Re: Wow! iPad app for Studiolive 16 and 24!!
It's pretty sweet. Works pretty darned well. I can see using this system.
A couple of things I see as a problem.
1. Setting it up was too easy. Meaning the mac connected to the board broadcast its information to the network, and the iPad just saw it. No password or authentication was needed to take control. That means you better have your own WIFI network and password protect that puppy if you don't want jokers taking control of your board.
2. The way faders behave on the board after being remotely controlled doesn't make sense. If I set a channel to a level, then come to the board and touch a slider, it immediately takes over. That means to take control of a slider will drop your volume, or worse, if your slider was in an up position, and you remotely turned it down, it will snap in at the up volume. This behavior doesn't make much sense. When working with lighting controllers that work on multiple pages, a slider wouldn't take over until you crossed the threshold of where it would be set at. This would make more sense than to just pop into the value of the slider when touched.
When getting back to the board, you MUST press the locate button, then position the sliders based on that before doing anything. If you press the locate button, then one of the other buttons, wherever the sliders are is what you're going to get. This does make sense, but make sure you're paying attention!
3. On a related note, if you have multiple iPads, slider settings are not updated on the fly. Meaning you have the same problem between iPads as you do between an iPad and the board, but on the iPad, there is NO locate button. This seems pretty stupid that they missed here. No reason it can't update, since the VU meters update showing you what's going on.
4. Channel names cannot be altered on the iPad, that I can find. You can change them easily on the computer, but not on the iPad. Not a huge deal, but requires touching the computer to make the changes.
5. I can't find any way to recall a preset on the iPad.
6. I can't figure out how to adjust the effects channels. I can turn levels up and down, but can't select effects. Better have those where you want them before taking control.
7. Related to #1, you can't control access. It's all or nothing. I'd love to be able to set the app so it ONLY has access to certain areas. Eg, this login is restricted to mixing AUX1. My vision is that you could put an iPad on stage for each musician and let them mix their own damn monitors. The aux mix screen makes that easy enough, but you know they're going to hit the wrong button and end up taking control of the whole mix.
8. On a minor note, the app on the mac isn't smart enough to keep the mac from going to sleep. Setting energy saver to never sleep fixes this, but it would be nice if the app just did that on its own. That's a trivial programming change to make!
I've only had a chance to play with the app for a couple hours today, and overall, it's pretty freaking sweet. By far the most intuitive remote mixer app I've seen to date. Multi touch on the sliders works as expected and its easy to get going. About a billion times superior to using a VNC type app. I'm sure in the future, there will be improvements that make it even better.
It's pretty sweet. Works pretty darned well. I can see using this system.
A couple of things I see as a problem.
1. Setting it up was too easy. Meaning the mac connected to the board broadcast its information to the network, and the iPad just saw it. No password or authentication was needed to take control. That means you better have your own WIFI network and password protect that puppy if you don't want jokers taking control of your board.
2. The way faders behave on the board after being remotely controlled doesn't make sense. If I set a channel to a level, then come to the board and touch a slider, it immediately takes over. That means to take control of a slider will drop your volume, or worse, if your slider was in an up position, and you remotely turned it down, it will snap in at the up volume. This behavior doesn't make much sense. When working with lighting controllers that work on multiple pages, a slider wouldn't take over until you crossed the threshold of where it would be set at. This would make more sense than to just pop into the value of the slider when touched.
When getting back to the board, you MUST press the locate button, then position the sliders based on that before doing anything. If you press the locate button, then one of the other buttons, wherever the sliders are is what you're going to get. This does make sense, but make sure you're paying attention!
3. On a related note, if you have multiple iPads, slider settings are not updated on the fly. Meaning you have the same problem between iPads as you do between an iPad and the board, but on the iPad, there is NO locate button. This seems pretty stupid that they missed here. No reason it can't update, since the VU meters update showing you what's going on.
4. Channel names cannot be altered on the iPad, that I can find. You can change them easily on the computer, but not on the iPad. Not a huge deal, but requires touching the computer to make the changes.
5. I can't find any way to recall a preset on the iPad.
6. I can't figure out how to adjust the effects channels. I can turn levels up and down, but can't select effects. Better have those where you want them before taking control.
7. Related to #1, you can't control access. It's all or nothing. I'd love to be able to set the app so it ONLY has access to certain areas. Eg, this login is restricted to mixing AUX1. My vision is that you could put an iPad on stage for each musician and let them mix their own damn monitors. The aux mix screen makes that easy enough, but you know they're going to hit the wrong button and end up taking control of the whole mix.
8. On a minor note, the app on the mac isn't smart enough to keep the mac from going to sleep. Setting energy saver to never sleep fixes this, but it would be nice if the app just did that on its own. That's a trivial programming change to make!
I've only had a chance to play with the app for a couple hours today, and overall, it's pretty freaking sweet. By far the most intuitive remote mixer app I've seen to date. Multi touch on the sliders works as expected and its easy to get going. About a billion times superior to using a VNC type app. I'm sure in the future, there will be improvements that make it even better.