Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Jeff Babcock

Jeff Babcock

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Jan 11, 2011
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Every once in a while folks throw out ideas that they envision in the future....

In this thread, let's share on any topic related to live sound.... what do you think will happen, or what ideas do you have that perhaps technology has yet to make possible?

Here's one - I foresee everything going almost completely wireless within a guesstimate of about 15 years. No more signal cables, starting with mics and consoles. Already one company is integrating wireless into their mixers via a USB port on the channel strip to plug in a USB wireless mic adapter. This is just the start....

I also foresee consoles becoming much more modular, to the point that they can be very highly customized to the application.

I also foresee increased use of touchscreen devices coupled with "haptic feedback" (the tech that allows you to feel dynamic texture on a touchscreen), I think as haptic tech advances that this will be huge.

What do you see in your crystal ball? Tim & JR are pros when it comes to sharing thoughts about this....

So how 'bout it? What's gonna happen, and what do you hope will happen....
 
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Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I agree on the wireless front..
in the future, where you go to adjust something will have nothing to do with where the signal comes from or goes to. DSP will be in the mic and in the amp and even if your control surface looks like a mixer and has EQ knobs those will just be sending commands to the mic or amp as appropriate.
so every mic/source literally sends straight to every output (amplifier) and each amp has an internal matrix mixer of sorts. it sounds like overkill, but as those parts get cheaper there will be less and less need for all signals to concentrate through one box

Jason
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Since I've been crystal ball gazing for a few decades, I've seen a few guesses miss the mark, but most are just too soon for the room still. To a large extent you can predict the future of pro audio by looking at the present of high volume consumer technology.

Your wireless audio will no doubt piggyback on some consumer networking technology.

Some of this is just logical... Things that don't really do something useful but cost a lot of money will likely go away (like a mixing console).

Things that can be done better/cheaper differently will probably happen (like powered speakers vs. old school amps and crossovers and passive boxes). QSC is not just practicing line extension making powered speakers, they're protecting their ticket to the show, in my future vision where free standing power amps end up as curiosities in Ivan's office museum.

One of my fun predictions was using a gameboy glove with VR glasses to mix a show with, but watching the game console technology evolve, they are getting so much better at reading human movement, so maybe in some not so distant future to reduce the level on some performer you will just point at them and squeeze their head. :)

Another old one of mine is completely leapfrogging the mixing paradigm, from manually riding gain and EQ settings to instead set targets for spectral balance and relative levels. This will be a huge mental leap for many, so probably will be adopted by kids first. They're more mentally pliable. The analogy I like to use to explain target based mixing is like a thermostat in your house to control the result (temperature) instead of a on/off more/less controls to keep tweaking the heat up/down.

Some of my "new" ideas are so old I wrote PAs for them (product development definitions) decades ago at Peavey. Listen to this one crazy idea I had way back when. I was going to stack two DPC 1000s together to make a 4 channel digital power amp, then throw our PC4xL digital crossover inside the 2u high package, and turn one or two analog audio inputs, into 4 light weight power amp outputs with DSP controlled crossovers built in.... What a radical idea?? Too bad my engineering support, never managed to throw 3 existing PCBs into one new metal chassis, and beat the rest of the world to a cool product by how many years?? I guess if I was really prescient I would have thrown that kluge into a speaker box to make the ultimate powered speaker. however with a Peavey badge on it, nobody would take it seriously either. :)

JR
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I chatted with Harry about this a year or two ago. A bone conduction type of Com headset that allows for the ear canal to be totally unobstructed, while being externally silent.
 
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Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I think at birth people will be implanted with a receiver that they can tune to various freq. The sound would not cover up the ear-but rather be injected into the bone conduction.

So when you go to a show you can tune it to a particular channel and have the volume as loud or as quite as you want-and still be able to carry on conversations with others.

WAIT! Did I just say that-no loudspeakers? No NO that is not the way of the future.

JR The muesum is coming along quite nicely-I will probably be moving in a couple of weeks-so when I get settled in I will post some photos.

I'm still looking for old power amps-and now I have started collecting old catalogs/brochures of PA gear from the 70's/80's.. I've got some really cool interesting ones.
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I kind of see speakers being with us for some time, in an many places pretty much as is, while at the cutting edge they will still be driven by technology and perhaps invention.

The laws of physics will not bend or be bent but that still leaves a lot of room for improvement.

For example in a live show, a lot of sound energy still goes elsewhere and is wasted, or in the case of large outdoor concerts is a nuisance that must be mitigated. So I can imagine some form of focussed, perhaps cross modulated sound that mainly occurs near each listener... It seems there should be some way to design a club dance floor system so the sound from multiple sources combine on the dance floor but cancel elsewhere (while I'm not smart enough to tell you exactly how. )

Speaker technology may intersect with amplifier technology... another hair brained idea is to combine electrostatic loudspeakers capacitive load, with a PWM class D amplifier to eliminate all kinds of resistive losses,,, While electrostatic radiators are bipolar so that opens another can of worms, maybe some very clever horn guru can solve. :)

The future will be better and different, if we can just get past Dec 2012.. :).. otherwise lots of work to finish before then.

JR
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I keep kicking around the notion of mixing in a more democratic fashion. Where the audience and musicians decide what sounds best, not a mix person. I think the better we get at managing large loudspeaker systems in rooms the easier it will be to put the control of level tone and balance back to the people who should rightly be in control of it in the first place.
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Brandon G Romanowski said:
I keep kicking around the notion of mixing in a more democratic fashion. Where the audience and musicians decide what sounds best, not a mix person. I think the better we get at managing large loudspeaker systems in rooms the easier it will be to put the control of level tone and balance back to the people who should rightly be in control of it in the first place.
Click to expand...

Funny, I had an idea for a bar a long time ago, when people could plug a guitar (or insert musical instrument of choice) into a mixer in their table/booth and then mix themselves against the backing tracks or stage band, sounded like a bad idea even back then.. :)
=====

Your idea has merit if you then map all the individual regional requests against system tweaks that could make most of the audience happy, of course this depends on the audience knowing how to mix... I recall back in the day when personal recording studio monitor sub mixers had to deal with musicians who couldn't operate a simple mixer. Of course then was then and now is now and the consumers are getting more technology competent.

JR
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I think Ivan got the essence of it but some more details are starting to become visible in the crystal ball. The musicians will be playing their music, which will be broadcast in a multitrack format. The audience will have receivers and in-ear micro-Danley transducers that sound better than any loudspeaker would at any location in even the most acoustically perfect venue. The Danley top-of-the-line model with the B&C Matterlesshorn Micro subwoofer option will cost so much that Mitt Romney will have to put the one he wants for his wife on the Danley Lay-Away plan. Perfect interference-free and distortion-free subwoofers will weigh milligrams but cost many tens of dollars and will be factory installed as an option on the in-ears that people buy for their receivers. The younger generation of sound engineers will have no clue what "comb filtering", "room modes", "magic smoke", "back pain", or "line array" used to mean. People will be able to dial in their own mix, focus in on the guitar now for the solo, then shift focus over to the vocals, instant replay that great line, then switch to the overall house blend mix for the rest of the song, etc. Receivers will have an option to allow users to perfectly tune each drumhead, as as well as the lead and background vocalists (only for their own receivers). None of the neighbors down the street from the club will even think to request the presence of the local police.
 
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Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Steve Hurt said:
You and Stephen St Croix had the same idea.
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Yup that was how to do it using technology available more than a decade ago,,, now you don't need the glove, and glasses...
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Another idea I thought of to bridge the technology of virtual and physical control surfaces is to project an image of a control surface (this could be a firm design, or soft custom control surface) onto a plain surface. Then read with a camera when you select a control by touching or pointing at it. There are issues with size/resolution but this would be pretty cheap on the hardware side and powerful when connected to a flexible virtual system. This is crudely the same technology as the projected QUERTY keyboards but taken up a notch.

JR

PS: I always thought his real name was Steve Marshall, doesn't matter now RIP. We never got along at trade shows since we were competitors in the old analog delay studio days, but he was undeniably a smart guy.
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

John Roberts said:
Yup that was how to do it using technology available more than a decade ago,,, now you don't need the glove, and glasses...
----
Another idea I thought of to bridge the technology of virtual and physical control surfaces is to project an image of a control surface (this could be a firm design, or soft custom control surface) onto a plain surface. Then read with a camera when you select a control by touching or pointing at it. There are issues with size/resolution but this would be pretty cheap on the hardware side and powerful when connected to a flexible virtual system. This is crudely the same technology as the projected QUERTY keyboards but taken up a notch.
Click to expand...

This has been done as a university project... I think I read about it first on the Theatre Sound list/google group.
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Tim McCulloch said:
This has been done as a university project... I think I read about it first on the Theatre Sound list/google group.
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Which one?

Projecting an image and then reading with a camera when a finger points to a control could be interesting, in that the control surface could be soft and independent of the hardware.

This would allow sound mixers to just call up their personal control surface du jour. I'd like to see that working...

Another "current tech" solution is a tablet with touch screen...perhaps even easier to make it work...

While someone would need to figure a remapping/translation to get anywhere near a universal control surface interface (pause to wait for my rant about lack of EQ bandwidth standard etc).

JR
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

Well a couple of months ago I mentioned the idea of a tablet with a docking station on a digital mixer...
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

I had these ideas before the product came out:
- Locking tremolo system - similar to Steinberger Trans Trem
- Remote control for your TV - button on TV makes remote beep so you can find it
- Guitar stand that supports guitar at the base - no support needed for the neck

The key is to do something with the idea......Quickly!
 
lol

You guys are all trying to get rid of yourselves!

I see big analog desks and racks of outboard becoming "boutique" and highly sought after. Just look at what happened to the studio market. When everyone had a studio in their bedroom the only way for a commercial studio to differentiate themselves was by having racks of the "real stuff".
 
Re: Tell us what you see in your crystal ball....

drew gandy said:
Wait, does that mean the Christmas light show will have a different "track" next year? Oh the possibilities...
Click to expand...

Just moving to a different office location. I did add several new songs this year. But my wife had to back into the hospital with complications with surgery the first week of December-so I spent every evening through Christmas and most of January at the hospital-and did not have a chance to get new videos. She has just started to get better-lots of worry/concern going on during the Christmas season this year.

I plan on adding some some more "stuff" next year-if the hospital bills don't kill us. It above $100K right now. We'll see insurance handles it.
 
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