Console x GUI

[cinetj]

Being heretical out of pure ignorance... Be gentle, please.


Raised a GUI guy (which sounds corny as hell by the way...) and having litle
experience with consoles (a Control 24 is a recent acquisition in the small studio I work) I find difficult to use the console for some purposes. Dialog volume automation for example. For me it's much easier do every litle adjustement with a mouse than writing automation in real time. How wrong could I be?

[GlennR01]

Not wrong at all. You need to work with a mouse. It's fine. :)

[Chris Lambrechts]

I of course disagree wholeheartedly with Sir Glenn ...

Cinetj,

I suppose you are talking about 'fine tuning' volume automation correct ? As in making a selection and then trimming things down ?

Or are you saying you find it hard to use the faders in general to write automation ... as in following along / riding the faders during playback ?

Just curious ... and of course also hoping to help to change your mind. You sound like you do not have a lot of 'fader milage' under your belt but nothing wrong with that and I can certainly understand that burned in habits can be hard to break. The idea of these controllers is to improve and make your workflow easier ... not to be a hassle.

I think a lot of it may lie in little things that help fader automation in countless ways. A proper understanding of things like automatch / join / autojoin for example ... things that you are not likely to use when mixing with a mouse but life essential when mixing on these controllers.

Or the actual automation modes .... again a BIG difference to what you would typically use when mixing with the mouse. LATCH BABY ... I'm willing to bet that you are not used to using that right ? Well .... you should investigate what it can do for you in combination with the couple of things I mentioned above.

There's TONS more but probably irrelevant at this point for you. As with all things ... it will ask a certain amount of commitment at first but I think I can guarantee you that if you are willing to put in some commitment and explore what it CAN do for you to improve your workflow ... you will NEVER go back to adjusting things like volume automation with the mouse. Well ... not for 99.999 % of what you have to do with it anyhow.


Chris

[macaholic]

I have to agree with Chris on this one as well...

I have only had my D-Command about a year and a half and cannot imagine going back to doing Dialogue rides with a mouse. After using the ICON, I found myself using all of PT Auto modes (except for Write ;-), and feel like it makes my workflow faster, simply because you are actually "mixing" in realtime, rather than adjusting levels with a mouse.

Of course I'm in a post environment, so cannot comment as to the music side of things, but won over another one of the guys I work with who is stractly a mouse guy too, when he saw I was able to tweak multiple things at once (volume, sends, and pan) not to mention the ability to be able to actually "grab" a couple knobs on the center EQ section and be able to sweep more than one thing at a time.

JC