SAC and Console 1

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm not understanding what circumstance would have somebody furiously tweaking a plugin during a live show where they would need a physical knob to do that.

I'm not saying its not possible, its just not something most live sound engineers would find themselves doing.

This is also why I asked Larry the original question "What was he hoping to accomplish". Maybe he is one of the rare people/circumstances were this would be more efficient.

Yes, it would be great if we could get a feel for his thinking on this.

Furiously tweaking? Probably not more so than any other hardware-controlled parameter. I was thinking it was just the same ol' thing about preferring a physical fader or knob over the mousy approach. More intuitive and easier/quicker to manipulate so long as you know quickly what controls what. I wasn't thinking that the fact it's a plug-in would make a difference. Same attraction as with levels and pans. Just more of a good thing. If you like their plug-ins, of course. And if the plug-ins will even work live.

[Dave Labrecque]

Best practices are generally
- capture clean unaltered audio
- mix/master in post

FWIW, Universal Audio has been promoting all kinds of channel-strippy stuff live during tracking as a way to commit to a sound and not get too tweaky in post. You know—old school, before they had the options we have today. I find it an intriguing approach in the 21st century, having got a feel for a couple decades, now, of that million-options world that we have at our mixing fingertips these days.

Anyway, who knows if this is what the OP has in mind, but it does illustrate that there may be other "best practices" out there that could take advantage of, say, recording on an emulated SSL console with additional, printed UAD hardware emulations—controls for which being manipulated with knobs and faders.

[Larry Burger]

Dave,
I have been using a USB Satellite with Sac.
Good and bad results.
It sounds great.
But it has been locking up SAC where I type in a channel name and it steals the mouse and keyboard.
I shut off the UAD and control comes back but I have lost the plugins, requiring a fresh startup of SAC.

I am waiting for new update, windows drivers and anything that may solve the issue because I really like the transient response and tone in SAC...

Some may have better results. . .

[Larry Burger]

I am close to sorry I started this thread. . . . . .
I usually find the forum helpful and just was looking for an answer if anyone had used Console 1 or might have a reason why it did not respond the way I had hoped.

I have used C1 in a Live Situation via other DAW's (I know they are not made for that and SAC is).

I used SAW Studio live before Bob designed SAC. . . .

I did not plan on just tweaking everything all the time.
If you have reached up and changed an eq on a channel to make it sound better, that is what I would do with Console 1 inside SAC.
But it would not work.

I assume some will use a different Reverb plugin inside SAC even though Bob has his own (which will give remote control).

That's is all I was trying to do since Console one is a VST plugin. . . . .

I don't want to start disputes just looking for help...

Thank you for the ideas and opinions. . . .

Larry...

[cgrafx]

I am close to sorry I started this thread. . . . . .
I usually find the forum helpful and just was looking for an answer if anyone had used Console 1 or might have a reason why it did not respond the way I had hoped.

I have used C1 in a Live Situation via other DAW's (I know they are not made for that and SAC is).

I used SAW Studio live before Bob designed SAC. . . .

I did not plan on just tweaking everything all the time.
If you have reached up and changed an eq on a channel to make it sound better, that is what I would do with Console 1 inside SAC.
But it would not work.

I assume some will use a different Reverb plugin inside SAC even though Bob has his own (which will give remote control).

That's is all I was trying to do since Console one is a VST plugin. . . . .

I don't want to start disputes just looking for help...

Thank you for the ideas and opinions. . . .

Larry...

Larry,

don't be sorry, and nobody is in a dispute.

in order to be helpful we need to know more information than you supplied.

Even if somebody else had tried C1 you didn't provide enough information about what didn't work so there would be no way to assess if they had the same problem or not.

What your describing about controlling EQ on a channel via C1 is not what is usually implied when talking about VST plugins as there is already a fully functional channel strip with gates, compressors, EQ etc.

Please don't read that as meaning your approach wouldn't work or be useful, but it does mean circumventing the core audio engine in order to have a control surface to tweak knobs.

As you've already determined in order to deal with the latency issue you also have to run the console at higher bit rates which means using a lot more of your CPU resources as well as more hardware to make that happen. Many interfaces will limit channel counts when you increase the clock rate.

So as a general approach C1 is going to be pretty inefficient.

I'm not making these statements to say don't do it, you just need to understand what the technical implications and limits are if your going to try to go down that path.

If the desire is to have a fully control surfaced mixing environment then SAW/SAC are not really going to be good solutions for that as they weren't designed with that goal in mind. (and force inserting another console strip into every channel is kind of defeating the whole purpose of SAW/SAC)

SAW/SAC do make very good hybrid solutions and both have good support for basic functionality most people are generally looking for.

Faders, solos, mutes, pans, record enable, transport controls.

If at some point in the future Bob releases an API for SAW/SAC then that would open the door for more customized solutions that could include control of the Gates, Compressor, EQ, phantom power, hardware channel gain, etc

There of coarse may be other work in the pipeline with Bobs more recent hardware alliance and maybe some of these types of issues will be alternatively addressed through that path instead.

[Larry Burger]

I just wanted to use Console 1 and their plugins (channels strips) inside SAC and yes tactile control of their plugins.

I do not want to control and SAC features from the controller...

I am testing UAD plugins and would consider controlling the UAD console from C1 (which it will do in other platforms).

But when I attempted the process it just didn't work so possibly it is impossible.

Thank you the help. . . .

[TomyN]

SAC will disable all plug-ins which report / create latency. I assume that this is the reason why it does not work as expected.

[Larry Burger]

Tomy,
Great point I didn't think about that.
That makes good locic...

I was able to get it to work with metaplug and Bidule but what an ugly way to go.

Thank you.

Larry...

[Dave Labrecque]

Dave,
I have been using a USB Satellite with Sac.
Good and bad results.
It sounds great.
But it has been locking up SAC where I type in a channel name and it steals the mouse and keyboard.
I shut off the UAD and control comes back but I have lost the plugins, requiring a fresh startup of SAC.

I am waiting for new update, windows drivers and anything that may solve the issue because I really like the transient response and tone in SAC...

Some may have better results. . .

I presume you're using the Unison plugins for zero latency monitoring? Does SAC actually see zero latency for those UAD plugs?

That's a bummer that you have those challenges. That's one of the downsides of using an unsupported DAW.

I bought an X8P interface during their end-of-year promotion and just received the free promotional Satellite Octo Core a couple weeks ago. Haven't tried either, yet. I know it's probably not going to be smooth sailing with SAW (I don't have SAC) based on other reports around here, but I guess I should get on that. Was waiting for my new studio build, but it's going to be a few months, so I should fire these babies up and see what's what.

To be clear: are you talking about typing in the channel labels in SAC? Or in the UA Console interface?

Thanks for your report. Let's keep in touch on this stuff.

[Larry Burger]

Dave,
Actually quite a few things.
You are correct the Names do not populate (bummer).
I was having trouble just using the UAD plugins no Apollo so no console.
Sounded great but it stole my mouse and keyboard where I couldn't do anything but ctrl+alt+delete but I found out if I shut off the satellite control came back just no UAD plugins.

Odd thing is the presonus faderport 16 worked and ran SAC fine while it was mouse keyboard broken....

So needless to say it has be fun................................