Razor wrote:My ideal mixer would always have a control surface, with at least 24 faders (motorized). Also, I know some people like the fact that SAC has only faders and no knobs, but knobs just make sense to me.
I like that SAC makes use of your computer for processing instead of relying on some proprietary expensive processing unit. That's probably the thing I like about it most of all.
Knobs can make total sense on hardware. They work fine because we can grab them and twist them. It's when you put the emulation of the knob visuall on screen that I think it becomes stupid. Even with the best implementation of virtual on screen knobs (which I believe to be where you click on the knob and move your mouse up and down to spin the knob) you still end up with large mouse movements that take your mouse out of the area where the cursor is in relation to the screen and then you will inevitablly have to pick up the damn mouse and move it back onto the mouse pad or the desk area, etc... I know it's knitpicky but I sill see it as a serious design flaw. The only other implementation I felt worked was one where you could hover over the knobs and use the mouse wheel to move the knob. But then you end up wearing out your finger with all that scroll wheel spinning.
Sorry, to me they are just a pain in the ass.
As for DSP, yes there is a lot of number crunching power availalbe in an off the shelf computer. The catch of course is in the details. Want super low latency? Well no computer operating system is really designed for that very well. Doesn't mean things like SAC are not usable, but it will sitll be signifigantly slower than dedicated DSP. With hardware DSP the code is custom written from the ground up, and the A to D, D to A conversion process is what accounts for much of the latency in most hardware digital console, not the processing. SAC itself is pretty damn fast as well, it's the ASIO driver buffers and any buffers on the sound cards that cause most of the added latency when dealing with native software products.
Going the DSP route can also be a lot more stable as well. It's why things like nice Digidesign and Digico consoles can continue to pass audio when the surface/UI crashes.
There is still good reasons when the big boy consoles have a rack with lots of DSPs in them to do all the heavy lifting and I guess I would just disagree, that I don't see that changing anytime soon. Computer/Software control of DSP can be a very stable and effective prodcut and it can still be more affordable than the old analog days. Just think how much you would have to spend for an all analog system with the processing power of even some of the fairly modest digital consoles or software.