Wireless Tablet Mixing

[dmilt23451]

It's an incredible tool for sound checks and rehearsals but I would never trust it during an actual gig.

[stuartb]

An engineer i work with sometime while doing lighting uses an iPad to control his LS9.

Outdoor festival, FOH position way off to one side, sets his mix on the first few tunes, then walked around fine-tuning the mix and FOH eq with the iPad.

Didn't have any issues as far as i could tell. It was just a bit weird watching the faders moving with no one there.

Whats the worst that could happen? you lose connection and the mix stays the same?

[kosmokrator]

Originally Posted by stuartb

An engineer i work with sometime while doing lighting uses an iPad to control his LS9.

Outdoor festival, FOH position way off to one side, sets his mix on the first few tunes, then walked around fine-tuning the mix and FOH eq with the iPad.

Didn't have any issues as far as i could tell. It was just a bit weird watching the faders moving with no one there.

Whats the worst that could happen? you lose connection and the mix stays the same?

Connection lost, suddenly super-loud feedback and the mixer is 100ft away in a packed audience?

I agree. Good for system setup/soundcheck. Later, not so much.

[jetam]

The main problem is the same as the main problem with many of the digital consoles, but just much more emphasized - it takes quite a long time to reach some settings.

[Frost]

I mix every gig I do with an ls9 and an iPad. It's been great.

[John R Truman]

So I gather, it's a little laggy, and sometimes loses connection causing some glitches, but I would think being able to move around the venue to make adjustments during the show, and the soundcheck advantage of going up to the stage to accomodate the monitor mixes, are major attributes as well. Thanks to all for the input. [(:-)

[RightOnRome]

Originally Posted by dmilt23451

It's an incredible tool for sound checks and rehearsals but I would never trust it during an actual gig.

no no no no no no ..sorry but you are living in the past.. i work on the regular with a small to mid size setup and run foh with ipad as much as possible ..at least 3 to 4 a week ..and frankly some of these gigs you just cant run a snake ... thank you ipad for making my life so much better!

festivals and bigger multi band shows
we use an ipad for monitors

best,

rome

[dmilt23451]

Originally Posted by RightOnRome

no no no no no no ..sorry but you are living in the past.. i work on the regular with a small to mid size setup and run foh with ipad as much as possible ..at least 3 to 4 a week ..and frankly some of these gigs you just cant run a snake ... thank you ipad for making my life so much better!

festivals and bigger multi band shows
we use an ipad for monitors

best,

rome

I guess for me the risk doesn't outweigh the advantage. Doing house of worship sound in a 2500 seat auditorium I can't let the situation arise that tablet loses communication and something gets screwed up or a cue is missed. I love it in my smaller venues that use an LS9 and agree with you guys that the freedom it gives one too walk the room is incredible as well as being able to set monitor and ears mixes while on stage talking with the musicians face to face.

[rmx16]

Originally Posted by John R Truman

Wireless tablet mixing has hit the pro live market by storm. Any insights or fair warnings from those out there using them?

Make sure your network is rock solid

[jetam]

Originally Posted by RightOnRome

no no no no no no ..sorry but you are living in the past.. i work on the regular with a small to mid size setup and run foh with ipad as much as possible ..at least 3 to 4 a week ..and frankly some of these gigs you just cant run a snake ... thank you ipad for making my life so much better!

festivals and bigger multi band shows
we use an ipad for monitors

best,

rome

You either have a whole day for a soundcheck or you just set the levels and don't care about eq's, compressors and other processors. Seriously I can't imagine mixing on a tablet. I've been working a lot on the LS9 so I know what is the shortest way to access any parameter, but I still hate it because it takes a lot of time to change anything. I've had a simmilar experience with M7CL and many other digital consoles.
I highly doubt that you can mix faster on the tablet than on the console. Actually I doubt that you can make a good mix with tablet if you have more than just a few channels.

[RightOnRome]

Originally Posted by jetam

You either have a whole day for a soundcheck or you just set the levels and don't care about eq's, compressors and other processors. Seriously I can't imagine mixing on a tablet. I've been working a lot on the LS9 so I know what is the shortest way to access any parameter, but I still hate it because it takes a lot of time to change anything. I've had a simmilar experience with M7CL and many other digital consoles.
I highly doubt that you can mix faster on the tablet than on the console. Actually I doubt that you can make a good mix with tablet if you have more than just a few channels.

i work with cover bands in small bars,out door dock bars, and large clubs .. i use the 16.4.2 ..i went from running dirty snakes 3-4 times a week to a much faster cleaner set up .. i set gain structure at sound check then cover the board.. i have full function with my ipad ..dynamics,eq,dly,verb, everything....club owners love it.. wedding planners love it...AND I GET GREAT MIXES .. thats why im still working on the regular.. if its not for you then dont do it.. once again .. i use an x32 at FOH ( ipad for mon.) for bigger shows and festivals and love that..

[Frost]

My boards usually have a preset file saved for the band I'm working with. I'm just tweaking the mix or eq while walking.
This summer I did a 12 mix stage with non English speaking musicians. I walked the stage and made each one a mix standing right next to each one while someone else sound checked foh. Made a difficult situation very easy.

[jetam]

Originally Posted by RightOnRome

i work with cover bands in small bars,out door dock bars, and large clubs .. i use the 16.4.2 ..i went from running dirty snakes 3-4 times a week to a much faster cleaner set up .. i set gain structure at sound check then cover the board.. i have full function with my ipad ..dynamics,eq,dly,verb, everything....club owners love it.. wedding planners love it...AND I GET GREAT MIXES .. thats why im still working on the regular.. if its not for you then dont do it.. once again .. i use an x32 at FOH ( ipad for mon.) for bigger shows and festivals and love that..

OK, if it works for you ...
I usually change a lot of parameters (compressors's release, gates, reverb times) at the begining of each song and also (ecpecially with the band I often work with) ride the faders a lot.

[audibell]

Hi.

The working default is landscape view for channel faders & FatCh EQ for house level and tone; you turn it portrait view to access the selected channel's remaining FatCh controls and there's no lagtime.

The Tab/buttons for Monitors & Scenes are quick enough, but while you can activate a scene for song changes while moving through a set, you can't update changes to a scene or save it remotely. My console is upstairs in the balcony so it's not just a few steps away in a 350 person room.

When you move 1/3rd 8ve faders in SMAART, it knocks the channel faders out of locate, which is un-useful when you've been channel fader tweaking out on the floor. But it's just a button reach when you're ready to re-position the faders. Gives you time to slow down and think.

I found it useful to keep the iPad for FoH and the iPh4 for Access-All Monitors; I haven't noticed any drop-outs or fighting for control between the two remote devices. Yet. Using a 2.5GHz wireless router on a short cat5 cable, private network, unconnected to anything else, including the band iPhones. Only one cook at a time in this kitchen.

I use it as a sound check convenience and it's not a replacement for standing behind the console during showtime but it's invaluable for two things so far:
1> I can judge/check the FoH musical balance better from downstairs on the main floor instead of being influenced by the balcony position 15ft up and 40 feet back. But the show is run from behind the console, not the iPad.
2> I can stand next to each player while we dial up the monitor mix; even if they're using IEMs, proximity yields player confidence, which is a helpful component.

When a band's manager/sound tech wants to hook a laptop to the FW port and record the show into Logic or Capture, we first ensure his version of Universal Control matches the board's firmware. If his is different, the board will lose all its presets and scenes and replace them with whatever he has. Currently our console shows firmware v1.0 build 192. Of course, using the Get function to copy all your scenes and presets to a hard drive is a prudent safeguard but having to drag&drop them all is still an avoidable nuisance so we are careful.

The tablet is another tool, invaluable at times, irrelevant at others.
Good luck,
WalterT

[John R Truman]

Thanks Walter, that is a very practical reply. I'll be upgrading soon, and I teach at a recording school, I'll be incorporating all of your responses into my presentation. [(:-)

[recordinghopkins]

It's absolutely a great tool for setting monitor levels while walking the stage pre-show. Also great for sending the assistant down front where the crowd is for minor tweaks. You don't ever want to chance losing control though. If a network issue or app glitch causes faders to go to maximum, or if you lose connectivity for some reason just as feedback begins, you'll have a lot of unhappy people in your audience.

[vinvanda]

I just wish soundcraft would release wireless control for their Si1 desk that I use a lot at work. theyve released it for their higher end range and their lower end range!

[Richard Crowley]

I was the video engineer (with decades in audio before ever touching a camera) for a road-show a couple weeks ago. The audio guys were using a nice PreSonus mixer and they let us mix our own audio for video feed using the IOS app. Positives and negatives from our 9-day run...

+ It was nice to have control of our own mix vs. interrupting the FOH guy.
+ It worked much better on a tablet (iPad) than on a tiny iPhone.
+ The iPhone (small-screen) version had a better display of the channel signal (strange)
+ I didn't notice any particular control latency problem, at least the way we were using it.

- The channel labels kept disappearing every night upon power-down. We had to keep reminding them to re-enter the labels so we knew which channel was which.
- On the iPhone screen, the labels are almost microscopic and require good eyes.
- We had to get them to group the channels we wanted into the blocks of 8 so we didn't have to keep scrolling left and right to get our mix.
- It was very frustrating to not have any solo capability. I have several more gray hairs. I suppose we might have set up an additional "output bus" as a solo bus if we had more setup time.
- It is a disaster to depend on venue WiFi networks. Use your own dedicated system.