How many faders should I get?

[johnnyv]

Hey Icon owners. I'm thinking about getting an Icon. If I do, how many faders should I get? Originally, I was thinking about getting 32 faders and splitting them 16 on each side of the center. Then I heard that O'Henry originally had theirs that way, but later changed to all 32 on the left of center section. I was kind of wondering if you split them 16L and 16R, would the ones on the right ever get used or would you always tend to work with the faders on the left of the center, so their move made sense to me. BUT, if you put all 32 to the left, do you ever really use the last bucket that's all the way to the left? At the end, you'd be way out of speaker range again.

So, my question is, how many faders would you guys actually recommend to a prespective buyer and why?

Thanks much,

John

[Carl Fuehrer]

I would say 32. For me having it split 16L/16R allows better use of the focus channel and center section. It also allows the engineer and assistant to work on the board comfortablly at the same time.

[johnnyv]

I would say 32. For me having it split 16L/16R allows better use of the focus channel and center section. It also allows the engineer and assistant to work on the board comfortablly at the same time.



Thanks, Carl,

But set up that way, do you find that you actually use the faders on the right or do they go unused most of the time?

John

[Carl Fuehrer]

I "Grew Up" on 40+ channel desks so I actually enjoy moving around to the different sides. If it didn't make a difference to me or to most engineers, the Icon would only really need 1 channel strip to be functional with the mid section as it is. To me, the whole idea behind the Icon is to stop mousing around the screen and get back to actual hands-on mixing and solving a problem I have had for a while with PT of watching the screen and numbers and not focusing on the audio like I should and did on Neve's, Amek's and SSL's (dare I include Mackie's?)

[Igotsoul4u]

I have to say that I don't use all 32 faders like I would if I was on a traditional console. I use more like 8. The bank/nudge buttons shoots everything right where I need it. If I want to get a good vibe of the overall mix I simply look at the edit window. If I move around to much then I might get a lot of static shocks and my legs might get tired. It sounds lazy and it is. Anyway. The biggest pro to more faders (in my opinion) is being able to have a solid looking piece of machinary sitting nice and balanced in your control room. It would look totally goofy without the faders on either side of the center section, but hey, thats just me.

[johnnyv]

I have to say that I don't use all 32 faders like I would if I was on a traditional console. I use more like 8. The bank/nudge buttons shoots everything right where I need it. If I want to get a good vibe of the overall mix I simply look at the edit window. If I move around to much then I might get a lot of static shocks and my legs might get tired. It sounds lazy and it is. Anyway. The biggest pro to more faders (in my opinion) is being able to have a solid looking piece of machinary sitting nice and balanced in your control room. It would look totally goofy without the faders on either side of the center section, but hey, thats just me.



got soul,

If you look at the Icon pic from Sylicone in Paris, they have 32 faders on the left, then the Center, then a Prod desk/equipment bay to the right. Looks really nice. With this approach, would you still have 32 faders on the left, or would you find that you really wouldn't be using them? That's my dilemma. I'm just wondering if I'd actually use 32 faders very often, or if I'd more likely sit in the sweet spot and just bank around...

thanks...

John

[RichN]

John,

On a 32 fader D-Control, many users prefer to put all 32 faders to the left of the main unit for a couple of reasons.
This puts the last 8 faders 25-32 pretty much dead center in the console and these are typically used for custom faders, while still leaving you the remaining 24 regular faders together to the left of them. This arrangement works for those who are used to mixing on a large analog console where your groupers are in front of you in the sweet spot. The advantage is that this custom fader section can be set up to edit plug ins, act as groupers or any selection of tracks in the session, all from the sweet spot.

One button push reclaims the CF section as regular faders. You could also keep selected tracks parked in the CF section in front of you and bank the other 24 faders to get to any other tracks on the fly.

In this config, the EQ and Dynamics panels are easily reachable from your right hand, without moving from the sweet spot.

Hope this helps

[Igotsoul4u]

I still prefer the sweet spot idea. The console that I used to deal with most often was a neve capricorn which is basically laid out in the exact same manner. I am used to having a limited number of faders, so I don't find myself venturing past 8ch on either fader banks. I do use custom faders quite a bit because i can access them without really moving from the sweet spot (I am small so if you are big you should have no problems.) The opposite fader bank is where i usually do all my bank nudging. I guess my ideal config would be the 8 faders on either side of the center section. Overall my main concern is usually to stay in the sweet spot. I can't wait until I can focus channels with the bank nudge bank buttons.....then I will never move again.

[uno1234]

But what I don't understand is, doesn't the LCD monitor get in the way of the sound from the speakers? Isn't the "sweet spot" you're talking about obstructed? How do people deal with this?

[Carl Fuehrer]

That's why you get the Vesa arm to mount it on. That way you can move it out of the way.

[Jeff Hodges]

I prefer the 16 on left and 16 on the right. I can't imagine having to slide all the way to the right or left to type or edit, this would keep me out of the sweet spot.

I make all 16 on the right custom faders with Left center justify on.

It's like having two consoles. I've gotten a system down for where I map stuff and having 16 faders for CF is really useful. I can bank on the entire left side for my 'floating' console.

Jeff

[johnnyv]

I prefer the 16 on left and 16 on the right. I can't imagine having to slide all the way to the right or left to type or edit, this would keep me out of the sweet spot.

I make all 16 on the right custom faders with Left center justify on.

It's like having two consoles. I've gotten a system down for where I map stuff and having 16 faders for CF is really useful. I can bank on the entire left side for my 'floating' console.

Jeff



Jeff,

Although I don't own an Icon and thus, don't know everything about it, your idea kind of intrigues me. Can I presume that you center the desk in the exact center of the center section? The reason I ask is that I had presumed that most people would center the desk on the line which separates the left faders from the center section, so that they would be close to actual faders. IF you center it there, then getting to the right faders would be pretty far out of the sweet spot, considerably farther than if you put all 32 to the left. Can you elaborate a little on your "center point"? If your center is directly in the center of the center section, then I'd like to know how you like working without faders directly in front of you. Also, could you please tell me more about what you do with the custom faders? I'm not too knowledgable about that and would love to know what you do with them.

Thanks,

John

[RichN]

I prefer the 16 on left and 16 on the right. I can't imagine having to slide all the way to the right or left to type or edit, this would keep me out of the sweet spot.

I make all 16 on the right custom faders with Left center justify on.

It's like having two consoles. I've gotten a system down for where I map stuff and having 16 faders for CF is really useful. I can bank on the entire left side for my 'floating' console.

Jeff



Hi Jeff,

Great to hear you have a layout that works for your needs, and the 16, main, 16 split arrangement is the norm.
I guess thats the beauty of a modular surface. Having all 32 faders together on the left seems to be preferrable to those who are used to having their groupers in the sweet spot on traditional analog consoles.

[Chris Lambrechts]

interesting discussion ...... I've been wondering how to put the extra 16 in once I move to the new room. Currently have a 16ch setup. I think I would go for the 32 on 1 side approach Rich talks about.custom faders IS a big deal when mixing and having those in the sweet spot seems to me the best option. Although the 16 - 16 setup definately could have it's advantages.

32 on 1 side / move trackball left of keyboard is the way I will go I think.

[johnnyv]

interesting discussion ...... I've been wondering how to put the extra 16 in once I move to the new room. Currently have a 16ch setup. I think I would go for the 32 on 1 side approach Rich talks about.custom faders IS a big deal when mixing and having those in the sweet spot seems to me the best option. Although the 16 - 16 setup definately could have it's advantages.

32 on 1 side / move trackball left of keyboard is the way I will go I think.



Can anyone elaborate on how they use Custom Faders? Still trying to get a grasp on best layout.

Thanks, this is all good info...

John!

[Chris Lambrechts]

Custom faders is a section / part of the faders that can adress a number of functions / manipulations :

1, the user decides how many faders are assigned and where they 'pop up' on the fader modules. The assignments can be done in banks of 8, with as a maximum the physical number of faders available.

2, what can you call up with CF : (probably incomplete list ... doing this by heart) :
- groups : with a choice of edit / mix / both
- CF groups : different from groups because they are created on the controller ... main difference and at the same time advantage compared to groups created in the soft is the fact that you can 'double up' tracks in CF groups
- recall things like Masters / midi / aux's / disk (audio) tracks only in one shot. Cool thing about this is that it can include hidden tracks. Quick balance changes to those ... very convenient on CF.
- plugin mappings ...

you have to see it realy to get a feeling of how powerfull it can be. IMHO having 8 or 16 faders in the sweet spot, that are assigned to custom faders can be a very powerfull mixing tool. You recall your tracks and groups of tracks right in front of your nose during the mixing process.

hope that helps.

[johnnyv]

IMHO having 8 or 16 faders in the sweet spot, that are assigned to custom faders can be a very powerfull mixing tool. You recall your tracks and groups of tracks right in front of your nose during the mixing process.




Chris,

Thanks. Presumably, your "sweet spot" is the faders just to the left of the Center Section. The other guy above who uses his Custom Faders on the faders to the right of the Center Section must be centering his desk more on the center of the Center Section than you (where he's equadistant from the left faders and the right faders), whereas I presume you center your desk closer to the very left edge of your Center Section, no?

Thanks again,

John

[RichN]

John,

The custom fader sections location is not fixed but quite easily moved around on the fly with a couple of button pushes. Many mixers will change its size from 8 to 16 or even 24 faders on the fly depending on what they are trying to do.
If you are mixing music and are using Custom plug ins to tweak your Reverb plugins parameters, then setting your CF section to 8 wide will give you 48 knobs and 8 faders to tweak the parameters. A dialog mixer may use custom plug ins to map the bands of his graphic EQ's to the 8 CF faders. Simply selecting the desired dialog channel he wants to work on will allow him to bring up its graphic EQ in the CF section (and automate the bands using motorized faders!), then simply clear it off the surface when done.

Adding to Chris's description, Custom Fader groups allow you to simply bring back a bunch of tracks from anywhere in your session in any order into the custom fader section and store them onto any of 12 preset buttons for instant recall. They aren't Groups in the sense that their levels are linked, they are just a collection of tracks that you want to see together in one place- totally unrelated to their location in the mix window.. Lets say you want, the lead vocal, its double, some backgrounds, and the vocal reverb returns stored to together on Custom Fader preset 1 and so on. When you want to balance your vocals in a section of the mix you simply hit the preset 1 button and those tracks are instantly recalled into your custom fader section.

You could easily bump your CF section to 16 or more faders if desired. Post guys may use custom fader groups for bringing back the source tracks of predubs. And remember, the rest of your faders can still be banked around the CF section, and one button push clears the custom fader section from the surface and they become regular channnels again. Very powerful, because it doesn't constrain the mixer to scrolling the mix window or using show/ hide with markers to get to the various tracks he needs to balance in the session.

[tomcat]

This CF stuff is very exciting. i must be a major geek because the thought of always available custom fader sets in a complex mix session makes me tingle.
Can you have two CF sets happening at once? For example, in a film post situation, say i use one set of 16 faders as my main submaster section. I will use the other 16 as my virtual floating console, to bank around source tracks. Can i have another 8 fader cf preset for my verb returns that is independent of the 16 subs on the other side? I am not on an icon yet, but it is imminent.
thanks

[johnnyv]

Chris L:

Way back when, you were in a quandary about how to set up your D-Control...how many faders to the left, and how many to the right. How did you end up setting it up and are you happy about it? I"m trying to figure out how to set up my 32 faders...either putting all 32 to the left or splitting 16's on either side of the center.

What do you think now that you've had the desk awhile?

Thanks,
J

[Chris Lambrechts]

Chris L:

Way back when, you were in a quandary about how to set up your D-Control...how many faders to the left, and how many to the right. How did you end up setting it up and are you happy about it? I"m trying to figure out how to set up my 32 faders...either putting all 32 to the left or splitting 16's on either side of the center.

What do you think now that you've had the desk awhile?

Thanks,
J



John,


We didn't move yet ... don't ask ... so I'm still on the 16 channel setup.

Now that said, I have had time to think about it and for me personally it will be the split setup. Both configurations have pro's and con's. Having all 32 channels on one side during a mix might seem the more convenient way at first but the main unit, with the dedicated dynamics / eq and focus channel and all the soft keys are far to important to have on the far left or right. Ideal if your working with 2 people maybe but I work alone so I need those things in the center. My current thought is to do CF on the left 16 channels and have the channels on the right side. It's all about setting up your session and taking some time BEFORE you actually start the mixing process. Now that I'm used to it it takes me like 30 minutes to set up a mix with CF groups. In the meantime I've found the ideal setup to start a session with too. 9 out of ten time I start from a template that has everything basic in there. EQ and dynamics on every track (offline but allready there). 3 sends allready assigned to outboard stuff, auxes , master and routing allready set up for what I think will be the size of the session. After tracking and editing itrealy only takes 30 minutes to think over your mix and set up the CF groups. It's well worth those 30 minutes because it takes away a lot of the unneccesary 'looking for a track' .

I know that some guitar track will be in CF 3 for example and I know that my vocals are on CF 5 etc etc ... Anyhow there's a bizillion different ways on doing things on the D control and that also is as much an advantage as a downside. If you can't make up your mind you can get in trouble. However if you manage to make up your mind on how you want to handle things, there's little to nothing it can't handle imho. Anyhow, the sum of all those things in my workflow will mean that splitting up the faders will work best for me.

let us know how you end up going and why. I'm still interested in hearing arguments pro and con from other setups.

[johnnyv]

Chris,

Thanks. Lately, I've thinking about putting all 32 faders to the left, with the "center" being just under the dedicated eq and compression panels. But, the more I think about it, I think I'll start with your idea of putting 16 on each side and sitting almost dead even in the center...

J

[MrKnewitAll]

I just completed the mix of a feature film on a large ICON console. It has 32 channels on each of three sections. It is set up with each of the control modules in the middle it's two 16-channel modules.

I found that I NEVER worked on the right side of the control module except to assign channels to the custom faders. I assigned the custom faders to the left 16 channels, building from right to left.

After that mix, I would change the layout so that the control module was the right-most section, with 32 consecutive channels on the left side. I found that sitting behind the control module was not a good monitoring position, that it was preferable to have a clear view (and sonic shot) at the screen. Since the left-most side of the control module holds the dedicated dynamics and EQ panels, it was convenient to have them to my right (as I'm right-handed). It's also good aesthetics to get yourself AWAY from that monitor screen, and pay attention to the sound coming from the silver screen.

The Icon worked very nicely.

[K.I.]

Hi.
My Room is 48ch.64Frame.
http://www.tunestudio.com/studio.html

[Jonathan Wales]

This CF stuff is very exciting. i must be a major geek because the thought of always available custom fader sets in a complex mix session makes me tingle.
Can you have two CF sets happening at once? For example, in a film post situation, say i use one set of 16 faders as my main submaster section. I will use the other 16 as my virtual floating console, to bank around source tracks. Can i have another 8 fader cf preset for my verb returns that is independent of the 16 subs on the other side? I am not on an icon yet, but it is imminent.
thanks




When you ask about having two sets at once, there are two answers. Yes - actually you can define up to 48 different sets of custom fader groups at once, which are instantly recallable. And yes - you can have a separate section of custom faders on the Left and Right sides of the console. Simultaneously if you like.

Having said that, if you want to use masters in your custom fader section then you don't need to define custom faders for the rest. The custom faders will stay where they are, and the rest of the channels will bank up and down through the tracks in the session in the normal way. If you define 2 sets of CF on each side, then any available faders that are not custom faders will still bank through the channels in the session.

Custom plugin maps are separate and additional to the custom groups. You can have one such map for each type of plug-in at any one time. Different ones can be loaded in as required if you want to use a different one. So, yes you can have a reverb plug-in CF on the LHS and a CF group of master faders or some collection of channels on the RHS if you wish!

This is why the ICON rocks!!!!!!!!!!!

[Pro Tools LE]

Get 80 Faders Ha ha ha