]

PS – I ended up moving the icon so that it appears to be more centered between the center faders. This actually causes the icon to be off center from the middle of the screen, but I think it looks better overall. I did not want to have to re-upload all new images however, so the images are from before I made this change.

In this design I also included a channel meter on each channel. While I haven’t actually connected to the console to test how this looks/works, I’m hoping it works well and will help musicians troubleshoot their mix – IE I just “lost” the guitar in my ears, but it’s because the guitarist is playing super soft right now. (That’s just a hypothetical situation – we all know that guitarist never play softly 🙂 ).

[Praiseguitar]

Thanks Brian! I’m really impressed by what you have done and excited to get started with CustomControl! I think your idea of the channel meter is spot on, as we often have the same issue trying to troubleshoot the signal chain. I’m one of our guitarist, so I agree that we never play softly!

Thanks for sharing!

[Brian]

I spent a little more time tweaking the design and I think I have come up with the final design. I moved the channel faders and meters round and like how they are oriented now – giving some breathing room for the icon without looking too stupid. I also tweaked the colors some – using colors from the icon on the channel names and pan controls to help tie everything together. It’s subtle, but I like how it all comes together.

Final Monitor Mix App with Allen & Heath CustomControl software

[LeadingPraise]

The Custom Control app designer has blown me away with how powerfully versatile and customizable it has been for our team. It is simple to learn.

I did something similar to Brian’s setup with Tab Containers within a Tab Container. I would appreciate being able to set up more than 10 Users within the board. Can’t wait for Dynamic Labels to work!

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[Kris]

I like all the suggestions and this custom control, but there’s a lot of uncertainty with it. How many devices can you have running simultaneously with mixing 50 channels in their mix?
What does the network integrity need to be?

[Brian]

I can’t remember the exact number of concurrent IP connections that the Avantis allows, but it is something like 40 connections. The Custom Control solution is very light with regard to network traffic. Of course it depends on how complicated your designs are, but the fact is that there isn’t a lot of communication going on with a Custom Control app compared to a full mixing app like MixPad.

We have 10 people running Custom Control for monitor control as well as a couple iPads with MixPad running. We’ve never had an issue with network reliability and we have plenty of other wireless devices on the network as well.

[Author]

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