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newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:03 am
by jlepore
Last night I had to use an A2 as monitor guy that had no prior experience with computer mixing - neither SAC or AMP. His normal gig is FOH on an X32 these days. I put him on the AMP rig with my normal monitor mix window set. I had a remote set up on my laptop at FOH so I could jump in if he ran into issues.

The only thing I wound doing is setting up the channel labels (since I was doing the input list on the fly on my Profile as well as his desk). He handled everything else himself. The only instruction I gave him was here are faders, here are aux sends in the monitor view, here is the channel strip. Have fun.

End of the night all I heard from the band was everything sounded great and no issues. The engineer had no issues and sat back relaxed all night. This simply could not have happened with SAC.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:14 pm
by pedrovent
I do not agree. I do it with SAC smoothly.
AMP is perhaps easier but nothing is free.
:)

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:45 pm
by BrentEvans
You teach people in five minutes how to run a show? I call shenanigans.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 2:18 pm
by jlepore
Really? Why should it take an experienced engineer more than that? That is what it takes me when I walk up on a desk I don't know to get going. I just have to find where they put all the things I already know how to use. Last week was the first time I've been on a Digico SD8 in years and that was all it took - thankfully - as I was down to 20 minutes to doors to get a national opener up and going (24 ins x 6 mixes).

Even knowing SAC as well as I do now I'm not sure I could do that jumping through all those screens to change mixers constantly (not to mention having to flip just to set EQ's and gates) with everyone asking for things at once and a PM screaming hurry up (which of course slows everything down!).

He was doing monitors - not like he had to think up grand routing, fx, etc. He had about 40 ins x 6 mixes with some EQing and Gating - and the ability to use his ears and not have to focus on the tool but the work. Exactly how it should be. No - I couldn't train someone that didn't know what they were doing on the audio side in that time - but then again - I wouldn't hire those people to do the gig. I don't work training gigs.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 2:41 pm
by jlepore
Seriously - What's so hard about using this as a monitor desk - everything you need in one screen - I need one hand on the mouse and a set of eyes and ears.
I'm sure this is not what SAC came up with for a monitor view but it really CAN be that simple with some software....

0150221_MonDesk.jpg
AMP Monitors
0150221_MonDesk.jpg (167.19 KiB) Viewed 47359 times

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 2:48 pm
by RBIngraham
BrentEvans wrote:You teach people in five minutes how to run a show? I call shenanigans.


OK, I sense some hyperbole as well. But where in the original post did he say it only took 5 mins? And as he pointed out, this wasn't a newbie that had never done it before. Only the desk was new to them. I have only glanced at the X32 stuff but I bet if I walked into a gig where someone had it all patched and ready to go for me and even labeled the inputs and outptus for me, I bet I could figure it out fairly quickly. We're not talking about starting from scratch here. :roll:

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 4:48 pm
by BrentEvans
I was talking to Pedro.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:20 pm
by jlepore
Ah .. I misread who you were talking to as well then.

Yeah - even set up, there is no way I could get someone running that fast on SAC - it just doesn't make sense to someone that uses real consoles for a living.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:40 pm
by Paul Henry
I haven't got my hands on AMP yet, but it took me about 30 seconds to understand what everything was in Joe's screen shot.

Re: newbie success

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:23 pm
by jlepore
The beauty is when you actually see how they work - that monitor view is a thing of beauty - you can click which brings up popup faders, or you can hover over a control and use the mouse wheel to adjust slowly - so you find the knob (you know - like on the big old analog desks we used to use), then look up at your artist while scrolling the wheel up and down until he gives to the smile.

Novel concept I know, but hey - it's fast and it works!

All praise to BobP and Brett for not laughing when I said that was what I wanted - I had it in DAYS and used it that weekend. That's how confident in the code I was.