Couple of suggestions for D-Control design

[MikeOlson]

Loving our new D-Controls:)

Need to throw out a few design suggestions:

1. The script tray needs to be one inch higher since it hits the joysticks in the surround panner. Big oversight imo. If you're not careful and you slide the script tray to be right in front of you, it is not hard at all to break your joystick(s) ... We've had the D-Control for a month and have broken / repaired the joystick 3 times already. We've improvised a rubber stopper to keep the tray from sliding too far but with enough force, it can still hit the joystick.

2. Add a little tolerance to the rack area of the Producer's desk option. The rack rails are inset about a sixteenth of an inch into the metal face plate and the opening is machined to be PRECISELY 19 inches. Since most rack gear is also precisely 19 inches, they do not sit in the rack properly. We had to grind down the rack ears of each rack piece a bit in order to get them to sit in the producer's desk right. Couldn't the metal top piece be machined to have a 19.05 inch opening or just enough to let 19" rack gear drop right in?

3. On the meter bridge you can't read the number markings. The meters look great, but the light gray on light gray dB markings are next to impossible to see. Couldn't they be back-lit? Oh that would look so sexy if the dB markings were back-lit ala SSL Plasma meter style:) Also, in the meter prefs we need a -10dBfs ref level for broadcast! -14 is nearly extinct at this point. What about an adjustable soft key pref like the auto match/glide times that you could simply adjust to whatever ref level you like?

4. I know this has been said many times but the rubber arm rest is painful. If I wanted hairless arms, I could go to a waxing parlor and it would probably be less painful:)

5. Couldn't the trackball have a scroll wheel or even better a scroll ring like the latest Kensingtons? I do enjoy the jog wheel scroll options, but scrolling with my left hand is clumsy.

That's about it at this point:) Loving everything else!
Thanks Digi for a great console er 'Worksurface'

[GlennR01]

Loving our new D-Controls:)

Need to throw out a few design suggestions:

1. The script tray needs to be one inch higher since it hits the joysticks in the surround panner. Big oversight imo. If you're not careful and you slide the script tray to be right in front of you, it is not hard at all to break your joystick(s) ... We've had the D-Control for a month and have broken / repaired the joystick 3 times already. We've improvised a rubber stopper to keep the tray from sliding too far but with enough force, it can still hit the joystick.

Agreed - I assume that when Digi designed this, they assumed that not everyone would opt for the surround panner...

2. Add a little tolerance to the rack area of the Producer's desk option. The rack rails are inset about a sixteenth of an inch into the metal face plate and the opening is machined to be PRECISELY 19 inches. Since most rack gear is also precisely 19 inches, they do not sit in the rack properly. We had to grind down the rack ears of each rack piece a bit in order to get them to sit in the producer's desk right. Couldn't the metal top piece be machined to have a 19.05 inch opening or just enough to let 19" rack gear drop right in?

Contact Vicky Moreno at Digi support - she is aware of the improper machining of the producer's desk rack width.

5. Couldn't the trackball have a scroll wheel or even better a scroll ring like the latest Kensingtons? I do enjoy the jog wheel scroll options, but scrolling with my left hand is clumsy.

I yanked the supplied trackball and installed the new Kensington - took about 2 minutes, worth the time and effort.

[MikeOlson]

Thanks Glenn, any chance you could provide pictures of how your Kensington ended up looking after installation? I've been playing around with the idea of doing that myself. They're still less than a month old so I'm still hesitant to tear them apart, even though we have opened up the surround panner a number of times already:)

[GlennR01]

No photo, but I removed the Digi trackball (per Digi's instructions), installed the supplied replacement blank panel, and sat the Kensington trackball on top of the panel with the cable fed thru the small cable slot in the panel.

[MikeOlson]

Ahh gotcha, so it sits on top. I was wondering if you sunk it inside the desk at all etc...
We'll see how it goes, the jog wheel isn't bad at all for scrolling, we just have to get used to using our left hands:) Lot's of finger gymnastics involved with some of the jog wheel features like moving windows around etc:)

Thanks again!