ICON D ? Is this the new controller?

[Rail Jon Rogut]

but come on no patchbay with there own D/A's-A/D's ect? What were they thinking?

It would be simple to wire a patch bay (analog and digital) to your I/O.. just because it's not included in the ICON picture doesn't mean it's not part of the solution.. obviously if you have outboard gear which you'd want to interface with your I/O.. you'd have them wired to a patchbay.

If you have enough I/O that you can dedicate each outboard unit to an input and output.. then you can hardwire them and label them in the I/O Setup and not need a patchbay. Personally I'd want one to reduce A to D and D to A points if chaining analog devices across a single insert.

Rail

[Tiago Silva]

This thread has been great fun to read!
Let me just confuse the discussion a bit more <grin>:

This is a small country I live in, and there is very little "disposable income". It's what I have to work with. Our top music groups are used to sell less than 100.000 records and call it a "very successfull album". A film that makes it to 200.000 viewers hasn't happened in years.

There's *ONE* SSL in the whole country. A 4000. Installed around '86. The studio is almost broke. What keeps it alive is the room: Jazz and classical guys like to track there because it's an old, big, nice room. But then, I have in my hands a very well mixed CD that had some tracks recorded there and some in a small studio with good rooms. Do I notice a difference between them? Yes. The mix was made in a small room with a 16fader ProControl, a vintage pre (can't identify it), a 15 inch monitor for PT, two NS10s and two Events. Can I hear a difference between this mix and some others done in the SSL room? I prefer the ProControl mix. It's the brain between the ears, guys. And there's more...

Phil Newell, among others, have said this better than I will, but here goes: you can't possibly know what to do with the sound you have if you can't hear what's wrong with it. You have to spend upwards of 500.000$ on a location, an acoustic project and construction to get a world class room. Then you have somewhere to put the nice gear... and take advantage of it!

A guy that spent 2000$ on an MBox system has just enough money to put it in his basement with some flutterbusters lining the walls (this, if he even cares). A guy that spent 50000$ dollars on an HD2 will still balk at the price of acoustic treatment. This is another game, it's not even in the same country. When you reach these figures, if you have to splurge just to get the return on the investment, you should, otherwise you'll just lose the money.
However, someone who just built a good room will look at the price of an SSL and see dinners at McDonald's every day, while it looks at a ProControl and sees a toy.

For film, since Avid bought Digi and their product lines became integrated, post workflows became a lot easier and with less snags. In this country, abandoning magnetic media and analog mixing has in fact improved the sound quality of the films, because we never had the money or the time to work correctly in analog. We still don't have enough time, but now we can take the tracks a lot faster to the state where art begins (that's when the soundtrack stops taking audiences out of daydreaming - sorry, "suspension of disbelief"). And that leaves us more time to do cinema. So we're stuck with ProTools, for now. And only anyone who hasn't heard of 30 minutes of automation recalling at the start of a day's work with some digital-controlled consoles won't appreciate the near-instant recall of a mix-in-the-box in ProTools.

Our only film mixing room (for SR-D) has a 32-fader ProControl; it was a way to use very good automation at a nice price and having the possibility to be productive in a room with the standard way of working. In film, *no way* you can mix with a mouse (well, *yes way*, but you will NOT be mixing *to picture*). Do I like it? I dream of Euphonix System5 every night after being in the studio - but heck, this country makes 15 films in a very good year, we(*) mix feature films in 3 to 4 weeks ("look, L.A., no premixing! Just 90 tracks!"), producers get peanuts in boxoffice, we get paid peanuts. How could we afford one? We hear of Neve DFC and Logic stages being in trouble in France!

Do I like ICON? Sincerely, no. It's expensive. It's big. Only plug-ins that conform to the "specifications" of the central section controllers (or flatly replicate them) will be useful (but the same thing happened with the ProControl plug-in section). There's still no place to put a LARC, a Dolby CatNo.43(0) remote controller, room lights switching or transport controls for external transports. All that I wanted was a sturdier ProControl, with touch-sensitive panpots that didn't stop working after 500 hours, a center section with keyboard, trackpad and metering (real metering), a monitoring controller and surround panners (joystick or 3-pot, whatever...). Some of them happened, some haven't. Maybe when I'm able to put my hands on an ICON I'll change my opinion.

Can't be really sure if I've made a point there or just rambling... Music guys, just stop, you're way off base, mixing in the box is very good for post. I'll tell you some secrets - Dolby Digital is as lossycompressed as MP3. The way to get good film sound is deploying dynamic and tonal *contrasts* - we're trying to keep people concentrated for 90 minutes, not 4 - and that takes lots of editing and lots of mixing. Usually most of film "tracking" happened in a noisy exterior or a boomy studio with lights buzzing, radiomikes crackling and getting cloth noise, and shotgun mikes in a boom 3 feet away from the talent, all being mixed in a battery powered console with battery powered pre's, and monitored through headphones. Therefore, the sound quality of most of the sound we mix has absolutely no relationship with the console we choose to mix with. It's all in the production sound, the sound libraries, the ADR rooms (not ICON's market) and the foley rooms (ditto!). Post mixing is about convenience and speed. And maybe ICON will deliver a lot more than ProControl did.

(sigh)

(* when I say we, I mean my Boss, that does the mixing. I'm just the local geek, so take my words with a grain of salt, please)

[yvan]

what will be it's price and release date?

[The Eggman]

S2N/Studio,

What can I say? There is no way that either of us will be able to know what the future will bring until the future brings it. So I don't see much purpose for you and I to go around and around. I've listened to you and don't agree overall. You've listened to me and don't agree overall.

But here's a couple of quick thoughts. For both you and Prod, ask yourselves this question. JJP and TLA, for instance, are both very popular, successful and excellent mixers. Both have grown up firmly in the analog era. JJP has built that wonderful room of analog gear, and it's fun as hell to see. NOW, if I had told either one of you five years ago, that within the next three years, both of those guys would announce to their clients that ALL FILES MUST BE RECEIVED BY US IN PROTOOLS FORMAT, would you have said to me "Yes, Eggie, you are SO correct in your vision of the future" or would you have said "Eggie, these guys use analog for their entire sound...what possible advantage would it be for either of them to even allow, let alone insist, that clients turn file into them on a sonically-lesser DIGITAL format?". I'm not asking you guys to publicly answer the question, but you should at least be honest with yourselves about it. I'm pretty sure that you would have told me that I was off my rocker.

We all do agree on one thing...the D-Control will surely add NOTHING to the general audio quality of ProTools. The audio it controls is the very same audio which can be controlled from the ProControl, the Control24, the HUI, the Cooper box, or even from your computer mouse alone. Same audio. Agreed.

For years and years, our industry has been faced with new technologies. Think about those older guys mixing on the tube desks back in the 50's and 60's. Don't we agree that those guys must have been saying "these new solid state consoles are never going to cut it! No studio is going to have success with them...they don't SOUND as good"? Or in the more recent past, the debates have raged on..."No digital reverb is going to take the place of plates and chambers". "SSL's are all bells and whistles...no real engineer is going to use them". "ProTools might be fine for editing, but no one is going record their entire album to it".

Now, both of you are saying that the Icon, because it brings no sonic advantage, will never have success...we'll never see big name mixers working on them...studios who install them will fail because they'll have nothing to offer over the little kid down the street. And, the real truth is...YOU MIGHT BE 100% CORRECT IN YOUR STATEMENTS. But I will also say that I wouldn't be SO sure that the future is going to play out exactly as you think. Believe me, stranger things have happened.

I surely agree with you that the better analog studios will continue to do well, especially if there is a shakeout and some of the lesser studios end up closing. The analog studios that have created for themselves some sort of niche or a very loyal clientele will continue to thrive...places like Avatar, Sunset Sound, NRG, Oceanway, Conway. Similarly, some of the SSL equipped mixing rooms should continue to do well after the shakeout...Larrabee, Hit Factory, Record Plant, etc. However, I believe that you're both underestimating the possibilities for overdub/mixing rooms built around the Icon. I do honestly believe that they will rise to carve out their own niche in the marketplace. When you guys say "ain't gonna happen", I think you're wrong. But the good thing is that we won't have to wait that long to find out...the Icon should be on display at NAB this month and shipping shortly thereafter. If the product bombs, I'll be the first to admit it.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

The analog studios that have created for themselves some sort of niche or a very loyal clientele will continue to thrive...places like Avatar, Sunset Sound, NRG, Oceanway, Conway.

Don't bet the house on it.

Rail

[The Eggman]

Don't bet the house on it.

Rail

Rail, I think that the major markets are tremendously overbuilt with studios. And much as I hate to say it, I'm thinking that a large number of the studios in our music cities (and around the world perhaps) will be shutting their doors. Having said that, I still believe that the studios mentioned above, by and large, may have the greatest chance to hang in there because they have found their niche and seem to have a fairly loyal clientele. But, no, I wouldn't bet the house on it. I'm betting only on the direction that I think is the future...

[Philthy]

Thanks Tiago, that was a really interesting post.

It's a good point you made about plugins needing to conform to the hardware specs; no one has talked too much about that yet.

[s2n]

For years and years, our industry has been faced with new technologies. Think about those older guys mixing on the tube desks back in the 50's and 60's. Don't we agree that those guys must have been saying "these new solid state consoles are never going to cut it! No studio is going to have success with them...they don't SOUND as good"? Or in the more recent past, the debates have raged on..."No digital reverb is going to take the place of plates and chambers". "SSL's are all bells and whistles...no real engineer is going to use them". "ProTools might be fine for editing, but no one is going record their entire album to it".

[sarcasm]And, we all know how nobody wants those old analog Class A pieces of gear or the plate reverbs from the 50's and 60's, right? They keep on dropping in price, yet nobody wants to buy that antiquated technology. They're all simply collecting dust in Guitar Centre's basement. Why bother when you have all of those cool plugins that sound better? No plate reverb or digital reverb can come close to a plugin![/sarcasm]

You can record to Pro Tools. That, I haven't disagreed with. You just can't mix on it to get THE SOUND.

ICON is for the film mixing guys. That's where you'll see it.

[The Eggman]

ICON is for the film mixing guys. That's where you'll see it.

[/QUOTE]

So, when you first heard ProTools, you said to yourself "man, you can really get THE SOUND by recording onto this format" or did you say "man, recording into ProTools definitely will NOT get you THE SOUND"?

And, so that we can all understand your position, do you think:

1) Icons will not be installed by more than a handful of the popular music recording studios.

OR

2) The studios will be dumb enough to install them, but the rooms will sit vacant.

I'd love to understand your thinking totally...

[thestudio]

I have two EMT stereo plates and the sound is just awesome........I like Reverb One and D-verb for certain things but I would agree that the algorithms are lacking. You just have to remember that Digi and other companies are just stringing people along slowly for profit. I get to work with an TC6000 at this one studio once in awhile and would have to say that it smokes plugs and it's digital.....