Who's using DMX to control volume faders?

if you have all those sound cues, what good will simple audio fade-in/fade-out do for you? Do you mean, for instance, a sound to set up a scene like a background cityscape sound, or a playground.. and you'd want to fade down/out that audio once the scene starts? THEN you'd cue up the next sound while the current scene plays out on stage?

IF it's just volume, then we're asically talking about DMX to VCA control. Not too hard to do, I'm thinking. .. might even be a cool idea for a product. Does anyone think this would have any buyers?
 
if you have all those sound cues, what good will simple audio fade-in/fade-out do for you? Do you mean, for instance, a sound to set up a scene like a background cityscape sound, or a playground.. and you'd want to fade down/out that audio once the scene starts? THEN you'd cue up the next sound while the current scene plays out on stage?

IF it's just volume, then we're asically talking about DMX to VCA control. Not too hard to do, I'm thinking. .. might even be a cool idea for a product. Does anyone think this would have any buyers?

The fade-in/fade-out is mostly used for ending pre-show music, which will usually be done mid-song, fading scene change music, cutting volume on background ambient sound.

One of my scenarios, that has caused trouble when I'm not in the booth:
Pre-show lights & music start as first cue
Fade music manually on sound console
Go to second cue, which cuts the music, but keeps the lights the same
Turn up volume on sound console
Go to third cue, which keeps lights the same, and plays pre-show announcement

I have had multiple occasions where the pre-show music is just cut off, or where the beginning of the pre-show announcement can't be heard.

As I've said, the software I'm using doesn't have the ability to adjust the audio volume, so when I'm setting up a show, I either have to edit my sound files, to adjust the volume, or manually adjust the volume on the sound console. I'd rather be able to use a DMX "cue" to set the appropriate volume for any sound that needs to be louder or softer.

I don't know how much of a market there is for something like this, but it's something that would be useful to me.
 
Ok.. just trying to wrap my head around your needs here. Your 'scenario' makes sense. I will talk to my guys to see what's involved. Looks like this calls for a DMX decoder chip, a way to address the DMX chip, and a small microprocessor to then turn DMX 0-255 into a voltage trigger for a VCA I.C. that would represent 0-100%.

I'll dig a little!
 
Ok.. just trying to wrap my head around your needs here. Your 'scenario' makes sense. I will talk to my guys to see what's involved. Looks like this calls for a DMX decoder chip, a way to address the DMX chip, and a small microprocessor to then turn DMX 0-255 into a voltage trigger for a VCA I.C. that would represent 0-100%.

I'll dig a little!

Thanks
 
I agree with others who express that you'd be best served by separate software for audio and lighting (even if running on the same computer). You might check out this question on the Sound Design Stack Exchange site for possible sound software to try: http://sound.stackexchange.com/ques...o-cue-editor-controller-for-live-theater-show

If you're running Windows, MultiPlay http://www.da-share.com/software/multiplay/ may provide the functionality you need. You'd program QLC+ to accept MIDI commands from MultiPlay to tringer you cues.

Annother option would be to try to get volume fading into QLC+ either through a feature request or through digging in and modifying the code yourself (if you do a good job, submit a patch to the project). I assume that the audio fade out setting in QLC+ applies only to the end of the track, not to an arbitrary cue to end the sound; otherwise you'd be using that.
 
I have recently done something like this for a couple of dance school, and plays here. Using a Combination of Lightfactory and ShowCueSystem I could control both the lights, sound and images that they wanted to display with Lightfactory configured to send the relevant cue instructions to ShowCueSystem. ShowCueSystem will also be a DMX device if wanted, where one channel can be the master fader and, a number of the cues can be set up to be DMX channels. If you wish to use a DMX Console (I did for one show run Lightfactory and ShowCueSystem on the same laptop, but I really prefer running them on different systems. )
 
Ok.. just trying to wrap my head around your needs here. Your 'scenario' makes sense. I will talk to my guys to see what's involved. Looks like this calls for a DMX decoder chip, a way to address the DMX chip, and a small microprocessor to then turn DMX 0-255 into a voltage trigger for a VCA I.C. that would represent 0-100%.

I'll dig a little!

I was just wondering if you found anything in your digging?
 

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