[Steve McCale]

Dear TwoPort,

As you know, there are no dumb questions, only dumb answers. I'll try to avoid giving you the latter. In answer to your question: Nothing is impossible, given enough time and market demand, but run-time automation features on the VENUE platform are not in the foreseeable future.

VENUE is purpose built for live sound applications. The run-time automation features you describe are mainly for use in a studio environment. Although I am the first to agree that run-time automation can have it's uses in certain live applications, the truth is, they are rare.

If music is truly being played by real musicians, it is practically imposible for them to perfectly reproduce every nuance of a performace, every time they take the stage. That means that no matter how much we program our mix, we will still need to grab the fader and adjust the EQ from time to time, reducing the effectiveness of the automation. In a studio mix, you can be sure that the track won't change with the room acoustics. Also, if you are using tracks in the show, you can simply program the machine that is playing the tracks (Pro Tools) to perform whatever run-time automation moves you wish.

VENUE's snapshot automation gives you a powerful programming tool that can be set to follow time code very quickly and accurately. I regularly use it to set up intricate mixes that change on a phrase by phrase basis to give me a run-time effect. With EDIT mode, I can trim and update these snapshots quickly and easily giving me a powerful workflow that really works in a live environment. What's more, it can be scaled so anyone can take advantage of what it has to offer, from the smallest Church facility to major TV Shows, without career live sound guys being forced to learn stuff like "Trim Update" and "Overwrite".
The fact is, we are constantly bombarded by our Pro Tools brethren on how much they wish Pro Tools had VENUE's snapshot feature!

You should play around with using time code to trigger snapshots and use the cross-fade time to get the blending effects you may be looking for. You can even accomplish smooth panning effects by splitting the signal to 2 different channel strips, panning one left and one right then using a cross-fade between the two to create very cool special panning effects. I use this technique to create some powerful surround effects, panning stereo signals from the front to the back in precise coordination with time code coming from video clips.

Sorry for the long answer, but no one every accused me of being "brief".

Happy Programming!

Steve