Currently there is there no indication for channels when a DCA is used to boost or cut the channel level. I had a guest engineer get burned at a show recently when he couldn’t get any output from any of his band channels. Turns out there was a DCA not assigned to a layer that was assigned to “all band inputs” and somehow got turned all the way down. His music playback channel/talkbalk/etc channels worked fine. But every other channel seemed like it wasn’t routing to any buses though they were. I figured it out the next day after he wound up recalling his starting show file and rebuilding his show to finish up sound check.
I’m a long time Avid Venue user, and one of a few things I love about that board is that when a VCA (DCA) alters and channel fader level, there’s a clear red outline of the fader relative to the real position in the UI so you know there is VCA/DCA interaction. This now seems like it could be a critical feature rather than just a nice convenience. It seems like something similar in the Avantis UI should indicate a DCA is affecting the shown fader level. I can see a lack of this indicator causing some real panics for folks in the heat of combat audio. Even higher end analog VCA desks back in the day had LED indicator strips next to the fader that indicated true fader level vs. mechanical when a VCA was assigned and in use. Attached is a screen shot of the Venue UI when VCAs (DCAs) are in use. I also made a markup of what the Avantis UI might look like with a simple small indicator. My proposal for the indicator is that it would only show up when 1) the channel was assigned to a DCA and 2) only when the DCA for those channels was a value other than detent/zero.
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CameronProAudio 2 months, 2 weeks ago.
