Mixers/Consoles X32/M32 Scene Management Program

[William Koch]

Before I get into this, I know the X32 and M32 are not the best consoles available on the market, but I haven't experienced anything better in it's relative price range and work in a handful of venues with them. The scene management (or lack there of) is my only issue. It is built for concert/bar/club/festival and theatre is an afterthought.

I know that there is an existing scene parser tool for the X32/M32, but I have been unable to use it as I am a Mac user (don't hate too much) and therefore I don't know what the functionality of this tool is. I have started work on a scene management tool that would function via OSC to create it's own "scenes" that could be pushed back to the console. I know I hate the scene/channel snippet/cue management that the x32 offers, and I actually find it fairly impractical when it comes to running a large musical, or any musical for that matter.

The program would hold all scene data locally. It would use OSC to pull all console information from the desk to store a scene. It would then use OSC to broadcast data back to the console. It would allow master "recall safes" that would control what OSC commands the program sends out, hopefully both on the master and scene level the way the CL5 does.

My goal is to make a scene management tool that functions similarly to how the CL5 works, and hopefully add some of the functionality in terms of "tracking" values as well as adding a feature similar to the "aliases" in the digico SD consoles. My goal is to also eventually include OSC and/or MIDI back end to allow easy "go" button recall by sending MIDI commands from the console or MIDI or OSC commands from QLab for whatever integration would be easiest for your production.
My questions are:

Is there demand for this tool? How many of you would use this tool?


Is there anyone who would like to contribute to this project? I am working on getting the OSC working right now, but once I have that functioning I would love to bring any other swift developers in.

What kind of features would you like to be added? Anything that can be accessed over OSC is fair game, so 90% of the console is up.

Once I have this working and in a good place on the x32/m32, I would love to add flavors for other consoles in this price range that have the full OSC support that these consoles do, especially since it should just be minor changes in the code to adjust how it is accessing the console's OSC parameters.

I do intend to include redundancy checks in my code to ensure all OSC commands were received since this console is guilty of not liking to take OSC 100% of the time when it's receiving a lot of commands at once.
Is the idea of depending on an external program to control your console too terrifying for some of you to be willing to use this tool? I admit I have some hesitancy of my own right now as even a bug free program could disconnect and give me hell. That being said, we depend on network for a LOT of audio anymore so I think I can get over my hesitations. I would like to hear what others think of this. I will also work to eventually add support for a backup system to run simultaneously with a primary computer.

Another idea I have is to allow some program functionality over MIDI to where you could run this on a remote QLab computer and not mess with what your QLab op is doing while you are programming.

 

[Mike R]

I think I am a little confused as to what you are trying to do. It seems like you are just trying to have scene changes that capture the full state of the console? That functionality is already built into the Scene functions of the console.
I mix my shows Line-by-Line with DCA's being reassigned by scene changes. I have been able to do this sufficiently several times on full scale musicals with the X32, and have not had any issues with it.

So what is it that you are really missing in the built-in functionality?

Also, I do have my concerns about it all being on a external device. I know we use a lot of external devices already (thinking QLab, inputs, etc.), but I want my scenes to be built into the Hardware that I am mixing on.

 

[William Koch]

I think I am a little confused as to what you are trying to do. It seems like you are just trying to have scene changes that capture the full state of the console? That functionality is already built into the Scene functions of the console.
I mix my shows Line-by-Line with DCA's being reassigned by scene changes. I have been able to do this sufficiently several times on full scale musicals with the X32, and have not had any issues with it.

So what is it that you are really missing in the built-in functionality?

Also, I do have my concerns about it all being on a external device. I know we use a lot of external devices already (thinking QLab, inputs, etc.), but I want my scenes to be built into the Hardware that I am mixing on.

Hi Mike,

First, thank you for your questions and comments, especially expressing your concern on the external device matter, I've been trying to think if there is a way that the program could use OSC to write scenes for specific things like DCAs so you can have the scenes stored on the console hardware just in case.

I understand that the scene recalls do essentially what I am describing, so 70% of the functionality I am trying to create exists already in some way, shape or form. I always feel limited when it comes to the flexibility of recall "focusing" on the x32/m32. I want to be able to tell the console to hit some parameters and not others, which you can do to some extent with recall safes and channel snippets, but those don't have the kind of functionality that you get on something like a CL5. My goal would be to add some of these types of features. One of my big headaches I get is figuring out how to manage only 100 recalls, I sometimes push 150 to 200 depending on the production.

On the CL5, I typically do line-mixing as well through DCA changes, often leaving the lead(s) on recall safe faders so I have to control them all the time. In a perfect world I will only have scene recalls affect DCA faders when I will be bringing a new group or person up with that DCA in the next scene. In other words, say I'm riding a DCA for a big solo number, as soon as that finishes I have a character coming onstage so I need to have their DCA ready to go, I want to recall it, but not have it up. In this situation I would want to turn that person's mic on, change the DCA to include him and change the scribble strip, and have the console bring that DCA fader down automatically without touching any other DCAs on the console(this can be solved by turning the DCA down on my own, but it also mitigates the risk of an accidental recall or double go). Right now I believe fader recall functionality on the DCAs is all or nothing as set by the scene safe or chan or param safes. I don't think you can affect a DCA's fader level in a snippet.

My goal would be to supplant this functionality with a table view where you could set parameter focuses by channel. Basically doing what the channel snippet does, but allowing the programmer to get more specific. This would also go for the effects rack. You could recall your rack settings within a scene and allow live changes made to other racks(i.e. tapping into a delay effect) to track through. That's a problem I run into frequently and have had to program qlab to dispatch effects changes. While this works, it's not conducive to a fast work flow. The other advantage of the way Yamaha makes their scene recalls with "focus" is you don't just write the data you need. You write all of the data from the console when that scene was created, so you can always change your mind on what you are recalling. I would also add MIDI triggers so that you can set custom MIDI buttons to trigger recalls as well as to quickly store scenes. It could be as easy as hitting a store button twice.

I hope this clears up some of what I was trying to say.

 

[FMEng]

I think this is reinventing the wheel. You have 100 scenes, 100 snippets, and 500 cues to work with, plus you can store more on the flash drive. All three can adjust DCAs. I suggest spending more time learning the X32 before going further.

Keep in mind that the user manual was written for version 1.00, and the console should be running version 3.07 now, which adds many features that aren't in the book. Snippets and cues came later. Use the wikis, firmware notes, forums, etc. to get more guidance.

 

[themuzicman]

I think you're trying to fill a pro-level need on an entry-level desk. If you find it useful for you, build it -- but I wouldn't expect most people to use it on an X32.

It sounds a lot like what was desired out of YammieQ for Yamaha desks. I'll be honest, if I needed to do something for a one-off thing in the desk, I'd probably just capture the OSC or MIDI values of the thing I needed to do, slam it into a QLab cue, and have it spit what I need back out.

If I'm at an X32, I'm probably not going to myself, "hey, I really need an alias here because these hats are killing me", I'm probably sitting there trying to figure out how to shoehorn my show into the desk and letting little things slide past that I know a different desk could fix. I think a large Excel table of OSC values and ranges would suffice for this and not a full-blow program, and using QLab to inject data into the desk is really enough -- besides, I've had enough problems with dumping large amounts of scene data into other desks to know that I don't trust it for huge operations and would definitely want to let the console's scene memory handle the workhorse stuff and only inject small amounts of data here and there when I really need to pull off a trick.

If you are held up because you're on a Mac and something is Windows only, Oracle's VirtualBox is super great (and free), and Parallels is great (and costs money).

The two biggest hindrances I see are
1. If a program is going to control my scene data, I want a redundant computer setup. If I'm on an X32, chances are whatever venue I'm in isn't springing for a redundant setup. Besides, OSC isn't the most redundant friendly, you end up having to route traffic from the Backup Computer into the Main Computer via an OSC Router, keep the main disconnected, and then when your backup crashes you need to flip the router to your Main machine. Too many points of failure, when I can use a piece of dumb hardware for redundancy like I do with MIDI.

2. It's a ton of data that consoles don't like to get all at once. Things are updated sequentially as data hits the desk so if you're trying to dump a huge file into the console so any piece of software needs some sort of tracking functionality so that you don't send data that isn't changing anything AND you need the ability to prioritize what data gets updated first so the scene can work (ever work on a PM1D or PM5D that had a million parameters being changed? You take a Q, the DCA's and mutes flip immediately while the entire surface goes blank for a second while it loads the new scene, and you're hoping everything pops back on quick, it's not fun in a super fast scene change).

On the CL5, I typically do line-mixing as well through DCA changes, often leaving the lead(s) on recall safe faders so I have to control them all the time. In a perfect world I will only have scene recalls affect DCA faders when I will be bringing a new group or person up with that DCA in the next scene. In other words, say I'm riding a DCA for a big solo number, as soon as that finishes I have a character coming onstage so I need to have their DCA ready to go, I want to recall it, but not have it up. In this situation I would want to turn that person's mic on, change the DCA to include him and change the scribble strip, and have the console bring that DCA fader down automatically without touching any other DCAs on the console(this can be solved by turning the DCA down on my own, but it also mitigates the risk of an accidental recall or double go). R

Probably a bit of designer perspective here that isn't too important, but I never want scene automation to ever touch a DCA's motors. In fact, on larger desks once a show is programmed, if I can I'll have the motors removed from the DCA faders just to make sure scene automation can't touch them and I have total control. I typically have all vocal inputs recall safe, and only use scene parameters to flip mutes, DCA assigns, scribble strip names, and mix sends.

If you're in a big solo number you should have at least a few other fingers ready to bring in another fader and hit a GO button simultaneously. For a double go, I generally have QLab triggering all scene changes in the desk, so the double-go prevention already in it stops that from happening.