For Icon Owners only - post your pros and cons

[boneboy]

I, like many studio owners, are researching the facts we need to justify adding the Icon console to our studios. There have been many informative posts from the folks at O’Henry Studios and Dom Camardella of Santa Barbara Sound Design, etc.

I would like to start a thread that is basically for Icon users only so that those of us that are considering purchasing it can quickly access pertinent information and determine if this console is the appropriate choice for our clients. This is good for Digidesign and for potential buyers.

It is important to understand the strengths and weakness’ of this console so we can anticipate what we have in store for us when we install it. Having said that , I understand that this is ver. 1.0 of the console and over the years will evolve like the SSL E series did to the K series.

It is very difficult to research the merits of this console when you have people arguing the concept of digital versus analog, etc., or who have only had a limited amount of time testing the console in a demo situation.

I respectfully ask that all those people that do not own the Icon to refrain from posting their comments in this thread.

The studio owners that are contemplating changing over to this new concept need a thread that is concise and not filled with petty bickering. Just the facts please! Professional studio owners have millions of dollars at stake and do not have time to read about people that run home studios fighting about their personal needs for a console that meet their songwriting needs, etc.

There are plenty of other threads that you can do that in.

There is one other set of criteria that I request for this thread - if you have questions about the Icon to the owners of the console, please keep them in the context of the thread. "Don't you wish you were mixing on a Neve console", etc., is not a valid question on this thread. Most of the professional studios that are considering buying an Icon have mixed and recorded on most of the analog formats.

Thank you for respecting the intentions of this thread. Any professional studio owner that is contemplating transforming the entire concept of their business needs as much qualified and experienced information as possible.

[Carl Fuehrer]

Ditto here. Must be all the owners are hard at work on their Icons and can't take a moment to comment.

[FlorianE]

In the initial flurry last summer the basic pro's and con's were all discussed - regardless of many off-topic contributions. People probably just don't like saying the same things twice.
A good clue may be the relative quiet that has settled over the ICON forum: apart from K.I's XMON, nobody seems to have technical complaints. And if there are issues, they're to do with PT software releases or persisting plug-in incompatibilities, rather than with D-Control.

Cheers
Florian

[Chris Lambrechts]

This section isn't that big yet. Only 4 pages and most topics only have a couple of posts in them. You could read through them first and see if there's anything missing you'd like to add ?

[SessionKat]

"Eyes (and ears) wide open" for any complaint, question or suggestion.

-tv

[Chris Lambrechts]

come to think of it .... I do have a complaint.

I got this nice, good quality Icon shirt. realy realy nice.

BUT IT'S SHORT SLEEVED FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. I live in freakin rainy Belgium and there's about 37 days in a year it's actually sunny and warm enough to wear it. Sjeezes ...

May I suggest long sleeved shirts for non Californian Icon owners ?


there ... glad I got that off my chest.

[FlorianE]

You got an ICON shirt?


Florian

[Chris Lambrechts]

"Eyes (and ears) wide open" for any complaint, question or suggestion.

-tv




Since you asked :


1. 'cursor in edit window follows select track from CS (control surface)' preference.

In so many situations this would be invaluable. Although I can see some pitfalls on how to programm this, the selected track would have to jump in a visible section of the edit window for example. maybe to be combined with the CTL Selecting a track but without having to hold the CTL key. it would give SOOOOOOO much more sence to scrubbing and especially trim scrubbing regions. Which works realy realy well from the D control but often get's left behind because you have to go through he hassle of putting the cursor on the right track either by scrolling to it with the arrows from the keyboard or zoom section or by clicking it with the trackball. Imagine ... push select button, '*' enter position in time and bam .... your there were you wanna be.

2. touching a fader or rotary displays corresponding controller value in timeline pref .... without having to hold CTL + command. Man that would be cool in mixing situations .... turn it of during editing , on during mixing . Put it on a soft key menu for convenient toggling. select track button would display waveform, touching fader would display volume info .... mute displays mute, pan pan, automation enabled parameters by touching the corresponding rotary. WITHOUT holding CTL + command. I can hear you, yes but doesn't all that toggling get on your nerves .... NO ... think about it ... it's not like it's going to jump from one to the other all the time in real life. And even if it does ... it's a pref ... turn it off if it bothers you. I can definately see the benefit in having it to enhance your workflow....

3. 'focus channel automatically toggles view to preffered setting' ... kinda like the E key for a selection but with a track. I usually set my track view to small. During editing the E key is gold. During mixing a pref that would bring up the focussed track to say large view would be awesome in combination with the touch fader automatically displays volume value pref mentioned earlier.


What do y'all think ? makes sence or waste of time ?

[drknob]

Some things we've learned since installing the D-Control:

1) The center section is quite wide. We originally had our console split with 16 faders on each side of the center. We decided it best to put all 32 faders together on the left. This also has the advantage of moving the monitor screen out of the sound field, especially when a center speaker is used. Of course, some center section knobs and the track ball become quite inconvenient to reach. We provide a Cinema display and remote keyboard on a cart beside the console to give clients an option.
2) There is no provision in the X-Mon to share either surround speakers or subs between Main and Alt speaker sends. To remedy this we use a passive combining network to sum Main and Alt surround and sub sends. This is an inconvenience.
3) The default setting for the Foot Switch 1&2 control ports is 'record'. This means that if you connect a Brainstorm wireless remote and forget to change the default setting (or it resets itself - it has happened) Pro Tools will receive a record command when someone hits a remote talkback button. This is just plain goofy.
4) Lighting is critical. Some of the displays can be difficult to read, especially those near the top.
5) Cable management is primitive or non-existent. Providing a handfull of sticky backed cable mounts and cable ties is not an acceptable solution for a product at this price point. Who invented the biodegradable primordial ooze that passes for glue on these things anyway?

Positive notes:

1) It works. It's reliable. We've had zero downtime. (but more than a few restarts for Pro Tools)
2) X-Mon sounds quite good.
3) The speaker cal function works well but should have better than .5dB resolution.

[SessionKat]

4) Lighting is critical. Some of the displays can be difficult to read, especially those near the top.




Have you adjusted your contrast/brightness settings in Utilities? You can adjust them ROW by ROW.

-tv

[Chief Technician]

"Eyes (and ears) wide open" for any complaint, question or suggestion.

-tv


Disclaimer: I don't own an ICON, and have only put my hands on one once.

Suggestions: Instead of the Scroll to Track Number option, how about a Scroll to Track Name option? It's easier to remember the name of a track (SFX C) than it is to remember an arbitrary number (37). I seem to recall there being a small option button in each fader bank on the ICON. I tried, unsucesfully, to hold this option button and touch a fader to make it snap to zero. I think it would be cool if you could do that. You wouldn't have to be near the center section to make it happen.

As for a design suggestion, the thing is too deep. I'm 5'10", and I can't reach the top mushroom without leaning out of my chair. I'm not going to lean out of a chair to reach that top mushroom. I know you can do custom mapping and the such, but I feel like I'd be paying for a lot of 'shrooms that I would never use if I were to buy an ICON.

[drknob]

Brightness is not the issue. It's viewing angle. The displays are all quite clear if you're standing. (and not too bad in the dark...)

[SessionKat]

Brightness is not the issue. It's viewing angle. The displays are all quite clear if you're standing. (and not too bad in the dark...)



We spent a deal of time working with individual encoder row contrast and brightness settings to achieve a soluable working experience.

Have you adjusted these settings by row? (not just global)

-tv

[SessionKat]

Brightness is not the issue. It's viewing angle. The displays are all quite clear if you're standing. (and not too bad in the dark...)



Harold, et al :
We spent a good amount of time playing with the individual encoder row CONTRAST and BRIGHTNESS settings using folks of different heights to provide workable settings as default. Of course, knowing that this is a very subjective call.

You mentioned "brightness", though have you adjusted the contrast per individual encoder row? This could help.

Regards,

-tv

[drknob]

Well, ok. I could apply myself to tweaking some of the contrast/brightness settings but I feel the better solution would have been to tilt the displays slightly towards the user. Maybe this is impractical and would cause too many design and manufacturing headaches. But I'm just sayin'....most of our clients like to work sitting down with the room lights full up. Maybe it's as good as it gets.

[Jeff Hodges]

- Ability to disable the Mute Clear button. I hate that button.

- Do to selected / Do to all - this is a cure and a blessing...curse if you forget to turn it off....

- When assigning midi outs, I always have to resort to the mixer view because, for instants, a midiman 8X8, all the channels look the same when twistiing the knob to select the midi out.

Can't think of anything else con...

The rest are pros.

Jeff

[Chris Lambrechts]

- Do to selected / Do to all - this is a cure and a blessing...curse if you forget to turn it off....


Jeff




would be nice if they would automatically dim, as in 'dissable' after you perform the action. Actually 'set to default to' to it too. give it a 'one shot' pref.

[Jeff Hodges]

would be nice if they would automatically dim, as in 'dissable' after you perform the action. Actually 'set to default to' to it too. give it a 'one shot' pref.



Very good idea.....a "one shot" then it turns off.

Very good.

[SessionKat]

- Ability to disable the Mute Clear button. I hate that button.

- Do to selected / Do to all - this is a cure and a blessing...curse if you forget to turn it off....





I like the one time and latch idea. Running this by some folks......



- When assigning midi outs, I always have to resort to the mixer view because, for instants, a midiman 8X8, all the channels look the same when twistiing the knob to select the midi out.

Jeff



We're currently addressing this. Soon.

-tv