Scene Recalls Revisited

[StonepianoParticipant]

Look, if somebody really wants to know what’s going on with my 24, instead of showing off their clearly nonexistent expertise, and suggesting that I’m an illiterate amateur, I’ll be happy to shoot a video when I have my day off, and send a Dropbox-link to anyone who’s willing to give me an e-mail adress.

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

youtube?

I’m interested, but haven’t played alot with scenes yet.

[StonepianoParticipant]

I’ll post a link here next week.

[John-SParticipant]

StonePiano,

I hear you brother. Yes this thread is about the Qu but I have a similar problem with the GLD. I have shown the problem clearly to them. Sometimes in the console you ask for “next scene” and you get it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you see the scene you are presently on displayed, sometimes you don’t. Try to modify the scene you are on and save it, you have just overwritten the next scene and now have two bad scenes.

It seems English logic will not progress. “What grandfather did is good enough for me” seems to rule. It is disconcerting that a GLD system that costs over $10K, the scene memories are illogical and unreliable. Yamaha has it correct. No matter how you got to a scene, pressing a button that says “next” should bring up the next one and the display should say in large proud numbers “here is the scene you are presently on”. Not possible with Allen & Heath. They do not want to change the on-board operation NOR will they make a computer app that is usable for theaters. I have asked they make a scene memory option to switch between logical operation and the other operation but it went nowhere. I do mostly theaters. I may be selling my system because of the workarounds required with no resolution in sight. Otherwise I love the board.

I realize some people have gotten used to this progression backwards operation but it irks me every time I use it. My silly cheap 01V was a pleasure to use (and modify) scene memories. Again I’ll say, the GLD is superior in every other aspect but those darned scene memories.

John

[StonepianoParticipant]

Thank You Very Much John for supporting my case,

…started to get real tired with people telling me I have an attitude problem towards the console. For me at the moment, it´s not only the backwards logic that bugs me, but an actual anomaly in the scene recalls. I WILL make the video to show y´all what I´m talking about.

All this mess really is a shame, because the Qu sounds good, the FX-emulations are excellent, and it´s a joy to do the actual hands-on mixing with. I suppose these properties are well present in the more expensive series,too.

Would not want to shell out another 2.5K€ for a M32… besides, I haven´t a clue of how it sounds.

P.S. it´s hard to even devise any workarounds, because you just don´t know what the console´s response is going to be at any given occasion.

[MikeShandParticipant]

The way I understand the GLD operation is as follows

CURRENT always gives the name of the most recently recalled scene. But of course as soon as you make ANY change on the board what you have no longer corresponds to the “current” scene. It is the current scene plus the changes you just made. I guess something could be put in the GUI that indicated that you had changed something, but I really don’t see how that would be helpful since either
1. You are trying to change the stored scene, in which case you do recall, make your changes, save, or
2. You are actually using the scene to do something, so you will almost inevitable make some change or other almost immediately after recalling.
In either case you kind of know that what you have on the board is different from the most recently recalled scene.

The only exception to the above is when you first boot up, when current is blank , not unreasonably, since you haven’t yet recalled a scene.

NEXT always show the name of the scene which is selected in the scenes menu. So if you do a save it will save the current state of the board overwriting THAT scene name. Similarly if you do a recall it will recall that scene replacing whatever configuration you currently have on the board, modulo scene safes and filters of course.

On boot up this is not unreasonably set to scene 1.

Auto increment is simply equivalent to moving the selection down one.

I don’t do theatre so don’t really understand what the requirements are there, but for my uses the above arrangement seems perfectly logical and useable.

I haven’t noticed any random behaviour or any which isn’t explained by the above semantics.

Mike

[StonepianoParticipant]

I think the only reason for A&H´s reluctancy to do do something about this, is due to them not knowing what to do about it. Someone wrote some very bad code. Maybe fire the person, and hire another who can make it right? It would be just incredible that they would actually stand behind this logic!

[StonepianoParticipant]

Mike, you are not on the same page with me, wait for the video.

[John-SParticipant]

How it acts when you first call up a show (on scene zero or one) is never an issue. I always start my shows on scene 5 or so.

How I WANT it to work is a large display to say “you are on this number scene”. Then, when I want to make a change, simply hit “save” and update the active scene. I then want to hit ONE button to go to next scene, have it recalled and displayed on the large “you are here” screen. Then, repeat as necessary. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Having the active scene memory in a list view is great. Most of the software is brilliant. I would bet no one at AH has ever developed a show with about 200 scenes in a single show and had to update them on the fly, having seconds to make modifications and get on to the next scene fast enough that the director doesn’t realize it happened. Over the course of a rehearsal I can make hundreds of updates. Doing this was easy on the 02R.

Lets ignore confirmation dialogs for the moment. That is another kettle of fish..

John

[StonepianoParticipant]

This is strange… I initiated this discussion, because there is an issue with the desk that needs to be dealt with by the company, and expected some support for my agenda. Instead I´m getting all these opinions from people who later in the game admit that they “don´t work with scenes that much”, or that they “don´t do theater”.
In todays production environment you just need scene-automation, and you need it to work reliably. The “don´t do theater”- argument is totally absurd, as if scene memory was somehow an option you don´t need that much. What kind of gigs do you guys do, then? AC/DC- cover bands? How do you approach a situation where you need drastic changes to an acoustic drumkit, for instance, per song- just push trough with the one setting you made during the soundcheck? If so, you´re in the wrong business. Scene automation is an indispensable tool, and I´d rather pursue this subject with people who have something to contribute to it. The videolink will be available next week.

Tuomas Kolehmainen
Independent sound engineer, behind all kinds of mixers for 25 years
Helsinki, Finland

[John-SParticipant]

In defense of other people’s opinions: They are trying to help out. Most users of consoles do not heavily use memories. They have (relatively) eons of time to recall a scene and it does not matter how many pushes of buttons it takes to actually recall a scene.

But when you have to recall a lot of scenes between dialog in a script, things need to happen “NOW”. NOW does not happen with the present way A&H programmed their boards. Please note, mixing a band is a pleasure with my board, even using memories for different songs works well. With a band, there is almost time to nap between memory recalls. But then you need that much time to get it right.

John

[mervakaParticipant]

Are you saying there’s a loss of data amidst recalling settings from the desk state? Can you make a very clear, objective procedure to recreate this symptom, citing your actions and any differences in behaviour to what’s expected? Start from a hard reset to factory settings to eliminate any historic corrupted data, and build a new scene or two in the procedure. I’m keen to get onto the same wavelength as you and understand the problem you’re having.

[John-SParticipant]

Oh, and one more thing for those who do not heavily use memories and are earnestly offering to help. First of all, thank you.

One big differences in the way we mix is we DO NOT look at the mixer OR the stage. We have one finger on the “next scene” button and are reading the script during critical times to assure timing, or to find where we are when the actors misses or adds lines at any moment. I cannot afford stare at a status screen to be sure the correct scene is coming up but I can very well count. Forward two scenes and back one results in an advancement of only one scene, shouldn’t it? Not with A&H.

If I am on cue 87 and an actor blows a line or three and I need to get to 89 “NOW” I want to only push the “next” button twice and be there. This is not assured with A&H depending on how you arrived at 87 to begin with.

[John-SParticipant]

Mervaka,

Are you a heavy user of scene mems? I am asking not to exclude your opinion. I see you generously want to help. I just want to know if you have mixed live musical theater. If so then you know it is a different animal. Not better or worse. Just different for sure.

I understand how they want us to operate the memories. Data is not lost. It is frustratingly illogical.

John

[mervakaParticipant]

Hang on, so “Next Scene” to theatre guys should be the last recalled scene’s number + 1, and not just the selected scene?

[Author]

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