Sound Desk Cue Stacks

[chelgrian]

I've just emerged from plotting a fairly complicated show using the Yamaha automation system on the M7CL and it was a very painful experience.

 

I've not had any experience with the cue stacks on other desks but are any of them any better i.e. have they learnt anything from lighting desks over the past decade for example does anything have:

 

- A blind mode so a cue can be edited without affecting what's going out of the desk at the current moment.

- Tracking

- A separate GUI on a separate monitor with the cue stack

- Arbitrary cue numbering so cues can be inserted without renumbering each subsequent cue in the stack

[nb705]

The Digicos can do all of that. The avid consoles can do all but tracking and the separate monitor. The Midas Pro series can do all but tracking and blind mode.

[neilalexrose]

- A blind mode so a cue can be edited without affecting what's going out of the desk at the current moment.

- Tracking

- A separate GUI on a separate monitor with the cue stack

- Arbitrary cue numbering so cues can be inserted without renumbering each subsequent cue in the stack

 

 

The CL and QL desks have a preview mode, so blind programming can be done. For a GUI of the cue stack, studio manager could be used on an external PC/Mac showing the scene library. Yamaha has stuck with whole numbers in the CL/QL when it comes to cue numbers - probably so the cues will line up with the midi program change message that is automatically assigned when you record a new cue. As this is a known constant in all Yamaha consoles, in the cue stack for the show I'm currently touring with, I programmed the scenes to be 5 scenes apart, so there are some spare memories available if I needed to insert any cues in the gaps. It's worth noting the maximum number of scenes that can be plotted on a yamaha console though - I think the top number is 300 on some of the yamaha consoles.

 

 

The Soundcraft Vi series has a preview mode, and you can add in point cues, but there is no external GUI for cues, though there is a small cue stack window on the central display, to tell you what is coming next. Incidentally you have to manually assign midi messages to each cue, if you wish to trigger the cues via show control software.

 

Neil

[cedd]

The likes of Digico have decimal point cue numbering, and the new Roland M5000 will have it too.

 

I've always felt a little bit like sound has lagged behind in terms of cue stacks. One really useful function I'd love would be to either have follow on cues or the ability to go in to a cue and separate out different elements to different timings.

For instance I regularly find I use up lots of extra cues (or just do things manually) when somebody delivers their last line followed by somebody new delivering a line. I have a cue to raise the fader on the new person, just in time to do their line without chopping the start of their word off, but also need to pull down the previous actor's mic. If I could fire a cue to open the new mic, with a 3 second delay before it pulled down the mic that's done with, it'd be really great.

 

 

 

[chelgrian]

The Digicos can do all of that. The avid consoles can do all but tracking and the separate monitor. The Midas Pro series can do all but tracking and blind mode.

 

Humph I don't like desks which I have to have UPS for because they might corrupt their Windows installation if the power fails at the wrong moment or that have to actually save the state of the desk rather than the desk just coming back to the same position it was when you power cycled it. That's something Yamaha have got exactly right since they use a custom RTOS rather than an off the shelf OS. However unfortunately you're right a DiGiCo with the T series software seems to be the only thing that can do a sensible cue stack.

 

The CL and QL desks have a preview mode, so blind programming can be done. For a GUI of the cue stack, studio manager could be used on an external PC/Mac showing the scene library.

 

I'm fairly dubious of having the network connected in a show situation, all the crashes of Yamaha desks I've seen have seemed to be related to network traffic or having Studio Manager or the iPad remote connected.

 

Yamaha has stuck with whole numbers in the CL/QL when it comes to cue numbers - probably so the cues will line up with the midi program change message that is automatically assigned when you record a new cue. As this is a known constant in all Yamaha consoles, in the cue stack for the show I'm currently touring with, I programmed the scenes to be 5 scenes apart, so there are some spare memories available if I needed to insert any cues in the gaps. It's worth noting the maximum number of scenes that can be plotted on a yamaha console though - I think the top number is 300 on some of the yamaha consoles.

 

The M7CL certainly has 300 scenes. The QL and CL series are the same. The Rivage PM10 has 1000 scenes but fundamentally has the same automation mechanisms as other Yamahas. The show I've just plotted uses 114 scenes so I could quite envisage running out on a more complicated show. If they implemented MSC rather than reply on program change messages arbitrary cue numbers wouldn't be a problem. The problem with leaving holes in the cue stack is that it makes the increment recall function (why is there not a button for this or an option to make recall do it) useless.

 

The Soundcraft Vi series has a preview mode, and you can add in point cues, but there is no external GUI for cues, though there is a small cue stack window on the central display, to tell you what is coming next. Incidentally you have to manually assign midi messages to each cue, if you wish to trigger the cues via show control software.

 

Never used a Vi but again another Windows based desk for the control computer, with QNX for the auto bits.

 

I've always felt a little bit like sound has lagged behind in terms of cue stacks.

 

Indeed.

 

It would be vaguely possible to do it externally on a Yamaha however certainly on the older desks you can't control all of the parameters via MIDI at the same time, you have to pick and choose what's mapped. Therefore you'd have to reverse engineer the Studio Manager to desk protocol to do it and I suspect that it'd be too slow.

 

Even on the desk itself it seems to take an appreciable amount of time (possible around 1 second) to recall a scene.

 

I suppose the problem is that the DiGiCo T series software was developed in co-operation with Autograph specifically for a niche theatre market which can put up with all of the other rough edges and that other desks are designed for larger and more lucrative markets first and squeezed in to other markets second. For example I think the M7CL was mainly designed for for the American houses of worship market.

 

Has anyone played with an SSL Live and what kind of automation system does that have or is it really 'Live' and not theatre? Given the other things SSL do you never know maybe they could be persuaded to do an SSL Theatre with the same desk but an additional software stack a la DiGiCo.

[Jevans]

Has anyone played with an SSL Live and what kind of automation system does that have or is it really 'Live' and not theatre?

 

I had a day at SSL a couple of months ago with it - it's a nice console with an automation system pretty comparable to the SD series (all the standard things, scoped record, scope recall, moving things around the cuestack, editing etc.), but it doesn't have what you might call any of the theatre specific features. It's got features like updating multiple scenes at the same time etc. using scene groups like on the SD series but nothing like the SD-T aliases/players workflow. There is a button to switch between "concert" and "theatre" modes but all that does is change the way the next/previous scene buttons work - in theatre mode they step between scenes instantly and in concert mode you can scroll up and down and then have to hit recall specifically.

 

I do recall quite clearly being slightly bemused by the fade times between scenes - one can set a fade time per scene, per channel, per parameter, each with their own wait time too, so it's a very, very large screen of numbers! When I asked who would ever have time to go down into that level of detail I was told apparently it was put in at the request of groups in Japan who automate everything...

 

Overall I thought it was a pretty promising console although I did think some operations with the UI were unnecessarily complex and involved more poking the screen that I was expecting - there were several screens that have to be unlocked by pressing an edit button at the side of the touchscreen before you can do anything else ( the scene recall list, for example) which didn't feel like there was any clear benefit to doing so - several times I would flick to a screen and try to start working on things before remembering that I had to push this button first. Also editing the scribble strips required a trip into the settings menu, though to be fair that's the same on the X32... ;)

[neilalexrose]

The problem with leaving holes in the cue stack is that it makes the increment recall function (why is there not a button for this or an option to make recall do it) useless.

 

 

The CL/QL has this function - increase the cue stack to the next cue, which you can assign to one of the user definable keys. Can't comment on the M7CL though.

 

Neil

[Jevans]

The problem with leaving holes in the cue stack is that it makes the increment recall function (why is there not a button for this or an option to make recall do it) useless.

 

 

The CL/QL has this function - increase the cue stack to the next cue, which you can assign to one of the user definable keys. Can't comment on the M7CL though.

 

Neil

 

I can confirm the M7CL does the same thing - a user key assigned to increment recall will recall the next scene in the list regardless of number. When working on the M7 I used to record scenes only every 5 in case I needed to insert one to avoid a renumber, but then I realised that I never actually bothered using the scene numbers anywhere anyway, so there was no point ( they're all labeled by name and of course when mixing the show you just keep hitting next!)

[Shaggy]

One really useful function I'd love would be to either have follow on cues

The vi series can do follow on cues, hit the cue number in the cue list and then use the go to cue and after sec fields.

[chelgrian]

The likes of Digico have decimal point cue numbering, and the new Roland M5000 will have it too.

 

The M5000 looks interesting, unfortunately no offline editor available for download and they are still in the 'lets keep the price secret' stage.

 

There's a possibility we'll sell and replace our M7 with something more modern before its residual value goes to zero.

[Mr.X]

I've always known the Yamahas were capable of much more than their Scene system offers, so I've been writing some software to allow additional functionality. I'd be curious to know whether those of you that do a lot of scene/snapshot programming think it would be useful. It's not in a release-ready state yet, but it does work with all Yamaha consoles (post 02R) and allows additional functionality and programming of the console.

http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/entry.php?30-A-little-something-I-ve-been-working-on

[cedd]

Talking about external PC-based options, there's also Palladium, which seems to offer a whole host of features, driving the desk via midi.

 

I've been meaning to download the free demo for a while now, but it's windows only and my windows laptop is on long term loan to my fiancée after hers died!

 

http://chsounddesign.com/palladium.php

 

 

 

[Shez]

I had a look at Palladium a while back although I've not yet used it in the real world. It certainly does appear to be pretty useful, particularly when used in conjunction with their other software as there's a nice workflow for importing data.