Live: iPad Mixing
Abstract (summary)
Bobby
Crown, house sound engineer at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles, discusses
using the Apple iPad for front-of-house mixing.
Full Text
It can be
argued that Apple's i Pad has changed the way people make music. But for mixing a live show? You bet. Granted, you won't be seeing
front-of-house engineers at the next arena date walking around the floor,
pushing "faders" up and down on an iPad while the digital console
sits idle. But for smaller venues of 1,000-capacity and below - where house
(and visiting) engineers are contending with multi-levels, multi-zones and an
FOH board in a less-thanideal spot - you may start seeing more iPadmixed shows.
And that's exactly what house engineer Bobby Crown of the famed Troubadour club
(Los Angeles) is doing.
Crown,
who has been with the venue for the past eight years, has been spearheading the
club's audio upgrades, fighting for a digital console to replace its aging
analog boards, garnering a loaner Avid VENUE (and later purchasing that digital
console) and generally leaning toward more computer-based processing. And then
he took it one step further: "When the iPad came out, I knew that I could
use it to mix," Crown
says. "So 1 waited five months and checked out some people online who were
messing around with it and found a screen-sharing program [iTelePort] that
allows the iPad to capture the [SC48's] screen and control the console
remotely. I finally went out and bought an iPad to strictly mix the show; the only apps I
have on it are audio apps, and 1 leave it at work.
"As
soon as I got the iPad working with the SC48, it really opened up the doors
even wider than when we got the digital console," he continues. "It
allows you to be completely remote; you don't have to be stuck behind the
console anymore. You can walk around and utilize every feature the console has
because the Avid [VENUE] software is able to be seen on the screen." Crown
connects the router to the back of the SC48 via Ethernet out and assigns the IP
address to the iPad. As soon as he turns on the app, the console screen is at
his disposal and is ready for soundcheck.
"So
now that we're onstage and the band's loading in, I can troubleshoot all the
monitors; I can send pink noise throughout the whole system and verify that
each monitor works. If it doesn't, I can stay downstairs, go to the amp and
figure out what the problem is to fix it [instead of making numerous trips from
console to stage and back again]. The bands see that their engineer - whom they
haven't met before - is doing something to help them along and immediately become
very comfortable. Once we get all the monitors ringed out and we know they're
verified, we plug in all the microphones based on the band's input list, and I
can stay onstage and walk right up to the monitor and hear if things are
working or not working correctly and fix it. It just gives you a better
understanding of what's happening onstage because you're there."
For the
most part, this is standard fare if a band comes in sans engineer; when a group
does come in with their own audio tech, that engineer will work on the SC48
while Crown and his second-in-command, Sean Myers, use the iPad to monitor
those mixes and help -
onthe-fly - if needed.
At
showtime, Crown can be seen at the Avid board - which can be used for both FOH
and monitor duties - making sure that all is working as it should. After the
first song, once Crown and crew feel comfortable with how things are sounding,
he'll start walking the floor, mixing
with the iPad. "It's such a small club, once it gets full you can stay on
the floor and mix, which
we've done, but then you run into issues where people are right next to you and
want to know what you're doing and distracting you," he adds. "We try
to stay at the console for the show, but we do walk around a lot." You
won't find Crown mixing
from a moshpit, but he hasn't found any problems from the occasional bump from
a club patron - nor has he experienced any latency issues with the router.
"I had expected to see that when you move a fader, you'd have to wait a
second to hear the result, but that hasn't happened. It's really
instantaneous."
Asked if
he misses the "tactile" feel of using a physical board, Crown
replies: "Yes and no. Having a graphic EQ for the front-of-house EQ, that
was something that I missed only because back in the analog days things were
never solid. It was never a comfort zone of sound; it could go any way at any
moment, and you had to always have your hands on it. Having that hands-on
tactile response, there's things I miss about it, but now that I know how the
console feels with a mouse and the knobs and faders that it provides, I don't
really want to go back - ever. From the beginning of my career in live sound until now, this is the
closest I have ever been to feeling fully connected to my responsibilities as a
professional live sound
engineer. The ability to adjust any input or output - with no limitations, at
any position in my mixing
environment - at the same time delivering the desired result in the time
expected is the ultimate rush any sound engineer can have!"
Sidebar
"[The
iPad] allows you to be competely remote; you don't have to be stuck behind the
console anymore."
- Bobby
Crown
Word
count: 941
Narrow
subject
Broad
subject
People
Company
Title
Live: iPad Mixing
Author
Publication
title
Volume
Issue
Pages
40, 42
Publication
year
2011
Publication
date
Jan 2011
Year
2011
Penton
Media, Inc
Place of
publication
Berkeley,
Calif.
Country
of publication
United
States
Journal
subject
ISSN
0164-9957
Source
type
Magazines
Language
of publication
English
Document
type
Feature
Document
feature
Photographs
ProQuest
document ID
871375700
Document
URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/871375700?accountid=144516
Last
updated
2012-08-23
Database
International
Index to Music Periodicals Full Text
No comments:
Post a Comment