Well, let's strike one thing Bob has said off the list.
"In 15 minutes you can train a guest/band engineer to use enough SAC to mix a show."
Now I'm not one to suggest that mixing with a mouse is easier than using a control surface (say, on a reasonable digital board), but even I recognize the limitations of control surfaces in SAC and yes, indeed, some operations *are* easier in SAC using the mouse than they are using a (limited) control surface. For example, you want to adjust one fader somewhere on the board and that fader just doesn't happen to be present on your fader pack. It's usually easier to just grab the mouse and tweak that fader than it is to (1) grab the mouse, select the channel, and move the 1st fader on the fader pack or (2) use the bank button to get the desired channel onto the fader pack, seek out the right channel (looking that the digital scribble strips on the Mackie in my case), and adjusting the physical fader.
This weekend I had a guest engineer who absolutely could not use a mouse to adjust faders. He used both of the methods above to select the channel and then he adjusted the gain by moving the fader. He was also a big fan of EQ'ing just about every input (as well as the mains' output) on the board. I heard nothing but complaints about how he wanted knobs and felt the mouse adjustments were too sensitive (yeah, I could have told him about the Mackie's abilities to adjust various parameters, but he was already going to slow on the board and I didn't want to have to train him more during the show).
I've gotten so used to SAC's idiosyncrasies that I've forgotten how bad the user interface can be. The GE asked me several (legitimate) questions about why SAC was designed as poorly as it was. Questions (that we all know about but don't think about these days) like:
1) Why do some buttons darken when they are actuated and others lighten?
2) Why doesn't SAC have real DCA/VCA controls? (He absolutely rejected the idea of group fader latches on the group faders; moving the actual input channel faders was unacceptable and adding a gain stage [group] was unacceptable).
3) Why can't you easily select an output channel and see which input channels are assigned to it?
4) Why does the "graphic equalizer plug in" only have 7 channels (parametric or not, he used them all and wanted more; didn't even want to try to patch in two of them and let him switch between them).
5) Why couldn't he adjust reverb parameters from the remote? (I'm using spazio, which isn't remoteable, but neither is Bob's reverb; not that he would have been happy with Bob's reverb). FWIW, my lead sound engineer is often wondering this same question.
6) Why can't we feed the output of one group to the input of another group?
7) Why is the user interface for controls on the SAC board different from those on the delay and graphic EQ plugins? (I.e., no pop-up fader).
He also came across the control surface bug where the (Mackie?) control surface gets in some mode where it's constantly setting the fader value and any attempt to set the fader with the mouse fails because the control surface just repositions the fader.
The guy absolutely rejected the mouse-based approach. Every time he had to adjust some parameter with the mouse, he muttered some unspeakables under his breath. Now I'm not saying this guy is completely right (hey, if you walk into an unknown venue and sit down at a board you've never used before, blaming the board because of your own insecurities and inabilities isn't a good show of professionalism) but the truth of the matter is that anyone who does the types of shows that I do with SAC is going to come across a lot of band engineers and some of them aren't going to be able to handle SAC's virtual mixing environment very well. It would be really nice if SAC was just a little nicer to use by these people. Bob can claim "anyone can be trained in 15 minutes to mix a show on SAC" but that doesn't make it true. I've had around a dozen guest engineers over the years I've owned SAC and all but two of them walked away feeling very frustrated (one had actually used SAC, one was a big DAW user and was immediately comfortable with SAC).
Now I don't want to give the impression that *everything* that happened was SAC's fault. This guy was one of the strangest sound engineers I've ever put on SAC with just a few minute's training. First of all, made a whole bunch of EQ adjustments *before* any sound was coming out of the system; then, during sound check, he put on a pair of cans and made many more adjustments. Surprise, surprise, when the band started playing for real (through the mains) the EQ was all messed up. I can understand that a sound engineer that tours with an act might know the particulars for the performers' instruments and might be able to preset the EQ *on their sound system* as a starting point, but when you step up to a strange board, on a strange system, in a strange venue and start tweaking EQ before you've got actual sound coming out, you're begging for problems (and we had them).
The guy was also a volume freak. For the first time in my life, the system tripped a 100-amp breaker *on the generator* (it also tripped *every* breaker on my power distribution box). During the show, he managed to trip one sub breaker (no big deal, lost two out of six subs for a few minutes) and then, on the very last word of the last song he boosted the lead vocals so much it tripped the break for my mains amps (two ITech 8000 amps). Unbelievable. I've tripped one 20-amp breaker on this system on two separate occasions for the past couple of years.
I always sell earplugs at the front of house booth. Crappy little things that I buy at Harbor Freight and sell for $0.25 each (basically break-even cost) to avoid lawsuit issues (especially with parents who insist on parking their pre-teens 20' from my FOH mains). At this show I sold out of every ear plug I had *during the sound check*. The sound engineer was quite proud of himself for that; he said "see, I just made you more money." To which I responded that I sell these things at cost and the fact that we sold out *probably* suggests that the system was a bit too loud. He ignored that, and kept complaining the whole night that he needed twice the system to do the show.
Fortunately, my Driverack 4800 was protecting my speakers. I would have been fearful for my gear if I didn't see those limiter lights coming on during especially aggressive song mixes.
I didn't even bother pointing out that this particular crowd doesn't want it ear splitting loud (they often complain about the volume when my guys are mixing). I also didn't bother pointing out that when you use up all the headroom, the mix is going to sound like crap. My attitude was "it's your sound, I'm not responsible for it." OTOH, it's my company's banner hanging on the FOH booth. Ugh.
On the plus side, the band was totally IEMs. That was a *big* piece of pleasantry. Once during the set the lead singer came up and said to me "I need 3 more dB at 3.1 KHz." How easy is that? (Usually people say "my vocals are muddy" and I have no clue what they want me to do about it).
On the SAC front, I came across a new (to me) bug while setting up the system. Hooked up the Mackie MCU and got it working. For some reason, I unplugged the Mackie and tried to reconnect it. This crashed SAC Remote. Good thing the guest engineer was present at that point he probably would have freaked.
Oh well, here's to next week; we've got a Doors tribute band. Hopefully it won't be as crazy.