We came up against this issue on the C2500 at our theatre, that fader’s repaired now but this thread got me thinking that the way a faulty fader is handled could be improved upon. The OP mentioned IEM mix bus faders being bumped down to -inf dB because the fader wasn’t moved to the correct position and this is exactly the kind of “oh s**t” moment I had mid show; in my case it was a balcony fill that got turned down on paying customers.
It occurs to me that when a faulty fader doesn’t quite make it to the correct value or doesn’t move at all, the last thing you want the console to do is update that channel/bus with this new (and wrong) value. Wouldn’t it be great if instead, the console alerted the user that the fader didn’t make it, maybe the LED strip could start to flash or there could be some other visual sign that the fader hasn’t moved correctly. Crucially, the console should maintain the correct value and allow the operator to move the fader there if they want to, or ignore it if it doesn’t require adjustment. The user knows there is an issue but can remain confident that balcony fills and IEMs aren’t going to get turned down erroneously, then they can investigate if they’ve got a bad fader after the show.
Not sure how other manufacturers deal with this as I’ve never come up against this issue on anything other than dLive. Maybe others here can think of downsides to what I’m suggesting but it would be great if A&H could come up with a way to solve this.
