DCA Meter

[daveParticipant]

I would like to request a feature add for the meters on the DCA’s to be enabled. I love all the new features that 1.9 brought us, but I would think that this would be something pretty easy to accomplish. My M32, M7cl, QL5, CL5 all have this built in.

[ScottParticipant]

+1 I realize that a DCA isn’t an audio path, but having metering to show the hottest signal of all of its members would be great!

[tpauldingParticipant]

+1 :: the engineers in the room will properly say “but what does it meter” and I will say “I don’t know… ask Yamaha and Midas what they meter.”

It would be so helpful visually for the workflow, especially with volunteers on our DLive many weeks.

[WolfgangParticipant]

As far as I remember, this idea has been mentioned before.

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

@wolfgang

You’re not wrong!

DCA channel meters

Metering on DCA channels

DCA metering

vu-meters on DCA

Metering on DCA faders

and you might notice the ‘-3’ in your address bar, because

DCA Meter

DCA meter

You’ll notice the sticking points in all of these is what can and should be displayed.
It’s not possible to display a summed signal in the same way as with a mix, as to get accurate data the channels need to be summed, which requires a mix.
A ‘quick n dirty’ sum of metering would not take into account phase or polarity interaction, so in the most extreme case there could be signal on the meters and nothing audible.
Showing the hottest signal is one idea and something that many others use, though could be seen as confusing being that you could have a couple of channels in one DCA and 50 in another with the meters implying that the DCA with only a few channels is making a greater contribution to the mix.
‘Signal present’ (e.g. -40dB) and ‘a member is peaking’ is quite a neat idea that could be truthful, though might also be seen as confusing and I’m sure wouldn’t satisfy many engineers as all meters would often be displaying the same thing.

What we need to understand is the use case where it’s needed and where it can display something useful and accurate which cannot be misinterpreted (and cause confusion and complaints as it has in the past).

Cheers,
Keith.

[DaveParticipant]

+1 :: the engineers in the room will properly say “but what does it meter” and I will say “I don’t know… ask Yamaha and Midas what they meter.”

+1 (“the loudest AFL signal” would work, too)

The only signal I let come into the system “blind” — that is, no metering on the “home” layer — is background (or “house”) music, and that’s just because I have it muted in all my show scenes. During the actual show, let’s say a keyboard develops an issue and starts power-cycling itself or maybe a cable carrying phantom power becomes intermittent (both are things that’ve happened to me). If I’ve got everything in a Vocals DCA, a Keys DCA, a Guitars DCA, a Drums DCA, etc, which DCA is the popping coming from? Without some form of metering, there’s no way to know, so I’ve gotta use groups just to get the metering. This can be pretty annoying on a MixRack that I’ve gotta share with monitors.

[pcbuilderParticipant]

+1
For me, just a visual indication of simply “any signal” vs “no signal” on a DCA would be helpful.

[DaveParticipant]

I missed my annual +1 for this feature by just one day. Oh well. Anyway, I still need to know which DCA is popping for them to really be useful*, and I’m still sharing MixRacks with monitors and so I’m still up against the total bus count limit.

*Aside from spilling, of course… that’s a feature so useful people keep asking for it on groups as well.

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