Chris Lambrechts
05-12-2004, 03:39 AM
I went to AES Berlin 2004 over the weekend and of course one of the things I wanted to check out was digidesign’s new ICON system. The integrated console system, featuring the new controller, D-control. My main interest at first went out to this new controller of course. I mean, after all, that’s what we (or at least I) had been waiting for. I followed 3 demo’s, 2 public ones (music and post) and one private one.
First of all, what immediately struck me during the first demo is that the term ‘protools’ system was not used one single time throughout the demo’s. Why ? I mean, you have a controller and a protools system and put them together and then you have an Icon system right ? Well yes …. And no. Yes because essentially a protools system is in there and no, because it is much much more then a protools system. Calling it a protools system would kinda be like calling a Ferrari a car. I mean it is a car but everybody calls it a Ferrari.
I think it’s going to take a while before people actually realize this though. The term ‘protools’ system is burned into peoples minds. Whenever someone mentions the word DAW, protools is the first thing that comes to peoples minds. Take a look at discussions online, whether here or on other forums, mention the word daw and it will be a matter of seconds (or words) before ‘protools’ pops up. So I really think it will be hard to put that out of peoples minds. But I’m pretty sure that whoever invests in an Icon system will call it an Icon and insist to some extend that it is called an Icon. I mean, I wouldn’t call my Ferrari a car either.
So, you want an Icon system, you determine how many I/O’s you want, whether you want mic pre’s and how many of those, sync I/O, midi I/O and how power full you want your Icon system to be by adding DSP cards to it and then last but not least, how big a controller (number of dedicated channels) you want to control all of that horsepower and I/O. And then of course inevitably we come to the D-control ….. the D-control. It’s actually kinda funny how little people use the word D-control. The digi people of course, but they’re trained to do so. Over the weekend I’ve spoken to so many people and it’s actually noticeable that almost all of them mention Icon when actually what they are talking about is the D-control.
The D-control is the control surface for the Icon system. Expandable to 80 channels blah blah etc etc … we all read the introduction pages on digi’s website and if you didn’t yet, I think you should before reading on. The D-control ….. yes indeed, the super mouse that goes with the Icon. The super mouse that controls the soft and has no sound. The 60k (rumored street value) super mouse. The empty box with faders super mouse and many other cynical things I’ve heard since it was first announced. Well, one things for sure, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what control surfaces can do for your daw. I have had a Procontrol since it first came out with an edit pack and I think I know what I’m talking about whenever I get into a discussion about what a controller can do for your workflow and your sound.
One of the big issues with control surfaces is and has been since day one : is it worth the money ? After all it doesn’t change your sound. WRONG. It does, the cheapest peavey midi controller with only volume and pan controls on it will change your sound. Because there is simply no way in the world that you will be able to create the same mix with only a mouse or a trackball. Especially when going into automation it will change your sound, if you don’t understand that, then I strongly suggest you go do something else.
So how do you justify 60k for a controller. I mean, it IS a lot of money and by god I wish it were only 5k. But I also wish that I could buy massenburg Eq’s for 120$ a piece, or Avalon mic pre’s for 50$, and I would gladly lay down 48$ ex vat for a massive passive.
But reality is different and here’s at least an attempt to justify the price, if not at least a major part of it :
- It’s versatile. I’ve yet to see something like it. In the private demo, which btw was done by Stan Cotey at the knobs and Gannon Kashiwa looking over his shoulders … they are the guys who created this thing, I got to take a closer look at the preferences panel. The preference panel alone and the possibilities to customize the D-control are virtually endless. Don’t like the way something behaves …. Simply change it to taste. Faders, knobs, buttons, displays, they can all be customized to react to your taste. The knobs do not only have fixed and velocity sensitive settings for example … you can customize the reaction of how much velocity you want. Things that might seem over the top like change the order it will display the sends over the channel strips for example … silly ? not if you think about it : you want send a at the bottom (closest to you)? Fine …. Put it there. In short, don’t like the way something behaves or is displayed ? change it to fit your taste.
- The monitor section : Stan got to the monitor section at the end of the demo, when time was already up so he had to skip through it very fast and that didn’t do it justice because the monitor section alone is worth a major part of the price. There’s an external box called X-mon which holds the actual hardware for the monitor section. And there’s controlling end on the D-control. I think it is midi controlled ‘cause I saw a midi led on the X-mon box but I forgot to ask to be honest. Anyhow, 2x 7.1 inputs (main and surround) 4x stereo input, 4x stereo Cue input …. 3 CR outputs of which 2x 7.1 and 1 stereo, 4x cue output … probably forgetting some here but anyhow the inputs and outputs are all there …. More would be almost ridiculous but it’s what and how you can control them that’s realy impressive. This is the kind of monitor section that you will only find on very, and I do mean very expensive consoles. And it will do more then what most of those do. Of course you can calibrate the outputs. How else would you be able to get a very accurate (within 0.5 db) display of how loud your speakers realy are playing. If measured properly with proper measuring tools (probably also by people who know what they’re doing) you can set it up so that every speaker in your system will be 100% calibrated to the actual value in db displayed on the D-control. Oh, did I mention the talkback system yet … integrated little speaker in meter bridge, dim function etc etc … the usual stuff you find everywhere but also latched mode / auto mode (which switches on automatically when the system is stopped). What else…. Stuff like the ability to set / fix reference levels when switching between speakers … a dedicated speaker channel select section that lets you solo/mute every channel individually or a combination of. Possibility to trim each channel’s output of course. In short, this is a very impressive monitor section. Very impressive.
- Let’s stay in the center section …. Dedicated eq and dynamics section. These sections are linked to the focus channel mode. It will display whatever is on the focused channel.
First the eq : 5 band + Hpf and Lpf dedicated knobs and buttons for everything one can imagine in an EQ. 3 (Q/freq/gain) rotary encoders (touch sensitive of course) per band, on/off switch per band … In case you’re working with multi channel Eq’s, possibility to switch between the channels for separate editing.
The dynamics / same deal … everything on dedicated switches including meters for gain reduction and i/o … these 2 sections alone will change the sound of your mixes. Every control is right there under you fingertips and can be edited / automated simultaneously as long as you don’t run out of hands. This is how one should edit and eq and dynamics.
- The transport / navigation section : 1 dedicated transport for Protools and a separate one just above it for Machine control. The normal locate switches plus a bunch of dedicated machine control related switches for switching between machines / track arming from channel strips etc etc… and the scrub/shuttle wheel … yes … for us Procontrollers with a dedicated trim switch which will bring you directly to trim/scrub region mode. That one should avoid a long thread from Jules.
- What else does the center section hold. A full size apple / windows keyboard (switch able caps) and a trackball. The trackball is like the size of the big Kensington ones and felt even better then those. The keyboard is apparently custom made for the D-control. I saw Stan banging it with both hands to illustrate the sturdiness of the thing. Keyboard and trackball are switch able for left handed people for example and the trackball can be replaced by a mouse pad. There’s a usb connector inside under the trackball to hook up a mouse or another kind of trackball. Or at least that’s what I understood.
A section with dedicated buttons for the windows in the soft : (edit / mix / transport / beat dedective / plugins / etc … and a realy cool one for me : the workspace browser window with a dedicated button.)
D-control goes also into little details … litlle but important details, especially when trying to justify why it costs 60k for the main unit. The disable keyboard switch for example is one of them. So simple yet so handy and important. You sit there mixing and accidentally hit something on the keyboard you didn’t want to hit. It happens to all of us no ? well … switch it off. An undo button but also a redo button. An all notes off switch for people who work with midi … midi still sucks and will always suck imho but at least I can switch off that hanging note with a dedicated switch. Sure … there’s plenty of keyboard shortcuts that will do the same but I’m mixing for crying out loud and I don’t want to spend even 3 seconds to think about what that shortcut was again and then do some kind of 12 finger option/alt/+/shift/ctrl/whatever combination to get there. Push the button and get on with it thank you. That’s what a controller should be about and that’s what D-control is about.
Enough center section … this post is getting way too long and I could go on for another 3 pages at least just describing every single button on there … I think I made my point … the center section is a big deal and is impressive to say the least . The focus channel strip is on there too but worth a separate section of this post imho.
- The channel strips : faders and knobs and buttons. P&G high quality faders (forgot the exact model number) 100mm etc blah blah etc … they felt good period. Multi coloured leds. Knobs that are custom made for the D-control. Faders and knobs touch sensitive of course. Everything you need is there : the leds / the switches / the dispays. But here’s some of the coold stuff that makes it more special : Flip and flop mode for example. Every knob on the channel strip (there’s 6) can be flipped or flopped. There’s a flip button for every knob and when pressed will transfer whatever is on that row of knobs to the fader. Can be a send level / plugin parameter / whatever is displayed at that point by that specific row of knobs. Flop mode (push ctrl/flip) will work for the top 5 encoder rows and will bring one of those down to the bottom encoder row. Very handy in some situations where you wanna keep the fader for volume control yet at the same time have a parameter (gain control for your compressor for example or a specific send level) close by for adjusting at the same time without having to reach all the way up for it. Flop lets you temporarily put that parameter closer.
There’s leds which will indicate if there’s a dynamic or an eq present on the channel, an insert switch to insert a plugin. And in this case, unlike the Procontrol, which made this feature quite unusable because in most situations, you can immediately decide on the type of plugin (rtas/tdm/stereo-multi mono…) and then go to an appropriate subfolder (eq / dyn / delay …. ) and go through the available plugins in your system for that particular application instead of having to scroll through all of them. There’s also channel strip modes, The knobs can display so much information it would make them quite useless if there wasn’t some way to bring them into a specific type of information mode with dedicated buttons for that. And again … they are all there : dynamics switch brings you directly to the parameters for the dyn plugin on that specific track. If there’s more then one dynamic plugin on that track push again and again to browse through them. Same for the Eq’s. The mic pre switch will let you acces direct control of your mic pre’s on that track. Input / insert / pan / send switches will do similar things. Input monitor mode switch for each channel. Last but definitely not least an number of leds next to each fader that will give you information about automation modes / group status and then what brings this post to its next section : custom faders.
-Custom faders : Custom faders come in banks of 8 (preference determined) and can do a number of things. Create custom arrangements of tracks for example … very convenient in large session where you want to bring together a number of tracks temporarily for mixing. Anyone familiar with the show/hide locator function in protools will appreciate this one big-time. Plugin mode is going to be everyones favourite. The bank of 8 faders including knobs turns into one huge plugin editor with dedicated controls for the parameters. Virus anyone (might wanna add a bank for that one in the prefs) still too many controls …. Plugin map mode … and this is were custom faders for plugins simply rocks. The ability to map any plugin parameter to a fader. The mapping of course is memorized and next time you open that plugin that same mapping of parameters you created is available. Or how about automation of plugin parameters … no more going through the endless list of plugin parameters adding them manually one by one for automation. In automation mode you simply tap the knob with the parameter you want to automate and voila. And what automation is concerned this goes for everything that can be automated on any section of the surface. Also in the dedicated eq/dyn sections … simply tap the knob and the parameter can be automated.
- The focus channel strip : locks down any channel on a dedicated channel strip in the center section and will stay there until you assign another channel to it. Extremely convenient again in large setups, both for mixing and tracking. I can imagine myself sitting behind one with a singer in the booth. I would want that singers record channel on the focus strip at all times. No matter where I bank the other channels to … the singer will always stay there.
Btw, is this post getting too long now ? probably yes, but then again …. It’s impossible to do it shorter then this … there’s just to much. And I haven’t even mentioned everything.
3 different like 40 minute long demo’s, all three covering different things. In the private one I had, Stan was literally flying over the thing rattling away like a machine gun trying to fit as much as possible in the 40 minutes and still the lady had to come in and say … sorry but times up and I walked out there feeling like I had only seen like maybe 10% of it.
This is the internet, these are discussion forums, this is what we come here for … to discuss stuff. Let’s discuss stuff. I tried to give a complete overview of what it can do. Probably a lot more. If I missed something, let’s hear it. Do you like it ? Do you think it sucks ? What’s wrong with it ? What do other’s have what this one doesn’t have ? Would you buy one ? Discuss ……….
First of all, what immediately struck me during the first demo is that the term ‘protools’ system was not used one single time throughout the demo’s. Why ? I mean, you have a controller and a protools system and put them together and then you have an Icon system right ? Well yes …. And no. Yes because essentially a protools system is in there and no, because it is much much more then a protools system. Calling it a protools system would kinda be like calling a Ferrari a car. I mean it is a car but everybody calls it a Ferrari.
I think it’s going to take a while before people actually realize this though. The term ‘protools’ system is burned into peoples minds. Whenever someone mentions the word DAW, protools is the first thing that comes to peoples minds. Take a look at discussions online, whether here or on other forums, mention the word daw and it will be a matter of seconds (or words) before ‘protools’ pops up. So I really think it will be hard to put that out of peoples minds. But I’m pretty sure that whoever invests in an Icon system will call it an Icon and insist to some extend that it is called an Icon. I mean, I wouldn’t call my Ferrari a car either.
So, you want an Icon system, you determine how many I/O’s you want, whether you want mic pre’s and how many of those, sync I/O, midi I/O and how power full you want your Icon system to be by adding DSP cards to it and then last but not least, how big a controller (number of dedicated channels) you want to control all of that horsepower and I/O. And then of course inevitably we come to the D-control ….. the D-control. It’s actually kinda funny how little people use the word D-control. The digi people of course, but they’re trained to do so. Over the weekend I’ve spoken to so many people and it’s actually noticeable that almost all of them mention Icon when actually what they are talking about is the D-control.
The D-control is the control surface for the Icon system. Expandable to 80 channels blah blah etc etc … we all read the introduction pages on digi’s website and if you didn’t yet, I think you should before reading on. The D-control ….. yes indeed, the super mouse that goes with the Icon. The super mouse that controls the soft and has no sound. The 60k (rumored street value) super mouse. The empty box with faders super mouse and many other cynical things I’ve heard since it was first announced. Well, one things for sure, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what control surfaces can do for your daw. I have had a Procontrol since it first came out with an edit pack and I think I know what I’m talking about whenever I get into a discussion about what a controller can do for your workflow and your sound.
One of the big issues with control surfaces is and has been since day one : is it worth the money ? After all it doesn’t change your sound. WRONG. It does, the cheapest peavey midi controller with only volume and pan controls on it will change your sound. Because there is simply no way in the world that you will be able to create the same mix with only a mouse or a trackball. Especially when going into automation it will change your sound, if you don’t understand that, then I strongly suggest you go do something else.
So how do you justify 60k for a controller. I mean, it IS a lot of money and by god I wish it were only 5k. But I also wish that I could buy massenburg Eq’s for 120$ a piece, or Avalon mic pre’s for 50$, and I would gladly lay down 48$ ex vat for a massive passive.
But reality is different and here’s at least an attempt to justify the price, if not at least a major part of it :
- It’s versatile. I’ve yet to see something like it. In the private demo, which btw was done by Stan Cotey at the knobs and Gannon Kashiwa looking over his shoulders … they are the guys who created this thing, I got to take a closer look at the preferences panel. The preference panel alone and the possibilities to customize the D-control are virtually endless. Don’t like the way something behaves …. Simply change it to taste. Faders, knobs, buttons, displays, they can all be customized to react to your taste. The knobs do not only have fixed and velocity sensitive settings for example … you can customize the reaction of how much velocity you want. Things that might seem over the top like change the order it will display the sends over the channel strips for example … silly ? not if you think about it : you want send a at the bottom (closest to you)? Fine …. Put it there. In short, don’t like the way something behaves or is displayed ? change it to fit your taste.
- The monitor section : Stan got to the monitor section at the end of the demo, when time was already up so he had to skip through it very fast and that didn’t do it justice because the monitor section alone is worth a major part of the price. There’s an external box called X-mon which holds the actual hardware for the monitor section. And there’s controlling end on the D-control. I think it is midi controlled ‘cause I saw a midi led on the X-mon box but I forgot to ask to be honest. Anyhow, 2x 7.1 inputs (main and surround) 4x stereo input, 4x stereo Cue input …. 3 CR outputs of which 2x 7.1 and 1 stereo, 4x cue output … probably forgetting some here but anyhow the inputs and outputs are all there …. More would be almost ridiculous but it’s what and how you can control them that’s realy impressive. This is the kind of monitor section that you will only find on very, and I do mean very expensive consoles. And it will do more then what most of those do. Of course you can calibrate the outputs. How else would you be able to get a very accurate (within 0.5 db) display of how loud your speakers realy are playing. If measured properly with proper measuring tools (probably also by people who know what they’re doing) you can set it up so that every speaker in your system will be 100% calibrated to the actual value in db displayed on the D-control. Oh, did I mention the talkback system yet … integrated little speaker in meter bridge, dim function etc etc … the usual stuff you find everywhere but also latched mode / auto mode (which switches on automatically when the system is stopped). What else…. Stuff like the ability to set / fix reference levels when switching between speakers … a dedicated speaker channel select section that lets you solo/mute every channel individually or a combination of. Possibility to trim each channel’s output of course. In short, this is a very impressive monitor section. Very impressive.
- Let’s stay in the center section …. Dedicated eq and dynamics section. These sections are linked to the focus channel mode. It will display whatever is on the focused channel.
First the eq : 5 band + Hpf and Lpf dedicated knobs and buttons for everything one can imagine in an EQ. 3 (Q/freq/gain) rotary encoders (touch sensitive of course) per band, on/off switch per band … In case you’re working with multi channel Eq’s, possibility to switch between the channels for separate editing.
The dynamics / same deal … everything on dedicated switches including meters for gain reduction and i/o … these 2 sections alone will change the sound of your mixes. Every control is right there under you fingertips and can be edited / automated simultaneously as long as you don’t run out of hands. This is how one should edit and eq and dynamics.
- The transport / navigation section : 1 dedicated transport for Protools and a separate one just above it for Machine control. The normal locate switches plus a bunch of dedicated machine control related switches for switching between machines / track arming from channel strips etc etc… and the scrub/shuttle wheel … yes … for us Procontrollers with a dedicated trim switch which will bring you directly to trim/scrub region mode. That one should avoid a long thread from Jules.
- What else does the center section hold. A full size apple / windows keyboard (switch able caps) and a trackball. The trackball is like the size of the big Kensington ones and felt even better then those. The keyboard is apparently custom made for the D-control. I saw Stan banging it with both hands to illustrate the sturdiness of the thing. Keyboard and trackball are switch able for left handed people for example and the trackball can be replaced by a mouse pad. There’s a usb connector inside under the trackball to hook up a mouse or another kind of trackball. Or at least that’s what I understood.
A section with dedicated buttons for the windows in the soft : (edit / mix / transport / beat dedective / plugins / etc … and a realy cool one for me : the workspace browser window with a dedicated button.)
D-control goes also into little details … litlle but important details, especially when trying to justify why it costs 60k for the main unit. The disable keyboard switch for example is one of them. So simple yet so handy and important. You sit there mixing and accidentally hit something on the keyboard you didn’t want to hit. It happens to all of us no ? well … switch it off. An undo button but also a redo button. An all notes off switch for people who work with midi … midi still sucks and will always suck imho but at least I can switch off that hanging note with a dedicated switch. Sure … there’s plenty of keyboard shortcuts that will do the same but I’m mixing for crying out loud and I don’t want to spend even 3 seconds to think about what that shortcut was again and then do some kind of 12 finger option/alt/+/shift/ctrl/whatever combination to get there. Push the button and get on with it thank you. That’s what a controller should be about and that’s what D-control is about.
Enough center section … this post is getting way too long and I could go on for another 3 pages at least just describing every single button on there … I think I made my point … the center section is a big deal and is impressive to say the least . The focus channel strip is on there too but worth a separate section of this post imho.
- The channel strips : faders and knobs and buttons. P&G high quality faders (forgot the exact model number) 100mm etc blah blah etc … they felt good period. Multi coloured leds. Knobs that are custom made for the D-control. Faders and knobs touch sensitive of course. Everything you need is there : the leds / the switches / the dispays. But here’s some of the coold stuff that makes it more special : Flip and flop mode for example. Every knob on the channel strip (there’s 6) can be flipped or flopped. There’s a flip button for every knob and when pressed will transfer whatever is on that row of knobs to the fader. Can be a send level / plugin parameter / whatever is displayed at that point by that specific row of knobs. Flop mode (push ctrl/flip) will work for the top 5 encoder rows and will bring one of those down to the bottom encoder row. Very handy in some situations where you wanna keep the fader for volume control yet at the same time have a parameter (gain control for your compressor for example or a specific send level) close by for adjusting at the same time without having to reach all the way up for it. Flop lets you temporarily put that parameter closer.
There’s leds which will indicate if there’s a dynamic or an eq present on the channel, an insert switch to insert a plugin. And in this case, unlike the Procontrol, which made this feature quite unusable because in most situations, you can immediately decide on the type of plugin (rtas/tdm/stereo-multi mono…) and then go to an appropriate subfolder (eq / dyn / delay …. ) and go through the available plugins in your system for that particular application instead of having to scroll through all of them. There’s also channel strip modes, The knobs can display so much information it would make them quite useless if there wasn’t some way to bring them into a specific type of information mode with dedicated buttons for that. And again … they are all there : dynamics switch brings you directly to the parameters for the dyn plugin on that specific track. If there’s more then one dynamic plugin on that track push again and again to browse through them. Same for the Eq’s. The mic pre switch will let you acces direct control of your mic pre’s on that track. Input / insert / pan / send switches will do similar things. Input monitor mode switch for each channel. Last but definitely not least an number of leds next to each fader that will give you information about automation modes / group status and then what brings this post to its next section : custom faders.
-Custom faders : Custom faders come in banks of 8 (preference determined) and can do a number of things. Create custom arrangements of tracks for example … very convenient in large session where you want to bring together a number of tracks temporarily for mixing. Anyone familiar with the show/hide locator function in protools will appreciate this one big-time. Plugin mode is going to be everyones favourite. The bank of 8 faders including knobs turns into one huge plugin editor with dedicated controls for the parameters. Virus anyone (might wanna add a bank for that one in the prefs) still too many controls …. Plugin map mode … and this is were custom faders for plugins simply rocks. The ability to map any plugin parameter to a fader. The mapping of course is memorized and next time you open that plugin that same mapping of parameters you created is available. Or how about automation of plugin parameters … no more going through the endless list of plugin parameters adding them manually one by one for automation. In automation mode you simply tap the knob with the parameter you want to automate and voila. And what automation is concerned this goes for everything that can be automated on any section of the surface. Also in the dedicated eq/dyn sections … simply tap the knob and the parameter can be automated.
- The focus channel strip : locks down any channel on a dedicated channel strip in the center section and will stay there until you assign another channel to it. Extremely convenient again in large setups, both for mixing and tracking. I can imagine myself sitting behind one with a singer in the booth. I would want that singers record channel on the focus strip at all times. No matter where I bank the other channels to … the singer will always stay there.
Btw, is this post getting too long now ? probably yes, but then again …. It’s impossible to do it shorter then this … there’s just to much. And I haven’t even mentioned everything.
3 different like 40 minute long demo’s, all three covering different things. In the private one I had, Stan was literally flying over the thing rattling away like a machine gun trying to fit as much as possible in the 40 minutes and still the lady had to come in and say … sorry but times up and I walked out there feeling like I had only seen like maybe 10% of it.
This is the internet, these are discussion forums, this is what we come here for … to discuss stuff. Let’s discuss stuff. I tried to give a complete overview of what it can do. Probably a lot more. If I missed something, let’s hear it. Do you like it ? Do you think it sucks ? What’s wrong with it ? What do other’s have what this one doesn’t have ? Would you buy one ? Discuss ……….