Consoles 953the matrix. A repertoire of usual starting points—preas-
sembled patches—is stored and recalled as needed.
In pure digital signal-processing systems, this is
taken a step further, where processing elements can be
arranged in order at will or dropped into place in the
form of plug-ins. No arbitrary system: full circle.25.16.15 Integrated Control of Outboard GearA great many bits and pieces of outboard
signal-processing gear (known vernacularly as toys) are
involved in the successful production of present-day
program material. Already the term outboard is flimsy
since via the system matrix, or via plug-ins, their signal
paths are already firmly internalized. The old
music-industry serial communications link MIDI,
despite its limitations, still bears integration into any
studio interactive system. The centralized control point
for these is the interactive main control surface for the
operator, and a MIDI-controller application is required
unless the console as a whole (strangely but sometimes
quite sensibly) merely becomes a MIDI slave to an
external controller.
It is no coincidence that major players in the DAW
world, and hence with influence tendrillike into the rest
of pro-audio, were initially strongly into the instrument,
machine-control, musical synthesis, and arrangement
world of MIDI control (e.g., Steinberg, with CuBase); it
helps explain, too, why there is such a tight integration
of MIDI music-making capability with audio processing
in these DAWs, and their look and feel is unmistakably
MI (musical instrument) in flavor.
At last the impossible studio system of a mere few
years ago, integrated, completely automated, and reset-
table in real time in conjunction with effects, storage
machinery, and other systems such as video, is here.
25.16.16 Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs)
Control by GUI only, where all audio functions are
controlled by mouse activation of on-screen widgets in
the form of pseudo-knobs, buttons, and sliders, has been
a natural progression, if for no other reason than it is
cheap—there’s no physical surface to build or buy! A
GUI, though, presupposes that the actual signal
processing is already in digitally controlled form,
usually pure digital. Although a GUI can be part of an
embedded system controlling a traditional digital
console as described later, often it is part and parcel,
along with the control code and signal processing code,
wrapped up within a PC. This does not make it a
nonconsole, all the parts and processes that make up a
console are in place, just in the one place.
DAWs rapidly transcended being the dinky
two-track editing tools they started out as and have
become the de facto console experience in many
spheres of audio. Characterized at heart by being (or
having at least the appearance of being) software appli-
cations that run on the familiar PC or Mac; by absorbing
the recording into the PC’s hard drive, by providing
access to just enough audio signal processing, by ratio-
nalizing control extensively so that it fits adequately on
a screen, DAWs rule the nonlive and production audio
arenas. While many DAWs totally run within and skirt
the processing limitations of the host PC (which are
becoming less limited as PCs become more capable
daily) in some cases extensive additional DSP farms are
employed to do the heavy lifting, leaving the PC mostly
to do the user interface. In either case, the PC-based
DAW is a perfectly valid multitrack production environ-
ment. Paradoxically, that which was the DAW’s initial
strength—the convenience, familiarity, and low cost of
the PC environment and GUI—is now the major (there
are others) drawback. Screen-based DAWs using
point-and-click are highly rationalized in operation, and
do not lend themselves well to other than single-opera-
tion-at-a-time usage.
This is the predominant reason DAWs and their
underlying technology are still eschewed in any live
audio activity, with more traditional (including rational-
ized!) console surfaces maintaining favor. That said,
there are burgeoning after-market and own-brand
control surfaces expressly to augment and improve
operation of DAWs, and many traditional console
manufacturers have embraced the underlying technolo-
gies and merged the two approaches quite seamlessly;
these range from a small surface of little faders all the
way up to major surfaces such as the SSLs above.25.17 Digital ConsolesIt is an impossibility given the nature of this book and
the space available to give a thorough treatise on digital
mixers and their techniques. It gets pretty mathematical,
pretty scary, pretty quickly. What is intended here is an
outline of typical audio digital signal-processing consid-
erations, methods, and limitations from an intuitive and
practical standpoint and ultimately in the context of a
practical digital console design.
An analog versus digital divide still exists simply
because as with any pair of such disparate technologies,
what is easy in one can be hard in the other and vice
versa; digital can do some things that are practically