A very stupid mistake!

[mamerica]

I made a very stupid mistake last week. It all started a couple of months ago when I installed the latest update on my Qu-16. I modified my default scene to include two VCAs. One for vocals and one for instruments. I have used the mixer at several festivals this summer but always as a monitor mixer only so I never used my default scene.

Last week I was running second stage at a music festival. Everything was wired. I was playing music through my phone into ST3. It sounded great! The monitors were set and the first act did their sound check. The MC announced them, I pushed up the faders and… no sound! I checked the assignments. I checked everything I could think of but no output. After about ten minutes of messing around, I decided to use a different mix (9 & 10) and patched it into my amps.

An hour or two later, I remembered the VCAs! I had assigned them to channel 15 & 16 in the custom layer and the faders were all the way down! Boy was my face red!

[Anonymous]

Yep, that would do it.
To be honest that is my greatest fear with the Qu-16 (my churches first digital console). Cause with an analogue mixer everything is out in the open for you to see.
And with my church being used by our primary school, I make use of the re-zero mixer button very frequently. I wish there was a way a digital mixer could show all of its settings at once like an analogue mixer does.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if the iPad app (and/or screen) could show “ghost” faders which account for DCAs?

[mamerica]

No,
They don’t have to do anything. This one was completely operator error. It was my own fault.

[Anonymous]

They don’t have to – but there as you say there is nowhere obvious that the DCA effect is shown (Actually isn’t there a virtual DCA lamp on the channel strip on the iPad already, as a hint – can’t recall if the same is available on screen as part of the channel processing screen (don’t have either available at the moment).

User error on a multi layered desk is often tricky to find, since there are so many places to look – you’ll likely look at the DCAs pretty fast next time, but I still think that a relatively simple software change could make it easier for other people not to fall into the same trap – Good UI design starts with “User error” and continues with “How can we make it easier to avoid that error”…

The Channel processing screen is probably a good place for this – there are already a couple of things (compressor/gate) which impact a GR monitor – the DCA(s) could also be represented (in a similar fashion, but probably separate since the signal is affected at a different point in the stream)

Not a bug, but a reasonable feature request to improve the UI.

[LKY]

Agree, it would be nice to have some sorta ghost display or something…

There is the DCA blip on the iPad app that shows its associated…

But, say 50% the image of the levels difference from normal to affected by DCA would be pretty trick…

I dont know thier software coding, but I’d think a simple quick calc could be shown via changing the opacity or even color wouldn’t be too hard…

The OP should post this in the new features forum…

[Author]

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