Fader to Channel Locking and Subsequent VCA Spill Question / Feature
 

Hey guys,

So on a D-Command I have a question about something I'd like to do but haven't really tried doing yet. I've had a D-Command 24 fader setup for 15 years or so, but admittedly, I use it mainly for monitoring and automation. I'd like to start using it more (I guess I'm super slow to adopt features even with the board staring at me everyday).

The way I'd ideally like to work, and the way I have my D-Command setup is with 8 faders on my left, the center section, and then 16 on my right. I sum with a Neve 5059 satellite and I usually create 8 summing groups which are essentially my sub busses that go out to my summing mixer. The 8 stereo channels are usually something like | DRUMS | BASS | KEYS | VOCALS | BACKING VOCALS | GUITARS | PADS | EFX |.

So ideally I'd like these physically located on the very left side of my D-Command so they show up as the 8 faders. OK - no problem. However, they will move around a lot if I bank or nudge, and I'd ideally want them locked to that position. I also wanted to be able to hit spill and have the member tracks that those subs represent spill over to the RIGHT hand 16 faders.

This workflow would be so quick and easy for me, and my way of thinking. Now I know I can create Custom Faders and make each of these 8 sub groups a custom fader. But would they be able to be LOCKED and kept un-bankable on the left hand side?

If this was possible, and these subs were actually VCA faders, I believe then hitting VCA spill would allow their member groups to automatically show up spilled over the right hand side since that's all the space there would be for them. This would be KILLER.

I rarely have more than 16 tracks in a given sub group, so this method would allow me to start at the sub group level, and then quickly focus in on any of the members of each group, always quickly on the right hand side for member tracks, and the left for their corresponding sub masters.

Thanks for reading... is this possible? I intend to tinker around when I'm not busy mixing tomorrow.

Best,
Neil

Re: Fader to Channel Locking and Subsequent VCA Spill Question / Feature
 

I'll respond to my own post here.

So basically, to have Master Aux Busses on the left hand side of the center console and member tracks on the right is easily possible in a few ways:

1 - Custom Fader groups: this will allow all Master Busses to remain locked on the left hand side.

The issue with this is that member tracks all include the aux busses and so we have to nudge the to right until we are only displaying member tracks. However, this isn't ideal. It also doesn't allow for spill behavior, so I'm basically banking around on the right hand 16 faders.

2 - VCA Track Groups. This is cool as it allows VCA Spill, however it is limited.

The VCA tracks will in fact appear and stay on the left, however, when we spill the member tracks they overlay over the VCA fader and occupy the left fader bank of 8, where the VCA groups are. It would be much better if they could spill over to the right, so the VCA masters could still stay in place on the left 8 fader banks (left of the center section in my setup).

Also - I personally don't like VCA faders. I have no desire to control the actual volume levels of the member tracks, this would actually screw up my workflow. If I could create 'VCA' tracks which could spill, but did NOT affect the actual fader levels of the individual tracks, I'd be happy --- basically using VCA's only for their spill functionality. And of course, the spilling properly filling the right 16 faders on the expansion instead of the 8 faders on the left.

3 - Folder tracks. On Eucon based surfaces, it seems that folder tracks might be a solution as they have implemented in Protools 20.4 - Folder Spill. This is unfortunately not available for Icon. I don't know how this functionality actually looks on the Eucon's, but this might be the ultimate version if the 'folder open/spill' actually expanded to the right fader banks - which I think it might.

So there's where my issue is. All this functionality, but I still cannot do the relatively simple thing I want: Aux Busses on the left, say 8 of them to fill all 8 faders on the left and ONLY member tracks of those aux's (so those aux's would be omitted from appearing on the right) to appear on the right 16 faders (expansion). And additionally, Ideally, a Spill functionality to exist so that I only needed to look at Master Aux's until I wanted to dial down into any particular blend.

Seems so close... but no...

I can get away with Custom Fader Groups for now, and just nudge past the 8 Aux faders if I line them up all on the left hand side of the Pro Tools Mixer.

Neil