[Ardour-Users] Ardour 2.8.5 released

[Ralf Mardorf]

John Rigg wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 09:42:47PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>   
>> I was googleing on German for "professionelle digitale mischpulte",  
>> because digital mixing consoles are seemingly used on stage and that's  
>> to funny, I was linked to something about Harrison.
>>
>> Mark's idea seems to be up to date, computers seems to be used on stage  
>> too. Modern digital (live) mixing consoles aren't stand alone solutions  
>> all the time, they indeed seem to need the additional PC or Mac.
>>     
>
> Digital hardware mixing desks are becoming more common. It's taken a long
> time for them to develop to the point where they are actually useable
> for live work, but the current digital mixers like the Midas XL8 and PRO6,
> Yamaha ML7C and others are getting popular with pro PA companies. The
> advantages of instant recall along with not having to carry huge, heavy
> analogue multicores and effects racks are considerable.
>
> These are quite different from commodity computer gear though. You might
> see computers at pro gigs, but it's very unlikely that they are being used to
> mix the sound. A PC or Mac might be needed to set up system networks
> and interface with amplifier DSP etc., but the actual audio processing is
> invariably handled by dedicated hardware.

Are you sure? I guess you could be right. As I mentioned before, there 
is the "flying fader" issue, the computer just controls the settings of 
the faders, even if the computer should crash, nothing would happen for 
the audio stream. When I was young there were no DSPs, just micro 
controllers. OTOH, in the 80ies there were very stable computer systems, 
that were not able to do multi-tasking and they also were not able to do 
that kind of signal processing, that is possible today, so just 
controlling something by the computer was done. But maybe today selected 
mobos are able to be an active part of the sound processing.

I don't know?